tonight's ramble: most fans are boring, this post will be boring too

Here, have a nice video. I'm going to say some harsh things about fandom, & thus most likely about you. So I'll start with something positive, and it makes a good soundtrack.
(thanks to Yamino)

I long ago got sick of the sort of fan (consistently male) whose fandom conversation substantially exists of proclamations of how badass his particular favored character is. "Hulk is the strongest one there is!" "No, Thor!"

There is another sort of fan (consistently female) who is functionally the distaff counterpart. Her fannishness is pretty much filtered through "shipping"--sometimes in really contrary-to-the-text ways.

After a decade in online fandom, I can tell you that conventional-wisdom gender stereotypes hold. Boys make everything into professional wrestling, girls make everything into a romance novel. And because comic-books are low art, popular art, they draw a lot of people who fall back on the conventional thinking about character & story. (I should be reading more classic Russian lit or something, right? Get a better class of fiction in my brain.)

And then I guess there are people like me. I find both those tropes a bit silly for the most part, occasionally disturbing in their singlemindedness, & ultimately, after ten years of competing visions of the best badass or the best ship, I find them tedious as all get out. And then there are the fans that I like to read: people who are actually writing about something else.

I'm not immune to feats of awesome power. Let's be clear. I am a Doctor Zero fan for a reason. Supes, Magneto, Ultragirl, I do actually like some ridiculous, over-the-top, stride-over-the-world (alien messiah-hood optional) characters. Sometimes I get annoyed at those who want to jack up a favored character's power level further than I would, or favor a character from a series I find annoying. But if I can be irked at Batman fanboys or Barry Allen loyalists, well, I hope I'm self-aware enough to realize that Supes, Magneto, Ultragirl, & Doctor Zero are silly characters too. Sometimes it's best to back off and not have other characters job to your guy. (I long wanted Ultragirl to paste Gladiator, but on reflection I doubt it's in character for her even if she somehow can.)

And when it gets to the less high-powered characters, well, part of the appeal is how they work with what they've got. I don't need my character to be able to simply and automatically whup anybody, & a story that read that way would be less satisfying than one where the hero had to work at it. (There's a really good example contrasting a Pérez/Andru Wonder Woman story with a Jimenez Wonder Woman story, that I think I have neglected to post for years. And Wondy is not really low-powered even!)

I think it was in Tree and Leaf I read the passage where the writer says that for him the question about heroes of story was, "Are they good? Are they evil?" I think I'm closer to that instinct of interpretation. Power is about what you do with it.

As for romance: I'm not against romance. I actually like romantic stories with characters who are written/designed to be together. But I rarely have non-canon ships as a rule, & I don't naturally seek them.

(I joke that I ship Koiwai and Asagi, but it's not a serious thing. I kind of want Jumbo to win, actually. I don't have, I'm not naïve enough, I'm too flipping old to have deep FEELINGS about it either way. All I can do is wait on Azuma to write what he will write.)

I could say, "I don't ship. I'm a guy." That's true enough. But more than that, I'm not really all that much into character-transformative fic for the sake of teh romance. Once you've turned a character into a different character, it's not quite the same character.

This may be alien thinking to some of comixfandom, as comix seem to think that a character is a name and a costume. But character, that's about who a character is, how they think, what their ethos is--and sometimes who you love, how you love, whether you love is part of that.

Now, some transformation is objective improvement. To get a character to stop being self-destructive, to be happier, to be less of an insulting caricature (1940's comix' portrayal of Orientals pretty much demanded reimaginings)--a fanfic can try to fix it, & sometimes a fan-turned-pro can invent new canon. But sometimes a character is designed to be imperfect. I'm not a great believer in "death of the author." Authors for me are always there, voice inescapably coming off the page. A later author may repurpose the characters, but that's another author using the same tags.

Still, I'm not completely against the transformation of character, not even where it ties into sex & relationships. (I got into Wondy fandom because I wanted to reinvent the franchise, people!)

I find it completely understandable if some het person fantasizes about turning Northstar straight. That makes sense to me on some level--the character, just "improved" to be more like a certain ideal. It doesn't even have to be a girl fantasizing that he's her (or her proxy character's) boyfriend. It can just be a matter of trying to tie a character you like to something in your personal identity or ideals. Reimagining Wonder Woman as a Christian? Sure, I can see where that comes from.

So by analogy I understand someone using fic to turn a character gay.

Someday I may understand what's up with Judd Winick changing the ethnicities of characters who already had sharply defined and unusual ethnic backgrounds. Doesn't mean I'll agree with it.

And that's sort of how I feel about insisting that Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke need to be a couple, or that Batman can beat everyone with prep time. I can understand it, I just reject the assumption.

Superhero comix fandom & the superhero comix industry are so intertwined, so incestuous, so inbred, that a lot of what we get is a totally earnest version of Stan Lee's hoary old captions, where he'd say stuff to the effect of, "And now we get to the fighting! Which is what you really care about!" I miss Ann Nocenti, who didn't come out of comix fandom, & who wrote stuff from a really different place. Now I think of it, I may even miss Steve Gallacci's dry, political anthropomorphs, in their chapters with no big fight, no payoff, living lives of desperation in a world that could go to hell on a scale far larger than themselves.

What I'm saying is that tonight I'm officially sick of it. The novelty has worn off. Most shippers aren't good enough writers to get me to care. In this shippy fans are like writers of ultimate showdowns & other wrasslin'-esque stories.

(blue is a dazzling exception, though nobody's dazzling enough to get me to even read Addison/Meredith fic. That said, I think Harrierverse works in the same sense that revisionist Arthuriana works. Whatever the characters are named, they are in blue's stories who she means them to be. And they're well-written. I just feel sad that she identifies her characters with corporately owned characters that can never really be hers.)

So I really appreciate Aaron Diaz, who is not a ficcer (uses his own characters) is not boring (creates clever scenarios) and when he's writing meta (see blog ) is this wonderfully dorky (if vaguely self-righteous) enthusiast for drawing and visual design.

And Shinga, who is a terrible little snarkblossom.

But ah, you say, these are creators, & not stupid, stunted-brain work-for-hire fanboys hacking out commercial pap about characters someone else owns! Also, their output is really freakin' slow. They are closer to Los Bros. Hernandez than some Big Name Fan like espanolbot or bluefall.

Right. But satirist commentators (or humorist critics) like espanolbot, or even finer, auggie18/magickmaker/freerangenerdity, succeed by tweaking the creators. (And frankly it's that kind of humor helped turn me on to Shinga.)

Am I this kind of smart, cool fan? Nah. I don't write that much, I'm not funny, & sometimes my blog is just links & memes. I hate to say it, but I fit in too well in the tumblr dynamic of just repeating other people's images. :(

Oh, well.

I'm not even as crazy clever-prolific as odditycollector, who would I think insist that's she's just a fan doing memes & jokes--but her memes take more work than most.

On a good day (once a year) I might be comparable to thehefner, or at least he makes sense to me. Reminds me of a smart guy I know in real life.

...

Doctor Zero could paste all the superheroes, too bad he's near-sociopath on the interpersonal relationship development scale. I just can't write a shipfic about him.

And I don't care. But there is pretty fan art and pretty fan music and funny fan jokes, & I still like internet fandom.

(no subject)

 

Nine things I wish economically privileged people in my life knew.

classragespeaks:

1. I am poor, I exist, and I’m right here. Hi! Many people who meet and get to know me without knowing my background are rather surprised to find this out. It matters to me on a very personal level when people do things like make nasty comments or assumptions about poor people, or assume that everyone in a given space is wealthy, thereby erasing the fact that I exist and am present. There are better reasons to not be classist (namely: it’s just plain wrong) than worrying about whether a poor person will hear you, but assuming that I’m not poor or that poor people are not present adds insult to injury and creates another communication barrier.
2. I may not look like what you imagine poor people should look like- but neither do most poor people. I’m smart, well-spoken, and a careful dresser. I’m highly educated because of financial aid. I avoid doing certain things and remember to do others because I don’t want to “look poor” and be judged for that. Then again, the commonly held stereotypes of poor people- that we’re stupid, “trashy,” lazy, waiting for handouts instead of taking care of ourselves, and so on- are just that, stereotypes, not true assessments based in reality. Just because I don’t match the stereotype doesn’t even necessarily make me unusual, just one more of so many different faces of being economically underprivileged.
3. I need and deserve as much space to talk about my experiences as you do to talk about yours. Talking about money- especially money one doesn’t have- is considered crass and impolite, but I can’t be fully myself without bringing that up. I know it makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but honestly, that’s not a good enough reason to expect me to keep quiet. As much as anyone else does, I deserve the right to talk openly about my background, my challenges, the reasons behind decisions I make- the realities of my life. 
   
4. Being poor has substantial, everyday, direct effects on my life, and if you spend time with me, you will have to deal with those effects. Nearly everything I do, every decision I make, is in some way affected by my financial status. If you’re close to me, you will watch me struggle with money and financial decisions on a daily basis. If you want to do something with me, it has to be something I can afford. If you give me advice or recommendations, you will have to take into account my budget, or else your attempt at help will just sound laughably insensitive. There’s no way around it.
5. Being poor also has a large indirect impact on me in terms of how people think of me and the community I come from. Stereotypes of poor people abound. People frequently assume that my parents are unintelligent, ignorant, and bad parents. They treat me as an anomaly, an escapee from a uniformly horrible situation that they can pity and make fun of. People who know me treat me as an exception to a classist rule, not realizing that their upholding of that rule allows people who don’t know me to stereotype and mistreat me. That’s the world I live in.
6. I don’t want your pity. For me, pity is one of the most hurtful sentiments I can experience. It assumes a really troublesome hierarchy; if you are able to pity me, you must be better than or above me in some way. Also, it’s completely useless, and doesn’t do anything to actually address or talk about the reality of my situation. It’s a copout, and it’s often a way to shut me up so that I stop “making people feel bad.”
7. Yes, I know full well that there are many people in this world who are worse off than me, but that doesn’t invalidate my experiences. I’m aware that I am privileged in many ways, and that in a broad view, I’m better off financially than many, many people. Between privilege and luck, I’ve found myself in a position where I will likely no longer be poor once I’m a full-fledged independent adult, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to handle that in an ethical way. But that admission doesn’t make the substantial disadvantages that I have experienced and continue to experience disappear. They are still real, painful, and very important to my life.
8. Me saying that you are (economically) privileged doesn’t mean I’m calling you a bad person, that I want you to feel guilty, or that I don’t think you deserve to have a good life.I don’t go around wanting people to feel bad. In fact, I rarely bring up things like this- too rarely, probably- because I know that people will take it personally and get defensive. Being poor is so much a part of me that it’s very emotionally difficult to handle when people totally dismiss the idea that there are substantial, important differences between my experience and theirs. But I have a responsibility to challenge the ideas- often unspoken, but present everywhere- that wealthy people are morally and functionally superior to poor people, that poor people could be wealthy if they only worked hard, and that my background, my family, my current reality can be dismissed with choice insults and assumptions that I’ve brought this on myself. If that makes you feel bad about yourself and your behavior, well, it probably should.
9. If you can’t deal reasonably and respectfully with me being poor, I’m not going to be able to keep you in my life. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I can never forget that I’m poor, or behave like I’m not poor. It is with me every moment, in everything I do and every decision that I make. If you constantly lean on classist stereotypes, if you insult my background, if you patronize and pity me, if you yell at me for “making you feel bad,” if you won’t let me talk about my financial struggles or get too uncomfortable to let me continue, if you forget every time that I can’t afford to do the things you want to do or don’t share your experiences and perspective- well, I’m sorry, but you’re not worth being around. I have no interest in spending time with someone who will not give me the space to be myself, or who cares more about their own zone of privileged comfort than respecting another human being.