Discussing problematic fanworks that aren't all bad

[sqbr]

EDIT: I have realised that this post, while it may have some merit, is mostly wrongheaded. I'm going to edit it to try and knock it into some sort of sense but keep in mind it used to be different. (Yes this erases my mistake, but it also means it's readable as a coherent argument)

I'm taking a break from responding to comments or editing the post etc while I think about the points people are making but I am increasingly uncomfortable with what I was saying. Ack.


So! Sailorptah made a comment on racism 101 proposing lots of small scale discussions of problematic fic rather than just these occasional big blow-ups about HORRIBLY problematic fic, and I was thinking that was maybe a good idea.

Or would it just cause horrible drama and pain and be a waste of energy? Note (I assumed this went without saying but I guess it doesn't): I'm not saying other people should host these discussions. I'm saying I should (and other people who agree with me) Also despite the example I'm linking to being about racism I would personally want to concentrate on the stuff that affects me personally eg class and disability.

What I am not calling for is less criticism of these really terrible fanworks written by really aggressively prejudiced authors. I'm saying we need more criticism of somewhat terrible fanworks by only slightly prejudiced authors as well, but that in those cases the criticisms shouldn't be so harsh or on such a large scale (especially since we're all at least slightly prejudiced in one way or another).

Unfortunately, there really isn't much of a culture in fanworks fandom of public criticism, so that when people do criticise fanworks publicly it tends to be the ones they hate so much they don't care if the author gets pissy at them. From what I've seen, there's very little crit lying in the continuum between private-ish communication saying "This is awesome though there is one thing…" and sometimes public stuff saying "THIS IS THE WORST FIC EVER".

Because we see any public criticism as a terrible insult, we're only comfortable making public criticisms of people we don't mind insulting eg authors who've really pissed us off, and the criticisms are thus very negative. And this reinforces the attitude that publicly criticising someone is always an insult.

We can and do of course privately email people and have discussions etc, and on a good day the end result is that that author has learned better and maybe fixed their story. But unless they then talk about it publicly (which can look a bit self promoting) noone else will know. And sometimes a reader just isn't up to putting their heart on the line for such a small possible gain when there's a fair chance the author will ignore them or freak out.

And of course all of this general reticence to be critical gets magnified by the huge drama around accusing someone of being racist or ableist etc. It doesn't help that there is a tendency, amongst the people being accused but also some of the accusers, of seeing it all in terms of who you are rather than what you did, equating "this one aspect of your story was *-ist" with "Your story is *-ist and bad" with "YOU are *-ist and bad". (nb that doesn't mean we shouldn't tell people "Your story is *-ist and bad" or "YOU are *-ist and bad" when it does apply. It just doesn't always)

I've hit this myself: I read a fic a while ago which upset me with it's ableism, and I wanted to talk both about the fic itself and the wider pattern it's a part of, but it's quite popular and in a lot of ways very good and I saw no way to talk about it publicly without the large possibility of hurting the author's feelings and/or having her or her fans getting narky. So I made a locked post and felt grumpy.

As sailor_ptah pointed out, general discussions of "what not to do" are all well and good, but they really benefit from examples.

It's difficult with recs, too, if you want to say "This was overall great, but I was a bit uncomfortable with…" (and if the recs I'd seen for that story had said something like that I would have been much less blindsided by the ableism and might have been able to enjoy the story or make an informed decision not to read it. Though I'm not sure the reccers noticed)

This goes double if you want to rec something for it's overall good portrayal of gender/race/sexuality etc but also poke at some of the stuff it got wrong or you're not sure of.

So! Do people agree with my take on things? Would it cause too much drama? Should I just suck it up and post about this stuff?

If nothing else: I hereby open myself up for being an Example To Others. I'd rather not be sporked or whatever, but if, say, someone wants to write a post about the heteronormativity of Disney fic and wants to use my rather heteronormative "Enchanted" story as an example then I won't Freak Out.

If public posting is too fraught, perhaps a locked community for people who are on board with the concept? Maybe they already exist and I've just never been invited :)

And maybe I'll make that post about class in "Written by the Victors"...

Comments

[ex_peasant441]

A few years back in an attempt to raise the standard of criticism in fandom I organised a Concritathon - like a ficathon, but people signed up to crit one another's fics. It turned out to be very popular and produced some really high class in depth crits (I owe my current brilliant beta to it in fact). The key to its success was that it was voluntary - we weren't picking other people's fics but signing up to receive the crit ourselves first. There were also strict rules that every crit must be constructive criticism (concrit), and hence concentrate on at least two positive things and at least two negative things, and there was a raft of advice for how to interweave the negative and positive so as not to either destroy other people's confidence or artificially boost them. The idea was we were learning together how to crit in order to help one another as writers.

The main problem was it took to much energy for me to organise and I had to abandon an attempt at a second round a year or so later. I also discovered that people are idiots at following complex instructions when they aren't familiar with the format, so they need a lot of hand-holding about exactly what to do. There were also one or two authors who never thanked their critics, which I assume meant either they were just naturally rude or that they had in fact been badly upset by the crit received. In retrospect I would have included something about having to respond to your crit, since that should also be part of the learning process.

So I would suggest that if you did this you should begin by making it a voluntary reciprocal thing, to get the general standard of crit techniques up to a much higher level before you attempt critting wider fandom. At the moment people aren't familiar with the general idea of any concrit, let alone concrit on such a sensitive subject, so you need to start small and with willing volunteers before you work up. You will also need to give a lot of guidance and help for how people should go about their crits and ensure everyone is prepared for the fact that it may not be an entirely pleasant experience. You also will need assistants who can take over the admin when you are too tired, which probably means a community.

[sqbr]

Those are good suggestions. I'm not interested in running a comm myself (ack, organisation) but I can see them being helpful for someone who was.