Fandom, death of the author, and learning to love the bomb

[bodlon]

I'm still thinking about fandom, and the way my anxiety about the (increasingly fictional) fan/pro divide sneaks up on me.

Some of my best, most enduring friendships started with fanfiction. Mostly other fanwriters -- like any breed of bird, we flock -- but also some of the people who enjoyed reading the stuff I posted. Fanwriting is social and

Comments

[brithistorian]

I think this plays out particularly interestingly in cases where the fandom is going on based on their earlier books in a series while the author is still creating the later books, especially in cases like JK Rowling and GRRM, where there's not a rock big enough for the author hide under and pretend the fandom doesn't exist. Even if they choose not to actively engage with the fandom, they still know that the fandom is there. It's a very different paradigm from the idea of author as isolated creative individual.

[bodlon]

Right, exactly. That's the triangle right there, and that push-pull.

It can get ugly, too, like when some of Torchwood's writers got death threats when Ianto Jones died in Children of Earth. Creators -- actors, writers, etc. -- sometimes get held personally accountable in strange, horrible ways.

It's so weird.

[brithistorian]

I bet it's particularly weird for GRRM right now because he's having to simultaneously create book-canon and TV-canon for the same series.

ETA: And the 2 canons don't always agree with each other.

[bodlon]

True, though he's been doing some of that for a while. He's always been intensely involved in all the spin-off media, including the RPG.