Fandom

[poliphilo]

Fandom- I don't get it.

Why would you want to mess with someone else's characters when you can create your own?

Does J.K. Rowling take pleasure in badly written stories about her characters having sex?  I doubt it.  Why- If you admire and enjoy her work - would you want to disrespect her so? 

Isn't "fan" a bit of a misnomer?

But lets move from the general to the specific. An artist just got banned by LJ because of an image she posted of Harry and Snape.

Only the banning seems ineffective because she's bounced back and the image is viewable. (I'm not giving links. I don't want to give her any more publicity than she's getting already).

I clicked. I was expecting an image of them kissing. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

The characters were clearly modelled on Daniel Radcliffe and Alan Rickman. Isn't this defamation of character or libel of something?

Even more to the point:  British comedian Chris Langham is about to go to prison for downloading images which (I assume ) are comparable to this. 

So- forget morality- LJ needs to guard itself against prosecution.

But I don't want to forget morality. You take characters from a beloved children's book and you produce an image of them that any paedophile would be proud to own (you can quibble over whether Harry looks underage or not if you want to be legalistic and miss the point) and  I can't think of any grounds on which I'd be prepared  to defend you.

A lot of fans are up in arms and banging on about censorship.  I just watched a video of a girl give a little self-righteous speech then attempt to burn her LJ shirt with a blow torch .  Fine. Off you trot to some less scrupulous site and good luck to you!  As it happens, I'm perfectly happy to see you go.

Comments

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[ilyena_sylph]

Hi.

I have a question. Do you want to get it?

Because if you want the point of view of someone who is not in HP fandom, who doesn't care all that much about that specific image either way, but who is desperately fannish over several other fictional worlds, I would love to talk to you.

But if you wrote this just to say you don't like it and don't understand it, nothing anyone (me specifically) can say will do anything to change your mind, and I'll go ahead and go about my merry way.

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[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not looking to be converted if that's what you mean but I'm happy to talk.

I've been engaged by certain fannish TV programmes down the years- most recently by Buffy- but I've never wanted to play in those worlds and when I'd seen the shows I moved on. There are always other fictional worlds to explore. I've enjoyed the Potter books but I don't think they're breathtakingly wonderful and now I'm back reading Dickens who is absolutely my favourite novelist.

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[ilyena_sylph]

And of course, as soon as I ask this I wind up without an internet connection for two days. *sigh*

*Tips head* I've watched most of this discussion, and I'm baffled. You never in your life, not even as a kid, begged you mother/father/grandfather/grandmother favorite aunt for "what happened next?" about a story?

Or wanted another Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed or Pecos Bill story?

Never?

The Potter books are wonderful universes to work in at least partially because they're not breathtakingly wonderful, for that matter, and they leave the Potter fans so many different places and stories to tell about that world.

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[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You know what? Having this debate has substantially changed my mind. I'm now much more sympathetic towards fandom- not least because all the people who have challenged my views have been so polite about it. I was expecting to be flamed and what I got were reasoned arguments.

Yes, there were books that grabbed me as a child- notably The Jungle Books and T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone. And, yes, I remember producing what might now be called fanart. But when I told myself stories- which I did all the time- they were always original and featured my own characters. There was- for example- this guy called Prince Carlosnod who had all sorts of (Tolkien-inspired) adventures. I needed story, right enough, but it never occured to me to extend someone else's. That's still something that puzzles me about fanfic. I've written fiction as an adult and much of the fun is the fun of making a world from scratch and not knowing in advance who the people are or how they'll behave. I know I'd find it really frustrating to be working inside a ready-made universe with ready-made characters.

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[ilyena_sylph]

*smiles* I'm glad to have been part of helping change your mind, then. Politeness never hurt anyone, as far as I'm concerned, and you definitely catch more bees with honey than vinegar, too.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd rather not make my fandoms look bad by being a jerk while trying to defend what I do.

*grins* Oh, sure, I told myself my own stories all the time, (normally with talking animals and unicorns and such).

I love worldbuilding, and do original fiction and D&D and WhiteWolf campaigns, but fanfic is a very different thing for me.

I... think I can see where you would find it frustrating, but part of the pleasure of fanfic is seeing "What if" Character X did Action Y, instead of Action A that we actually saw.

The best explanation I've seen recently is that the creatively-organized fans have a very elastic relationship with the text. We lock on to the characters, for whatever reasons, and we want to 'see' what would happen if you took the character you know, and twisted the situation around them. How does the world change, basically.

Of course, my current/primary fandom is DC Comics, where every creator working today started out as a fan--seem sto make a huge difference. DC fen are blessed, and cursed, with decades of history... and decades of Elseworlds and re-imaginings, and canon 'alternate universes', all of which have an almost infinite array of possibilities for people to go "but what if?!" about.

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[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I value good manners. I now regret that my initial post was so confrontational. But then if it had been all milk and water it wouldn't have attracted notice.

I can see now how- among other things- fanfic is a form of lit-crit. There are few texts out there that couldn't do with adjustment. Rowling, for instance, I'd love to take her stuff in hand and give it a little style. She's a great story-teller but a lousy writer.

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[ilyena_sylph]

My apologies for the U.S.-centric-ness of one line in the previous comment. I was going for 'campfire tales' I could easily think of, and wound up sticking with the U.S.