Anghraine

iykyk

I don't even recall who posted this, but apparently at Worldcon, Seanan McGuire presented this simple flowchart to explain what is and is not fanfic:



I have no grievance with McGuire in general, but this is both elegant and quite wrong, IMO. Sorry, my Austen fanfic is very much fanfic (and there's no need to give the P&P "variations" industry any more delusions of grandeur than it already has, lol—those are very much fanfic, too). Some of my fics could also be considered re-imaginings or retellings—First Impressions is the obvious example as a deliberate retelling of P&P with genderswapped leads, rather than a true what-if AU—but they are absolutely fanfic. They're fiction written as a form of fan expression.

Sometimes there is a real sense of difference between fiction of this kind, especially when written in a fandom context that is clearly informed by or in dialogue with other fanworks, wider trends in the fandom or in online fandom in general, etc vs some literary re-imaginings that interrogate the source material but are not really fannish (not even in a fan hatred way). So it's not that I think all fiction of this kind should be defined as fanfic. I think that has to do with the conditions of creation rather than the novelty of the cast, setting, and/or plot. But the defining artistic criteria of fanfic as a form or genre are not determined by externally imposed legal codes or the opinion of the source material's author.

There have been many attempts to develop an authoritative definition for fanfic that ultimately comes down to "can you legally make money off it?" But that is not what fanfic is, and I'm deeply skeptical of conceptualizing genre, any genre, based on whether or when it can be sold. A lot of licensed IP writers seem very invested in distinguishing their work from fanfic—sometimes claiming it's not about superiority (sure, Jan), but it's just very important to them that they not be perceived as fanfic writers. But I'd argue that what makes licensed work fanfic or not isn't actually the license, or it being a professional job for money, but the approach of the work in question. Some IP writers are very much fans and clearly approached the licensed work as a chance to write fanfic about some part of canon they're super into with authorization from a parent company or something (various Star Trek writers seem to be very much of this type, say). Others don't really seem to be approaching their work as a form of fan expression, which is not morally wrong in any way, but definitely different. Going back to P&P, there are some takes that I wouldn't really consider fanfic (unlike the variation industry), just because the authors don't seem to be writing as fans but for some other goal. So you sometimes get P&P sequels that are really different from the fanfic—more literary in some ways, but often less engaged with Pride and Prejudice or its adaptations than the fanfic tends to be and prone to little canon errors that fans don't usually make. It's a little hard to describe but you can usually tell.

In any case: some licensed IP work is fanfic and acknowledged as such by the authors, while some isn't; some fanfic is based on source material that is long out of copyright (and some other things based on the same or similar sources isn't fanfic), and the time since publication does not merit a specific respectable distinction from, idk, normie fanfic by Marvel slash superfans or whoever is the fannish target du jour.

In honor of finally!!! getting the Legendary Defender of Ascalon title after fiFTEEN YEARS, a thing for my favorite location in any video game ever: pre-Searing Ascalon from Guild Wars: Prophecies.

Never forgive, never forget.

More political schadenfreude:


[A screenshot from a news headline reading "Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell makes remarks"]

hahahaha

Namely, the main upside is that I've forbidden myself from reblogging these kinds of nakedly manipulative and desperate attempts to turn anti-kink fandom morality policing into progressive praxis:



I've seen some people pushing back against the idea that the anti-kink fandom morality police's vapors over anything but the most vanilla sexuality could possibly be puritanical, and it's always this kind of tortured, manipulative argument that seems incredibly transparent but somehow ends up getting uncritically reblogged. This particular one is so wrong from every angle that I wouldn't even know where to start. But since I'm not letting myself get into those kinds of arguments on Tumblr, I don't have to start. #blessed

[Stats from my third PhD exam on Jan 2nd, 2021, reading Page 6 of 22; 6613 words]

when will I be freeeee

Tagged: #i'm supposed to have endnotes but also they don't count #T_T

I am very deeply tired of the posts about how no one is neurotypical actually, everyone is disabled if you think about it, mental disabilities are just poorly conceived associations of traits and you shouldn't limit yourself with a label, blah blah blah.

I get that some of this is spurred on by inaccurate generalizations and assumptions about neurotypical people from neurodivergent people who may not fully understand the variations and nuances of NT experience, or who are simply wrong about certain things, or whose venting is imprecise, etc. But some of this so patently arises out of a visceral resentment at not being centered in every form of disability discourse and advocacy, and refusal to countenance the idea that neurodivergent people a) exist as such and b) are marginalized in a way that many NT people are not.

Some of these posts/commentary are coming from other neurodivergent people with whom I simply disagree. But most that I have seen are pretty clearly written from the POV of someone who knows they would ordinarily be considered neurotypical and resents it in a birdsrightsactivist kind of way:



[A screenshot of a Tweet from the user ProBirdsRights, aka birdsrightsactivist, reading "I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?"]

Autism on any scale but the most severe (and that only sometimes) does not seem real to most of the people writing these posts, additionally. That's part of the thing that makes this so frustrating for me, personally. This line of discourse is overwhelmingly dominated by allistic people who all but say everyone is autistic in their own way, while revealing a mind-boggling lack of comprehension or basic empathy about what it is actually like to go through the world as an autistic person. They very evidently regard autistic self-advocates as, at most, slightly eccentric but basically normal, self-indulgent people whom they just find kind of grating for some mysterious reason that they do not interrogate at all.

It's like ... even when I'm ranting (like now!), I try to put things in a careful way, in large part because I am very easy to misunderstand IRL and I don't like it. But so many of these posts that I see being reblogged (by well-intentioned people who just ... don't get it) make me want to start screaming. Often the frustration takes me hours or days to articulate. Sometimes I'm just trying to think of some phrasing other than "shut the fuck up, you don't know what you're talking about." I never say that directly to any individual. But there is so much utterly unearned and misplaced overconfidence in so many of these posts that it's difficult not to feel it.

I got a reblog on my "Faramir/Éowyn consumes Faramir's arc far more than Éowyn's" post that definitely brightened my day:

[A reblog from Tumblr user ravencromwell reading: