who gets to decide what others can write?

[veronica_rich]

If you're a woman or girl in fandom and you're eloquent enough to write reams of meta criticizing other female fans for writing m/m or male characters, and not enough female characters, I really have a hard time taking your criticisms seriously. Because if you spent half as much time and energy writing and creating the female characters you claim you want to read about, as you do complaining your fellow fans are not serving you by writing what YOU feel you have the right to read, there wouldn't be a problem. You'd have gone a long way toward solving it.

I write m/m. I have written f/m. I have written gen, humor and otherwise. I have not written f/f because I have not encountered a f/f pairing I want to write. It doesn't float my boat. It may never float my boat. You don't like what I write, don't read it. I have plenty of f-listers who don't like slash; they don't read those stories of mine. We still manage to get along. You don't see me complaining that the good J/N or W/E or even the two good J/E writers who exist in my fandom aren't writing the J/W that I want to read. If I want J/W that fits my specifications, I'll write it myself.

And I have. Many times.

I write m/m. I'm neither gay nor male. I don't pretend to be; I don't pretend what I do is groundbreaking or a blow for gay rights, though I do support gay equality. But my support thereof is separate from my fanfic; my fanfic is NOT political, even if I were to drop a political theme or statement into one. I would never pretend it is. I do not believe I am appropriating a culture to fetishize it, because (1) I make an effort to write from my characters' brains, not their genitals, even if it's just porn; and, despite my effort to do a good job, (2) I cannot imagine that anyone would take my POTC slash fanfic seriously as literature. I do not publish in literary venues; it's LiveJournal fan communities, for godsake. My stories show up alongside 14-year-olds' discussions of "OMG JOHNNY DEPP IS SO HOTT!!111" I mean, really. I won't publish my original writing HERE.

But, what if I DO want to write m/m original fiction? Do I not have that right, especially if what I produce is a fair attempted portrayal of human beings? Tyler Perry isn't an older woman, despite playing one in several movies. Anne Rice was never a 300-year-old French male vampire; Naomi Novik never captained a ship as a man during the Napoleonic war; and neither Ted Elliot nor Terry Rossio were ever a 20-year-old woman in the 18th century Caribbean. (Remember how Elizabeth Swann was seen as a feminist ideal in fandom? That was two men writing her, with input from various other men producing and directing. Was there even an XX in the bunch other than Keira Knightley? I'm pretty sure she didn't singlehandedly create that character. My criticisms of T&T never included the assertion that they didn't have the right to write that character.)

My point - and to paraphrase Ellen, I do have one - is that fandom exists for people to share what they enjoy with other people who also enjoy the same things. This doesn't mean you should shut up and never criticize anything. But think about who you're criticizing. If you see egregious offenses in the movie or book (i.e., Cannibal Island characterizations of the natives in POTC-DMC set some people's nails on a blackboard) and you want to discuss them in an adult fashion with other fans, there's a place to do that. Or, write a letter to the studio/publisher/literary magazine pointing out the problem. Those writers were paid a great deal of money, and you have a right to question their intent. But if you just wish you could read more free fanfic of your favorite character ... write her yourself or encourage those writers who do, to do more. Complaining about the free fanfic from writers who don't want to write her isn't going to garner you stories that you want to read. Fanfic is a labor of love, a fantasy that will never come true - it's not coursework for college-level Creative Writing 241, even if some people do use it to practice their writing skills.

But, eh, as always - what do I know of such esoteric topics? I'm just a middle-aged fanfic writer with a four-year education from a medium-level Midwest university. I don't have any advanced degrees or academic papers under my belt, or published novels. I never experimented with other women or multiple partners, never inhaled, shot up, or snorted, and I wear plain cotton underpants. LOL ...

ETA (from one of my replies below): I would point out in the POTC fandom that I may well be the only writer (other than someone who once kindly wrote a story inspired by one of mine) who has made a fat woman the star/protagonist of any of any fanfic - Prissy, from CotBP. I just wanted to throw that out there. I'm a fat woman myself - do I have the right to scream that I'm being marginalized by all the women in this fandom who only want to write skinny, beautiful Elizabeth Swann??

Comments

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

I think that it has gotten to the point where the thought police are knocking on our keyboards. And yes, you make an excellent point. So much of the brouhaha is about women writing men. And, as usual, it's women who end up sabatoging other women. Because frankly, I think a much more important issue is that the majority of screen writers are men and they are writing craptastic roles for women. And if they don't write craptastic roles for women, then the directors see fit to give what could be a stellar role to someone who is beautiful but can't act. And I am not talking about KK. I am talking about comparing the screen chemistry and pure acting chops of Robert Downey Jr and Rachel McAdams (who I actually like in other things) versus Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. And yet Irene Adler is a STUNNING character in the Holmes books. Yet Hollywood can't help but declaw her. So yeah, who am I going to write about? Unless you're writing real fiction, you're stuck.

And yes, I do write real ficton and you wouldn't believe the shit I get because my protagonist is a full-fleshed out FEMALE character. The people who dislike my books do so because my protagonist is a bitch. So, what's a writer to do? At least if I write male characters, I don't have to justify them getting angry or getting irritated or screaming or swearing or, you know, generally acting like normal people, not cardboard cutouts that are familiar and safe.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I think that it has gotten to the point where the thought police are knocking on our keyboards.

The only good thing is at this point, the ringleaders are kind of ineffectual. They've pissed off so many fellow fans that they've had to withdraw and withdraw until they're largely talking in a circle with themselves. I just don't like the idea of somebody sitting back going "she doesn't have the right to write that." Say what?

At least if I write male characters, I don't have to justify them getting angry or getting irritated or screaming or swearing or, you know, generally acting like normal people, not cardboard cutouts that are familiar and safe.

Now that's sad. What about the protagonist is bad? I read those books. I liked her for the most part - she had her moments of unlikability, but don't your best friends, even? That's the way of things. No good character is going to be entirely likable 100 percent of the time - the hope is that when they're not, they're still able to evoke enough sympathy to make them worth reading.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

They've pissed off so many fellow fans that they've had to withdraw and withdraw until they're largely talking in a circle with themselves.

That's only true for POTC. Read metafandom. There are armies of people out there with similar attitudes.

No good character is going to be entirely likable 100 percent of the time - the hope is that when they're not, they're still able to evoke enough sympathy to make them worth reading.

I'd like to think it's characterization. :) This is exactly what happened in the Harry Potter books. Her one attempt to make Harry 3D failed, so she essentially abandoned characterizaton for ever-escalatng world builing, which ended up make the series quite weak in the end.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

As for specific fandoms, to be fair to other fandoms, POTC is the one with which I'm "inside" familiar. Others I only see from the outside, though I am given to understand this goes on in them, too. (But wouldn't it also be fair to extrapolate that because people have retreated from POTC fandom because of such as this, it's happened in other fandoms? Not all of them, of course. But some? Human response is human response.)

[venusinchains.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've been on the 'inside' for PotC and Torchwood. The general breakdown, of the breakdown, has been virtually identical for the two. In fact, reading the rest of the comments here today, and your responses, I'm thinking I may not have been reading any of the metas you were referring to (unless you too have been boggling at the mess over at metafandom). But it's all the same shit. So, we grok anyway. :)

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

The thing that I think is unique in the POTC kerfuffle was that we didn't have the numbers to sustain a wank of that magnitude. HP suffers through that sort of wank all the time, but because of its sheer size, people can huff off to their little corners and it doesn't affect the whole. In POTC, we didn't have that large enough of a community so that the segregation of the fandom, essentially, killed it. I'd like to see a statistical breakdown of how big a fandom you need to sustain major wank and still thrive. Clearly, POTC wasn't large enough. We're limping along at best.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's interesting. Do you think that this kind of massed attempt to make an author write what [whatever group] think they ought to write is a problem no matter which genre you write in?

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

I've gotten lots of good reviews on my real-life fiction, and I hope I didn't give the impression that I haven't. But the negative comments, by and large, are from women who see my main character as a bitch. Men don't seem to have that problem! Interestingly, one of the best reviews I ever got was from a male critic! Because mystery has genres within the genres, hard-boiled detective fiction, agatha christie cosies, etc., there are a broad spectrum of readers. The agatha christie contingent find my books too raw. Which is fine, again, you don't like, don't read, but I can point to several male writers who have included strong minor characters who are women (and one who wrote an extremely successful mystery featuring a woman protagonist) and I NEVER HEARD ONCE that she was a bitch. And yet she swore and drank and made my character look like a Sunday school teacher. But he got away with it because he'a a guy. If I'd written that story, being a woman, I'd have gotten the rave reviews he did AND a host of comments by woman who feel betrayed by strong female protagonists. They want Miss Marple in the English countryside.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

At least the reviewer has obviously read your book and isn't trying to tell you that you ought to write shiny, happy female characters simply because you're a woman. Or is there a pressure group that says that women shouldn't write hard-boiled female detectives because it's insulting to women and contributes to our ongoing oppression in society?

I can work out how to react to reviews where people didn't like my characters for one reason or another, but I find "you shouldn't write [whatever] because you belong to [the group of oppressors] and you're appropriating our experience" or "you should write [whatever] because you belong to the oppressors and you owe us representation" (which contradict each other, of course) or "you should write [whatever] because you belong to [the group of the oppressed]" much harder to counter. I mean "I write the stories that come into my head because those are the only stories I have to tell," doesn't seem like much of a logical defense. And yet that's pretty much the essence of the thing.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I mean "I write the stories that come into my head because those are the only stories I have to tell," doesn't seem like much of a logical defense.

And THIS right here is what I've been trying to say. NOBODY SHOULD HAVE TO JUSTIFY THAT THEY WANT TO WRITE A FICTIONAL STORY. If it doesn't meet standards to be published or posted somewhere, that's fair. But telling someone "I'm not going to publish this" is not the same as "You are not allowed to write this, period."

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

Of course. Seems rather elementay but I think we've cross over to the "silly" season, to quote Le Carre.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I think maybe that what we need is just higher standards for publication. I don't think it should matter who writes a book as long as it's a good book. And no one really benefits from the publication of badly written, badly plotted, stereotypical rubbish. (Of course, whether an individual book is good or bad is a matter of debate in itself, but I think that's a different debate that can only meaningfully be had in the context of one book at a time.)

As far as fanfic goes, I think that when people are entertaining you for free it's quite rude to demand they give you what you want at the expense of their own interests and desires. Gives "looking a gift horse in the mouth" a new use.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

This is somewhat of a larger issue. I have no patience for someone who questions whether you have the right to write what you write. It seems to me that the marketplace will sort out those issues quite nicely. Either you write compelling, believable fiction (which, of course, you do, smooches) or you don't. The marketplace is an amazing barometer of what is acceptable or what is not.

I'm talking about people bleating for more realistic portrayals of women in fiction, and I'm saying, well, I wrote exactly that and got lamblated (in some circles) for writing EXACTLY that. So yeah, no winning period. And as such, you must write what you must write. Because you're going to take it on the chin in some fashion, therefore, you might as well be proud on some level.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Thank you *g*. And yes, I completely agree. For every "this author has no grasp of the gay male psyche. x would never happen," review I get, I get another saying "I loved your book. x particularly resonated with me because I had exactly the same experience." So I'm wary of anyone who thinks they can talk for an entire group of people throughout history as if all the members of that group were inherently the same. I think the key is to just remember that your characters are human and write them like individuals - whatever group they might belong to.