Fic Recs and OTW Babble
Should I watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles? I almost never watch TV shows as they air unless I know that they've already managed to pull off at least one decent season. But Sarah Connor is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, and The Terminator is in my list of top five movies of all time. (I'm one of those freaks who prefers the original to the sequel; it's just so raw. And it's infiltrated my subconscious to the point where I have nightmares about being chased by the Terminator on a regular basis.) I'm kind of freaked out that Linda Hamilton isn't in it, although I understand that wouldn't really work because of the age issue. And I'm glad that the character, and the whole fictional world, is having a life beyond its original writers and actors. So. Is it worth watching, or am I just going to end up ranting about how disappointing it is?
I'm kind of boggled that so many of my friends are getting into Torchwood. I mean, yes, there's bisexuality, but the show is so badly written. I'm just hoping that people will follow the Torchwood trail back to Doctor Who, and see how much better that show is, and discover the slashtastic awesomeness of the Doctor and the Master.
Today's fic recs:
John Simm did an interview in which he confessed to having worked as a cage dancer when he was young and needed the money. No, seriously! So versaphile wrote fic in which a young inexperienced David Tennant meets cagedancer!Simm. And then they have some of the hottest sex I've ever read. And the end almost made me cry. Read it here: Kiss Me Quick.
versaphile also wrote more Doctor/Master. (versaphile, I swear I am not stalking you. I just kind of want to live inside of your brain.) Three for a Wedding. It's actually Doctor/Master and Doctor/TARDIS, and it's extremely disturbing, but it's the good kind of disturbing.
yahtzee63 wrote The Yankee's Loot, in which the Tenth Doctor picks up Scarlett O'Hara as a companion. And it works, brilliantly, because she perfectly captures Scarlett's inner voice. That woman is a sociopathic megalomaniac, and somehow you can't help but love her. I'd never have imagined that these two fandoms could be combined, but Yahtzee makes it work.
Here's another Life on Mars fic that I greatly enjoyed. It's like an episode--70s police show plot, entertaining dialog--just with the bonus of gay sex. You wouldn't think those things would blend together so well, but, obviously, they do. (Sorry, I know there's tons of slashy police show fandoms out there, I've just never been into one before.)
I've been following the metafandom discussions about the Organization for Transformative Works, and I continue to think that it's awesome. One of the things that boggles me about the internet is that people just take for granted that things disappear. You can read a story that's stunning, life-changing, brilliant, and then look it up one morning and find that it's completely gone.
Some of the best things I've ever read have been fanfiction. There are stories that I love that I'll never read again, because I didn't think to save them to my hard drive. Stories that anyone new to the fandom will never even know existed. And while I respect the right of an author to remove her work from the internet by choice, so many of these disappearances are just by random stupidness. Remember when fanfiction.net deleted all of the NC-17 stories? Work was lost in that purge that we'll never see again, because the author had already left fandom, or switched fandoms, or felt that the fic wasn't worth the effort of reposting anywhere else. Not to mention all the domains that have expired, or sites that were deleted because some studio sent out a bunch of take-down notices, or communities that some petty moderator decided to close and delete. (My earliest interactions with two of my best real-life friends, jaydk and drujan, are on a Yahoo Group whose archives were deleted by a list owner who had an extremely inflated idea of her own importance.)
I want a place where fannish work isn't subject to the whim of one person, or some company that just sees us as dollar signs. Our work should be hosted somewhere that won't arbitrarily delete it. That seems so obvious. But I guess people don't think about until it happens to them; that's why femmequixotic's "Why I Joined OTW" post really got to me. (Her community was deleted by LiveJournal.) I'm still so offended that fanfiction.net deleted all the NC-17 stories; I was reading Modus Vivendi at the time, the first story that ever got me into slash (!!), and I couldn't believe that something so awesome was going to disappear. (Happily, it found a new home. But what about the people who were reading it on ff.net and didn't know where it went? Or the ff.net readers who would've discovered it, but never did?)
This is why I keep All About Spike running, even though I haven't been in Buffy fandom for years. The site still gets a steady stream of traffic, and new reviews are posted every day. People go back and re-read their old favorites, and newbies to the fandom are always showing up and finding the classics. I don't know if I'll keep it online forever, but I want to; I hope that, twenty years from now, when there's The Buffy Chronicles and a whole new revival of the thing, newbie fans can go back and be inspired by the work of their fannish predecessors. But the way fandom works now, pretty much everything will be gone. The links will be broken and the webpages will give 404 errors.
I know that people are annoyed by the academic talk on the OTW website, but that's because they're starting a non-profit organization. It's necessary; you have to get the IRS to approve you. It's worth it, because a non-profit is the best possible way they could run this. It means that the organization will last long past the interest of the original founding group, and it means that it won't be controlled by the whim of one person, and it means that it won't be subject to the demands of advertisers and profit. All of these are exactly what an archive needs.
I haven't read a single complaint that struck me as valid. You don't think OTW represents you? Either join up and represent yourself, or start your own organization. You don't want to post your work in their archive? Okay, don't; no one's forcing you. You're pissed off that they aren't chasing after the approval of men? Cry me a fucking river. You don't care about fandom being approved of by the mainstream? Neither do I, but I do care about our work being deleted because the legal system regards us as criminals.
Right now the people leading the discourse about what we do are companies that either regard us as thieves (yes, I know that what we do spreads the word about their products and draws more people into purchasing them, but companies can be petty and stupid; look at Viacom suing YouTube for a billion dollars over Daily Show clips, or, say, pretty much the entire music industry, suing twelve-year-olds for sharing MP3s) or else realize that what we do could lead to profit, and thus want to reign us in and change us to suit their needs. The biggest voice out there making an articulate defense of what we do is Henry Jenkins, and he's generally lovely, but he doesn't get everything; he's not part of our community; and more voices can only be better. People complain about OTW trying to "represent everyone" but they're not; they're just another voice, saying things that need to be said. If you don't like what they're saying, OMG, start your own organization and say something else, but don't whine just because other people decided to get off their asses and try to represent themselves.
Every time LiveJournal deletes someone's journal, or a hosting company cracks down on "subversive" works, and fans complain about their hard work disappearing, someone comes in and snarks, "Well, what did you expect? Companies exist to make a profit; if they want their site scrubbed clean and safe for advertisers, that's their prerogative. If you want control of your work, get your own damn server." And they're right. The only way we'll ever have control of our work is if we own our own servers. That's why OTW is awesome.
(I didn't realize I had that much to say. I know I'm just reiterating stuff that's been said by more articulate people elsewhere; go read that. Incidentally, I would totally want to join OTW, except I have no freaking time, and all my non-profit volunteer energy is going into SuperVegan.)
[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]
I'm kind of boggled that so many of my friends are getting into Torchwood. I mean, yes, there's bisexuality, but the show is so badly written. I'm just hoping that people will follow the Torchwood trail back to Doctor Who, and see how much better that show is, and discover the slashtastic awesomeness of the Doctor and the Master.
Today's fic recs:
John Simm did an interview in which he confessed to having worked as a cage dancer when he was young and needed the money. No, seriously! So versaphile wrote fic in which a young inexperienced David Tennant meets cagedancer!Simm. And then they have some of the hottest sex I've ever read. And the end almost made me cry. Read it here: Kiss Me Quick.
versaphile also wrote more Doctor/Master. (versaphile, I swear I am not stalking you. I just kind of want to live inside of your brain.) Three for a Wedding. It's actually Doctor/Master and Doctor/TARDIS, and it's extremely disturbing, but it's the good kind of disturbing.
yahtzee63 wrote The Yankee's Loot, in which the Tenth Doctor picks up Scarlett O'Hara as a companion. And it works, brilliantly, because she perfectly captures Scarlett's inner voice. That woman is a sociopathic megalomaniac, and somehow you can't help but love her. I'd never have imagined that these two fandoms could be combined, but Yahtzee makes it work.
Here's another Life on Mars fic that I greatly enjoyed. It's like an episode--70s police show plot, entertaining dialog--just with the bonus of gay sex. You wouldn't think those things would blend together so well, but, obviously, they do. (Sorry, I know there's tons of slashy police show fandoms out there, I've just never been into one before.)
I've been following the metafandom discussions about the Organization for Transformative Works, and I continue to think that it's awesome. One of the things that boggles me about the internet is that people just take for granted that things disappear. You can read a story that's stunning, life-changing, brilliant, and then look it up one morning and find that it's completely gone.
Some of the best things I've ever read have been fanfiction. There are stories that I love that I'll never read again, because I didn't think to save them to my hard drive. Stories that anyone new to the fandom will never even know existed. And while I respect the right of an author to remove her work from the internet by choice, so many of these disappearances are just by random stupidness. Remember when fanfiction.net deleted all of the NC-17 stories? Work was lost in that purge that we'll never see again, because the author had already left fandom, or switched fandoms, or felt that the fic wasn't worth the effort of reposting anywhere else. Not to mention all the domains that have expired, or sites that were deleted because some studio sent out a bunch of take-down notices, or communities that some petty moderator decided to close and delete. (My earliest interactions with two of my best real-life friends, jaydk and drujan, are on a Yahoo Group whose archives were deleted by a list owner who had an extremely inflated idea of her own importance.)
I want a place where fannish work isn't subject to the whim of one person, or some company that just sees us as dollar signs. Our work should be hosted somewhere that won't arbitrarily delete it. That seems so obvious. But I guess people don't think about until it happens to them; that's why femmequixotic's "Why I Joined OTW" post really got to me. (Her community was deleted by LiveJournal.) I'm still so offended that fanfiction.net deleted all the NC-17 stories; I was reading Modus Vivendi at the time, the first story that ever got me into slash (!!), and I couldn't believe that something so awesome was going to disappear. (Happily, it found a new home. But what about the people who were reading it on ff.net and didn't know where it went? Or the ff.net readers who would've discovered it, but never did?)
This is why I keep All About Spike running, even though I haven't been in Buffy fandom for years. The site still gets a steady stream of traffic, and new reviews are posted every day. People go back and re-read their old favorites, and newbies to the fandom are always showing up and finding the classics. I don't know if I'll keep it online forever, but I want to; I hope that, twenty years from now, when there's The Buffy Chronicles and a whole new revival of the thing, newbie fans can go back and be inspired by the work of their fannish predecessors. But the way fandom works now, pretty much everything will be gone. The links will be broken and the webpages will give 404 errors.
I know that people are annoyed by the academic talk on the OTW website, but that's because they're starting a non-profit organization. It's necessary; you have to get the IRS to approve you. It's worth it, because a non-profit is the best possible way they could run this. It means that the organization will last long past the interest of the original founding group, and it means that it won't be controlled by the whim of one person, and it means that it won't be subject to the demands of advertisers and profit. All of these are exactly what an archive needs.
I haven't read a single complaint that struck me as valid. You don't think OTW represents you? Either join up and represent yourself, or start your own organization. You don't want to post your work in their archive? Okay, don't; no one's forcing you. You're pissed off that they aren't chasing after the approval of men? Cry me a fucking river. You don't care about fandom being approved of by the mainstream? Neither do I, but I do care about our work being deleted because the legal system regards us as criminals.
Right now the people leading the discourse about what we do are companies that either regard us as thieves (yes, I know that what we do spreads the word about their products and draws more people into purchasing them, but companies can be petty and stupid; look at Viacom suing YouTube for a billion dollars over Daily Show clips, or, say, pretty much the entire music industry, suing twelve-year-olds for sharing MP3s) or else realize that what we do could lead to profit, and thus want to reign us in and change us to suit their needs. The biggest voice out there making an articulate defense of what we do is Henry Jenkins, and he's generally lovely, but he doesn't get everything; he's not part of our community; and more voices can only be better. People complain about OTW trying to "represent everyone" but they're not; they're just another voice, saying things that need to be said. If you don't like what they're saying, OMG, start your own organization and say something else, but don't whine just because other people decided to get off their asses and try to represent themselves.
Every time LiveJournal deletes someone's journal, or a hosting company cracks down on "subversive" works, and fans complain about their hard work disappearing, someone comes in and snarks, "Well, what did you expect? Companies exist to make a profit; if they want their site scrubbed clean and safe for advertisers, that's their prerogative. If you want control of your work, get your own damn server." And they're right. The only way we'll ever have control of our work is if we own our own servers. That's why OTW is awesome.
(I didn't realize I had that much to say. I know I'm just reiterating stuff that's been said by more articulate people elsewhere; go read that. Incidentally, I would totally want to join OTW, except I have no freaking time, and all my non-profit volunteer energy is going into SuperVegan.)
[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]