Unpopular Fandom Opinion Survey
Jun. 24th, 2009 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaWhen you see this, post five unpopular fandom opinions in your journal.
I am assuming "unpopular" modifies "opinion" and not "fandom," although since most of my fandoms are small ones by LJ standards . . .
1) Ghostbusters II was a good movie. While I fully recognize that it was relentlessly derivative of the original and Janine was OOC for the whole movie, it was still a lot of fun.
2) The seme and uke dynamics of yaoi are not only hard to write well, when they are written poorly, they are not infrequently actively harmful to USian fangirls and their ideas about queer issues and gender issues. (I do not know enough about queer rights in Japan to know whether they are harmful when they're at home.)
3) Bisexuality exists. The fact that a character has had, in the past, a canon relationship with a person of a particular gender does not mean that it is somehow a betrayal of the character to portray them with a relationship with a person of the other gender in a fanwork. If the character's sexuality is never explicitly stated, it is just as in-character to assume that they're bi as that they're exclusive to the gender they've already been linked to.
4) Bisexuality exists. On the opposite side of the coin, if a character has had a canon relationship with a person of a given gender, changing them to the opposite exclusive sexuality without depicting the soul-searching process in between, or at least handwaving it, is out-of-character unless you're writing an AU. This applies to the canon writers as well as the fannish ones. Joss Whedon, I'm looking at you.
5) The TVTropes term "Word of God" notwithstanding, the canon creator is not its god. Once the canon is released into the wild, the characters have a life beyond his or her head, and they exist in the interaction between the writer, the reader, and the work; the canon creator is, at that point, the First Ficcer. This is even more true of subsequent canon writers; much as I love their works, Richard Mueller and Stephen Moffat are ficcers who got paid for it.
I am assuming "unpopular" modifies "opinion" and not "fandom," although since most of my fandoms are small ones by LJ standards . . .
1) Ghostbusters II was a good movie. While I fully recognize that it was relentlessly derivative of the original and Janine was OOC for the whole movie, it was still a lot of fun.
2) The seme and uke dynamics of yaoi are not only hard to write well, when they are written poorly, they are not infrequently actively harmful to USian fangirls and their ideas about queer issues and gender issues. (I do not know enough about queer rights in Japan to know whether they are harmful when they're at home.)
3) Bisexuality exists. The fact that a character has had, in the past, a canon relationship with a person of a particular gender does not mean that it is somehow a betrayal of the character to portray them with a relationship with a person of the other gender in a fanwork. If the character's sexuality is never explicitly stated, it is just as in-character to assume that they're bi as that they're exclusive to the gender they've already been linked to.
4) Bisexuality exists. On the opposite side of the coin, if a character has had a canon relationship with a person of a given gender, changing them to the opposite exclusive sexuality without depicting the soul-searching process in between, or at least handwaving it, is out-of-character unless you're writing an AU. This applies to the canon writers as well as the fannish ones. Joss Whedon, I'm looking at you.
5) The TVTropes term "Word of God" notwithstanding, the canon creator is not its god. Once the canon is released into the wild, the characters have a life beyond his or her head, and they exist in the interaction between the writer, the reader, and the work; the canon creator is, at that point, the First Ficcer. This is even more true of subsequent canon writers; much as I love their works, Richard Mueller and Stephen Moffat are ficcers who got paid for it.
