What's your take on fandom as it pertains to being good/bad and its relation to canon?
I've just now become quite perplexed by the idea of any writer who would see fandom as a bad thing. I'd actually thought about this before, years and years ago, when I was in a fandom-ish RPG of Terry Goodkind's series, and he got mad and had his lawyers lean on all the different sites that emulated his series at all until they shut down or scrambled to make up something completely original to replace all reference to his series.
But I had completely forgotten about the concept until some things I was reading today while poking around lj. The topic I saw wasn't actually saying fandom is bad, but it reminded me that some people do think this.
[MORE THOUGHTS ON THIS TOPIC]
I have a friend who really doesn't understand fandom at all. I've tried to explain things to her and she's open to the explanations but in the end she looks at it the same as she looks at the fact that I have close online friends-- with a lot of confusion and disbelief that it's legitimate. She hears stories of drama that happens online and thinks it's because it's online, but she doesn't connect the fact that actually she's telling me more drama than anyone via stories about rl friends of hers and the issues that have ensued in different places she's worked.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying she's bad or doing anything wrong at all in being confused by something she's had no experience with personally. Rather, I mention it because it's intriguing to me to think about the ways different people look at different topics.
Even the idea of how to finish a long series can come into play. You could do it JKR style, and basically lay the smackdown on fandom by telling them THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS AND THE REST OF YOU CAN SUCK IT, you can take the slightly sudden approach of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, you can tie up all the immediate loose ends and leave it at that, you can be more open-ended for future stories, or any number of other options. There isn't some hard and fast rule for what's right or wrong because that's an extremely nuanced topic that depends entirely on the plot, the author's preferences, the characters portrayed and their actions, and more than anything, what is best for the story being told.
I guess I bring this up because I wonder if there's a bit of a difference in how people end a story or well-liked series based on whether or not they are aware of the idea of fandom. JKR once again as an example. She was very aware of fandom and even popped up on sites different places. I would have expected, as a fan of her series, for her to leave the ending a bit open-ended, but she instead chose to include an epilogue that I'm not sure I've met one person yet who liked it. Even my non-fandom friend hated it. And that's because at the heart of fandom is the same thing-- people who love a series and get invested in the characters, whether or not they're aware of or agree with the concept of fandom, still, I think, end up creating a bit of a fanon universe in their mind. They come to believe what makes sense for that character beyond the last page, and an epilogue like JKR did is like a slap in the face for many people because it cuts out any chance of thinking of one's own ending and tells you that the ending is exactly this.
Now, that was probably her point. But what I wonder is-- was that always going to be the ending? If she'd never become aware of the massive fandom that popped up around HP, if she'd never seen the Drarry and Puppylover versions of the world, would she have still written everything the same way? Would she still have felt it necessary to skip a decade ahead to emphasize that everyone is perfectly happy in their perfectly heteronormative way of living, and that in essence the entirety of the point of their existence led down to the babies they had? Or might she have written a different ending that didn't curtail different aspects of fandom? Obviously the thing about fandom is people write/do what they want regardless of canon at times, but it's still interesting to me to wonder whether HP would have been the same had she not realized one day, "Hey, fandom exists!" and potentially thought as a follow-up, "I don't want them trying to write an ending I don't want so I'll make it so everyone sees exactly the same ending I do."
Or was she, instead, simply trying to emphasize to everyone that she has zero intentions of following up on the series herself? And, again, would she have felt the need for that emphasis if she hadn't seen the popularity that exploded and grew, as a result, into a massive fandom?
But leaving aside all these things I keep bringing up that have a bit of a passing glance at the original topic, it's just all leading back into what perplexed me in the first place: the idea of someone thinking fandom is bad, and, maybe above that, the idea that writers could believe others could be writing/drawing/whatever their characters the wrong way.
I mean, I get it to an extent. You create a character a certain way and you want it to remain passably similar in retellings. I don't really feel that way myself for my characters for the most part but I can understand the concept for others.
But on the other hand, a well-written character will feel real to a reader. That reader might then extrapolate on any number of small instances in that character's life, and end up in an entirely different place than where the character started. Even if, for instance, I wrote a male character who I was quite certain was straight and someone else really liked that character with some other male character and shipped them... I guess I just don't understand the concept of being upset by this. It doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. It means someone liked that character enough to consider his interactions with others, and they read into this or that interaction, and they went with it.
I guess it's a bit of my gay bias, however, in that if there were a canonically gay character who someone shipped with a woman, I might be a bit confused, but again, I wouldn't care.
I think more than anything I'd find it more perplexing to think of someone turning a gay person straight in fic than a straight person gay, ONLY because there's such a history of heteronormativity that ended up feeding into slashdom, I think, so reversing that just seems like an even more niche market that I wouldn't think is likely to be popular. Simply because, if a person is reading a series about gay people, they're most likely okay with the idea of someone being gay, so making them straight is counter to the typical inclinations of that pool of readers. But making a straight character gay is more in line with that pool of readers because they're so used to seeing only straight people in series elsewhere and potentially turning THEM gay for ships that it would be easy for them to bring that thought process over even into a gay series, if they saw sufficient chemistry between particular characters.
I suppose that would have to be a generalized assumption for the reason for such things because it would depend entirely on each person. And I could be wrong on all of this.
Questions for you!
Anyway, if any writers happen to be reading this, out of curiosity, how do you view fandom? If a fandom developed around one of your stories, would you like it? And what would you think about fanfic writers or artists creating works that features characters of yours engaging in activity or having feelings that are outside of the specified sexual orientation in canon?
Conversely, if any readers of ANY kind of series/stories are reading this, what's your take on fandom? And do you believe your opinion is affected by whether or not you have ever been involved in a fandom of any sort in any way? (by writing, reading, drawing, etc)
[My answer for myself, in case you wonder]
My answer for myself, in case you wonder
For me, I suspect my view of fandom HAS been affected by my past. After all, I came from fandom. The Gundam Wing fandom is where I first ever shared my stories with complete strangers, and especially in a public setting.
Previous to that, I did what I normally do-- write but don't share it because I think it's shit. Or, I'd shared things like poetry or short stories with friends and family on occasion. If they ever said they liked something I did, I didn't believe they were telling me the truth because I thought they were obligated to me through our ties to try to not discourage me or try to not be mean. It wasn't until complete strangers (over the internet at that, who had zero investment in my life and had zero reason to lie about it) started saying they liked my stuff that I began to believe maybe there was something to it.
When I become engrossed in a story or series of any sort (tv, manga, anime, book, etc), if the presented canon pairings don't make sense to me, I DO sometimes ship other pairings. So to me it isn't a bad or strange thing to do. But it would have been interesting to see my opinion in an alternate universe where I never typed those fateful words into a search engine all those years ago that eventually led me down the slash fandom path.
Since I can't phone up Alt!me, I figured out of pure curiosity I'd see if anyone else had thoughts on the topic.
But I had completely forgotten about the concept until some things I was reading today while poking around lj. The topic I saw wasn't actually saying fandom is bad, but it reminded me that some people do think this.
[MORE THOUGHTS ON THIS TOPIC]
I have a friend who really doesn't understand fandom at all. I've tried to explain things to her and she's open to the explanations but in the end she looks at it the same as she looks at the fact that I have close online friends-- with a lot of confusion and disbelief that it's legitimate. She hears stories of drama that happens online and thinks it's because it's online, but she doesn't connect the fact that actually she's telling me more drama than anyone via stories about rl friends of hers and the issues that have ensued in different places she's worked.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying she's bad or doing anything wrong at all in being confused by something she's had no experience with personally. Rather, I mention it because it's intriguing to me to think about the ways different people look at different topics.
Even the idea of how to finish a long series can come into play. You could do it JKR style, and basically lay the smackdown on fandom by telling them THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS AND THE REST OF YOU CAN SUCK IT, you can take the slightly sudden approach of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, you can tie up all the immediate loose ends and leave it at that, you can be more open-ended for future stories, or any number of other options. There isn't some hard and fast rule for what's right or wrong because that's an extremely nuanced topic that depends entirely on the plot, the author's preferences, the characters portrayed and their actions, and more than anything, what is best for the story being told.
I guess I bring this up because I wonder if there's a bit of a difference in how people end a story or well-liked series based on whether or not they are aware of the idea of fandom. JKR once again as an example. She was very aware of fandom and even popped up on sites different places. I would have expected, as a fan of her series, for her to leave the ending a bit open-ended, but she instead chose to include an epilogue that I'm not sure I've met one person yet who liked it. Even my non-fandom friend hated it. And that's because at the heart of fandom is the same thing-- people who love a series and get invested in the characters, whether or not they're aware of or agree with the concept of fandom, still, I think, end up creating a bit of a fanon universe in their mind. They come to believe what makes sense for that character beyond the last page, and an epilogue like JKR did is like a slap in the face for many people because it cuts out any chance of thinking of one's own ending and tells you that the ending is exactly this.
Now, that was probably her point. But what I wonder is-- was that always going to be the ending? If she'd never become aware of the massive fandom that popped up around HP, if she'd never seen the Drarry and Puppylover versions of the world, would she have still written everything the same way? Would she still have felt it necessary to skip a decade ahead to emphasize that everyone is perfectly happy in their perfectly heteronormative way of living, and that in essence the entirety of the point of their existence led down to the babies they had? Or might she have written a different ending that didn't curtail different aspects of fandom? Obviously the thing about fandom is people write/do what they want regardless of canon at times, but it's still interesting to me to wonder whether HP would have been the same had she not realized one day, "Hey, fandom exists!" and potentially thought as a follow-up, "I don't want them trying to write an ending I don't want so I'll make it so everyone sees exactly the same ending I do."
Or was she, instead, simply trying to emphasize to everyone that she has zero intentions of following up on the series herself? And, again, would she have felt the need for that emphasis if she hadn't seen the popularity that exploded and grew, as a result, into a massive fandom?
But leaving aside all these things I keep bringing up that have a bit of a passing glance at the original topic, it's just all leading back into what perplexed me in the first place: the idea of someone thinking fandom is bad, and, maybe above that, the idea that writers could believe others could be writing/drawing/whatever their characters the wrong way.
I mean, I get it to an extent. You create a character a certain way and you want it to remain passably similar in retellings. I don't really feel that way myself for my characters for the most part but I can understand the concept for others.
But on the other hand, a well-written character will feel real to a reader. That reader might then extrapolate on any number of small instances in that character's life, and end up in an entirely different place than where the character started. Even if, for instance, I wrote a male character who I was quite certain was straight and someone else really liked that character with some other male character and shipped them... I guess I just don't understand the concept of being upset by this. It doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. It means someone liked that character enough to consider his interactions with others, and they read into this or that interaction, and they went with it.
I guess it's a bit of my gay bias, however, in that if there were a canonically gay character who someone shipped with a woman, I might be a bit confused, but again, I wouldn't care.
I think more than anything I'd find it more perplexing to think of someone turning a gay person straight in fic than a straight person gay, ONLY because there's such a history of heteronormativity that ended up feeding into slashdom, I think, so reversing that just seems like an even more niche market that I wouldn't think is likely to be popular. Simply because, if a person is reading a series about gay people, they're most likely okay with the idea of someone being gay, so making them straight is counter to the typical inclinations of that pool of readers. But making a straight character gay is more in line with that pool of readers because they're so used to seeing only straight people in series elsewhere and potentially turning THEM gay for ships that it would be easy for them to bring that thought process over even into a gay series, if they saw sufficient chemistry between particular characters.
I suppose that would have to be a generalized assumption for the reason for such things because it would depend entirely on each person. And I could be wrong on all of this.
Questions for you!
Anyway, if any writers happen to be reading this, out of curiosity, how do you view fandom? If a fandom developed around one of your stories, would you like it? And what would you think about fanfic writers or artists creating works that features characters of yours engaging in activity or having feelings that are outside of the specified sexual orientation in canon?
Conversely, if any readers of ANY kind of series/stories are reading this, what's your take on fandom? And do you believe your opinion is affected by whether or not you have ever been involved in a fandom of any sort in any way? (by writing, reading, drawing, etc)
[My answer for myself, in case you wonder]
My answer for myself, in case you wonder
For me, I suspect my view of fandom HAS been affected by my past. After all, I came from fandom. The Gundam Wing fandom is where I first ever shared my stories with complete strangers, and especially in a public setting.
Previous to that, I did what I normally do-- write but don't share it because I think it's shit. Or, I'd shared things like poetry or short stories with friends and family on occasion. If they ever said they liked something I did, I didn't believe they were telling me the truth because I thought they were obligated to me through our ties to try to not discourage me or try to not be mean. It wasn't until complete strangers (over the internet at that, who had zero investment in my life and had zero reason to lie about it) started saying they liked my stuff that I began to believe maybe there was something to it.
When I become engrossed in a story or series of any sort (tv, manga, anime, book, etc), if the presented canon pairings don't make sense to me, I DO sometimes ship other pairings. So to me it isn't a bad or strange thing to do. But it would have been interesting to see my opinion in an alternate universe where I never typed those fateful words into a search engine all those years ago that eventually led me down the slash fandom path.
Since I can't phone up Alt!me, I figured out of pure curiosity I'd see if anyone else had thoughts on the topic.