can we please bring back “in poor taste” as a concept
Because at some point it got folded in under “problematic,” and now every damn thing that has Unfortunate Implications or deals with sensitive topics indelicately enough to raise hackles or gores somebody’s sacred cow is treated as a grave injustice or a threat to society. Online activism culture has lost the vocabulary to express “this deals with touchy stuff in a way many people might find inappropriate, and you should probably avoid it if insensitivity on this subject gets you angry/upset, but it’s not promoting hateful ideas or demeaning people or affecting anything but my opinion of the creator’s sense of tact.”
I think this really an important post.
We’ve fallen into such a rut of “everything is right or wrong, no inbetween” that stuff that’s merely in poor taste is conflated with things that are actually offensively malicious.
this is so well worded like i been trying to say this for awhile thank you
Damn. This is the thing.
I also kinda dislike that people started saying ‘problematic’ when they could be specific about what someone did wrong. It becomes this vague scary thing that someone ‘said something problematic’ and you don’t know whether they passionately defended nazis or made a clumsy joke about retail workers. And because we don’t know what someone means but we do want to be safe a lot of us just assume to worst and avoid people labelled ‘problematic’. This makes is a very effective tool to bully out people for minor flaws and to reinforce purity culture and disposability culture.
My dash has, in the past two years, become increasingly invested in this idea that fic comments are the fan creator’s “currency,” the means by which fan creators are “paid,” and therefore, it logically follows, a thing fan creators are owed.
I’m not a huge fan of this.
Do I like receiving comments? Yes. God yes. Love it. Enter into a black funk if I don’t get at least 25 within the first week of posting, at least 15 within the first day, at least 5 in the first hour, and at least one right away right in the very first second. I refresh obsessesively in those first seconds. I want all the attention on me and my work. I feel like I need it.
But it is not owed to me. Not the way my job owes me payment for my labor. Not the way I earn currency. I’m not contracting with fanfic readers for comments. I’m posting something and letting the internet have at it, which is a different thing entirely.
I think sometimes about how comments-as-currency interact with BNF culture. If you’re taking in the idea “this is a fic by a very important person whose opinion on the canon is sacrosanct and special” and also “by reading this free internet story, you now owe it to the creator to make them feel good about it and themselves,” that’s a particular magic elixir. And I guess a part of me is still scarred from the Cassie Clare days, and really does not agree with assigning special primacy to fandom creators because of the ways that can go drastically wrong.
Though, actually, never mind the Cassie Clare days. In the here and now, there are fic authors who feel they should get special praise from fellow fans for “originating” specific ship fandoms (why, because you showed up first?). In the here and now, there are BNFs with hundreds of bookmarks and thousands of comments who routinely threaten to flounce because the attention they get is just not enough for them.
the longer I am in fandom, the less I care for that shit. I think fandom is often made worse when we treat it like a transaction made for social approval, when we normalize this idea that participation in fandom is by its nature a contract by which you can demand the reactive energy of others.
I think a lot about two times I didn’t “comment.” One is Terry Pratchett. I love Terry Pratchett. Ever since I picked up a copy of Mort in Heathrow airport at age 12, I told myself, every year, that I would write him a letter telling him how funny he was and how much I loved his work. I told myself that when an essay on Mort won me a scholarship to high school. I told myself that when an essay on Death in Discworld won me a scholarship to college, and then helped send me to professional school. I told myself I would write Terry Pratchett a letter every year for over ten years, and then he died and I never sent him a letter and I regret never sending him a letter.
I also think about shinigami.org. Shinigami.org was a Gundam Wing fansite way back in the early 00s, run by a fan named Kumiko. Kumiko was the first fanfic writer I ever idolized. I don’t remember the quality of her work or the characterization or the writing style or the pairings, but I remember the way her work made me feel. I loved this one Hitchcock AU in particular. I checked shinigami.org every single day during computer time in 8th grade, desperate to see if she had posted a sequel to that fic. Then Kumiko announced she was shutting the site down. Agonized, I then checked every single day to see if she would reverse her decision. She never did, but before she took the site down she posted a note saying she was thankful for all the people who had messaged her with kind words and praise. And then I felt embarrassed and bad, because it hadn’t occurred to me to tell Kumiko how much I idolized her (and I did) and how great I found her Hitchcock AU (and I really, really did).
These are not the only times I haven’t commented. They happen to be the only times I have felt BAD about not commenting. Why? Not because I was stiffing Kumiko or PTerry — I wasn’t. I paid for my copy of Mort and every subsequent Discworld book I bought, so I wasn’t denying Terry Pratchett anything he was lawfully owed. And Kumiko had made the choice to establish a Gundam Wing website for free and post stories on it for free and (unlike some of her contemporaries, say, PL Nunn, who charged for a lot of her work) was not asking fans to enter into some kind of contractual arrangement where they owed her currency for stories rendered. So I wasn’t backing out on a deal with either her or Terry Pratchett, and I didn’t feel bad for that reason. I felt bad because I missed a chance to express what Terry Pratchett’s work meant to me and what Kumiko’s work meant to me. I felt bad because their brought me intense happiness and I had the words in me to reflect on that happiness and just why it had such a pull on me and made me rethink the way I looked at the world. But I did not use those words, which was a missed chance for me to know more about me.
Don’t comment because comments are fandom currency. Comment when you feel like you have something to say. Don’t feel bad about not commenting because you “owe” a comment. You don’t owe comments. But if you have a feeling you can capture, something a work brings out of you, and you don’t take the time to sit with yourself for a few minutes and capture that feeling, then sometimes that can be a shame.
That’s how I feel about comments. And no, I don’t comment on everything. And honestly, you shouldn’t have to either. If you feel like it helps to create a welcoming fandom space, if it makes you more the person you want to be, then comment away, but even that, I think, should be more about how commenting helps you create something you value than how commenting is something you owe. I don’t think that, because I have written fic for free, I am thus owed the reactions of every single person who stumbles on that fic and happens to have a positive reaction. I do think, because I read fic for fun, that sometimes there’s added joy in taking the time to express myself to the original creator. Those are two very different approaches.
And, it goes without saying, appreciate every comment you get. Because no, people don’t owe them to you.
I think as nerds we need to start being honest with ourselves that a lot of the movies we profess to “love” are actually thoroughly mediocre except for that one specific fight scene. You know the one I mean.
i still hate y’all bitches who say oc x canon shit is cringe like bitch you have ANY idea how flattered i would be if someone made an oc for my fantasy world? how utterly PSYCHED my ass would be they loved a character so much they fleshed out one themselves just 2 be with one of mine? fuck y’all haters
Thesis: one major reason that straight dude writers keep accidentally writing male protagonists who read as gay or bisexual is because they have no close friends in real life, so the only model for non-familial emotional intimacy they have to draw on is how they interact with their SOs.
jinlinli 