Thorns

So, the politics of fanworks panel at Swancon got me thinking. I left a comment on cupidsbow's post on the subject with some further thoughts, and one of the things I noticed while writing that comment is that despite most of my fanworks being fanart I was having real trouble thinking of transformative fanart with an overt political message that weren't race/gender/etc swaps. (Not that's anything wrong with such swaps, but surely there had to be more variety I was missing)
( And then I thought about it some more… )

So I was reading ‘Too Asian’? which says The upshot is that race is defining Canadian university campuses in a way it did not 25 years ago. Here's a post about it by angry asian man.

I have encountered anti-Asian attitudes a lot as a maths major and tutor, I think the dynamic here is moderately similar to Canada.

It would be nice if instead of handwringing that Asian kids are getting BETTER GRADES THAN WHITE PEOPLE OMG anyone cared about the fact that rich white kids remain and have always been SIGNIFICANTLY overrepresented at universities in Canada/Australia etc.

I hope I'm not being derailing bringing class into it, but I think it's worth bringing up as part of the same overall imbalance.

I imagined how it would look if it was about rich kids in Australia, since that inequality struck me going to a private school and then uni as a white working class kid. Obviously you could do the same thing with race, but I didn't trust myself to do so myself without going to a weird place. Also rich people are a minority who do not fit in with the values Australia was founded on (as a penal colony)
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So, last week I played Mass Effect and loved it, modulo a few niggles (see these posts). I've been playing Mass Effect 2, and while in a lot of ways it's a better game it's gone for Darker and Edgier and has taken some of the problematic aspects of the old game and crossed the line into creepy badness. I'm still definitely going to finish it, but there's that element of "Why can't I quit you/how long until you upset me again" fear that is, for example, familiar to many fans of Supernatural.

Warning: contains sexual assault triggers (though very vague ones) and also spoilers (though the first section isn't spoilery, and the spoilery section is marked)

EDIT: I played it some more and the next few hours of gameplay were pretty much solid awesome. Stupid Bioware.
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I have actual coherent thought I was hoping to make into a post but whenever I try I fall asleep. So! Links.

On generous listening I have linked to my reply which has some of my thoughts on the topic. (And when I am less sleepy, I will reply to her reply!)

Dirty Girls and Bad Feminists: A Few Thoughts on “I Love Dick”

This is an old post but it connects with some stuff I've been thinking about. I've been thinking about which criticisms of social justice activism etc I find helpful, and I think saying "What I/we should do.." rather than "What they should do.." is a big part of it.

On note of Classism trumping Racism A nice rebuttal to a point of view one encounters in various places.

Why Accuracy in Historical M/M Romance Matters This is similar to my approach to historical f/f and m/f etc. I have a niggling feeling that I'd disagree with some of it if I was more awake, though.

First: I finished the Dragon Age story I asked people about (in a locked post), here it is at AO3 and at Fanfic.net for anyone who doesn't read alias_sqbr and is curious to see how it ends. Further criticism entirely welcome. I don't know that I'm up to editing the story any further but if necessary can add a note or something.

Anyway: While I can intellectually understand the appeal of modern AUs of non-modern stories they tend to leave me a bit cold(*), but I have encountered quite a few Avatar ones here and there on my travels and found some enjoyable enough.

The thing that bugs me, though, and I was wondering if anyone who seeks the genre out knows of any counterexamples, is that they all seem to be set in the modern U.S.

Specifically, none are set in Asia, nor do they have Asian protagonists. Apart from the issues of race and representation etc I just think this is a missed opportunity for potentially interesting stories. That and I find myself wanting to write an AU where they're all Asian Australians or something (and then I remember I suck at AUs) I've often had the idea for drawing them as modern day teenagers from the respective cultures that served as inspiration for the different nations or the adventures of Mai, Tai Lee and Azula as Shoujo schoolgirls but I don't feel up to getting it right. Still. I realise the show itself is from the US, but that just goes to show that writing beyond what you know can be done.

EDIT: I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with any given individual modern U.S. AU. But it just seems a pity that that's all anyone ever seems to write/draw. And for example I get the impression that a moderate number of Merlin AUs (not the ones where they're actually the same characters in the future) written by US writers are set in England because they see the characters as Inherently British. Or maybe there's just more British fans of Merlin than Avatar, idk.

Since I tend to skim over them vaguely I'm not sure if the characters are always white (apart from maybe Sokka and Katara). Zuko does get to keep his scar most of the time at least.

It bugs me a little with Dragon Age as well, but it's not like a modern British AU would be all that different to a modern US one, and it's not subject to the same subtext of cultural and ethnic erasure. And I do understand the "write what you know" thing: when I did my own Dragon Age modern AU I imagined them as Australians just because why not. Maybe I just need to get into more culturally diverse fandoms...

(*)Unless they're movies, for some reason.

I've been pondering an emotionally detached objective essay on this topic for a while but now I'm annoyed so you get a rant.

So. I use references for my art. Sometimes this is a bit legally/ethically hinky, first by the simple fact of being fanart (which most of my art is) and second when I use copyrighted works without the owner's permission. This bothers me sometimes and while I try and acknowledge all my major references as well as as much as possible only using creative commons/public domain etc images I can understand the argument that I am a Bad Person or a Criminal for, say, making a parody photomanip using commercial photos without permission.

But. This post isn't about those ethical/legal dilemmas (and I don't want people arguing about them in the comments. Make your own post and link it if you must)

This is about the accusation that it makes me a bad artist. Not just that it shows my lack of talent (no argument from me on that) or that I have no taste (a subjective judgement) but that it makes my creations not real art.
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The problem:

I make fanworks (fic, art, and comics) which (since they're about people) touch on issues like race, class, gender, sexuality, disability etc. There is always the danger with these works that I've inadvertently made something Very Hurtful that I won't notice until someone points it out to me. If I just chuck stuff online based on my own judgement it could do a whole lot of harm before someone points out the Fail, and then I have to figure out how to fix it. (If your response to this is that I shouldn't worry about it, this post is not aimed at you but, for example, Racefail: same shit, different day is. I do not feel like arguing with you)

One common solution offered for this problem is being beta-ed, but this doesn't work for me. (Research and mindfulness etc do a most of the time, and thus I do them, but they're not entirely reliable by themselves)
( Possible solutions )

Fanworks fandom is for many women(*) a way to create a space where we can express ourselves freely and escape the oppressive sexist heteronormativity of mainstream fiction. (If that's not how it works for you, you may not get much out of this post)

There is to some extent a division between those who find their joy through m/m, and those through female protagonists. These aren't neat divisions and there's people who do neither or both (I've written male protagonist m/m, m/m/f and gen myself) but to some extent they're mutually exclusive approaches.

Sadly, the women of both groups are inclined to get into "All het is heteronormative and sexist" vs "All m/m is mysogynist and sexist" arguments, which, beyond ignoring femslash, as Hoo boy, thoughts on yaoi (let me tell you them) points out isn't helpful or accurate. That is definitely not what I'm trying to get into here.

What I'd like to express, because it's been niggling at me ever since I first encountered m/m fanfic nearly a decade ago, is the way that while m/m slash fandom clearly acts as a feminist self expression thing for it's fans, and I realise it isn't actually just an extension of the Patriarchy and it's hatred of female characters, that is how it feels to me a lot of the time. And I'm not sure what if anything can be done about it (mainly I just needed to get this out of my head).

My brain's a bit mushy today, I apologise in advance for any giant holes in my argument, feel free to poke at them though I may take a while to reply.

Also: I am not accusing m/m slashers generally of sexist intent. I mean I think some of them are being sexist, but they're no worse than anyone else on the whole imo and my m/m slashy friends are all awesome feministy people. This is about the effect of m/m fandom on me as someone outside it.
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There's been some very interesting discussion of violence in fiction recently, in Militarism, pacifism, fandom naraht has some links and very interesting thoughts about pacifism.

My issue I guess with these posts is with the dichotomy between pro-military and pacifist. Because I love stories about violence, but my gut sympathies are very anti-military and while this is sometimes problematic, I think it's not inherently self-contradictory. This came up in the comments to naraht's post but I'd like to poke at it some more.
( And now some examples )

(nb I posted a very similar locked draft version of this a little while ago, and then I decided it would be useful to be able to link to it in public posts)

I love messing about with gender with my art, but unfortunately it is very easy to cross the line into transphobia and/or heteronormativity/gender essentialism etc. I've seen various things about the issues with genderswap fanworks but they tend to concentrate on fanfic which is about people's sex being swapped during the story and/or aimed at genderswap kink, while I tend to make gen always!swapped fanart. The one exception I've encountered is I've genderswapped a canon!male just to draw her in a man's suit. Where does that fit in?, which is definitely worth reading (especially the comments), but doesn't cover everything. Since I haven't been able to find much on the subject I'm probably interrogating things from the wrong perspective, sorry :/ (For example: I have a feeling "trans and crossdressing" is not a sufficient catch-all, though no better one comes to mind)
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