Oh noes, not the Internet bullies!

[starlady]

H/t to corneredangel, here, for this:

Is writing fan fiction different from writing a tie-in? Yes and no. The risks I can take are. In a tie-in, I am much more constrained in terms of writing sex. But I am much less constrained in terms of writing politics. I can say things to the broader society about the issues of the day, about war and peace, about race and sex, that I could never say in fandom without starting firestorms of wank. It's no longer possible to discuss those things in fandom without tons of abusive comments, whatever one's position, because the issues are too controversial and the Internet bullies on all sides are too abusive. We are going places on those issues in the tie-ins that I certainly would not dare go in fan fics!

[…]

The good thing about the tie-in is the much broader audience. Internet fandom, and especially LiveJournal/Dreamwidth fandom, for all that it likes to think it's diverse, isn't so much. It tends to be highly educated women, and disproportionately American women from the Northeast and California. Its culture is very specific and out of touch with the majority of fans of the show, especially for something like Stargate: Atlantis. How many people in LJ SGA fandom are men who are active-duty military? How many are over 50? How many consider themselves Christian, or are from rural areas? If I want to talk to a broad audience, to talk to a truly mixed audience in terms of gender, race, age, and region, a tie-in will reach a far more diverse group of people than fan fic will. Fan fic skews to female, liberal, and young.

--Jo Graham (interviewed in Transformative Works & Cultures vol. 5)

I don't even want to know what she thinks she can't say in SGA fic, and you couldn't get me to read those tie-in novels if you paid me. And as for her implications about fandom, my instinctive response is that she is wrong doesn't know whereof she speaks. I don't think anyone in fandom has ever claimed that fans are in any kind of cultural majority--which makes it all the more important, I think, that we not give problematic oppressive bullshit a free pass.

Comments

[lotesse]

That's ... a rather bizarre set of statements. Also, I was not heretofore aware that anybody actually read tie-in novels. I mean, I did at fifteen, but that was just because my da wouldn't fix the internet when I asked him to, and I needed that sweet sweet hit of Star Trek, yanno?

And I'm in the rural southern midwest, so there.

[starlady]

It doesn't matter where we are, and it angers me that she thinks that since she's a pro author or wherefore the fuck ever she gets to definitively state who fandom is and what we do. I've had the same fight with different people in other contexts and it never fails to make me see red. They want to pin fandom down and condescend to it, both of which go against what I think are the best things about fandom, and what I love about it.

/passionate rant

The Trek tie-in novels are sort of in their own class, I think. Otherwise, no, I don't read tie-in novels. But we're in fandom and therefore don't count! ARRR.

[kindkit]

There's been a certain amount of excitement about these tie-ins, partly because they're post-series continuations and therefore the authors have more than usual freedom, and partly because of who the authors are: besides Jo Graham, the other main writer in the series will be Melissa Scott, a very important figure in queer sf/f who hasn't written for some years due to the death of her partner and occasional co-writer, Lisa A. Barnett.

I've never seen the show and I still might read Scott's contributions.

[lotesse]

I (somehow) hadn't heard about this; it does sound interesting!