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.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 08:44 am (UTC)5. Yes! Yes! In my essay against canon I say: Even endorsement by the property's creator(s) is no measure, because they change their minds, or lie, or forget, or don't care, or took the job over from someone else, or leave it to someone else, or any combination of the above.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 12:03 pm (UTC)On a deeper level, I think of authors who insist that they. and only they, know and understand the characters they created as being akin to parents who believe that they own their children and do whatever they can to prevent them from becoming functionally independent people. (This is entirely aside from the legal issues, here.)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 03:06 pm (UTC)That our legal system doesn't get it is, in my opinion, one of the hideous quasi-Lovecraftian consequences of intellectual property often being owned by corporations, which are immortal, rather than humans.
Yes! Yes! In my argument against "Why don't you just invent your own characters?", I say: The hiccup in normality isn't that the characters are treated by me as if I own them, the hiccup is that big corporations own them.
The problem isn't that corporations are immortal per se, it's that their lobbyists have managed to suborn the life-of-the-creator-plus-a-time-limit laws that are in place, extending the time limit and creating the capacity to indefinitely renew. I think copyrights should expire at the death of the human creator, and that corporations oughtn't be allowed to own them. I have nothing against life-of-the-creator-plus-a-time-limit in principle, except that theoretically it's what we have now and it's being abused with no practical recourse for those who object. (I once argued this at length on Usenet and have reprinted the argument here.)
Fanfiction is and of a right ought to be fair use. Fortunately - according to my own, passive and anecdotal research - the corporations only send C&Ds to websites with unauthorized use of their actual works: screen captures and episode transcripts and the like. Original derivative works are seen as free advertising and/or too pervasive to persecute.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 02:04 pm (UTC)