hector_rashbaum | Entries tagged with brainz om nom nom nom

I'm really waffling over whether or not I want to move to Dreamwidth. The recent LJ ads thing really, really bothered me (long story short, NOM bought ads through Google to display for the keywords "gay marriage", so anti-gay ads showed up on the flists/posts/etc. of LGBT people and allies, and there were also fetishistic ads about "ladyboys" showing up on the flists/posts/etc. of transpeople).

I'm not one of those who blames LJ for it, I'm aware that if I want to blame anyone for the ad system being set up in such a game-able way it's Google, and that really the party to blame are the insufferable bigots at NOM for buying the ads with those keywords in the first place.

And it probably makes me look horribly selfish, as a Plus user who's opened myself to ads from the beginning (sort of. I do use AdBlock so I rarely, if ever, see any), who's known from the beginning I have no control over the advertising that displays with my journal, to get bothered now that the hypothetical - the lack of control leading to something really objectionable - is a reality, in a way that specifically offends me. But here I am, offended, and uncomfortable.

I think my account's old enough I could revert to Basic, and ~~lose most of my icons :(~~ get rid of the ads on my LJ specifically. But right now I'm uncomfortable with the idea as a whole - that as long as LJ uses an ad service it doesn't control, as long as LJ doesn't take an ideological stance on every single political issue likely to see an ad, this might keep happening. I'm not sure I really want any part of a service that's willing to take the chance it will make money promoting discrimination against me.

So...I don't know. That said, I definitely can't afford a paid account, so if anyone's got a spare invite code to toss my way...?*puppy eyes*

(I know I'm late to the party on the anti-gay ad thing. I keep turning it over in my head and being kind of okay with it, and then not, and then...over and over and over. So.)

Here's a fun quiz that I expect my entire FList to pass.

Person A: "It's not creepy to portray a fictional character doing what you want them to do--they don't have free will, not really. They're puppets. Real people aren't puppets."

Person B: "I don't have the power to make [celebrity] do a damn thing, I can't interfere with his free will in any way.

A character is a character. Whatever inspires him, whatever elements are pulled from reality to create him, however closely he resembles a real living breathing person, he is not a living breathing person."

Just two questions, both count equally. Show your work.

1. Which of these people is an RPFer? (This one's a bit of a gimme, I think)

2. Which of these people appears to have the blurriest line between fantasy and reality?

( Answers Under the Cut )

I rarely comment on the feminist blogs I read; it's some side effect of the social anxiety thing, that when I'm in an arena where I worry other people know more than me and will thus be able to see ignorance I didn't know existed in my words, I get antsy and just shut up. Although, honestly, if more people did that on their initial forays into activist theory, the world would be a lot awesomer.

Aaaaand I'm rambling already. Anyway I was reading Feministe earlier, and the story that's been circulating for a few days about a teacher who bound two black female students to teach her class about slavery finally showed up there. Reading the comments, I came across one that touched on an issue that's been on my mind lately. Thus:

I am not insensitive to the girl’s feelings, but as a parent of a young girl, I hope I am teaching her to be emotionally strong and to learn to deal with the situations she may one day face, including potentially traumatizing ones.

I was just talking with a friend about how troubling it is that the norm seems to be one should feel bad merely for being offended, that simply for being wronged, you are in fact wrong. Being hurt by something hurtful is not a sign of weakness, nor is it a character flaw, and I only hope I can teach the children I have any influence over that there is nothing wrong with speaking up when you are harmed - in any way.

As a society, we’d probably move a lot farther a lot faster if it wasn’t considered desirable to ignore wrongdoing in the name of “strength”.

I struggle - and it is a struggle, for me, because a large part of my anxiety stems from not wanting to be seen as an inconvenience - daily with this concept, that when someone wrongs me if I speak up I am doing something wrong. Somehow, the people whose biggest problem in the privilege system is being criticized for stomping on anything that will prevent them benefiting at other people's expense have convinced everyone else that criticizing is a more heinous offense than the stomping. You don't have to look any farther than the contempt surrounding "PC" - all political correctness is, really, is not using phraseology you know to be offensive.

And yet the mainstream response to "x term is offensive" is more likely to be "OH GOD HERE COME THE PC POLICE" than "gee, sorry I offended you."

There is nothing bad, or wrong, or shameful, or weak, about taking offense, and yet it's become codified in our culture that being offended is a crime in and of itself. And I, for one, am going to struggle, and examine, and push like Hell against my internalization of that idea until the day comes I don't feel like standing up and saying "your sexist bullshit is offensive" is likely to have more repercussions than the sexist bullshit.

You?

Current Mood: cranky

I understand the power of words, and more than that I understand the power differential. I know "asshole" doesn't hit the same as "cunt", that "wuss" doesn't sting like "pussy". I know when I'm feeling road ragey it's ten times more satisfying to think of the idiot going 10 in a 35 as "sweetheart" or "grandma" than anything else. I know how often it feels like the only word that fits has been made off-limits by those damn PC Police in my head, how frustrating that is, and how much that leaves me wondering how much one person's internal dialogue, how much one use of "slut" really matters. I know that even as high-and-mighty as I can get about this kind of thing, there are plenty of times I think the better option would be for everyone else to develop a thicker skin rather than for me to modify my habits.

I also know that I am better than that. I know I'm not the kind of person who is so self-centered as to privilege my inconvenience - which gets less and less inconvenient as time goes on - over the very real marginalization of entire groups of people. I know that I am capable of the thought required to understand the principles behind modifying my language, and that I am a good enough person to change my behavior in line with those principles.

I know I can't make anyone change their behavior. I know it's up to any given person what she says, what she thinks, what she does. I know if someone feels strongly enough, all the education, all the intelligence, all the pushing for much-needed social change in the world can't make him do a thing. And in the same way, no one can make me change things I feel strongly about. And I am smart enough to know discussion, disagreement, and any other manifestation of an individual's ideals aren't the same thing as force.

I know how misogynist, racist, homophobic, etc. language reflects on even people I know for a fact to be not misogynist, racist, homophobic, etc. I know "PC" is a buzzword used by assholes so when they complain they won't sound like the sort of person who complains about being asked to respect their fellow human beings - despite the fact that is what they're complaining about. And I know, above all, that I will never allow myself to look like one of those people.

So I wanna talk about identity. Because I've gotten a few times lately, from a few different people, the implication - if not direct statement - that I am somehow wrong, or naive, or stupid/foolish/what-have-you for considering my lesbianism a defining characteristic.

And part of the reason I don't talk about it is it requires saying "straight people generally don't have this problem" and I find people react so weirdly to that - which I think comes from what I posted about yesterday, this idea of finite problems. Because if there are, I dunno, only two problems in the world and gay people say "this is only a gay problem" and POC say "this is only a POC problem", the implication is that straight people, white people, have no problems. But problems are most definitely not finite, and no one is saying "this is a strictly gay issue, straight people don't have issues". So the defensiveness is really out of place.

But here it is. See...there are a lot of facets to my identity. I'm a lesbian, I'm a cat person, I'm a student, I'm a glasses-wearer, I'm an oldest child with middle-child syndrome, I have anxiety problems, I'm fat, etc.

Some of those are less important. I could be a dog person without being a different person, I could have good eyesight and not be different, I could be a middle child and be the same old me.

But there are things on that list that are fundamental to who I am. I would have had vastly different life experiences if I weren't fat, and thus the person I am today would not be the same. And my experiences from here on out will be different than if everything else were the same but 100 pounds lighter, the way I parse things is different, I am different. And in the same way, my life - and the person I am - would be extremely different were I straight.

I pull out those two examples for a reason: they are things that society (either as a whole, or just massive parts) tell me I should be ashamed of. So merely by not being ashamed - by accepting that this is what I look like, and I will focus on my health and not worry about the looks, by saying there is nothing wrong with me being attracted to and loving women exclusively - I am fighting. And this is the problem straight people don't have - that daily struggle, the near-constant need to prove you're normal, you're worth being treated like a human.

(And really, people, do I need to say this? YES I understand discrimination against gays isn't the only kind that exists, what kind of idiot do you think I am? Focusing on one specific discrimination in one specific context isn't the same as saying "I'm the only person who's ever been discriminated against ever")

And that's where it starts to look like I'm privileging one facet of my identity over any others - because that one facet is under attack. Because, yes, all things being equal being gay would be no different than being straight, but what world do you live in where all things are equal? So I have to fight (well...I don't have to, but to put it baldly I consider people who lie back and take their oppression with open arms fools), and so I have to call attention, and then rather than getting it from one side with "you're not okay" I get from the other side "you're not identifying right".

So here it is, in simplest terms. When something I consider fundamental to my identity is under attack, I will fight back. Fighting back requires calling attention; calling attention gives the impression of valuing one facet over another. This doesn't mean I consider being a lesbian the be-all end-all of Me - but nor does it mean I don't consider it more important than other things.

Or, Hell, have it in even simpler terms: Shut the fuck up and stop telling me how to parse my own identity, you privileged assholes.

So...I was cleaning out my Documents folder this morning, and I found the beginnings of this long-winded blather about privilege and intersectionality...and I was gonna finish it up, but I realized it boiled down to just a couple sentences.

There is no finite number of privilege/oppression systems that can exist at any one tume; therefore, the existence of one oppression/privilege system doesn't negate the existence of others. Lack of one set of privileges doesn't mean you can't benefit from another (I see this a lot in discussions of white privilege: "I can't have white privilege, I'm poor!" No, what you don't have is class privilege - you still have white privilege [and depending on the person: straight, male, etc. privileges]). The fact that one oppression/privilege system may be more extreme/harsh/whatever than another doesn't mean the latter doesn't exist.

Any questions?

And from now on, rather than dignifying any "you can't have problems because other people do" comments with original responses, I'm just gonna link to this post. Because I do not have the energy.

I have two options when I pick up a book/rent a movie/watch a tv show: I will be ignored, or I will be stereotyped.

Okay, I guess there's a third: I'll be represented as a character like everyone else, as opposed to a lesbian. But more often than not, I have to actively seek that out; the onus is on me to make the effort.

And it's tiring. It's exhausting and demoralizing in ways I'm not sure someone who's never had to think about seeing their lifestyle treated as a valid - as an existing - one that isn't inherently harmful can see. And that sounds a lot more dismissive than I want it to.

( Read more... )

So I guess all I wanted to do with this post was...give a little insight. Maybe it's not needed, maybe it's not welcome. But this is stuff I deal with every single day - and this is just when I wanna lose myself in a story or movie for a little while. This is what I go through when I need an escape. God knows what would happen if I thought lesbians should be treated like real people in real life, right?

(I'll stop being so OMGSERIOUS soon, I expect)

Current Mood: pensive

In no particular order.

Freedom of speech does not, nor did it ever, mean freedom from the consequences of speech. Nor does it, or did it, mean one can say anything anytime anywhere.

Anger is not the worst thing in the world. Anger alone does not invalidate anyone's point, nor does lack of anger validate anyone's. If someone is wrong, they're wrong, no matter how much you like or dislike their emotions.

Ignorance is not an excuse - but it can be a good explanation. Ignorance will not be eradicated by belittling and silencing the ignorant; in many cases that makes it worse. The only way to eradicate ignorance is education.
- You can't educate the adamantly unwilling; it's not a fault if you choose not to try.
- No matter how ignorant you are, no individual owes you an education.

Intention does not negate action, nor does it do away with the consequences. There's a difference between shooting someone in cold blood and shooting someone in self-defense, but at the end of the day someone still got shot.

There is a difference between doing and being - someone who is racist might not always do racist things, and someone who does something racist is not necessarily a racist. An accusation of one is not an accusation of the other.

Acting misogynist might make some boys like you, but they won't respect you - and every self-respecting person even marginally aware of gender inequality issues won't be able to stand you.

In the same vein, faked misanthropic bullshit for the sake of looking badass (aka being ~*~edgy~*~) might make other idiots with no respect lol with you, but the rest of the world will be lol-ing at you.

The fastest way to correct an inequality, assuming finite resources, is to take some from one side of the scale and add them to another. If you've always been used to four weights on your side, losing one might seem unfair - but if there are only six weights, it needs to go to the side with two to create balance. There's a vast difference between removing weights to correct an imbalance, and removing them to create an imbalance.

Protecting a marginalized group from further marginalization is not the same as discriminating against the now-unprotected group.

There's a difference between viewing women (or any marginalized group) as weak, and recognizing when other people talk or act as if women are weak. Recognition of an unfavorable situation does not condone or create the situation.

Critique of your work is not the same as critique of your person; if you can't understand the difference, the biggest favor you will ever do for yourself is to avoid sharing your work.

You can't dictate how other people respond to your ideas or the way you communicate them; nor can you ever say with absolute certainty how someone is feeling.

Fiction =/= reality; writing =/= acting; thought =/= behavior. If you can't tell the difference between what I think and how I act, the problem is your own inability to separate fantasy from reality.

You may be the most important person in your own universe, and that's not a bad thing, but expecting to be the most important person in everyone else's universe is just douchey.

Words mean things. Words also have connotations that aren't necessarily in line with the meaning you intended. Failure to consider this is common. Constant refusal to even be aware of this is just as common, but infinitely stupider.

Current Mood: hungry

Yet another "is there different etiquette for using a fanwriter's OC than for using the source creator's characters?" discussion, here (unlocked this time).

Every now and then, usually when one of these posts pops up in FFR, I get the urge to sit down and write a nice long tl;dr soapboxy meta piece like I do with every other fandom issue that pisses me off. I can never get more than a few sentences in, because I just don't get it.

It seems so painfully obvious to me that the principle is the same, that it's hypocritical to deride someone for doing exactly what it is you do because of convenience (well it would take forever/is hard/is impossible to contact source authors, less so fanwriters), or assumed feelings (canon authors probably don't care/want to know about fic), or whatever other arbitrary straw someone manages to successfully grasp. And it's hard to argue something when you just don't get where your opponent's coming from, where you really truly cannot see why they disagree with you.

To me, it's as simple as this: if it's an etiquette breach to use someone's OC without asking or notifying, then it's an etiquette breach. Even if you think it's so hard you don't think it would be fruitful to bother trying. Even if you don't think the author wants to hear the question. Even if you think the answer might be no (and if you're not prepared to respect a "no", I consider it far ruder to ask than not).

And I wish I could figure out why other people don't see it that way, so I felt like it meant something to discuss it.

Edit: So not very long after I posted this, something interesting happened. I...figured out where the other person was coming from. Ha!

This is probably something entirely specific to the individual I was discussing with (and, I know it's hard to believe, it's actually been a pleasant discussion. Two people who disagree having a pleasant conversation! In fandom! I KNOW SO CRAZY.) but what I figured out was:

We agree up to a certain point: that contacting the creators of source material is, at this point in time, not necessary.

Here's where we diverge:

I think it's not necessary because I don't believe it's ever necessary - I don't ever think one needs to inform a creator or ask permission when one creates a fanwork. This has a lot to do with my interpretation of where the author and text become separate entities (once it's published and has been read/viewed/heard by one person, it's no longer solely the author's; more than that, I believe the mere act of publication severs the tie between author and text, even if no one ever reads it), which I explained in-depth in a WAY tl;dr comment here. I'm babbling! It's late/early and I haven't slept. Anyway. Contacting author is never necessary, although if I know for sure not being alerted would bother/annoy/insult someone I don't want to bother/annoy/insult, then I'll let 'em know.

She, however, appears (and this is entirely extrapolation, but when I posted this in the comments, while not actively confirming, she never denied) to believe contacting the author is a necessary point of etiquette, and that the only reasons not to contact the professional creator of the source text are practical/social ones. Thus, if an author provided a proper channel to let her know about fanworks, there was a guarantee it wouldn't result in a massive crackdown on fandom, and that delightful fandom attitude that it's rude/creepy/tinhatty to inform the creator of your fanworks, she would feel the same about notifying source creators as fanwriters.

So! We're never going to agree, because we're coming from completely opposite viewpoints! So here I am thinking all these practicalities are attempts to justify the hypocrisy of believing one should contact fanwriters and not source creators, when it's not hypocrisy at all, because, all else aside she does think you should contact source creators.

I feel so much smarter for having figured that out.

Current Mood: frustrated

I've yet to figure out exactly wtf it is about Torchwood that, when I've never had any desire to get fannish about any other tv show, makes me want to do all those fan-y things like ficcing and analyzing and making prettypretty icons and wallpapers and shit. But hey, if you're running Leopard and ever feel the need to get comprehensive screen caps taken and cropped down with minimal effort, my weird fannish obsessiveness is your gain! Heck yes.

I spent a good chunk of last night setting up a way to make screen capping easier, because it's way way way not fun to just sit through an episode with my fingers locked on shift-command-3 and then have a couple hundred pictures to edit. I'm not yet obsessive enough to consider that worthwhile.

So step one is to automate the actual capping. I've started working on learning AppleScript, but I'm not particularly far along. I managed to find the bits and pieces I thought I needed, and cobbled them together (and prayed, on first run, my computer wouldn't explode). The text and saving instructions are behind the cut, or you can just download mine.

( timed_caps.app )

Easy enough! Just open the app, it'll ask you where to save, and start capping until you close it.

( So now you've got a folder full of caps... )

In a broad sense, this post is about how much worse it is to be condemned or marginalized by people who should understand, how much trouble I have with the realization of the idea that any marginalized group tends to force divisions within itself, so the less-marginal can say "okay, so I _____, but at least I don't ________. Those other guys are the real ickies."

That idea has always, always bothered me. The gay people who condemn flamboyant gays for being too out-there, or the gay people who cry oversensitivity and "PC Police" at people who speak out against the subtler incarnations of heterosexism; the big girls who complain about other fat girls not covering up to their liking; the women who try to get in better with sexist men by parroting "women are such bitches and whores, but I'm not like that"; the FPFers who don't think RPF has a right to exist; people with one socially unacceptable kink condemning those with even less socially okay kinks.

In the specific, this is about this post that was linked from

metafandom today, in which

redsambuca takes issue with a child molestation fic.( Read more... )

Edit: I should note I wrote this pretty much immediately after

metafandom went up and I read the post; since I wrote this,

redsambuca has added one more edit at the end, and commented several times that she's aware of the problems with her post.

So here's the thing, about the bandom debates.

What it really comes down to is...there are two almost entirely different bandom cultures: one which traces its roots back through decades of band fannishness and mainly exists in archives outside LJ, and one whose roots are more aligned with media fandom - the successor to popslash, really.

Those two cultures develop and operate entirely separately from each other. Well...develop, yes, operate not so much.

Both cultures have found homes on LJ. And two groups using LJ for the same purpose, for fandoms with similar source material, are going to run into each other.

But while on the surface one band fandom probably doesn't seem much different from the next, that independent development has led to that popslash-successor culture to be very different from that traditional-bandfic-successor.

So obviously, clashes are going to occur. And the biggest one has been over terminology - over "bandom".

Because here's the thing. Both cultures use the word "bandom". And, perhaps more importantly, both cultures invented it. This isn't a bunch of Rockfic douchebags coming in, seeing a word they think is neat, and stealing it only to cry when someone else points out it doesn't mean what we think it does.

This is two cultures, with overlapping terminology but with definitions that don't match. It's not old fans getting all worked up that newer fans might like the same thing, it's not (well, it is in some cases) bandom-in-the-exclusive-sense actively trying to piss off other bandficcers, it's not some kind of value judgement on the music (I like the music! On both sides).

All it is, is two cultures clashing and the resultant culture shock. It's people fumbling around trying to find a way to do this without fucking with someone else's culture; because it's an issue of redefining people and arguing with the way they define themselves and their culture, people get sensitive and people get mad and it becomes more fighting than fumbling.

But at the end of the day, that's it. Bandom-in-the-exclusive-sense want to be able to use their terminology they invented to describe themselves the way they choose...so does everyone else.

So I'm just going to go right on ahead using "bandom" the way I've always used it, with the definition I've always used. And bandom-in-the-exclusive are going to, too, at least based on the usage since the last round of omgarguing. And there will be clashes, because sometimes I forget the difference in usage, and some people will see me defining my-version-of-bandom to avoid confusion and accuse me of making "bandom is what I say it is FUCK ALL Y'ALL" posts regardless of what I was talking about. And life will go on.

(This is my last post on the subject I swear :D)

PEE ESS go check out

wistfuljane's Bandslash vs. Bandom usage poll. And check out the comments, there's a pretty sweet wank to legitimate discussion ratio.

metafandom linked to an interesting post about the lack of race and gender issues in bandom yesterday. The post is interesting on its own, but what actually interested me most was seeing so clearly how which bands you're fannish of colors your view of race and gender issues as presented by "bandom".

(Before we go any further, I define "bandom" as "band and musician fandom", in the most general sense; just to avoid confusion)

Bandom (as I use it) is a broad term, and what it really covers are a lot of niche fandoms. My fannish experience has been 99% on RockFic (the other 1% is from many years ago before I knew there was any sort of community surrounding the hot sexxorz I was reading), where it's not entirely atypical to dabble in six or seven (or more, if you're a nut like

arrys_girlie ;]) fandoms that aren't really yours. So the experiences are a little more muddled - but you still come to the table with one or two bands that are, y'know, your fandom.

My main fandoms are Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. I get more into Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Flogging Molly every day. I dabble in Iron Maiden, but I'm really only interested in Nicko and Bruce, fanworks-wise. Same with Edguy - Tobi, Eggi, and Felix are the only ones who hold my interest.

Breaking them down to their demographic characteristics, I get a pretty bland showing. Mostly white, mostly male, mostly over 30 (probably mostly over 40, actually), mostly non-practicing Protestant. Where the post I linked praises the bandoms she follows for their diversity, the bands I'm into rather glaringly lack any real diversity.

There's a woman in Flogging Molly, a Jewish man (and I think it's rather interesting to note two things about David: one, he was advised to drop his last name [Rashbaum] early on in their career and willingly [as far as I know, which...isn't far, haha]; two, that he's easily the most overtly religious member of Bon Jovi) and a Cuban-American in Bon Jovi.
( Read more... )
I love my bands. But from a race issue standpoint, they aren't exactly fab...and from a feminist standpoint the fandoms are downright toxic.

Rock on, bandom.

I mentioned, a few posts ago, that I'd be dissecting an essay titled Fans, Producers, and when Real Person Fic actually becomes about Real People, posted at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium. But I was rereading it to get an idea of how to approach it, and realized there were really only two paragraphs I wanted to attack.

Quick note: I use "fandom" here to mean "fanworks-producing fandom", just to avoid confusion. And because I'm a ficcer exclusively, and the essay was discussing fic, that should maybe say "fanfic-producing fandom".

Not by the sex, which I never actually got to, but by the simple fact that someone I know had walked into a room and said something innocuous in a fan story on the internet. And not just any story posted by an enthusiastic 14-year-old on Quizilla, but fanfic that was very much a part of the social economy of fandom, written by people whose fannish identities were based much more heavily on their role as a fan writer than as a fan of this particular band. In short, my friends didn't just have a fan fantasy written and posted online -- they had been brought into the social culture of fanfiction as a product, in the way a new spinoff of the Stargate franchise might be.

( OMG so much wrong with that. )

OKAY MOVING ON. This is a quickie, and really it's just a question.

While one of the central premises of RPF has always been that these public personas that celebrities construct are no more "real" than a fictional television character, it becomes difficult to maintain this conceit when the "characters" in question begin acknowledging and commenting on the fics in interviews and even in fan communities.

Okay. So. My question is: How does any given celebrity's knowledge of fanfic make their public persona any less a construct?

I think I know what she's getting at here - that the fourth wall in bandom is a little sketchier because of celeb knowledge of just what's going down.

But she didn't go there. She went from "your fourth wall is questionable" (which I addressed in an earlier meta piece) to "YOU'RE LYING ABOUT HOW YOU CREATE CHARACTERS". And I don't get it. Anyone?

I've always been a bit of a celebrity gossip addict. I suppose it started back with my Hanson obsession (notice I don't say "former obsession"...Tay-Tay, call me! Er...*nervous laughter*), when I would voraciously gobble up anything to do with my beloved Taylor and his less-beloved-but-still-beloved brothers. I used to know everything about them (Tay's favorite bands included the Counting Crows and Spin Doctors *nods*). Same thing a year or so later when I moved onto Backstreet Boys (beloved Brian and Howie <3) and *NSync (beloved Lance and JC). Everything I could find out about them, I had to know. Had to.

A few years ago my mom got a subscription to Us magazine, a freebie or something. I was the only one in the family who read it, and I tore through it. I knew all sorts of useless little bits about the A-Z lists, including who went on which list. Most of these people I cared nothing about, past the fact their sagas - and by sagas I really mean "mundane bits of everyday life, like who they dated and where they shopped" - were fascinating.

The free subscription lapsed, my interest waned. Until someone linked me to The Superficial. It founds its way into my daily blog routine, but it wasn't until Richie Sambora and Heather Locklear separated that I got rehooked. I shouldn't even say re-, because I was hooked like never before.

A few days ago I decided to quit celeb gossip again, for a few reasons I'll get into in a bit, and man. Cleaned five blogs out of my bookmarks, dumped one LJ feed and one community, took three gadgets off my Google homepage, and while I didn't have any subscriptions to cancel, rest assured if I made a list of magazines I need to avoid in the future, it'd be massive.

( Why am I mentioning this? )

(And this is the part where I say if you're a gossip hound no offense is meant; my moral objection is no one else's behavioral guideline [nor is it even anyone else's moral issue])

I'm not sure why I'm still following

otw_news. It's become increasingly clear, as if it wasn't clear from the get-go, there are just too many fundamental differences in their view of and goals for fandom and my view of fandom.

At one point the discussion was nice - I actually love babbling about fandom with people. But it drug on, and it started to feel like the people we (

screwthedaisies,

sidewinder,

partly_bouncy, myself and sometimes

evaine) were talking with weren't interested in understanding our points so much as they were interested in us admitting they were right.

And that feeling just keeps getting worse, and I don't know why I keep speaking up. Because the last coiple times it's been:

Me: This language is exclusive
OTW Supporter: No it's not, y is z
Me: Maybe they could say z?
OTW Supporter: SHUT UP Y IS Z

Generally far wordier than that, and I'm probably more THEN SAY "Z" YOU DUMBASS than "um, maybe z?", but...same framework. It's exclusionary, no it's not because [arbitrary definition], but I've never seen anyone else on Earth use that definition, shut up it fits.

So I'm not sure why I still bother. And I think that after this round of arguing in circles with someone who's missing my point by such a large margin I assume it's purposeful, I'm not going to bother anymore. [insert here party thrown by everyone who's been stuck in a long argument with me over there]

I have one last thing to say on the subject and then, barring the occasional "this doesn't represent me or my experience in the slightest", I'm done arguing with the OTWers.

Run by people with no apparent ties to fandom, whose fannish experience we have to take their word for, using terminology that leaves some uneasy, working from their specific view of what fandom is and should be.

FanLib, or OTW?

ETA: I want to clarify a few things that have already been pointed out to me in comments; I wrote this fairly hurriedly when I was extremely frustrated, and better to ETA than explain things a thousand times, yes?

I was told not to paint all OTW supporters with the same brush; I did that in this post but I don't, actually, do that in my head. The distinctions I make are still fairly broad generalizations - OTW "upper level" (committee & board members), OTW supporters I've had little to no interaction with, and the small but vocal group of people who make me cringe when I see they've replied to something I've said (and to be fair, I'm sure I inspire the same reaction in these people :) ), but I don't actually think of all OTWers in one light.

It is, however, that vocal minority I interact with time and time again, who seem to be closed off to any view of fandom that isn't their own, whose arguments sometimes tread dangerously close to "this doesn't exclude me, therefore it can't possibly exclude you". It's that group (and I mean group in the loosest possible sense, not like "zomg anti-Rockficcer conspiracy gang") that leave me feeling like there's no point anymore to saying "this excludes me" because apparently my exclusion doesn't matter.

The second thing I want to point out is when I say "Run by people with no apparent ties to fandom..." I'm talking about the board. In their bios, the connections to fandom are extremely vague, and the only reason I have no problem taking their word for it is I've followed OTW from the beginning and know it sprung from the brains of BNFs. Other people don't know that, and it becomes a case of "I'm in fandom. No, really. Just trust me on this, I am."

I am a meta machine lately, apparently.

TONIGHT'S TOPIC: WIVES AND GIRLFRIENDS IN RPF. Whoo!

I've never really liked the idea of nonfamous wives/girlfriends showing up in fic. And for a long time I just took it at face value - I won't write 'em, I don't like reading 'em but they're not dealbreakers for me, end of story.

But a post championing the use of nonfamous wives/girlfriends (and I specify because I have zero issues with the women who are famous in their own right) in

metafandom a while back had me examining whyI don't like it, because I wanted to jump into the discussion with more than "it's bad because it is."

( And I came to the conclusion my issue with it has two parts. )

I said in the last post when we write RPF we write knowing we're basing it off a character, off the act the celebrity puts on whenever he or she is in public. But the wives and girlfriends, especially the ones who make an active effort to avoid attention, can't be expected to have those characters - suddenly you are taking an actual person's life, one they haven't necessarily opened up to you.

That said, this is one of those things where I'm well aware it's my opinion and in bandom it isn't necessarily (I need a new word) a popular one. I'm also not the sort to run around telling people what they can and can't write (although if you're a friend and I think you're being exploitative, I might say something), this is just why I don't seek it out and why you'll never see me writing any kinky Jon/Dorothea/David kinky porn epics (even if it'd be really hot...), or anything with Tico's current wife (even though it'd be really hot...he should go back to famous models).

And WOW how many more parentheticals do you think I could've squeezed into that last paragraph?

A post linked from

metafandom tonight, a post that had very little (if anything) to do with RPF, had me thinking.

We, and by we I mean RPFers (although maybe I should specify sane RPFers ;]), do have a fourth wall. It isn't necessarily as pronounced or obvious as the fourth wall in FPFandom, but it's most certainly there.

Because at the end of the day, anyone who writes about a public person is writing about a fictional character. To varying degrees, everyone who makes their living in the public eye acts. The Jon Bon Jovi on stage is not the same as the John Bongiovi who goes home to his wife and kids (but just take a minute to savor the image of JBJ, mid-coitus, spouting off one of his favorite stage phrases..."How we doin' so far, okay?"); the Gerard Way giving a magazine interview isn't the same as the Gerard Way hanging out with his friends.

( There are fans who don't get this, certainly. )

Our fourth wall is more of a fence and our respect issues have some pretty significant differences; but we have a fence and we understand respect. The difference between fantasy and reality is less pronounced, but it's there, and the smart ones know that.

Okay, so, you have these two pegs. One's square, one's...not quite circular. Octagonal.

Your board has a couple of spots for pegs - again, one square, one octagonal.

Someone comes over to where you're happily occupied and says, "hey, I'm gonna give you fifty bucks, if you can come up with one name that tells me what both those thingies you're putting in that board are."

Fifty bucks? Awesome. So you start thinking. They're different colors, so no good there. They're different materials, so no good there. They're different sha - wait! No, they're not, not entirely. Look, they both have straight sides, and angles!

"Square pegs," you say, with the smug satisfaction of someone who just earned fifty bucks. But when you hold out your hand for your prize, the guy shakes his head and walks off.

You're a thinky sort, and you expect the best from people (poor sap) so instead of thinking he's a jerk, you think you must not have met his requirements. So you ponder, and ponder, and ponder some more.

But the similarities are there! Straight lines! Angles! How can someone see they aren't both square?

"Perhaps," suggests an onlooker, "you were being too specific. What's wrong with just calling them pegs?"

"Well that's too broad. That kid over there has pegs, too, but his are different from mine."

That kid over there does, indeed, have some pegs. And they are, indeed, different. But that kid over there doesn't call his pegs, and upon hearing you say "pegs" assumed you weren't talking about him.

"So I can't just say 'peg', people won't know what I'm talking about. Besides, they are both square," you say, and begin adamantly trying to stick the octagonal peg in the square hole to prove it.

You guys, real person fandom and media-based fandom are different. They have different - overlapping sometimes, yes, but still different - cultures. They have different relationships with canon, with fanon. They have different legal issues.

The fact that they both have canon and fanon and legal issues doesn't make them the same thing.

Calling one by the name of the other is a solution to the problem of referring to both at once, but not a good one. So please stop trying to stick my octagonal peg in your square hole - it's not going to fit, and it's not going to do either one of us any good.

To any bandficcers on my flist who haven't seen this pimped elsewhere:

If any of you are interested and have the time (five minutes, tops),

sidewinder has put together a survey about some terminology and how bandficcers read terms differently (if they read them at all!) from FPFiccers. From the post:

The following survey is open for all fans who participate in some way in a band fiction community (you write, you read, run a community, etc.) I don't care if it's rockband fic, emo-band fic, popslash, whatever--all of your input is desired. If you don't understand a question or terminology, don't stop or feel like you have to look stuff up--I want your first impressions, how you would answer these questions based on your familiarity with these terms and ideas now.

The results of this survey work, when completed, will be posted to fanthropology. Thank you for taking the time to complete it. It was simply written--by me [sidewinder] with the input of several other folks on wording--out of curiosity based on recent discussions and is not "sponsored" or being run officially by any particular communitiy or group.

The survey is here.

Thanks for your time :)

(x-posted to various BJ Slash comms [as well as a fair number of other places, listed in her LJ)

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