Calling NY fan writers and artists -- Women are in fandom? Really?

[rthstewart]

I've been gnashing my fandom fen teeth lately because the excellent discussion in the Star Wars EU fandom about the poor development of compelling female characters then led to the deeply discouraging but usual, "what's it to you since Star Wars is all for guys, right?"  Credit to people like duncatra webmistress at Club Jade for mustering a better

Comments

[rthstewart]

Yes to all of that. Lev Grossman did that wonderful piece in Time and now there are great pieces on Think Progress and Wired too about fan-derived works. You're right -- about they were at some fan comic con and interviewed a couple of guys. It's just all part and parcel of the same -- why do we keep having these same conversations about the same old things? What is this all so shocking? How can someone even attempt to do a story on fan based works and not, with a 5 minute google search find out ALL THAT STUFF? Gosh, the Avengers just had a fan art show in LA -- there were pictures on the Marvel website and you could see Noelle Stevenson's work in the background. Women are so prominent, how can you miss them?

[autumnia]

I don't actually have anything to add to this interesting conversation but wanted to mention that I was in the elevator with Lev Grossman the other day and actually thought of you and your mentions of his article on LJ and in your FF.net profile. :-)

[raykel]

Yeah, I'm kind of gobsmacked by the same thing as anyone else. It's one thing to not include women in fan arena that is, by and large, majority male. But in fanfiction? I think I know one or two male fic writers and about 3,928 female ones.

[harmony_lover]

Yes, yes, yes, to all of this. I am another one of those academics who writes and plays in fanfiction, and the fact that PBS - one of our standard bearers for fair and accurate reporting - could make such a frightful misrepresentation of fanfiction writers is really appalling. Not to mention that it does marginalize, sexualize, and generally ignore women, and given all of the ways that women are being attacked right now, that really upsets me. The vast majority of fanfiction writers I know are female - in fact, I would almost say that it would be nice to see more male writers, just for the change in perspective - and it is definitely women who keep the fanfiction communities going and active.