Poll: Separation of Canon People and FF People

[thefourthvine]

(Note: I'd like to get responses on this from as many different fan writers as possible. Anyone who pimps it will have my eternal gratitude. And if you leave a comment letting me know where you pimped it, you will get my eternal gratitude and an imaginary cookie.)

This poll is for anyone who has ever written fan fiction and in some way shared it - internet, zine, carrier pigeon, coded broadcast to Alpha Centauri, whatever.

So. If someone connected with the canon found and read your fan fiction, how would you react? For the purposes of this poll, I would like you all to imagine that we live in a world where there are no possible legal consequences. In other words, your weird new readers can hate you, but they can't take you to court or send a C&D.

[Poll #698126]

Comments

[melannen.livejournal.com]

author-sending-feedback-for-stories-I-wrote-in-his-canon has in fact happened to me. (There are some areas on the fringes where the lawyers have not scared them away yet.) My reaction was 1 and 10 at the same time and in equal amounts, and that was not an option, so I didn't answer that question. And yes, the 1 was for 'oh my god, my story *sucks*! Oh my god, he noticed me!' and the 10 was for 'Oh my god, he noticed me! Oh my god, he liked it!'

I've written RPF (with shipping) as comment fic for people on my flist and been very happy that they were reading it, but I don't suppose that counts? But generally, I never write RPF about people (living people. Historical fandoms are wide open) unless I already know that they approve, or unless I feel like they deserve it, so my reaction to finding out they were reading it would be more like, bwahaha, the evil plan has come full circle. (The only thing I've *published* where I really worry about RPF is that I've written XF characters who are based on real-life persons (without prior permission), right down to having the same names, and said RL persons were delighted at being written into the canon, but I'm not entirely sure they'd feel the same way about showing up in fic/RP.)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

And to expand, by 'deserve it' I mean - writing Bush/Cheney they deserve it because, well, they're Bush and Cheney; explicit slash is not the *worst* thing I'd like to see happen to them. Writing Kerry/Edwards they deserve it because that entire presidential campaign *was* an extended, conscious exercise in the creation of slashy subtext; same thing with Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert. I could generally care less about actors, but for certain RPS I'd feel no shame the same way, because they are clearly playing up the subtext on purpose in their public personae; for the actors that actually have some shame, though - yeah, I'd feel kind of bad.

That's regardless of their stated positions on fanfic or homosexuality.

[sheron]

well, they're Bush and Cheney; explicit slash is not the *worst* thing I'd like to see happen to them

I'm thinking prisonfic. XD

[melannen.livejournal.com]

See, now you've got me thinking that in the Stargate-verse, they were never elected, and we need a reason *why* the timelines diverged there, and I'm thinking, Goa'uld prison planets, and possibly anal probing.

... oh, no, wait, I just remembered that I've already written XF fic where Dick Cheney gets possessed by the Black Oil, that would be retreading old ground. q:

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Writing Kerry/Edwards they deserve it because that entire presidential campaign *was* an extended, conscious exercise in the creation of slashy subtext;

Hahahah, oh word, so true. That still didn't stop me from locking and filtering and private-communitying the hell out of it though. And that's not the worst politics RPF thing I ever did either, no, that would be when I slashed my state's trainwrecky '04 Senate race. But it was satire! There was a statement about homophobia to be made!

same thing with Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert.

Someone else on this thread mentioned the Great Wonkette Slasher Outing Panic of '05 - what a tempest in a teapot that was. But Stewart and Colbert have been wink-nudging ever since.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Actually, I never published any of the John/John I was working on, but that's not because I was ashamed of, heh, hijacking their bodies, it's because (and I think the poll numbers bear out that I'm not the only one who has more shame re: grammar than sex) if they *did* find it, I'd want them to be totally blown away by what a wonderful author I am and immediately ask me to be a speechwriter, and I just didn't think any of it was good enough.

And dude - the Great Wonkette Panic - can you do links, or at least a better date? I'm not really in the organized polislash fandom anymore. I tried using Wonkette's search but was getting nothing (I can't believe that a search for 'sex' on Wonkette got me zero results.)

[alpheratz.livejournal.com]

I haven't done my good deed for the day, so I went and hunted it for you: February 17th (http://community.livejournal.com/tds_rps/2005/02/17/). :D You'll have to join the community to see most of the posts. Or just read the f_w report (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/634351.html). Oh, it was beautiful.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Whee! Thank you! That is beautiful! Almost as beautiful as Stephen Colbert himself!

(links to individual posts on Wonkette don't seem to work on my browser. Hmmph. Very odd.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I've had authors send me comments on (non-fiction) stuff of mine, and the reaction is always, for me, stark and absolute horror; it's like I can only handle thinking critically about books if I forget there's a person behind it. (Which is odd, because I have no problems thinking critically about FF, even if I know the author quite well, and no problems editing anything, fiction or non, no matter how well I know the author.) That horror of mine is probably why it didn't occur to me that someone could check in at several places on the scale simultaneously.

I never write RPF about people (living people. Historical fandoms are wide open)

I have complete sympathy with this. I can't write or read RPF for living people, but historical ones are fine. Apparently, for my brain there's a horizon - 40 years or so after someone's death, he becomes equivalent to a fictional character for me. (Actually, I suspect WWII is my cutoff for historical people - anyone who died after it ended is too modern for me. It'd be neat to do a poll to see where other people's lines are on that one.)

and said RL persons were delighted at being written into the canon, but I'm not entirely sure they'd feel the same way about showing up in fic/RP.

Ooo, interesting. Just out of curiosity, who were the RL persons who were written into XF canon?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I generally have a reaction of about half embarassment and half joy whenever *anybody* reads my work; it was just way more so when it was an author that I love. It probably helps that I first got into active fandom (with both meta and fic writing) in the very early days of webcomics fandom, where there was *no* separation between fans and canon-creators, and everybody read everything.

It would be interesting to see what people's cut-off is for historical fandom - I couldn't give you a date; for me it has a lot to do with whether they've started showing up in professional fiction. Nixon, for example, hasn't really been dead that long, but after a major motion picture (even a tasteless one) I tend to think it's open season on him.

>>o were the RL persons who were written into XF canon?
Well, the ones I've written are Dr. Bambi Berenbaum (http://www.tv.com/episode/551/summary.html), sexy entomologist, based on RL entomologist and writer Dr. May Berenbaum (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dbooks%26field-author%3DBerenbaum%2C%20May%20R./102-8616507-4047319) - rather loosely based, but that didn't stop be from using RL info from May's books to flesh out her character. And Agent Leyla Harrison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyla_Harrison), FBI accountant and fangirl extraordinaire, based on RL Leyla Harrison (http://www.geocities.com/workingstiffsfanfic/leylatributefr.html), fanfic writer and fangirl extraordinaire.

(While I'm on XF, one reason that I don't really distinguish between actors and other creators in terms of this poll is that XF was my first real media fandom, and the line there (as in many other fannish TV shows) between actor/writer/director/fan is really very blurry. And there's never been a very large XF RPF fandom, but say the phrase OT3 on an XF forum, and it all eventually comes back to this picture (http://xfroadrunners.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=383): the stars and the creator post-coital in bed together ... which officially puts Gillian, David, and Chris in 'they deserve it' territory for me, btw.)