Thank you for this; it's brilliant. I've been thinking a lot of things along these lines lately, but haven't been able to articulate it so perfectly.
While I'm not condoning harrassment of show creators, I do wonder why it's entitled to express shock and dismay over a text, or behaviour, or trends within these shows, particularly if they were designed to shock and/or dismay. Are we meant to feel it, but not speak of it?This, especially, resonated with me. Of course, within Torchwood fandom itself (at least the LJ corner I hang out in), I haven't seen too much of this -- there, people who liked CoE and people who didn't manage to be very respectful of and sympathetic to each others' opinions, but outside of that I've been getting the sense that it's somehow wrong to respond to the text in a particular way -- that if we do have a particular negative response, then it's because there's something wrong with US, rather than some of us just approaching the text from a different subject position
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And you know-- I do think we're entitled to a bit of honesty from the show's creators and the people involved with the show. I know they can't give everything away, but the promotional stuff for CoE-- particularly that aimed at fandom and at the gay community-- was, I think deliberately misleading...
I think there's more than one way to engage with my point, and the one you've taken is just fine. :)
I agree with you on this. I actually think the lead-up advertising for CoE is the second most misleading I can remember seeing. The first was the trailer for the Matthew Broderick film, Project X, which was advertised as a bubbly teen shenanigans film, and is actually a tragedy about animal testing. Chimps die! Of radiation poisoning! It will take a lot to beat that! The day I saw it, people were walking out of the cinema, and for good reason. It's a shame, because it was a decent movie, but more traumatising than it should have been, due to the false expectations I (and the other patrons, I imagine) walked in with
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I don't think it's so much the writers being misleading, as a mismatch in communication. You have Davies saying "we're going to develop the Jack/Ianto relationship and make it important to the plot", by which he means "we're going to write this like an actual relationship between real human beings, with all its ambiguities and imperfections, and the plot will turn on the relationship's untimely end", but which Jack/Ianto shippers interpret as "they'll have lots of frothy uncomplicated sex and live happily ever after - yay!"
On a fandom level, I have a quibble with the word "want", esp re warnings. I do think it is entitlement when by saying "we want" we actually mean "we believe we automatically deserve". We can want something (warnings for PTSD triggers) and we can become so used to our microcommunity (our immediate small corner of fandom) providing that thing that we take for granted that it also extends to other microcommunities -- and then we feel slapped when we learn otherwise. But as long as we don't have a fandom FCC dictating what must be warned for, it's still only a courtesy (and maybe common courtesy, yes, as it reflects community standards -- but that's not the same as being requisite) on the author's part to provide warnings
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I've been having trouble writing this reply to you. Not only because I have a migraine today, but because you've weighed in on two of the debates I mentioned in passing (and not on the sides I agree with). However, responding to those debates would be sidetracking from the main point I was making, and which you do address in the middle of you reply. Err... that wasn't meant as a passive aggressive scold -- I did invite people to show off their fannish entitlement here, so I'm not upset you let yours show. :) I just don't want to get into those discussions now, but it's hard to resist. *resists
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But why, why, why is it so fucking outrageous for us to have strong, stupid and/or outspoken opinions about canon and fanworks? Why does expressing those opinions make us "entitled"?
Here's my fannishly entitled statement for today: I want fandom to stop verbally beating each other up for thinking and feeling the things we think and feel, and especially for asking for the things we want. I'd also really like it if tomorrow, the only people still using the term "fannish entitlement" in a non-ironic way were non-fans.The parallel that comes to mind is all the arguments around women's role in the workplace in the 70s and early 80s, where the (male power structure) consensus seemed to be, "Okay, but only if you can play with our toys in our way" - i.e., in a suit with a bow at the neck, and in a way that emphasized the (male-identified) virtues of rationality and ... yeah, I can't remember what the rest of those virtues were, either
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I have always read the term "fannish entitlement" to mean that behaviour where a particularly obsessive fan or fans has crossed a line from reading a given text to demanding that text be written specifically for them.
For example, a company called Big Finish does full cast audio plays of Doctor Who. Doctors Davison through McGann all happily play the Doctor on them, but Tom Baker - for whatever reason - has always elected not to. I've read genuinely angry posts on web forums about how Baker "owes it to the fans" to play the Doctor for the rest of his life, when of course he owes them nothing whatsoever. The same goes for a writer or producer crafting a television series in one direction or another. The fan can watch the show or not watch the show, like it or hate it, but doesn't actually (and shouldn't) control it.
That's pretty much what the terms always seemed to mean to me, but your post is interesting because what I describe above is clearly fan overentitlement I think, which leaves fan entitlement to mean something else
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This. For me, the line (and my rare use of the term) tends to be associated with the passivity of the words "for them"--FOR them. By which I mean, and I'm not that coherent today but bear with me, that to me entitlement in fandom is when someone is saying "do the work for me" rather than "give me the tools to" or "leave me alone to" or "I should be allowed to do or have X as well as you." In other words, demanding rights (which YAY) is not entitlement. So that for me goes to a whole array of things like the difference between "Write the story my way" vs. "Allow me to critique your piece of shit story" (the first is entitled; the second isn't; critique is a right, not an entitlement.) I've had people write to me and ask if I could rewrite such and such a story I wrote for their BSOs in a different fandom--er, that's entitled, imo. But you have the right to remix or critique my work or whatever. I think fandom is a place where we have rights (fair use, remix, critique, review, etc.) and where we use those rights to make/build/
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Yes, I agree. I think we're very much still negotiating where the boundary lines of reasonable engagement fall in the wake of new technologies. Like you, I lean more towards a liberal interpretation of the rights of cultural engagement.
I have always read the term "fannish entitlement" to mean that behaviour where a particularly obsessive fan or fans has crossed a line from reading a given text to demanding that text be written specifically for them.
Absolutely.
There was a lot of this in LJ-based Torchwood fandom after Children of Earth: fans insisting that the writers owed some special duty to the long-term fans (specifically, a particularly vocal subset of long-term fans) over and above their duty to the other six million viewers to tell the best, most compelling, most powerful story they could. Said fans coming up with ever more absurd rationalisations to justify what is essentially the fannish equivalent of stalking: "You must love me, because I love you!"
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You rock. *beams* Look at its mane and tail blowing prettily in the wind!
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While I'm not condoning harrassment of show creators, I do wonder why it's entitled to express shock and dismay over a text, or behaviour, or trends within these shows, particularly if they were designed to shock and/or dismay. Are we meant to feel it, but not speak of it?This, especially, resonated with me. Of course, within Torchwood fandom itself (at least the LJ corner I hang out in), I haven't seen too much of this -- there, people who liked CoE and people who didn't manage to be very respectful of and sympathetic to each others' opinions, but outside of that I've been getting the sense that it's somehow wrong to respond to the text in a particular way -- that if we do have a particular negative response, then it's because there's something wrong with US, rather than some of us just approaching the text from a different subject position ( ... )
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I think there's more than one way to engage with my point, and the one you've taken is just fine. :)
I agree with you on this. I actually think the lead-up advertising for CoE is the second most misleading I can remember seeing. The first was the trailer for the Matthew Broderick film, Project X, which was advertised as a bubbly teen shenanigans film, and is actually a tragedy about animal testing. Chimps die! Of radiation poisoning! It will take a lot to beat that! The day I saw it, people were walking out of the cinema, and for good reason. It's a shame, because it was a decent movie, but more traumatising than it should have been, due to the false expectations I (and the other patrons, I imagine) walked in with ( ... )
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Here's my fannishly entitled statement for today: I want fandom to stop verbally beating each other up for thinking and feeling the things we think and feel, and especially for asking for the things we want. I'd also really like it if tomorrow, the only people still using the term "fannish entitlement" in a non-ironic way were non-fans.The parallel that comes to mind is all the arguments around women's role in the workplace in the 70s and early 80s, where the (male power structure) consensus seemed to be, "Okay, but only if you can play with our toys in our way" - i.e., in a suit with a bow at the neck, and in a way that emphasized the (male-identified) virtues of rationality and ... yeah, I can't remember what the rest of those virtues were, either ( ... )
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Hahahaha! That's great. Thank you.
And yes, to the rest of what you said.
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For example, a company called Big Finish does full cast audio plays of Doctor Who. Doctors Davison through McGann all happily play the Doctor on them, but Tom Baker - for whatever reason - has always elected not to. I've read genuinely angry posts on web forums about how Baker "owes it to the fans" to play the Doctor for the rest of his life, when of course he owes them nothing whatsoever. The same goes for a writer or producer crafting a television series in one direction or another. The fan can watch the show or not watch the show, like it or hate it, but doesn't actually (and shouldn't) control it.
That's pretty much what the terms always seemed to mean to me, but your post is interesting because what I describe above is clearly fan overentitlement I think, which leaves fan entitlement to mean something else ( ... )
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Absolutely.
There was a lot of this in LJ-based Torchwood fandom after Children of Earth: fans insisting that the writers owed some special duty to the long-term fans (specifically, a particularly vocal subset of long-term fans) over and above their duty to the other six million viewers to tell the best, most compelling, most powerful story they could. Said fans coming up with ever more absurd rationalisations to justify what is essentially the fannish equivalent of stalking: "You must love me, because I love you!"
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