Oh, dear.
I seem - in moments of seeking a counter-irritant to my edits of MSP’s forthcoming work (publication on 4 July or so) on George Washington’s correspondence with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (a task that has alas deprived me of much good company) - to have committed fic, and that in another fandom. It results, on the surface, from research I did for Da Slockit Light. In fact, The minstrel boy to the war is gone and I’m in with the IT crowd (Mind the Gap) have, in another sense, rather deeper roots: which I shall now discuss, drawing upon a colloquy with our beloved and ever-supportive absinthe-drinking Bubba.
[A propos Appropriation.]When - nine years ago, I realise with sudden horror - I adopted the name and persona by which I am known in fandom, and under which I have published my more recent works in what is jocularly called ‘real life’, I regarded (as I yet regard, if with affection) fandom and fannish activities as a form of five-finger exercises for the writer. History is a literary art, to be sure; and the foolery of fiction has freed me rather from my earlier and more arid habits as a writer in published work. Yet the fact remains: I began writing in fandom - HP fandom, naturally - as, to be frank, one long Britpick. (It is claimed that Dame Agatha, not dissimilarly, was moved to write detective stories after reading one and declaring that she could do much better than that.) And now, it seems, a like impulse has tempted me over the fence into another pasture as well.
Bubba, with his unvaryingly too-great kindness, commented to the effect that it was nice to see our latest export contextualised. Well, naturally, I rather preferred it when we were known for exporting parliamentary democracy, the Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare, the BCP, cricket, the common law, and herbaceous borders, rather than singing, um, twinks.
The fact remains: having commenced poking about in This Other and Unidirectional Fandom to get background for the fictional boyband in Da Slockit Light, I found myself (typically) at once unable not to use fiction as a medium to raise my usual complaints, and as a vehicle to make points that wanted making. The minstrel boy to the war is gone allowed me, precisely because it is in an RPS fandom, to make certain points upon the nature of privacy in the age of paps, redtops, and social media that are simply not as pointed when I write Rita Skeeter into an HP fic. I’m in with the IT crowd, in the same fashion, allowed me to make my usual plea that writers, and particularly overseas writers, Do the Blinking Research. In one way, that point - which has always been my point, throughout my time in fandom - has been sharpened of late by my collaboration in an HP project, one to which Our Brammers has alluded in a post of her own, and I’m in with the IT crowd no doubt is partly reaction to that experience.
What it comes to is this. Fandom generally - all fandoms - is full of fen who are most of ’em broadly leftish, indeed Grauniad-ista, in their views: they go to cons and attend panels and bleat together in perfect unison against sexism, othering, cultural imperialism, and cultural appropriation. After congratulating themselves on their moral sensibility, far too many of them then go forth and ... not a few insist that Actual Gayers don’t truly write slash (quâ slash) because Slash Is Women’s Space and It’s Not Actually About Gay Men Even as Characters; rather more of them go off and ‘other’, fetishise, sexualise, and otherwise monster a British Asian as a sexily-threatening Bad Boy in a fashion that ought to have died when Valentino did; almost all of them engage in the appropriation of gay male culture, which they do not share and are not a part of; and all save a few plunge into Coca-Cola-Colonialism by imposing Yank cultural norms on any British-canon fandom they happen upon. (Thank God for many honourable exceptions, such as Femme and Noe and Tiger and all.) And you can’t lecture ’em, this lot: they’re not merely impervious to argument, they resent it. So one ends by trying to slip it past them as fiction (well, there’s that cat out of the bag now. Sorry).
I don’t call this hypocrisy. I really don’t. One cannot be a hypocrite unknowingly, and most of fandom simply have not twigged to the fact that one cannot bang on disapprovingly about appropriation and cultural imperialism and then whinge whenever a Real Life Gayer criticises slash-fandom’s cultural appropriation of gayness and gay culture, or bridle when the Chairman of the Keep Potter British Campaign (hullo) objects to Americanisation. It remains the case that resenting and resisting calls to Do The Sodding Research in a fandom set in a country and society that is not one’s own, even if one’s position is Look, It’s Only a Hobby and We’re Just Having Fun and Why Must You Harsh Our Squee and Fuck Off, We Didn’t Sign Up to This to Do an FE Course in British Sociology, remains, quite simply, cultural imperialism: and most fen think that a bad thing.
I am not, I repeat, levelling charges of hypocrisy: only of literal thoughtlessness. And I am imploring fandom to think - for a change.
I don’t at all think most fen are swine. I don’t pretend anything I write is pearls, either. But - whomever I cast my tales before - they’ve at least this in common with pearls: they are formed and provoked by irritating grit, quite half the time.
The other half originate from gratitude towards such very kind readers and dear friends as you lot.
[A propos Appropriation.]When - nine years ago, I realise with sudden horror - I adopted the name and persona by which I am known in fandom, and under which I have published my more recent works in what is jocularly called ‘real life’, I regarded (as I yet regard, if with affection) fandom and fannish activities as a form of five-finger exercises for the writer. History is a literary art, to be sure; and the foolery of fiction has freed me rather from my earlier and more arid habits as a writer in published work. Yet the fact remains: I began writing in fandom - HP fandom, naturally - as, to be frank, one long Britpick. (It is claimed that Dame Agatha, not dissimilarly, was moved to write detective stories after reading one and declaring that she could do much better than that.) And now, it seems, a like impulse has tempted me over the fence into another pasture as well.
Bubba, with his unvaryingly too-great kindness, commented to the effect that it was nice to see our latest export contextualised. Well, naturally, I rather preferred it when we were known for exporting parliamentary democracy, the Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare, the BCP, cricket, the common law, and herbaceous borders, rather than singing, um, twinks.
The fact remains: having commenced poking about in This Other and Unidirectional Fandom to get background for the fictional boyband in Da Slockit Light, I found myself (typically) at once unable not to use fiction as a medium to raise my usual complaints, and as a vehicle to make points that wanted making. The minstrel boy to the war is gone allowed me, precisely because it is in an RPS fandom, to make certain points upon the nature of privacy in the age of paps, redtops, and social media that are simply not as pointed when I write Rita Skeeter into an HP fic. I’m in with the IT crowd, in the same fashion, allowed me to make my usual plea that writers, and particularly overseas writers, Do the Blinking Research. In one way, that point - which has always been my point, throughout my time in fandom - has been sharpened of late by my collaboration in an HP project, one to which Our Brammers has alluded in a post of her own, and I’m in with the IT crowd no doubt is partly reaction to that experience.
What it comes to is this. Fandom generally - all fandoms - is full of fen who are most of ’em broadly leftish, indeed Grauniad-ista, in their views: they go to cons and attend panels and bleat together in perfect unison against sexism, othering, cultural imperialism, and cultural appropriation. After congratulating themselves on their moral sensibility, far too many of them then go forth and ... not a few insist that Actual Gayers don’t truly write slash (quâ slash) because Slash Is Women’s Space and It’s Not Actually About Gay Men Even as Characters; rather more of them go off and ‘other’, fetishise, sexualise, and otherwise monster a British Asian as a sexily-threatening Bad Boy in a fashion that ought to have died when Valentino did; almost all of them engage in the appropriation of gay male culture, which they do not share and are not a part of; and all save a few plunge into Coca-Cola-Colonialism by imposing Yank cultural norms on any British-canon fandom they happen upon. (Thank God for many honourable exceptions, such as Femme and Noe and Tiger and all.) And you can’t lecture ’em, this lot: they’re not merely impervious to argument, they resent it. So one ends by trying to slip it past them as fiction (well, there’s that cat out of the bag now. Sorry).
I don’t call this hypocrisy. I really don’t. One cannot be a hypocrite unknowingly, and most of fandom simply have not twigged to the fact that one cannot bang on disapprovingly about appropriation and cultural imperialism and then whinge whenever a Real Life Gayer criticises slash-fandom’s cultural appropriation of gayness and gay culture, or bridle when the Chairman of the Keep Potter British Campaign (hullo) objects to Americanisation. It remains the case that resenting and resisting calls to Do The Sodding Research in a fandom set in a country and society that is not one’s own, even if one’s position is Look, It’s Only a Hobby and We’re Just Having Fun and Why Must You Harsh Our Squee and Fuck Off, We Didn’t Sign Up to This to Do an FE Course in British Sociology, remains, quite simply, cultural imperialism: and most fen think that a bad thing.
I am not, I repeat, levelling charges of hypocrisy: only of literal thoughtlessness. And I am imploring fandom to think - for a change.
I don’t at all think most fen are swine. I don’t pretend anything I write is pearls, either. But - whomever I cast my tales before - they’ve at least this in common with pearls: they are formed and provoked by irritating grit, quite half the time.
The other half originate from gratitude towards such very kind readers and dear friends as you lot.