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A number of people responded to my previous post about rec sites created by people who aren't familiar with the show whose fanfic they're recommending. I started to respond to the comments, but each time I got myself tied in knots, and I began to realize that my thinking about this issue is very muddled and tied inextricably with some of my
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If that's *not* what she was thinking, well...the only other alternative reading I have is that she thought Bodie was inconsistently characterized *within* the story itself (what story was it, J?)
Like you, I am extremely wary of reccers who admit to not knowing canon (like...at all) in the fandoms they're reccing, but I'm even more wary of *authors* who don't know canon for the fandoms in which they're writing, and yet even some of *them* can surprise me every once in a while.
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And I'm not precisely sure what the commenter was saying. She didn't appear to have much familiarity with fanfic, and she hadn't read enough of the story to know whether it was internally inconsistent (which it most assuredly isn't). I'd be interested to know your take on it. It left me ... boggled!
And I'm definitely much more wary of authors who don't know canon. I mean, there's nothing *wrong* with putting up a rec page while not knowing canon - my reaction really isn't rational at all! I mean, *wariness* is rational, but my irritation is a bit disproportionate and clearly goes beyond the surface issue ...
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Entirely differently. It's not that her questions weren't legitimate (I don't agree either, but still, I could see a fan of Pros asking those questions, I suppose) - it's that she had the presumptuousness to cast a judgment knowing nothing whatsoever about what she was speaking.
And as for your first point - I agree entirely. I mean, I have a hard time judging individual stories in a particular fandom until after I've read a whole bunch (I didn't feel qualified to rec Pros on crack_van even last month, thinking there was still so much I hadn't read), much less judging a story before I've even finished it. Finish the damn story, watch a few eps - or at least read the intro to the fandom provided right there on crack_van,/i> - and then come back to me with your questions!!!
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This brings me to your post, where i find a similar and, I'd say, equally faulty deduction, namely that readers who do not know the source text are not fannish....I wonder if someone who reads without source text knowledge automatically *is* such an outsiderI think I must not have been clear on this point. I agree with you entirely - I probably didn't emphasize this enough - that one need know nothing of source to be a true fan - in fact I think what I said was "I know very well that someone can be a 'real' fan, can entirely belong in this world and "get it" in every sense of the word, without knowing one iota of the canon for a particular fandom." I *firmly* believe that fannishness is a quality that has nothing whatsoever to do with familiarity with source ( ... )
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seriously, though, i thought you'd used the term primal :-)
and now i'm realizing that you just used outrage and i immediately thought of that seamus heaney poem punishment which i adore, where the last lines are: "who would connive / in civilized outrage / yet understand the exact / and tribal, intimate revenge ( ... )
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Especially because I vacillate wildly, and I can see all sides of many of the issues - especially this one.
The thing is, I really really really do see the other side here. As kaiz said below, there are all types of rec sites, and really, I think that's wonderful, fabulous, great. Who am I to tell someone not to post a rec site because she's not familiar with canon? So the intellectual, logical side of me, which usually predominates, is telling me to stop making a fuss, to each her own. And I believe that ( ... )
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There's also the phenomenon of writers who are known for writing very well in multiple fandoms. I suspect that a lot of readers who are enthusiastic about stories written in a domain about which they know very little are, e.g., fans of M. Fae Glasgow or cesperanza, and they'd read Refrigerator/Refrigerator Magnet or Sodium/Chloride if they wrote 'em.
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Or, if it's The King's Two Bodies, I guess the natural one.
But Fridge/Magnet is a natural for angst, because they're so different but they're drawn together...and Na/Cl have chemistry.
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::snorts into keyboard and snickers madly::
(you seem to have that effect on me :-D)
(Oh, and maybe PB&J stick together??? I'm afraid I'm not in your league ....)
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I think it's a difference in how you and I think about recs and recs pages. Specifically, it's a issue about *judgement* and the criteria the creator of a recs page is (or isn't) using to select those recs.
You say:
I think it's because, though I like to think I'm a decent judge of writing/fiction, I'm in fandom because I'm a *fan* and I want to read *fanfiction,* and I have an underlying, mostly unexamined, assumption/expectation that someone who takes it upon themselves to create a rec page for a fandom is implicitly holding themselves out to be qualified not merely to judge "fiction," but to judge *fanfiction in that fandom,* to tell *fans* what (in her opinion) is and isn't worth reading.Which seems to indicate to me that: 1) you see reccers as arbiters of fanfic quality esp. as it relates to ( ... )
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Now, I haven't addressed the issue of whether a person can be a "true" fan and yet never have seen the series or read the texts
What are they a 'fan' of then?
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;)
My first actions after finding stories I like in a fandom - if I can't immediately lay hands on the episodes - are to read the transcripts, download wav files of the dialogue, look at online photos and read episode reviews.
Oh My YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would argue that in many fandoms you CANNOT get a realistic idea of the characters only from reading fanfic.
Ho yes... Screaming crying Doyle... so not right. Fragile, bruised waiflike Illya... mmmm no... Big Butch Jim and damsel Blair... Blaahahahaha.... Although the Man Song vid does show their relationship so well...
I actively enjoy "assessing" fic for adherence to / plausible extrapolations from canon.are we not the same person... *looks over shoulder ( ... )
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What? IK's not a girly man???? Well, heck...
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