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Since my alter ego has so far not been represented on my flist:
you can let things slide by which ordinairly you would protest about Like the fact that it's o-r-d-i-n-a-r-i-l-y? ;-)
You know, it's almost more interesting seeing the rankings of different people's characters. A Snape with a #1 backup of Harry must be very different than my Remus with #1 backup of Snape. It's all the way you blend then, man.
Also I forget to mention the world-changing news (and by "world" I mean about six inches all around me) that I got a new chair. See, you all had no idea that for the past few months I've been sitting at a chair at home which had lost all of its caning little by little. I wrote that Petunia thing sitting on what was essentially an oversized square toilet where you could never put the seat down. I just didn't think about it until the roommate had to borrow my computer and tried it herself and failed. I went to Staples and got one on-sale. There's no telling how much I'll be writing now I'm not balancing by butt on an empty wooden frame. Mwahahaha!
By the way, I'm really enjoying all the
Harriet the Spy was never a very important book for me. I liked it, but it wouldn't ever be a book I said would shape my life or anything. Except for one line in it that I always remember and often find reason to remind myself of. There's some moment when Harriet asks Sport a very basic question and the narrator says something like, "Harriet never had a problem asking about something she didn't know. She just thought, 'Well, I'll ask about it and he'll tell me. Then I won't not know anymore."
Which is not to say there aren't times when I don't pretend I know about stuff when I'm completely lost if I think it will make me look stupid. But for me this comment refers to things that I just really have no way of knowing yet because it's new to me, or I'm a beginner, or for whatever reason I'm just not up to speed yet. If I was 16 years old and putting my first story up on an lj, sure I'd probably be hurt if people called me an idiot over it. If I felt like I was entering a place where being new and learning meant I was fresh meat to be torn apart I wouldn't be part of that either. And certainly nobody should be part of an artistic community that's trying to tear each other down rather than genuinely make each other better--though apparently some people thrive in that environment.
But the thing is too, that in my experience people who genuinely want to improve and have a realistic idea of their own work find others like that, and I don't think the big generalizations about who's behaving badly work. If you've got a critic and an author they're both people; both can affect the other; both are responsible for their own behavior--just like any interaction, neither one of them gets a free pass. I've read a lot interesting stuff lately that I agree with on, for instance, the danger of mediocrity, and that's very different from taking one side or the other and saying nobody should ever post this or that. For instance, in one of several threads on the subject of badfic one poster championing the writer completely lost me by sharing a personal story that was supposed to convince me--the story of how she quit writing forever because somebody gave her what to me sounded like an important bit of criticism. I mean, I'm reading the comment about how she used to write all the time and then somebody said THIS and I literally expected the next sentence to be, "I didn't like it at first but then I went back and looked at my writing and to this day I've always appreciated that criticism. That was the day I really started becoming a writer," or whatever. Imagine my surprise that the moral of the story was that the critic was a monster. It wasn't that I decided, "Hmmph. This person must suck!" It was just that it showed just how impossible it was to say there was just a right way to give feedback, because here was something probably more young girls should hear and understand (I thought) being put on the same level as an anonymous personal flame on a hate thread. That made think whoa-this isn't a thread about vicious behavior at all, it's about no criticism ever unless it's exactly what the author wants to hear and who's got time for that?
Some people would say that a reaction like that simply means the person shouldn't be writing. I don't know if that's true. Everybody writes for different reasons. Saying you can't write unless you're trying to get to the point where you write at a publishable level is a bit like saying fanfic should never be an end in itself because people should ONLY write fanfic to move on to profic--which is silly. A person can write for her own personal enjoyment rather than the enjoyment of others. If she wants to share that stuff with an audience that's okay too--with the understanding that somebody might say, "Hey, if you're going to share this with an audience you really need to think of the audience, and that probably means improving your style." I'm sure most people who would critique run-on sentences in fanfic, for instance, would never think of saying the same thing about somebody's private diary entry. But I think people are making things unnecessarily hard on themselves by being angry at someone for *thinking* they're writing for a different reason than they are, or for criticizing something in a way they don't like. It's just like...how is that person supposed to know what feedback is correct? How could they know how sensitive you were? Maybe this person thinks they're doing you a favor. The way we take a comment isn't always proof of the way it was intended and the way we react to comment really isn’t necessarily the way anyone would have reacted so clearly the person should have known better. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teasel said very well on this thread, the best way to avoid vicious fanfic is to have a community in which constructive concrit is encouraged and writers are expected to take some responsibility for their reactions.
I mean, when it comes down to it nobody can make you stop writing. Only you do that. That doesn't mean you can't ever be hurt by criticism or whatever--of course you can. Maybe some criticism makes you feel in a way that makes writing not fun anymore and you decide to quit because of that. But particularly if you supposedly have a love of a particular art form, it's up to you what you're going to do with it. I just don't really get how you can quit because of *other* people. For instance, Bob Fosse went into choreography because he knew he would never be as good a dancer as Fred Astaire and if he couldn't stand not being up to the level he wanted. That's a good example of somebody making a reasonable decision to do something else. Or somebody who just doesn't like the life of a professional actor or writer with all the rejection and no money so channels their energies into something else. That's another example of someone making a good decision to quit, but it's not the fault of the cruel world just because hey, the world is what it is. Of course it'd be easier to be an actor if there was no risk of ridicule or politics or rejection or anonymity, but that's the reality of it.
Any vaguely artistic business is hard to succeed in, which is why to be honest, people who work in one are all too happy to see anybody else give up. Yes, we want to inspire talented people to produce good work so that we can enjoy it, but it would actually make things a lot easier on me as an editor, for instance, if somebody who doesn't write very well DOESN'T send something to me. In my personal experience, the worst type of author to work with is the "professional" writer. "Professional" writers differ from professional writers in that they are actually professional amateurs. Often they're women, in my experience, and they all have very strong ideas about how they're supposed to be treated and nurtured as a professional, which translates into truly unreasonable demands, accusations that they're being oppressed and, ultimately, no work for them in the future. So I'm actually not really upset when that kind of attitude is encouraged in fanfic, since at least it's in the amateur realm where it belongs.
So I don't know. I think the main problem with fanfic is you probably do have two very different types of people writing it: those who want to be professionals and those who want to be amateurs--and I'm not using the word amateur as an insult. I just mean amateur in the sense that the writing is about personal expression--it's about the author herself rather than the work. Like I said, sometimes the amateur attitude shows up in the professional world, just as the professional attitude is very often present in fanfic. If somebody really wants to be professional, then developing a thick skin probably is a good idea. Or really not so much a thick skin, but a reason to keep writing for its own sake that doesn't depend on any reaction you may or may not get from the public. If the real goal is to actually produce better fic than of course it makes sense to present criticism in a way it’s going to be heard. Sometimes, as strange as it sounds, even snarky threads contribute to that. It’s like any other culture—if something is looked down upon by the culture it’s probably more likely to be rare. Fear of posting anything because people attack anything personally even it’s good would be a bad thing. The desire to avoid posting something badly-written because the culture values good writing is a good thing. As harsh as it is, I suspect that while the fandom culture perceived as nurturing of self-esteem and valuing personal expression will produce more writers, it’s the fandom culture perceived as having intimidating standards that’s going to writers of better quality. Ideally, of course, we should have both, but if I was going to lean one way or the other, I’d lean towards the latter culture
You scored as Remus Lupin. Your alter ego is Remus Lupin. You are a wise and caring wizard and a good, loyal friend to boot. However sometimes in an effort to be liked by others you can let things slide by which ordinairly you would protest about.
Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com |
you can let things slide by which ordinairly you would protest about Like the fact that it's o-r-d-i-n-a-r-i-l-y? ;-)
You know, it's almost more interesting seeing the rankings of different people's characters. A Snape with a #1 backup of Harry must be very different than my Remus with #1 backup of Snape. It's all the way you blend then, man.
Also I forget to mention the world-changing news (and by "world" I mean about six inches all around me) that I got a new chair. See, you all had no idea that for the past few months I've been sitting at a chair at home which had lost all of its caning little by little. I wrote that Petunia thing sitting on what was essentially an oversized square toilet where you could never put the seat down. I just didn't think about it until the roommate had to borrow my computer and tried it herself and failed. I went to Staples and got one on-sale. There's no telling how much I'll be writing now I'm not balancing by butt on an empty wooden frame. Mwahahaha!
By the way, I'm really enjoying all the
Harriet the Spy was never a very important book for me. I liked it, but it wouldn't ever be a book I said would shape my life or anything. Except for one line in it that I always remember and often find reason to remind myself of. There's some moment when Harriet asks Sport a very basic question and the narrator says something like, "Harriet never had a problem asking about something she didn't know. She just thought, 'Well, I'll ask about it and he'll tell me. Then I won't not know anymore."
Which is not to say there aren't times when I don't pretend I know about stuff when I'm completely lost if I think it will make me look stupid. But for me this comment refers to things that I just really have no way of knowing yet because it's new to me, or I'm a beginner, or for whatever reason I'm just not up to speed yet. If I was 16 years old and putting my first story up on an lj, sure I'd probably be hurt if people called me an idiot over it. If I felt like I was entering a place where being new and learning meant I was fresh meat to be torn apart I wouldn't be part of that either. And certainly nobody should be part of an artistic community that's trying to tear each other down rather than genuinely make each other better--though apparently some people thrive in that environment.
But the thing is too, that in my experience people who genuinely want to improve and have a realistic idea of their own work find others like that, and I don't think the big generalizations about who's behaving badly work. If you've got a critic and an author they're both people; both can affect the other; both are responsible for their own behavior--just like any interaction, neither one of them gets a free pass. I've read a lot interesting stuff lately that I agree with on, for instance, the danger of mediocrity, and that's very different from taking one side or the other and saying nobody should ever post this or that. For instance, in one of several threads on the subject of badfic one poster championing the writer completely lost me by sharing a personal story that was supposed to convince me--the story of how she quit writing forever because somebody gave her what to me sounded like an important bit of criticism. I mean, I'm reading the comment about how she used to write all the time and then somebody said THIS and I literally expected the next sentence to be, "I didn't like it at first but then I went back and looked at my writing and to this day I've always appreciated that criticism. That was the day I really started becoming a writer," or whatever. Imagine my surprise that the moral of the story was that the critic was a monster. It wasn't that I decided, "Hmmph. This person must suck!" It was just that it showed just how impossible it was to say there was just a right way to give feedback, because here was something probably more young girls should hear and understand (I thought) being put on the same level as an anonymous personal flame on a hate thread. That made think whoa-this isn't a thread about vicious behavior at all, it's about no criticism ever unless it's exactly what the author wants to hear and who's got time for that?
Some people would say that a reaction like that simply means the person shouldn't be writing. I don't know if that's true. Everybody writes for different reasons. Saying you can't write unless you're trying to get to the point where you write at a publishable level is a bit like saying fanfic should never be an end in itself because people should ONLY write fanfic to move on to profic--which is silly. A person can write for her own personal enjoyment rather than the enjoyment of others. If she wants to share that stuff with an audience that's okay too--with the understanding that somebody might say, "Hey, if you're going to share this with an audience you really need to think of the audience, and that probably means improving your style." I'm sure most people who would critique run-on sentences in fanfic, for instance, would never think of saying the same thing about somebody's private diary entry. But I think people are making things unnecessarily hard on themselves by being angry at someone for *thinking* they're writing for a different reason than they are, or for criticizing something in a way they don't like. It's just like...how is that person supposed to know what feedback is correct? How could they know how sensitive you were? Maybe this person thinks they're doing you a favor. The way we take a comment isn't always proof of the way it was intended and the way we react to comment really isn’t necessarily the way anyone would have reacted so clearly the person should have known better. As
teasel said very well on this thread, the best way to avoid vicious fanfic is to have a community in which constructive concrit is encouraged and writers are expected to take some responsibility for their reactions.I mean, when it comes down to it nobody can make you stop writing. Only you do that. That doesn't mean you can't ever be hurt by criticism or whatever--of course you can. Maybe some criticism makes you feel in a way that makes writing not fun anymore and you decide to quit because of that. But particularly if you supposedly have a love of a particular art form, it's up to you what you're going to do with it. I just don't really get how you can quit because of *other* people. For instance, Bob Fosse went into choreography because he knew he would never be as good a dancer as Fred Astaire and if he couldn't stand not being up to the level he wanted. That's a good example of somebody making a reasonable decision to do something else. Or somebody who just doesn't like the life of a professional actor or writer with all the rejection and no money so channels their energies into something else. That's another example of someone making a good decision to quit, but it's not the fault of the cruel world just because hey, the world is what it is. Of course it'd be easier to be an actor if there was no risk of ridicule or politics or rejection or anonymity, but that's the reality of it.
Any vaguely artistic business is hard to succeed in, which is why to be honest, people who work in one are all too happy to see anybody else give up. Yes, we want to inspire talented people to produce good work so that we can enjoy it, but it would actually make things a lot easier on me as an editor, for instance, if somebody who doesn't write very well DOESN'T send something to me. In my personal experience, the worst type of author to work with is the "professional" writer. "Professional" writers differ from professional writers in that they are actually professional amateurs. Often they're women, in my experience, and they all have very strong ideas about how they're supposed to be treated and nurtured as a professional, which translates into truly unreasonable demands, accusations that they're being oppressed and, ultimately, no work for them in the future. So I'm actually not really upset when that kind of attitude is encouraged in fanfic, since at least it's in the amateur realm where it belongs.
So I don't know. I think the main problem with fanfic is you probably do have two very different types of people writing it: those who want to be professionals and those who want to be amateurs--and I'm not using the word amateur as an insult. I just mean amateur in the sense that the writing is about personal expression--it's about the author herself rather than the work. Like I said, sometimes the amateur attitude shows up in the professional world, just as the professional attitude is very often present in fanfic. If somebody really wants to be professional, then developing a thick skin probably is a good idea. Or really not so much a thick skin, but a reason to keep writing for its own sake that doesn't depend on any reaction you may or may not get from the public. If the real goal is to actually produce better fic than of course it makes sense to present criticism in a way it’s going to be heard. Sometimes, as strange as it sounds, even snarky threads contribute to that. It’s like any other culture—if something is looked down upon by the culture it’s probably more likely to be rare. Fear of posting anything because people attack anything personally even it’s good would be a bad thing. The desire to avoid posting something badly-written because the culture values good writing is a good thing. As harsh as it is, I suspect that while the fandom culture perceived as nurturing of self-esteem and valuing personal expression will produce more writers, it’s the fandom culture perceived as having intimidating standards that’s going to writers of better quality. Ideally, of course, we should have both, but if I was going to lean one way or the other, I’d lean towards the latter culture
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no subject
i remember the first time after many years oif reading fanfic when i felt the urge to write it was after i joined LJ, met folks, became part of a community but not really...b/c i didn't write. fandom often discriminates against non writers and that, coupled with the writing-as-communicating-about-your-favorite-characters, i think, brings many people to share things that a lot of us would rather not have seen...
in other words, fic at that level becomes an almost one-on-one (or one-on-however many) intimate conversation, a joke, a game, an enjoyable exercise. with LJs bizarre half public/half private role, however, we suddenly are exposed to what previously remained private, remained in chat rooms or emails or private conversations.
personally, i think the question is not about writing but about publishing. i write...badly. that doesn't mean i need to share it with the world. i don't think that makes me a professional :-) just a person with a high propensity for shame, maybe :D
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For instance, I feel like if you wrote something for social reasons and somebody critiqued it as if you were writing it to be criticized on a professional level, there would be a miscommunication there, but the critic wouldn't necessarily have intentionally insulted you. This just may have been what they thought they were supposed to do because that's the side of the writing part of fandom they're in. If the person was ridiculing you it would be possibly mean and also pointless, like holding up an ad in a magazine and complaining that there was no plot or characterization. If we're going to have lots of different people in a fandom we all have to make room for each other.
But then, if I were to submit a story I wrote as a game between friends to an archive and it was rejected and criticized, it would be silly of me to get angry and shoot back that they were wrong for criticizing me since I was just writing a joke for friends, since the archive describes itself as a place for writing-for-net-publication. Similarly on some of the other threads, sometimes people seemed to want the kind of feedback intended for published work--but only the good kind. They were hurt not because their non-serious work was critiqued seriously, but because their serious work received serious criticism that wasn't glowingly positive.
Of course in fandom it's always going to be confusing because it's all "published" the same way--on the net. You and somebody else might both "publish" something in your lj, only you're not wanting it to be considered as a piece of professional writing and somebody else does. You're saying hey, I'm an amateur, I'm doing this for such and such a reason. Somebody else might be an amateur literally but approaching things more as a professional.
The people I described in my post, for instance, are professional amateurs because they *are* trying to work as professional writers with actual publishers...they just have this bizarre idea of how that's supposed to work!
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I'd ask the flipside of ces' comment as well. We may be focusing on the mechanics of writing to pretend we're not just in it for the sex (though I'll confess, one reason to improve your writing skills is to write better porn--if you have a great fantasy share it better!). But there may also be some denial on the other side.
I admit I don't really buy the idea that it's *completely* social when some people say that, especially if they are angrily yelling at someone for criticizing their technique. As I said below, sometimes the problem of someone criticizing something isn't that it suddenly suggests they should care about writing but that they make it clear what they're doing maybe isn't really "writing."
I mean, the girl talking to Reena and being amazed that Draco should be IC since this was fanfic and how could she put him together with Harry if he was in character does seem to be just working with a completely different rulebook where sticking with canon isn't part of fanfic. That sort of comment to her might be something like criticizing Lord of the Rings by saying that if Frodo were invisible his retinas would not be able to reflect light and so he would be blind everytime he put on the ring...and also, rings can't turn people invisible.;-)
But then you also have to wonder why, if this is social, a writer is accepting pages of praise about what a great writer she is, and how great her story is, and why she would never write again because somebody criticized her. There might be several different fantasies going on at once here...
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no subject
yeah, i think if someone *is* writing crack and knows it, an OOC critique can't do a thing! she'll laugh and admit that she knows that and thencontinue to have fun.
it's the multiple fantasies of playing and beiung serious, of throwaway prose that still wants to be great literature and respected that is the problem, isn't it???
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*hope this comment works*
I mused on the line between the two some time ago... maybe that's the element I missed. We're all backstage having a laugh, not sweating over the curtain coming up.
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Re: *hope this comment works*
it's sth that i don't really see in any other context and the emotional involvement we all share in the texts, the characters, the fics is sth that's hard to translate into the RL world...
From:
Re: *hope this comment works*
True--though of course improving one's technical skill can only help that as well. I can understand why someone would be annoyed by someone's concentrating on the structure or technical aspects of the story when the point is to just to discuss the situation presented in the story as best as the author could. Sometimes writers slip back and forth across the line between social and literary. For instance, it seems like a question that's being brought up a lot in these discussions is something like, "Well, if you're just putting something out socially then why would you be offended by technical criticisms?" Which could be a good point if it's not just that the author doesn't want to deal with the technical aspects but want it to be assumes straight off that the technical aspects are all good.
it's sth that i don't really see in any other context and the emotional involvement we all share in the texts, the characters, the fics is sth that's hard to translate into the RL world...
Yes, that's a big part of it. A profic writer might have a big investment in his/her own characters, but that's very different from the shared love that fans have for another person's characters.
BTW, I'd love to hear more about your feelings on non-writers being discriminated against. Maybe that's in the link...?:-)
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Re: *hope this comment works*
i used to lurk for so long b/c i wasn't writing and when i finally started to interact, i realized that i myself and many others never saw me as a "true" fan. and various folks have confirmed that belief.
look, for example, at multifannish people who discuss fandoms in which they *are* and others in which they merely read.
i think one of the problems is that while there are plenty of readers only, not too many of them are that active or in the "public" eye, i.e., think about your flist and how may folks don't write...
[then again, the entire writing thing is amusing, of course, b/c i always say i don't write while i "write" for a living, of course...or make that *not* for a living :-)]