Week in Review

[kate_nepveu]

Lost my temper over not one but two online discussions, which is the first time that's happened since I can remember. Only SHOUTED in one; I'm not sure if, in the other, it was apparent to anyone other than Chad that I was truly angry.

I did come up with a ten-second theory on the predominance of women in fanfic, which is that it's more socially

Comments

[scifantasy]

And I'm really sorry for causing all the shouting.

[kate_nepveu]

You didn't! I capslocked at someone else.

You and I are good, truly.

[scifantasy]

I capslocked at someone else.

Oh. I'd figured that mine was the obvious one because frankly, I was pretty well aware I'd made you truly angry. (And no, I didn't apologize just because you were angry, I apologized because I realized I was wrong.)

You and I are good, truly.

That's incredibly relieving.

Oh, and I agree about Animaniacs as the heir to Looney Tunes. Absolutely brilliant cartoons on every level.

[kate_nepveu]

We skipped the first Slappy one, may skip Mindy & Buttons (not sure), and almost certainly will skip the hippos. Yay, DVDs.

But otherwise, great stuff. We have the first volume of _Pinky and the Brain_ too (on my list: a "are you pondering what I'm pondering?" icon).

[rilina]

When I was reading one of those umpteen posts over at bad_penny, I saw a commenter saying they wanted to "fangirl the lawyer lady who keeps correcting people."

[kate_nepveu]

Awww!

Though, really, this is bad, because now I'm going to spend so much time (1) re-read Scalzi's thread to make sure I'm the only person this could apply to and (2) browsing the *thousands* of bad_penny comments to find this one!

[cheshyre]

I remember that comment too, but didn't realize it applied to you.

If I see it when I try to catch up with the threads, I'll send you a link.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks!

[mmcirvin]

I thought it was pretty clear that you were... perturbed by some of the stuff being said in Scalzi's thread.

His initial position annoyed me a bit too, since being married to samantha2074 has given me an inkling of the social norms of fanfic communities and they don't seem entirely unreasonable. Also, I spent enough time writing elaborate deadpan parodies of things on alt.religion.kibology to know that the parody/fanfic distinction is not a clear one; this peculiar thing, for instance, is identifably a crossover fic and has been linked to in lists of online fanfic.

[kate_nepveu]

Okay, I don't know why your comment was showing as replies frozen. I must've hit the button without noticing.

Thanks; tone online is tricky. I was trying to keep it pretty calm, so I may have to work on that.

(And though I was mildly peeved at Scalzi, the serious perturbing came later.)

[kalimac]

Well, your first point in Scalzi's thread certainly seemed obvious to me - that unacknowledged plagiarism is worse than open borrowing of characters for fan fic. The plagiarism is hidden and it contains no original work.

But then, I found some of Scalzi's ideas a little odd - such as his suggestion that fanfic is still copyright violation even if the original author gives permission (though in that case it's not prosecutable copyright violation). If the author gives permission then the fanfic author has a license, and it's perfectly legal. Same as the publisher with whom you have a contract has license to print your work, but the pirate in Taiwan doesn't.

The relevance of the fanfic author's misbehavior to her professional work is that copyright violation and plagiarism are the 21st century Scarlet Letters. Once sinned and you carry it to your grave.

As for the other discussion, you're trying to draw a distinction between conscious racism and unconscious racial bias, and it apparently didn't get through.

[ex_greythist387]

the 21st century Scarlet Letters

Gods, yes, unfortunately. As the primary target's hunters have sought to widen their net, they've taken on two more of FictionAlley's early members, who have otherwise agreed to appear at a hybrid academic/fan conference. Now we have this. Meanwhile, on bad_penny people are drawing the strangest artificial distinctions between cons and "real life," perhaps to make themselves feel better.

Apparently, the acronym FIAWOL has never trickled over to Potter fandom. I find this unreasonably amusing given all the cosplay and the (sometimes quite good) role-playing games/communal narratives that've been undertaken on lj.

[kate_nepveu]

To be clear, I was mildly peeved at Scalzi, for his manner rather than his content. The angry stuff was later in the thread, and since it's very long, I wasn't expecting anyone who hadn't already been following it to go and read it as a result. I should have been clearer that I was just noting stuff that happened to me this week; I'm pretty well aware of the ways that the discussions failed.

[kate_nepveu]

Running off, but--missing footnote?

[rachelmanija]

Let me give it a shot:

Because romance is this totally lame and stupid thing, quite obviously, but even sensible women -- women who are intelligent and have otherwise good taste in things -- end up reading it and liking it.

Because football is this totally lame and stupid thing, quite obviously, but even sensible men -- men who are intelligent and have otherwise good taste in things -- end up watching it and liking it.

Because science fiction/fantasy is this totally lame and stupid thing, quite obviously, but even sensible people -- people who are intelligent and have otherwise good taste in things -- end up reading it and liking it.

There! Make more sense now?