Look, Ma! Meta!
A while back malnpudl alerted me to a call for a local-to-Toronto fangirl who was willing to appear on an academic panel sponsored by an annual Toronto literary festival. The panel was going to discuss "appropriation art" - writers and visual artists who incorporate copywritten material into their work. The panel organizer felt it was crucial to have some
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On a more economic level I think that producers and networks get a lot of money from fans. We're pretty big spenders, once we're hooked on something :) And we get hooked through fic, as well. I would have never gotten into Due South if it hadn't been for the amazing writers in the fandom community
This is an excellent point. I've been thinking lately that our way of interacting with our media source text at the economic level sort of discourages The Powers That Be from bringing lawsuits against us. We don't exactly do anything that would cut into the profit margins of Alliance Atlantis or the SciFi Channel. Quite the opposite, in fact: we do encourage a lot of interest in rather obscure media properties. I think if our mode of fannish interaction was a bit more aligned with traditionally "male" patterns of interaction (which seem to violate copyright law in more pronounced ways) we'd probably get ourselves in trouble, a little. As it is, we tend to fly under the radar. And we buy a lot of shit, too, which helps :-)
I'm so anal about my own writing, but I really admire and envy people who write crack, wacky crossovers and really experimental stuff.
Heee, me too! I really feel like everyone else is much more talented and...this is tough to explain. "Looser," maybe, in the sense that they feel more free to play with different forms and ideas in their fanfic? I stick to the same kind of themes and formula, and I really do envy the folks who do really creative, adventurous, cracky/wild/wacky/weird stuff with their stories. (But shhhh, don't tell ds_team_whimsy I said that).
People feed off each other in fandom, and I love that - instead of producing and presenting something finished to a broad audience, we have this amazing playful and supportive playground to write in. I've learned so much about writing techniques, meta, different cultures and conventions, through being in fandom.
Yes, and yes. Yes. See? You are wonderfully smart! And totally right!
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*g* And I'm happy to hear that I'm not the only one who sometimes feel a little imtimidated by the crazy-cool writers out there :) But your themes and formulas are amazing, though!
Read your entry about the panel, and it sounds like it was a really interesting experience - and I feel convinced from what you wrote that you did an amazing job trying to explain to everyone what it is we're doing. I think it was really brave of you to do it, too.
For some reason, I think I would find it harder to talk about the fanfic aspect of my writing than I would about the gender issues, or even the porn - just because it seems that some people find it kind of sordid (word?) and a little silly. But they just don't get it, eh? *g*
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