kalpurna

Recently, the Due South fandom had its first wank since... maybe the Ray Wars? I don't know. Basically, it was fairly overblown by fandom_wank (SHOCKED FACE), and as far as I know not that many people got angry about it, at least in public, and anyway it would have been considered a slow day in HP fandom. Nevertheless, it's kind of a milestone, I think, because we're normally oh so careful what we say in DS.

I should start off by saying that I think people on fandom_wank were less fair to aukestrel than they should have been. Not only because, frankly, Due South is a more OTP-laden canon than other fandoms have to deal with (I'm sorry, but I'm a lot more sympathetic toward this rant being about Fraser/Kowalski than if it were about Harry/Draco), but also because I have a hunch that what she said is not that far from what a lot of us feel about certain things.

Here's the thing. Even though I would never, ever say this to anyone's face, because I'm not confrontational online, there is definitely a part of me that feels the same way she does about Ray/Ray. And about F/V/K, and about Rodney/Carson, and incest pairings. And that little part of me doesn't say, "What you're doing is not my cup of tea, but That's OK, Because I'm a Reasonable and Tolerant Fangirl." It says, "What you're doing is STUPID AND WRONG AND YOU ARE WRONG SHUT UP." I don't particularly like it, but it's there, and I have a fair bit of confidence that most people in fandom feel that way about something, some issue.

If someone says shitty things about Fraser, I don't just feel bad because they're insulting my taste in characters: I feel bad because I feel like they're insulting someone who means a lot to me, a friend of mine who has mattered in my life. And yes, that sounds a little crazycakes. But... you're in fandom too. And I think you know what I mean.

And that, I'm pretty sure, is a good thing. Fandom is all about caring more than other people do, about looking at characters and seeing them as people, about loving fiction, about taking those Velveteen Rabbits and making them real, treating them with seriousness and with care. If you don't get worked up about something in fandom, I don't want to know you. The one thing about fandom_wank that makes me absolutely sick is that they keep their fucking distance. FANDOM IS NOT ABOUT KEEPING YOUR DISTANCE. Fandom is not about keeping your distance.

But the discussion that didn't happen as a result of her post, and I think it's interesting that it didn't, is the conversation we as fandom might need to have about civility. I mean absolutely no disrespect to aukestrel when I say this, because, again, I think she said what she felt and I absolutely understand why she felt that way, but I think DS fandom would be a very different place if there were posts like that every day of the week. And I think that needs to be acknowledged.

The question we maybe need to be asking is, "Why should we be careful with our speech in fandom?" After all, it's the internet! Sockpuppets abound, and it's not like we'll ever have to come face to face with most of the people we talk to. Why does it matter whether or not we act gracious about the pairings or kinks or, let's face it, people we think are wrong wrong wrong?

The thing is, though, it's a pretty easy question to answer. We should be careful with our speech because our speech is all we have. We are on the internet, we do have a limited amount of interaction and accountability, and that's why we need to take great care with what we say and with how we say it: because that's all we've got. The internet is an extraordinarily difficult medium in which to communicate adequately, what with its lack of body language and facial expressions and inflection, and therefore courtesy does not come easily. Language is all we've got, and we don't even have the full run of that.

I was amused by the commenter over at fandom_wank who derided aukestrel's frequent use of caps and italics, because that's one of my favorite things about DS; the degree to which we try and convey conversational tone through text. Paul Gross arms, baby! \o/ Fandom at large needs more ways to convey EMPHASIS and sarcasm, not fewer; we're trying to have, as I pointed out above, a pretty intimate conversation, in a medium that's textual and public. It's difficult, you guys! We're trying really hard!

And I do give you an E for Effort, fandom. The comments to her post were unbelievably civil, by any standards; I especially liked justbreathe80's comment, and the ensuing thread. It would have been very easy for people to go "OMG U R MEEN," and largely, they didn't.

Unfortunately, I think the real underpinning of the problem with that post, the reason that people got pretty hurt by it, was that aukestrel insisted on taking the argument away from the pairing and toward the people who write the pairing, calling them sheep and popularity-seekers and lazy writers. And I have to draw a distinction here between stuff that is okay to think, and stuff that is okay to say. I, personally, think Republican views are WRONG. I think they are INCORRECT and also HURTING AMERICA. But at Thanksgiving Dinner with my born-again-Christian aunt, I don't bring that up. I talk about it privately with my friends, and I don't think that makes me somehow morally bankrupt.

I guess what I'm saying is that the nature of fannishness is such that sometimes, we all go a little batshit. But there's a good way and a bad way to deal with our small moments of freakin' out, and I'm personally glad DS fandom tends to choose the politer route. There's a Cult of Nice? Oh good, sign me up.

ETA: Hee! I was curious about the last time we got wanked, so I went and found it (October 2005). Here's a quote from the report: It's all pretty polite but this is as wanky as this fandom gets these days. ♥ ♥ ♥
ETA2: AHAHAHA. Here's the last one before THAT (September 2003): ...and really, the posts are surprisingly calm and well reasoned and non-wanky or flamey. We win!