It has come to my attention that I've been accused, in a friendslocked post which I can't access, of having phoned willshenilshe's publisher and made a complaint about her original fic (apparently, that it was based on fanfic), which caused her to get in trouble with her publisher and to have to delete her journal.

I did not do it. Nor do I have any idea who did.

Not only did I not do it, I consider it an absolutely reprehensible thing for someone to have done. As you probably know, I have criticized willshenilshe's fanfic on a couple of occasions in ways that were offensive to many people. But I would never, under any circumstances, make a personal attack on her or attempt to cause her harm of any kind. That sort of thing is outside the bounds of decent behavior, and I absolutely agree with those who are angry on willshenilshe's behalf.

(I should add that willshenilshe herself has not accused me.)

I have no way of proving that I didn't do it, of course. But I didn't. And I would like to think better of fandom than that folks would believe, on absolutely no evidence except the fact that I'm known to dislike willshenilshe's writing, that I did. It's a long way from criticizing someone's writing to harassing them and trying to get them into legal trouble.

This is all I plan to say on the subject, since I have no way of defending myself except to say, yet again, that I didn't do it. Accusations are easy to make, but innocence is impossible to prove.

Especially little cute helpless ones.

I eat babies, too.

If they're especially nice fat luscious babies, I share them with glossing. She likes to suck their brains!

If I've had enough babies to eat, I just steal their candy.

Oh, and I love nothing better than ruining other people's fun! Yes, I live for that. A day's not complete if I don't harsh someone's mellow.

Y'all better defriend me now. Quick, run for your lives!



*laughs*

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

I find myself, reluctantly, involved in this debate. I'm not going to call it a kerfuffle, because I think it's more serious than that.

And since I'm involved in it (the response to one of my recent posts has been used as an example) I thought you might want to know where I stand.

I don't think personal attacks in public posts are okay. (As for what people want to say privately in locked posts, I do not care.)

Naturally enough, there's some disagreement over what counts as a personal attack. For my purposes:

"X is a bad person" = a personal attack

"This story by X is bad" = not a personal attack

"Your ideas are wrong and misguided--let me show you why" = not a personal attack

"You are stupid for having these ideas" = a personal attack

"Your ideas are stupid" = borderline and unnecessarily hostile


For those who are now pointing in disbelief--yeah, I've done some dubious stuff. Namely, two anonymous comments. I don't consider either of those comments a personal attack, however. Both of them were about fic, not about the moral or intellectual character of the person.

Vigorous discussion of ideas is, in my view, a good thing, although I do think we could all benefit from a more restrained tone (not content, tone) when we discuss things. However, I don't think it's a good thing to respond to a disagreement about fic or ideas (even an inappropriately aggressive one) with public personal attacks.

To borrow a line from mimesere--if you feel I've personally attacked you at some point, send me an e-mail to kindkit64 AT yahoo DOT com. Link me to what I said. If it was a personal attack, then I will apologize. Publicly.



I'm not planning on doing a bunch of defriending over this issue. People who actually made personal attacks, I've already defriended. If you think those attacks were okay, I've got a problem with that. I think you're wrong and your attitude troubles me.

That doesn't meant I'm going to defriend you, though. Because my friendslist is not a list of my personal friends. There are people on it that I don't get along with especially well, and I know there are people who have me friended who don't much like me personally. And that's okay. I consider my friendslist to be a reading list. If you're on it, I find your fic or your ideas interesting.

We don't all have to be friends. Confusing mutual fannish interests with friendship is at the root of a lot of the problems in LiveJournal fannish circles, I think. But we should all be civil to one another.

I've been thinking a lot about point-of-view in fic lately, and I'd love to get a discussion going about some issues.

1) Why is first-person fanfic so rare? Does the use of first-person bother you in fanfic, and if so, why?

2) Third-person POV in fanfic tends to put us very tightly into the head of a single character, to the point where the third-person narration is really in that character's "voice." It's almost an indirect first-person. It's a technique that, in my experience, isn't nearly as common in profic, although of course it does happen. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a tight POV? Are there times when the narration should be more detached? Why is tight POV such a fanfic standard?

3) What about omniscient narration? Many nineteenth-century novels, for instance, will let us into the thoughts of various characters in the same scene. In fanfic, this is usually considered a flaw. Why? Is it a matter of scale--that a novel is simply larger than a (typical) fanfic and has more room for omniscience? Could fanfic sometimes benefit from omniscient narration?

4) What about the fairly common technique of alternating third-person POVs? (A segment in Giles' POV, for instance, then a break and a segment in Buffy's?) It might solve some of the problems of the single POV, but does it create new ones? Is it "cheating"?

Share your thoughts on POV, please!



Now for something completely different . . .

Apparently, on the commentaries of the S5 Angel DVDs Joss pretty much says that Spike and Angel had sex at some point. This has been greeted with much joy and many kudos for Joss.

I don't think Joss should get kudos for this, though. Okay, I can see how it's gratifying for fans of slash, or fans of the Angel/Spike ship in particular, to get the acknowledgement.

But the fact remains that Joss, and the writers, and the network, did not have the guts to put a m/m relationship unequivocally onscreen. Yes, there were coy hints and deliberately slashy moments. But nothing that might have risked angry letters from homophobes, nothing that might have alienated a precious sponsor. Acknowledgement of homoeroticism after the fact is . . . unearned. It lets Joss and his show claim street cred, claim to be cool and progressive, for doing absolutely nothing.

I'll grant Joss some kudos (a kudo?) for Willow/Tara and Willow/Kennedy, same-sex relationships that were really developed on BtVS. I'm deducting points, though, for the fact that f/f relationships are less controversial and likely to increase viewership rather than reduce it (think of all those "lesbian" scenes in porn aimed at straight guys). (Note: I'm not saying that real-life lesbians are any less oppressed by homophobia and heterosexism than gay men are. I'm only saying that representations of female/female sexuality tend to get a less negative reaction in American culture.)

Let's do the math. On BtVS and AtS, we got two lesbian relationships, one canonical instance of female/female attraction (Fred and Willow), and one long arc of extremely strong and non-jokey f/f subtext (Buffy/Faith). For m/m, there's one cryptic canon reference (Spike/Angel), a substantial amount of jokey and deniable subtext (Spike/Angel, Xander/every male character), and a couple of gay-seeming male characters played as villains and/or for laughs (Ethan, Lorne, Andrew).

Given that record, I'd say that Joss, in the Buffyverse, was only partly challenging the prejudices of American society. To some extent, he was complicit with them.

Excuse me while I don't squee.

For the immediate future, entries in this journal will be friendslocked. It'll change back eventually, but I don't know when.

If I don't currently have you friended but you'd like to be able to read stuff, let me know.

I promised myself that I was going to play nice and stay away from kerfuffles. But I didn't. And now glossing is getting the blame for something I did.

Some of you probably already suspected this, but yes. It was me. I made the anonymous comment about the mysterious similarity of an image in one of willshenilshe's stories to one of glossing's.

Ever since then, I've been fretting. Because we all know that similarities happen, and so do accidents.

But.

This is the same highly unusual detail (blue raspberry popsicles), used in reference to the same two characters (Xander and Oz), in two stories that appeared less than a week apart. I simply do not believe that it was a coincidence. I'd believe that it was an accident, except that willshenilshe has denied ever reading the story.

The thing that's really got me upset is that apparently, pointing out what looks like an incident of overly close borrowing is considered a much worse offense than the borrowing itself. glossing, whom people have assumed made the comment, has been publicly scolded, in coded form, on several journals.

Some folks have trotted out the usual line about how people should have the guts to own up to what they say. Pardon me while I laugh. We all know why I commented anonymously. And I had every intention of remaining anonymous, except that I can't stand to watch glossing, my friend who I love a hell of a lot, get the blame.

I also want to add that, while I know very well how it looks given my history, I didn't make the comment out of any desire to persecute willshenilshe. I was reading through the Slash Wedding Ficathon stories, and I saw the line and recognized the image. That's all. I would've been just as upset no matter who wrote the fic in question.

So that's the story. If you think I'm a shitty person and you want to defriend me, go ahead. But I think I had damn good reasons for what I did. In any case, leave Gloss the hell alone, all right? She didn't do it.

I've turned off comments on this post, because frankly I'm tired and miserable and I just don't want to deal. So if you feel the need to express your disapproval, post in your journal or whatever. But before you do, think about how you'd feel if you found what happened with glossing's story happening with one of yours. I was trying to stand up for my friend. Although perhaps not in a very well-thought-out way, considering how people have been treating her.



Also: for the immediate future at least, this journal will be friendslocked. Because, as I said, I feel bad and I just can't deal. If I don't currently have you friended but you want to read my stuff, post a comment after the next post.

You know what? If I say, "I think it's bad writing to rely on fanon instead of developing plausible characterization," that does not make me a Brutal Fic Nazi who's bent on crushing everyone's else's opinions.

And if you say, "Well, it's all just fun and if you don't like it don't read it and please stop being such a bitch," that doesn't make bad writing any less bad. Nor is it much of an answer to what I said.

I'm not saying that bad fics should be deleted from the web or that those who write them should be rounded up and sent to re-education camps. I'm just saying that careful writing is better than fanon-y, shallow, formulaic writing.

Yeah, people have the right to produce and post whatever kind of fic they want. And you have the right to say that fandom should be uncritical.

I have the right to say it shouldn't be.

There is no fic police. I’m not trying to crush anybody under my jackboot. And equating critical opinions with censorship is a cheap, unfair argument.

You know how, back during the 15 minutes of angst that was fanfic_hate, a whole bunch of folks said that someone who doesn't like a story should have the guts to put her name to her opinion? And that the legions of minions wouldn't come out to break her legs?

( Kit commits fandom suicide )

In the course of a long and complicated discussion over in glossing's LJ, I said some things about the "trailer-trash" stories that a number of people have been writing lately. And my comments got more response than I had anticipated, so I want to clarify what I meant.

First off, my concerns about these stories are partly personal (I grew up poor and rural--I come from the sort of people who might be called "trailer trash") and partly political. I'm concerned about the power issues involved in people with privilege (that's us--the people who have the money and leisure time to own computers, write stories, and post them to LJ) writing about people without such privilege (the rural poor). In particular, I've been unhappy about the way a certain exoticizing language has been used to describe and promote these stories--as though poverty, violence, hopelessness, and lack of education are sexy and fun. As though we privileged people have a right to be emotional tourists, looking at this exotic tribe for our own amusement.

(Incidentally, I also have some concerns about the term "trailer trash," which is, let's face it, a slur.)

But, here's the deal: I don't think it's my business to stop other people writing things. And I don't think that writing about poor people is automatically a bad thing (that would be absurd) or that only people who've experienced poverty have a right to talk about it (that would be the same ridiculous logic that says women shouldn't write slash).

I do think, though, that writing about oppressed people (poor people, gay people, people of color, or whatever) carries a certain responsibility, especially if the author does not belong to that group and hasn't experienced that kind of oppression. We need to write thoughtfully. I think slash that indulges in gay stereotypes, that uses male/male or female/female eroticism purely for mindless titillation, that doesn't concern itself at all with the real social situation of real gay and lesbian people, is unacceptable. (And I don't mean that every slash fic has to be about discrimination or coming out--heaven forbid. But I do think that every slash fic needs to rise above stereotypes and treat gay and lesbian people as people.) Similarly, I think that "trailer trash" stories shouldn't stereotype or dehumanize the poor, shouldn't treat them as performing animals. Being poor isn't a sexy lifestyle choice; it's a painful predicament that poor people struggle with as best they can.

As I said above, I think it's perfectly legitimate to write about other social groups, including oppressed ones. But we need, as a professor of mine once said, to do our homework first. We need to write thoughtfully and responsibly.

One final note: I'm not trying to attack cracktrailer or to single out any story. Frankly, I haven't read most of them (and the few that I've read, I've skimmed) because I've been ill and I haven't had the energy to deal with what I worried I might find. I hadn't intended to say anything about this issue, but last night I made some off-the-cuff remarks, and I thought they needed clarification.

Best wishes to all.