Fandom has always been sleazy; I just never paid any attention

[fpb]

IN one form or another, fandom has dominated my life. I started out in comics when I was sixteen, and since then I only left comics fandom to plunge right back into JKR fandom in the internet age - which, to us old-time dead tree users, is fandom on steroids.

One of the hardest things

Comments

[shezan]

I've always found that 90% of fanfic is dross, 5% is interesting, 3% is bloody good and 2% is better than the source material. There is some pretty shabby stuff out there (pornish and otherwise) but by and large, I've always found that fantasy (by which I mean here sexual fantasizing) writing, even of the more extreme variety, does not translate into actual similar or even remotely-inspired conduct. So it's pathetic? Most people's writing abilities, let alone interior life, is pretty pathetic.

That being said, just when I had decided I LOATHED any idea of RPF for pretty much the reasons you said, someone wrote the most amazing Peter O'Toole/Leni Riefenstahl fic, Black and White, Still. Which basically proved again that you can write absolutely ANYTHING, as long as you have the talent to go with it.

[fpb]

Thomas Mann wrote Lotte in Weimar. But you have to be Thomas Mann to do that sort of thing. And not all of us are. That being said, the original of Maria Pinto in Second Chance told me that she loved the story.

[elegant_bonfire]

It's hard to find good fanfic on the internet. I got into fandom long enough ago that it was pre-internet, and everything I've written was published in fanzines. The big difference is that most fanzines were published by an actual editor, and you got to know who put out a good zine and who didn't. (And the ones who didn't frequently either started editing better, or didn't publish any more, since the word got around.) I kinda miss those days. Zines are still around, and I usually pick up a good one or two at MediaWest Con, but it's not like it used to be.

Edited to add: I agree that RPS sucks, it's right up(down?) there with MPREG and other dregs of fanfic

[shezan]

My reaction to MPREG is instinctively yours - I find it yucky - but of course, there will be THE odd story that actually works. lexin actually wrote a couple of MPREGs that work.

[inverarity]

I don't think a preoccupation with sex and sleaze is something particular to "fandom." We only remember, for the most part, the great poets and writers and artists of previous eras, but porn, sleaze, and Sturgeon's Law are not new phenomena in the modern age. We just haven't preserved a lot of Elizabethan RPF rapefics and ancient Greek porn. But we know it was there, and probably quite popular.

The Internet is the great leveling medium, though. That's what's new.

I've posted before about my own thoughts about using someone else's characters. I can hardly object to it, since I write fan fiction. I do believe that as a matter of courtesy and respect, you shouldn't use someone else's characters in a way the creator would object to, but I think that's more etiquette than legal or moral requirement. (The legality of fan fiction is actually still a bit of a murky area to begin with.)

I know that if Alexandra Quick were an original series about which fan fiction was being written, there would be all kinds of stories and pairings that

[inverarity]

Why did you make me Google that? Why???

[fpb]

Because he has a point. And that will tell you why I am not joking when I say that I am sincerely and bitterly relieved never to have had any success as a cartoonist.

[affablestranger]

The 'sex obsessed' portion of fandom hit me in the face like a shovel when Doctor Who returned to screens a few years ago, and it got worse and worse when David Tennant took the role. To his credit, he seems to have taken what's been being done with his likeness in fanfics in stride, but I can't imagine what he really thinks of it. I know lots of fans, predominantly women, who go to... ahem... great lengths (and depths) in their fics about Doctor #10 and Rose, Martha, Sally Sparrow, or whomever.

It's kinda killed fandom for me, to an extent. Because I never thought of Doctor Who as "sexy". Ever. Yeah, I crushed on Nicola Bryant when I was a teenager, but it was a boyish crush, not a fetishization. That's what I think get me about it.

[fpb]

But it would not have been any different had he been as chaste as snow. When you have people slashing - and I am not, repeat not, joking - Calvin and Hobbes, the grotesque mania for the crotch really is unstoppable.

[sanscouronne]

This may be throwing the baby out with the bath water, but I renounced all fan fiction as abusive of the true spirit of the original since coming across the smutty stuff written for Harry Potter, but more especially, for Lord of the Rings.

[fpb]

It is throwing the baby out with the bath water, but you are under no obligation to read anyone's fics, including mine (though I would be flattered if you did). You have enough to think of anyway. And that is something that fandom, if it had a mind, would have to consider: how repulsive its ways would be to outsiders. My mother, who is a liberal of sorts and getting more liberal as she gets older, asked me what kind of perverts I'd found myself among and had trouble accepting that this was a bunch of regular mostly teen-age girls.

[sanscouronne]

I do not know if it is fan fiction, but I LOVED your short story about Orpheus and Eurydice.
As for the HP fiction, I'm afraid that I am not well-versed enough in Harry Potter (having not read the last few books and skimming the previous ones) to appreciate your fan fiction.

[mindstalk]

If fan fiction is fiction using someone else's characters, which seems the most defensible definition to me, it's pretty broad -- for example, the Aeneid, and possibly the Inferno, and the whole of Arthuriana[1]... Of course, it might matter for some whether the original author is living, recently dead, 1000 years dead and obscure, or outright Anonymous.

[1] Is Lancelot or Galahad someone's Gary Stu? An idealized character introduced into an existing work?

[swordygardener]

it really struck me at the time of the 2006 World Cup, when I became aware that Livejournal hosted - or at least partly hosted - a kind of fandom who used real people - in particular, sportspeople - to project on them all kinds of graphic sexual fantasies.

It really struck me at the time when I was ten, when I became aware that the world hosted - everywhere - a kind of fandom who used real people - in particular, actresses - to project on them all kinds of graphic sexual fantasies.

Pin-up pictures are so evil and perverted and all men having one should be put into prison.

[fpb]

And you are under the impression that you have made some sort of point.

It's always good to check...

[fpb]

This person is not only very foolish, but an obvious sockpuppet. Its LJ has only just been started and mentions no friends or interests. So it gets banned with a notice that, really, you should try something less pathetic.