The Boy Who Lived Forever...

[fajrdrako]

Thanks to fairestcat for pointing me to this article, The Boy Who Lived Forever by Lev Grossman. It seems like a long time since I've noticed mention of fanfic in mainstream journalism; though it has been become increasingly common to mention the participation of fans, fanfic included, in TV shows like Supernatural.

The first article I remember ever seeing about slash was in a British tabloid where the author wrote about the "scandal" of Kirk and Spock being lovers in this clandestine media. One got the impression that the author of the piece didn't know (or didn't care) about the difference between fact and fiction.

I particularly liked it that Lev Grossman starts out talking about The Man from U.N.C.L.E. which was my first fandom, though confined to me and my two best friends. I found the wide world of fan fiction with Star Trek and K/S much later. Until then, as far as I knew, I was the only one doing it.

Comments

[baronjanus]

This is wonderful. It's been a very long time since I saw any positive reference - and a knowledgeable one - to fanfic. Thank you for the link.

[fajrdrako]

Yes. Very fair-handed, I think, which is always rare in the media. And in a fairly prestigious publication, too.

[baronjanus]

Am I the only one suspecting the author is a ficcer?

[fajrdrako]

Well, no, that was actually my first thought. A ficcer, or married to one.

[baronjanus]

There's something very lonely about feeling like you're the only one doing something (I spent 4-5 years as a lone young Bowie fan before I met another person who even knew him). In that way, the recent boom in ficcing and ficcers is a positive development, although visibility inevitably breeds misunderstandings and mockery/persecution.

On the other hand, as you know me, old, bitter, and grumpy, ;) all these new people coming in make it difficult a, to know who really has their heart invested in it, and who's gonna disappear entirely in a year or two, and b, it's more difficult to find good fic in the general piles ;) It's like if older fandom was a giant store where you had to go through piles of knickknacks to find treasures, now it's pretty much a massive city... full of piles of knickknacks. And the same amount of treasures as that store that now looks so small.

sorry for rambling..

[fajrdrako]

I think we can only take each writer, and each work, on its own merits - which really leaves us adrift in the wilderness, but it also makes the gems all the more wonderful when we find them, whether they are individual works or specific people. And the quantities can be overwhelming, but I think it's better to have that wealth to explore than to have little or nothing - to have only what is in our own heads, which was the case when we were solitary fans.

[rydra_wong]

*wanders by via a content search, hoping that's not creepy*

I was curious to see how other people in fandom were reacting to the article.

Grossman is not, AFAIK, a ficcer in the sense of being "one of us."

However, he wrote a novel, The Magicians, which is extremely fic-y in its relationship to its source texts -- it's very visibly about the Narnia and Harry Potter stories, with the serial numbers barely filed off, and riffing off/critiquing those narratives. And if you don't recognize it as talking back to Lewis/Rowling, you'd miss part of the point of the novel, IMHO.

So it doesn't really surprise me that he gets what fanfic is about.

[baronjanus]

with the serial numbers barely filed off

I really wish I could do this :) I think it could be such fun. Not specifically Potter/Narnia, I mean just taking the fun that is fic in specific fandoms and go wild with it into an orig - and, I'm sorry to say, marketable/profitable - novel or series. There's just something about it that tickles* me.


*In a good way, not like real tickling.

[baronjanus]

Also, and now it's my turn to apologise for possible creepy, I wanted to say thank you about your post on exercise and depression. I don't have many words, but... it couldn't have come at a better time.

[rydra_wong]

Not creepy at all; I wouldn't have put it out there if I didn't want people to read it. And it's really good for me to know that it resonates with other people. So thank you.

[fajrdrako]

Thanks for the info about Grossman. So he's not a fanfic writer, but he's coming from a similar psychological space.

And I'm so glad he doesn't, as some published authors do, say "the stuff I write is okay, the stuff fan writers write is not" - a double standard that I find very annoying.

[franzeska]

It's possible, but he also just did better research than most people. (That lj community was a cool idea!) I'm not surprised that's reflected in the article, though I'm still impressed at how well it turned out.

[baronjanus]

Which lj community?

And yes, it could just be good research. I must say I can't remember what it was exactly that made me just feel like there might be "heart" involved, not just "brain", though. It was written like someone who cares, not like someone who is entirely into anthropological research of "those strange subcultures out there".

[franzeska]

Yeah, it definitely has a different feel. It felt more like "my neighbor has an interesting hobby" than like any of the usual approaches.

I don't know exactly whose idea it was, but Grossman got help from OTW interviewing fans. Details are here. Basically, he posted a bunch of locked posts to lg_interview asking why we like fic, what we think of authors who don't, what common misconceptions are, and that sort of thing. A number of things in the article look like direct reactions to all of the ranting in the common misconceptions comments. :D

[fajrdrako]

So many misconceptions out there, and so many prejudices. I like to think the tide is turning. Not that I think we should be spreading fandom to the masses, but it would be good to have fewer external attacks from the media.

[baronjanus]

A very optimistic outcome of fandom would be that storytelling would re-acquire some of its old methods and respect. Myth and legend, that sort, but with the ability of everyone to do it - note the disproportionate numbers of females and lgbtq in fanfic - and not just the few "chosen" elders.

[fajrdrako]

That would be a better world. It really would.

[franzeska]

Yeah. I definitely see no need to go chasing after people to force fandom upon them, but the truth is that we're long, long past being an underground thing nobody has heard of. It's nice to have something to counterbalance the idiotic articles and the parodies. (I thought what SPN did was pretty funny, myself, but parody is rarely a good source of faithful or positive depictions.)

[fajrdrako]

True.

Which makes this all the more a moment we can enjoy. The time a mainstream article in a mass-market publication got it right.

[franzeska]

\o/

[baronjanus]

Beautiful. Good idea, and like you said, good research, going to the source. Was probably a good community for long meta.

[franzeska]

Yeah. I saw a lot of the usual stuff you see in fandom meta everywhere, but I think having all of those different responses together gave a better idea of some of the breadth of opinion in fandom and of which views are more and less mainstream for us, which is something that can be awfully hard for an outsider to know, especially if they only have one or two informants.

[fajrdrako]

I have known a lot of outsiders, who, despite good intentions, see a small part of fandom and think 'it's all like that'. Not true, but it's so vast that even with years of study, no one sees the whole of it. And no part tells the whole story, which makes it hard to deal with on a casual basis, and difficult to summarize.

Grossman did well.

[baronjanus]

I know people have done papers/thesis/phd/books on the topic, or around it, but somehow this feels nicer. At least nicer than the ones I got to see.

[fajrdrako]

Sometimes in studying a culture, and writing about it, something of the flavour gets lost. Or something. It probably has to do with academic objectivity, or the appearance of academic objectivity.

[baronjanus]

...Or looking at things entirely from the outside and not caring very much. A type of subculture colonialism.

Not all, I know, I know, definitely not all. Just... some.

[fajrdrako]

"Subculture colonialism." What a great phrase. Yes, that's exactly what I was getting at.

[baronjanus]

And that, after a long discussion and many examples (which can wait for another time), connects directly to the outsiders who walk in trying to make money off this "quaint, charming people".

[fajrdrako]

Bad thing, that. But don't get me started on the evils of capitalism and monetary greed.

[baronjanus]

I don't mind monetary greed, but it works for some things, and not so much for others. Cars, they can go for money. Not so much fanfic. Or sex. Or smiles.

[fajrdrako]

Since I don't feel the need or desire to own a car... I can agree with that.

Actually, I'd be happier if people didn't feel the need for cars, since I don't think cars are good for the world.

Being greedy for smiles? That's okay.

[baronjanus]

Not charging for them.

[fajrdrako]

Which lj community?

The author had an LJ community soliciting information and input to his article. Going to the source, as it were.

I agree that on any scale of "us" and "them", the author sounded as if he saw himself as being related to fandom in some way, if only just in shared sympathies.

[fajrdrako]

I'm impressed by the article itself - that he wrote it with understanding, clarity, and truth - but also that Time saw fit to print it.