“Don’t like, don’t read” is so exhausting because it acts like fandom can only be harmful if people go out of their way to read triggering fanfic. As if it’s all isolated and underground and easy to avoid. Like. I’ve never read a Reylo fic, but if I search for Finn stuff, there it is. If I scroll the TFA tag, it’s there. Fans write “Finn meta” that tears him down to elevate Reylo (shit, journalists do it too). Finnrey shippers and Finn fans are demonized for noticing any of it.
We can avoid it, sure – if we leave fandom. We’re fans, we’re not going anywhere.
Some good points here. The meta bit is pretty distasteful, and just in general I think people shouldn’t tag character hate, or tag a character just because they show up in a fic if they’re not going to be a focus of it.
That said… being upset because you see a ship you don’t like when scrolling through a tag for the whole fandom is maybe a wee bit excessive. ‘cause honestly, if you find it harmful just to know there are people who write your NoTP, then maybe you SHOULD leave that fandom.
You have a right not to have to read content you find upsetting. You do NOT have a right to demand it be so “isolated and underground” that you don’t even have to know it exists.
You have it a wee bit backward. I demanded no such thing. Do I think reylo belongs in the main tags? No, I don’t. It has nothing to do with The Last Jedi, it’s a white fantasy wankfest that buries posts that are about the movie and erases the inclusiveness of the actual trilogy. There’s nothing I can do about that, the Star Wars fandom has always been racist as hell.
But don’t tell me “don’t like don’t read” when it’s everywhere, making just about every tag a shitshow. I DO have the right to say I don’t like it when I can’t avoid it. Don’t like criticism, don’t shove it in my face.
Do you use Xkit or Tumblr Savior?
Those are browser extensions that work with tumblr (i.e. make it goddamn functional for a change) on multiple browser platforms.
You can use the Blacklist feature in Xkit or Tumblr Savior (and for AO3 this works too, with the AO3 Savior extension) to completely block a chosen tag or keyword.
It might show you something was blocked from your dashboard or whatnot depending on the extension but it won’t show you the actual posts with that tag (some people have also managed to set it up – I think in Tumblr Savior specifically? not sure, I stick with Xkit and haven’t fiddled much with this but I think it has a whitelist option too- so that it would whitelist something so that for example a fandom tag would only show up with say, your preferred ships and not any other content, something the Teen Wolf fandom has made heavy use of in rebellion against canon’s apparent queerbaiting turnaround – I say apparent because I’m not in that fandom, but that’s what I’ve seen some people in it say they did).
If you use an extension like this to block the reylo tag/keyword then you should almost never have to sit through those posts on the Force Awakens or Star Wars tags again, if they’ve been tagged with the ship or otherwise include the ship name in their text they should get blocked. 🙂
At worst, you’ll spot a few “blocked based on this keyboard” notifications but they’ll be like a single text line with no post and no content attached other than mentioning what keyboard it was being blocked for.
Options like this are exactly why a lot of people are okay with saying “don’t like, don’t read” because we CAN filter better now – but if you didn’t know these were common options (because why would you? it’s not like they’re official through tumblr, which hates that third parties attempt to make this hellsite functional apparently) then I can understand your frustration. So I hope this reply helps you out with your annoying reylo issue! 🙂 I don’t tend to browse the main tag for TFA or Star Wars, but I really don’t like that ship either (just?? why??) and so I could see how if you’re looking for neutral content and can’t block it, that could be really frustrating
Unfortunately there is no fix for character hate tagged with just the character name though : that’s a matter of individuals tagging accurately, and that’s in turn a matter of internal fandom tagging practices/culture. I’m sad to hear Finn hate is being tagged with neutral tags, that sucks. 😦 If you spot some common lines that get repeated though you might be able to cut down on it with keyword blocking? Again, not a perfect fix, but >_>
Wow, patronizing. Of course I know about and use xkit on the web. Dropped Tumblr Savior years ago. I know how Tumblr works. I’m on mobile 90% of the time, and yes, I know about Washboard, too. All but one of the examples in the op? Xkit doesn’t fix it.
Personally, because of the nature of my blog, I don’t blacklist or block, ever. It’s important for me to see the reality of the fandom. That’s my choice, yeah. It doesn’t make flooding tags with irrelevant ship content reasonable or above criticism. It’s not that I can’t handle all they reylo, it’s that it pisses me off when fanon ships like reylo sideline Black characters. I’ve used blacklisting, and believe me, seeing dozens of “this post has been hidden” posts isn’t any better.
And why is it so damn hard for this particular fandom to be respectful? Kyluxers, regardless of how I feel about the ship, somehow manage not to infest every corner of fandom, on and off Tumblr. I don’t see them harassing SW directors and actors on social media. It can’t be that damn hard.
This isn’t just like, I don’t want to look at Adam Driver’s face. It’s about maneuvering through a fandom for a trilogy that offers inclusion that aggressively prioritizes whiteness.It’s about antiblackness. A band-aid doesn’t help.
I’m someone who does black list things I hate, and I STILL see them! Part of my problems with my current fandom is that there is literally no way to avoid the problematic stuff without leaving it entirely.
And that’s before getting into all the insidious ways in which hate continues to permeate even after you black list the obvious stuff. i.e. My fandom is tremendously racist towards the main character – which would be fine (or, well, tolerable) if people tagged it. But they don’t, because the fanon has spread so far that people think it’s canon, and thus no one thinks to tag it.
Not to mention microagressions. No one is going to tag their fic or write in a warning that “I took the main character’s good traits and gave them to the white leads while giving him all their bad traits” – but that’s exactly what happens.
One of the biggest problems with things like racism, sexism, etc., is that they most often AREN’T intentional – which means people aren’t going to tag for them. The racism will run so deep that people don’t even see it. The hate will run so deep that people don’t even see it. If you don’t see it, you can’t tag for it, so how are you supposed to block it?
“Blocking” problematic content on Tumblr, AO3, or anywhere else, relies on the person generating that content, AND on *everyone* else reblogging that content, to accurately tag it with what you have blocked.
How likely do you think that is to actually happen when people don’t even think they’re doing anything problematic in the first place?
Exactly. People will trigger warning all kinds of things, but not racism, not unless it’s like a screencap of an “alt right” Twitter rant. Tagging their own potentially triggering posts for racism? Doesn’t happen. People can use fandom to cope, unless it’s coping with racism, then it doesn’t really count. What is upsetting to Black fans is just fandom fun. They wouldn’t even think to tag it as racist.
In any event, I’m not going to expend time and energy on helping to create a space that fosters the comfort of fans who make fandom a hurtful place for fans of color who don’t toe the line. They want me to do the work so fandom can be a nice, happy place where racism can flourish while xkit makes me (partially) oblivious of how shitty it really is? Lol no.
Fandoms influence on authors tends to be trivial. Two characters who have never kissed, but of whom there is slash fiction, end up kissing, and the fans, or the author, joke that this is fan service.
But the pushback regarding The 100 is a bit different. It’s different because its femslash, but its also different because of the directness with which some of the fans wanted to criticize Jason Rothenberg. I get that fans criticize comic books and movies all the time, but this had a political angle that is rare. The fans weren’t saying “I found that scene unrealistic” the fans were saying “This is a civil rights violation.” That is potentially something very new.
This article from April, 2016 is an excellent reminder of what went wrong with The 100 and the growing power of fandom.
The great thing about fandom/internet friends vs. friends you meet out IRL, is that when you get to know people for the first time face-to-face, there’s this awkward process of trying to figure out juuuust how much of a dork they are, and how much you can nerd out before you scare them off. Like, you don’t wanna break out the real freaky shit right off. There’s always the impulse to hang back a little, as you try to gauge just how into a thing they are. But with fandom friends? You fucking met them in the garbage heap. You knew their fucked up narrative kinks before you even know their real name. They are screaming their passions into the void. Your friendship comes pre-loaded with already knowing the exact depths of each other’s depravity, and any ordinary-people-shit you have in common is just a bonus.
Let
me start by comparing TV writing to book writing. I just wrote a book,
and I only got creative notes from one person, my editor. She does two
rounds of notes with me (a general edit and a line edit) and then passes
me off to the copyeditor, who gives me grammar and spelling and
continuity notes. Then it goes to print! Easy peasy! (Well, not easy at
all, it’s a lot of work, but very straightforward.)
Compare that
process to the TV writing process. Every Rdale script is broken
(meaning: figured out) in the writer’s room, where there are 11 writers
plus Roberto, our fair boss and Showrunner. We all chime in with ideas
and suggestions and Roberto decides what direction he likes best and
chooses the pitches that work best until we have a working outline. Then
we put the scenes onto notecards, moving them around, re-breaking,
rejiggering, until the story works. That’s a lot of hands stirring the
pot so far, but we have one head chef: Roberto.
Then we write an
outline, which gets notes from the producers, the studio (Warner
Brothers), and the network (CW). Then we adjust based on those notes,
which come from a few of the execs at each company, who are smart and
very good at their jobs, which involves reading and analyzing TV scripts
from many shows and deciding what works well for them. They’re drawing
on their whole careers-worth of experience doing this on lots of
different shows to figure out how to guide the direction of Rdale.
Then
we go to script. The writer of that episode takes the very detailed
outline and starts writing scenes. Sometimes s/he might farm out some
scenes to other people in the writers room, or sometimes the room will
move on to the next episode and leave that writer to write solo.
Then
the completed script goes to Roberto, who does a pass on it to make it
sound like his vision for the show, and feel like the characters he has
in his head.
Then, when he’s happy, he brings it back to the
writers room and we all read it and go through it page by page together
to revise it and give notes. At this point, Roberto has the script open
on a computer in front of him, and he changes dialogue, action lines,
scenes, etc. live as we give feedback.
Then, the script goes back
to the producers, the studio, and the network, to get notes from them.
Sometimes those notes are minimal, and sometimes they’re major, it all
depends. The writer and Roberto make revisions based on those notes.
Sometimes we have to go back to the room and rebreak as a group, but
usually not.
Somewhere along the way, someone at Archie Comics
reads it to make sure we’re taking care of the characters they’ve had
and loved for 75 years.
At some point, someone in a legal
department reads it for clearance, which means sometimes we can’t use
certain brand names in dialogue or else we’ll get sued, and we can’t use
certain people’s names unless they’re in the public eye.
Also
someone in some department reads it to make sure we aren’t swearing too
much or referring to something too vulgar or the FCC will fine us.
Then
the script is sent up to Vancouver where production reads it and starts
pre-production. Sometimes there are changes to the script at that point
because we can’t get a location or we can’t get an actor because he’s
booked on another series, or the weather won’t allow us to shoot
somewhere, or we have to move an outdoor scene indoors, or a night scene
to day for budget reasons. Revisions are made here. The actors read it,
and occasionally they’ll have notes which require revisions.
Then
it gets shot. Then the footage is sent to post-production, who starts
to edit it. In the edit, frequently we’ll learn that our episodes are
several (maybe many) minutes over, and we’ll have to cut lines, jokes,
moments, sometimes whole scenes for time.
Then those rough cuts get sent to the producers, the studio, the network for notes.
You
get the idea yet? There are lots and LOTS of hands in the pie here.
Hundreds, maybe a thousand. If a certain idea isn’t making it through
from initial pitch to the final screen, it could be any one of the
people along the way raising a red flag. Usually there’s no grand
conspiracy – there’s too many people with competing interests for that.
If you find that you’re less than satisfied with something on your
screen, it could be for the devious reason you suspect or it could be
for a completely benign reason like budget or schedule. There’s no one grand puppetmaster holding the strings, but there are lots of people making changes along the way.
tldr:
There are too many companies and too many people for any kind of grand
conspiracy, but that doesn’t mean that a bunch of people giving tiny
notes couldn’t add up to something bigger.
Imagine describing fandom to someone with no prior knowledge of it at all. What’s the need-to-know?
You’d tell them it consists largely of online communities who organize via blogging sites (and formerly message boards or mailing lists); fiction and art that’s often erotic in nature, and is sometimes commissioned or sold via self-promotional sites like etsy and society6; conventions that people travel internationally to attend; cosplay that takes so much skill to assemble that some people do it professionally; analysis of the source material backed by fans’ knowledge of subjects that range from medicine to weapons operation to feminist social theory to stage design.
I can imagine a lot of reactions, depending on the person, but I’m having trouble figuring out who could hear that and then conclude most of the participants are kids.
I will be moderating a panel on Fangirling Over 30 next month, and I was looking up this post so I could quote it at at the panel, and I just wanted to throw in, additionally, something that is implied above but not stated outright:
Who do the young’ins think are performing the executive functions of fandom? Who’s paying for a domain name and server space so they can host a fanfic archive? Who’s establishing and moderating message boards and mailing lists? Who’s throwing a ‘zine-assembling party at their house? Who’s forming an LLC and liaising with a hotel for the convention they’re organizing? Who’s doing the research on intellectual property to determine what constitutes fair use so that fan artists know what they can sell and where?
Hint: not kids.
The fandom playgrounds we’ve been frolicking in for 50 years did not materialize out of thin air. They were built by the people who are “too old to be in fandom.” Respect them.
I spent most of my early years in fandom (starting around age 27-ish) as one of the young’uns. At science fiction and fantasy conventions (as distinct from, say, comic book conventions or anime conventions) the average age is sliding upwards. I’m STILL pretty middle-of-the-road age-wise and I”ve been attending Orycon for about 18 years. My generation didn’t invent fandom, pretty much the boomers started “fandom as we know it”.
I’ve had people ask me why someone my age is on tumblr, and I’m sort of laughing because I wonder why someone their age is allowed on tumblr at all. I don’t let my kids loose on the internet until I have a reasonable sense that they’re old enough to handle themselves without asking people who write smut why they’re still in fandom.
In my family and larger circle, nerds aren’t made, they’re born. My five year old is a raging pokemon fan and has been for a couple years now. His favorite thing is a pokedex he’s still too young to read but has mostly memorized anyway. My middle child is not-very-verbal but is a huge Steven Universe fan. And my eldest has been in fandom since they were six. I started reading science fiction when I was seven years old, because my parents, who are in their mid-sixties, had so much of it lying around the house. We’ve taken three generations to SCA events (expensive), conventions (even more expensive) and I think when one of the later Harry Potter books came out we had to buy four copies because there was NO one in the house who was willing to wait for three other people to read. (all four of those copies now live in different households, lol.)
I will be in fandom long, long past my death. You won’t even be able to pry it out of my cold, dead hands. I’m halfway tempted to put AO3 in my friggin’ will.
At some point it is going to have to be acknowledged that it is not ‘fandom’ anymore, but something else, a ragtag society of creatives – writers, artists, actors, filmmakers, etc – who just happen to enjoy things other people make.
Give me a few minutes to watch for last minute bids to show up on the Trevor site, and then I’ll reveal the totals!!
You guys are unbelievable!!!
I’ll start from the bottom:
Assassins AU amassed a small $22 dollars, which was initially surprising but made more sense when you consider that anything with bullets flying around these two is bound to be controversial. That will be lowest on my priority list going forward.
Ahead of assassins AU was the Christmas AU, which garnered $25, also understandable because it’s April lol
We start getting into the big bucks now. The canon Fix-it had strong support for most of the auction, but it topped out at $320, which is impressive but not enough. It will still get written though! No worries to those of you who know how much potential the show had and threw away in S3.
Now, for the final two. It was a battle between politics au and masquerade au, the two fics that actually have already been posted so far. Masquerade AU was slow to start but eventually took a thin lead over politics with about an hour to go.
Politics surged back though, and with some impressive donations, Politics was in the lead with $989 with one minute left! Masquerade AU was too far behind, at $831
And then a last minute bid of $158 dollars came in…for masquerade AU.
Masquerade AU and Politics AU tied, thanks to an anonymous last second donation.
Which means I’ll be updating both at the same time!
Like I’ve been saying, all of these fics will be posted eventually, so no worries if yours didn’t accrue the most. The best part about this was that you all amassed a huge $2,345 for The Trevor Project!!
$2,345!!
This fandom is amazing and I’m so happy to be a part of it.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen something like this – such a wonderful idea, all for a great cause – and an amazing number.
Well done, @centuriesofexistence – I hope this is a trend that other creators follow.
This took me a good five minutes to read and a little longer to take in, so – I know it’s probably easier to type shorthand via phone, but it really isn’t that easy for some of us to read.
I don’t get sad, it’s not something I think about at all. I don’t think there is anything personal about it, but it is a business, those conventions are (I believe) studio sponsored to promote the show and if the show/network doesn’t want any Lexa brouhaha, it is possible they decline to invite ADC. It is a little on the cruel side, as it kind of deletes her contribution in a way (like erasing Lexa from the montages) and makes it difficult for fans to really celebrate that character in a way that isn’t hamstrung by the studio politics of it. Speculation, of course.
Keeping in mind how popular Lexa became (before and after her death), I can see the studio not wanting the character to overshadow the show itself – if you saw the fuss at the Copenhagen Comic Con, it was basically LexaCon. If that happens at an unrelated event – imagine what would happen if she did attend an actual related-convention? I can’t see anyone risking the fallout. Not while the show is still on the air, at least.
OK anonymous stranger on the internet super qualified to judge writing quality. Do I believe it? Let me tell you something…if they kidnapped us, put us both in a room, told us to write something to save our lives, and that they were going to shoot the worst writer of the two I promise you that by the end of the day I’d have convinced them to shoot him not just once, but twice.
😃You are amazing, i love your work.
Don’t tell them how a Xena fan fiction writer (Melissa Good) actually wrote for the show (some Xena ff writers went on to be published professionally).
In fact, fan fiction writers do go professional (some already are, they just don’t want you to know it).
Oh, definitely NEVER bring up that some Clexa fan fiction receives more views (individually and collectively) than most books on the bestseller lists are able to sell hard or digital copies (3,000 – 9,000 copies is all it takes to get on a bestseller list). It’s arguable more people have read more fan fiction than have actually watched the series (16 – 13 episodes a season and how much fan fiction is there?).
If you want to be successful in Hollywood, you could probably spend years sucking up to enough people to get a job, without much in the way of qualification, either (I’ve never seen a showrunner with so little reported experience), or you could learn your craft, build up a following and, if you desire, seek professional representation.
The work that goes into producing 200k page fan fiction is no different than what JK Rowling put in or what Stephen King puts in or anyone else, for that matter.
There is so much fan fiction in this world, right now, if you could publish each one (and I’m not saying you should) in a hard format, you could probably fill a few libraries a few times over – all over the world.
For some, fan fiction is a serious form of literature and deserves respect, certainly the writers do. There used to be a time when it was extremely difficult to publish fan fiction anywhere. But fans have fought for and studios and copyright holders have recognised that fan works are serious business (they are also free advertising) and nothing to scoff at.
It is important, too, to understand that fan fiction is, basically, punk. It is rebellion. It has helped queer people and POC find their voice and find community and respect. It has helped create positive representations of minorities where so little exists in ‘professional’ media.
I do realise the anon is just trolling Clexas, looking for a response – and really, they don’t deserve it – but fan fiction is always worth talking about and any opportunity is a good one.
– They use terms like lemons, smut, or UST to talk about the genre of their fic.
– They have squicks.
– They want you to have squicks. Which isn’t to say that they want to squick you, just that it’s a useful term.
– *glomps*
– They leave long comments on everything the read. Possibly not in the tags. They might do something super bizarre like send a message or put their thoughts on the end of your post.
– They write disclaimers on everything. Or on literally anything, since nobody does that anymore.
– They write about orbs, and those orbs are cerulean.
– Or literally anything else is cerulean. Cerulean is an outdated term. I’m calling it.
– The tongues of their characters are still battling for dominance, even though it’s 2017, and really a winner should have been declared by now.
– They have a fear of Mary Sue.
– Characters in their modern AU are chatting on AIM instant messenger, and calling each other on landlines. There are references to Ceiling Cat, because the characters are hip to meme culture. This AU is ~modern~ after all.
– Their fic is interlaced with slightly relevant song lyrics (disclaimer, they didn’t write the song.)
– They don’t do any of above, because they are New Fandom Savy, but they write or reblog nostalgic posts about these things.
– They had a livejournal.
– They still have a livejournal.
– They ended up on tumblr only after getting into a new fandom, searching livejournal for content and fellow fans, and suddenly coming to the startling realization that livejournal has become a barren wasteland of tumbleweeds and chirping crickets.
– They miss their geocities site.
– They wrote fic for the X-Files while the original nine seasons were still airing.
– Bonus, they wrote fic for the original Star Trek and published it in a zine, before the Internet was a thing. That’s like super mega fandom old.
– They might be less inclined to call themselves “trash”, but they are totally out there, reading all the things.
Yahoo groups!
Xena, not X-files 🙌🏻
Relickru, get in formation, or whatever the kids are doing these days.
Back at my first convention, in the 80s, you paid to enter and that was it. It’s gone from being fan-run to serious corporate promotional event engineering with lots of money to be made (some of it legitimately, some of it just theft). I can well believe there are artists who are uncomfortable with the scheme and want nothing to do with it, while others just see it as another working day for which they are paid.
Certainly, if you stand to make some serious money from it (I’ve heard of actors walking away with hundreds of thousands), it’s hard to imagine anyone turning it down – but people do and for personal as well as business-related reasons.
Some might even think it tacky to make money off of fans who were harmed by their show. I don’t know. Next year might be a different proposition. Thanks for writing.
The Doctor Is Out 