Arrogance and editing.
Yesterday, I wrote about criticism. In the past, I have written about Not Doing the Research as being a form of appropriation. A wise comment from Matilda on yesterday’s post has drawn my attention; and impelled a conclusion. Whatever the excuse: ‘it’s only fanfic’; ‘the rest of us are simply trying to have fun’; ‘you, Wemyss-the-Killer-of-Joys, are harshing our squee’: there is in fact, at bottom, one reason and motive for people’s rejecting criticism and editing and the duty of research.
Arrogance.
I am not saying that everyone who rejects criticism and editing and the duty of research is, personally, and wittingly, arrogant (or intending to engage in appropriation). It’s a habit most people pick up from others, and it is contagious.
But in its real roots, what drives this attitude?
That ‘it’s only fanfic’? That’s arrogance: a form of literary snobbery.
That ‘I’m publishing what I like’? Well, by publishing, you are expecting others to give of their time and attention in (and you are generally expecting to paid in ego-boosts for their) reading what you publish; if you consider that they want to be grateful for whatever you belch out, that’s a trifle arrogant, isn’t it.
And how arrogant is it to believe that having the common courtesy to do the research so as not to insult, deprecate, misrepresent, patronise, or appropriate a culture or subculture that is not one’s own, is optional? That it is not your own - although it is the canon source of your fandom - does not, unless you are swollen with arrogance beyond belief, mean it is inferior, and merits your colonisation … God damn you. This applies - and applies, all too often, all too pointedly - to Yanks writing in British-canon fandoms, to persons who are not gay or bi men writing slash, and to a whole slew of other Representative Classes of Fen.
Damn it all, there really is no other way of describing the idea that one is above or beyond or past or absolved from being criticised and edited, or from having performed one’s duty of research and given of one’s best, but arrogance. I am told that some BNFs regard themselves as above all this sort of thing. I can only say that they are morally indistinguishable from the BNP, if this is so.
Let me repeat something I said in a prior post:
One cannot be a hypocrite unknowingly, and most of fandom simply have not twigged to the fact that one cannot bang on disapprovingly about appropriation and cultural imperialism and then whinge whenever a Real Life Gayer criticises slash-fandom’s cultural appropriation of gayness and gay culture, or bridle when the Chairman of the Keep Potter British Campaign (hullo) objects to Americanisation. It remains the case that resenting and resisting calls to Do The Sodding Research in a fandom set in a country and society that is not one’s own, even if one’s position is Look, It’s Only a Hobby and We’re Just Having Fun and Why Must You Harsh Our Squee and Fuck Off, We Didn’t Sign Up to This to Do an FE Course in British Sociology, remains, quite simply, cultural imperialism: and most fen think that a bad thing.
I am not, I repeat, levelling charges of hypocrisy: only of literal thoughtlessness.
And now let me clarify that. It may be thoughtlessness: but the notion that it’s not worth thinking about, and then bothering with, is arrogance.
I’ve said before, in the series ‘ There Is No Muse, and Other Unsettling Principles’, that there is a great deal of ‘idleness operating upon luxury’ in fandom, and this includes Refusing to Do the Tiresome Research, Darling, and Not Getting On Yer Bike. And I’ve noted time and again that
you really do want to employ the techniques and tricks of the social or criminological or military or political historian in your writing.
Put your characters in context, in the mental and physical landscape they would inhabit. What do they eat, read, believe? Where do they live? And - the historian’s question - how does this influence them? What past experiences shape them? I have been known to stress that Harry after the War educated himself to make up the deficiencies of his schooldays. I may tell you now that I do so because that is what Wellington did in India to make up for slacking through Eton and Angers, and what Winston did in India to make up for slacking through Harrow and Sandhurst. (I may say that when I am confronted with a text that contains fanboy Creeveys; a Ministerially-connected Cro(a)ker; a rather slack schoolboy (from a family that is no longer as celebrated as it had been) who goes on to defeat a famous tyrant who is supported by some of the upper classes in that youth’s own nation; and a man named Arthur W--sley, I should be a poor Briton indeed did I not think of Wellington.)
Context. For various reasons, including the statutory, every council in the kingdom publishes one or another sort of planning document or Landscape Character Assessment. Look if you like at Suffolk or the South Hams by way of example; or the village design statements for Great Bedwyn and for Swallowcliffe. If you wish to put your characters upon a canal, there are resources for that. Steam trains? Lor’, yes.
No historian worth his salt should imagine not knowing what his subjects read and eat and used for transport and grew for veg. and saw around them. Nor ought we: if all you know of treacle tart is the name, you don’t know Harry. (Note the ginger. Then consider Amortentia.) Yes, all right: it wants research. But not so very much; and it cuts down on agonising over plot, for when you know these things about your subjects or characters, you know already how they shall react and what they shall do in any situation. And then of course the devices used by historians in narrative, exampled above, clamour to be used and lead you to use them quite naturally. It’s all technique, and it’s a doddle;
meaning that, unless you really are bloody bone-idle, Doing the Research is not in fact a hardship.
And where does this indolence and idleness and luxury come from? Arrogance: the belief that the world, or at least the reading public, owes you an effortless sodding living, simply because You Are Special and Ought to Be Paid Simply For Blessing Us With Your Existence. Balls. Such utter balls it’s married to Yvette Cooper. Get the fuck over yourself.
If you believe you write only to please yourself, have at it: but don’t publish it and expect others to waste time on it if you can’t be arsed to edit it, to have it edited, and to have polished it. That sort of self-pleasure, like other forms of wanking, wants to be kept to yourself, not incontinently obtruded into the lives of the rest of us.
And for God’s sake, stop calling critics and editors and the advocates of standards, research, editing, criticism, and doing the research, ‘elitist’ and ‘bullying’ and ‘intimidating’ and ‘arrogant’. Look in a glass - mirror, to some - instead, if you want a proper recipient of those epithets.
Arrogance.
I am not saying that everyone who rejects criticism and editing and the duty of research is, personally, and wittingly, arrogant (or intending to engage in appropriation). It’s a habit most people pick up from others, and it is contagious.
But in its real roots, what drives this attitude?
That ‘it’s only fanfic’? That’s arrogance: a form of literary snobbery.
That ‘I’m publishing what I like’? Well, by publishing, you are expecting others to give of their time and attention in (and you are generally expecting to paid in ego-boosts for their) reading what you publish; if you consider that they want to be grateful for whatever you belch out, that’s a trifle arrogant, isn’t it.
And how arrogant is it to believe that having the common courtesy to do the research so as not to insult, deprecate, misrepresent, patronise, or appropriate a culture or subculture that is not one’s own, is optional? That it is not your own - although it is the canon source of your fandom - does not, unless you are swollen with arrogance beyond belief, mean it is inferior, and merits your colonisation … God damn you. This applies - and applies, all too often, all too pointedly - to Yanks writing in British-canon fandoms, to persons who are not gay or bi men writing slash, and to a whole slew of other Representative Classes of Fen.
Damn it all, there really is no other way of describing the idea that one is above or beyond or past or absolved from being criticised and edited, or from having performed one’s duty of research and given of one’s best, but arrogance. I am told that some BNFs regard themselves as above all this sort of thing. I can only say that they are morally indistinguishable from the BNP, if this is so.
Let me repeat something I said in a prior post:
One cannot be a hypocrite unknowingly, and most of fandom simply have not twigged to the fact that one cannot bang on disapprovingly about appropriation and cultural imperialism and then whinge whenever a Real Life Gayer criticises slash-fandom’s cultural appropriation of gayness and gay culture, or bridle when the Chairman of the Keep Potter British Campaign (hullo) objects to Americanisation. It remains the case that resenting and resisting calls to Do The Sodding Research in a fandom set in a country and society that is not one’s own, even if one’s position is Look, It’s Only a Hobby and We’re Just Having Fun and Why Must You Harsh Our Squee and Fuck Off, We Didn’t Sign Up to This to Do an FE Course in British Sociology, remains, quite simply, cultural imperialism: and most fen think that a bad thing.
I am not, I repeat, levelling charges of hypocrisy: only of literal thoughtlessness.
And now let me clarify that. It may be thoughtlessness: but the notion that it’s not worth thinking about, and then bothering with, is arrogance.
I’ve said before, in the series ‘ There Is No Muse, and Other Unsettling Principles’, that there is a great deal of ‘idleness operating upon luxury’ in fandom, and this includes Refusing to Do the Tiresome Research, Darling, and Not Getting On Yer Bike. And I’ve noted time and again that
you really do want to employ the techniques and tricks of the social or criminological or military or political historian in your writing.
Put your characters in context, in the mental and physical landscape they would inhabit. What do they eat, read, believe? Where do they live? And - the historian’s question - how does this influence them? What past experiences shape them? I have been known to stress that Harry after the War educated himself to make up the deficiencies of his schooldays. I may tell you now that I do so because that is what Wellington did in India to make up for slacking through Eton and Angers, and what Winston did in India to make up for slacking through Harrow and Sandhurst. (I may say that when I am confronted with a text that contains fanboy Creeveys; a Ministerially-connected Cro(a)ker; a rather slack schoolboy (from a family that is no longer as celebrated as it had been) who goes on to defeat a famous tyrant who is supported by some of the upper classes in that youth’s own nation; and a man named Arthur W--sley, I should be a poor Briton indeed did I not think of Wellington.)
Context. For various reasons, including the statutory, every council in the kingdom publishes one or another sort of planning document or Landscape Character Assessment. Look if you like at Suffolk or the South Hams by way of example; or the village design statements for Great Bedwyn and for Swallowcliffe. If you wish to put your characters upon a canal, there are resources for that. Steam trains? Lor’, yes.
No historian worth his salt should imagine not knowing what his subjects read and eat and used for transport and grew for veg. and saw around them. Nor ought we: if all you know of treacle tart is the name, you don’t know Harry. (Note the ginger. Then consider Amortentia.) Yes, all right: it wants research. But not so very much; and it cuts down on agonising over plot, for when you know these things about your subjects or characters, you know already how they shall react and what they shall do in any situation. And then of course the devices used by historians in narrative, exampled above, clamour to be used and lead you to use them quite naturally. It’s all technique, and it’s a doddle;
meaning that, unless you really are bloody bone-idle, Doing the Research is not in fact a hardship.
And where does this indolence and idleness and luxury come from? Arrogance: the belief that the world, or at least the reading public, owes you an effortless sodding living, simply because You Are Special and Ought to Be Paid Simply For Blessing Us With Your Existence. Balls. Such utter balls it’s married to Yvette Cooper. Get the fuck over yourself.
If you believe you write only to please yourself, have at it: but don’t publish it and expect others to waste time on it if you can’t be arsed to edit it, to have it edited, and to have polished it. That sort of self-pleasure, like other forms of wanking, wants to be kept to yourself, not incontinently obtruded into the lives of the rest of us.
And for God’s sake, stop calling critics and editors and the advocates of standards, research, editing, criticism, and doing the research, ‘elitist’ and ‘bullying’ and ‘intimidating’ and ‘arrogant’. Look in a glass - mirror, to some - instead, if you want a proper recipient of those epithets.