Fandom Snowflake 2020 #6: In Vain, Perhaps, But Who Can Tell?

Challenge #6 asks us to imagine an ideal and publish it, in case we find someone who shares our ideals. Here's the challenge text:

In your own space, make a list — anything between one and ten things is a sweet spot, but don't feel constrained by that! - of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, or that you'd like someone to make for you.

There are some suggestions as to what might go on such a list.

Are you dying for podfic of your writing? Do you need icons for a character that doesn't get much fanart? Is there a story you want to read? Are you looking for new canons to get into? Would you like a collaborator for a project?

Maybe you want more people to talk about a certain fandom with, or you'd love to trade ficlets with somebody over email. Maybe you're new to a fandom and would like some recs to start reading, or communities to join. This is the time to ask!

( Why wishing is less easy for me )

So, understanding this is an effort, and I'm probably thinking "what would be doable?" rather than "what do I want?", here is a list of things that I would fannishly like.

1. Transformative works made of stories.

I'm pretty sure my blanket permissions are up to date, as well, but I would be thrilled if people wanted to make art of particular scenes or podfic out of stories. I realize that takes a lot more collective effort and time, and a very different skill set, than dashing off a few thousand words, but it would be very validating for someone to believe or enjoy a story that much that they wanted to transform it more.


2. More meta, please!

There's nothing wrong with fic. And especially nothing wrong with fic that tackles issues left on the table or reimagines canonical events with different characters or different identities. But I find myself wanting people to examine the issues and contexts of the media they consume, either sticking solely to their own universe or examining shows in the context of our world around them. People using their training or life experience to go "this is excellent!" or "oh, wow, this is terrible and we don't think the creators understood" or "oh, wow, this is terrible and we're pretty sure it's intentional." I'm pretty sure that's also a different skill set than writing fic, but a good non-fic essay is really nice to read and recommend to others. (They can be hosted at AO3, too.)


3. Comments, whether here or AO3 or somewhere else.

I really like the opportunity to talk and find out what people enjoy about things they read. I realize that comments take effort, even the ones that are produced with the help of comment templates, so I wouldn't want anyone to feel obligated in any way to have to leave comments. Kudos are great, and are nice ways of saying "I read and enjoyed this", as are the short comment forms that work here, things that are single words, emoji, or otherwise that don't need a lot of ramble with them, if you don't want to ramble.


4. Be for, rather than against.

That's not quite the right way of putting it, though. Because there's a lot of value in voicing and acting in opposition to toxic and terrible influences and people in the world. It seems like, as fans, we do our best work when we're striving toward something, rather than simply voicing our opposition. And being opposed to things can get caught up in things like ship wars and purity tests and having language meant to inspire people to action be used instead to declare that certain people are beyond the pale and to stop the conversation at that point. Sure, not everyone subscribes to the theory of the death of the author, but there's value in being able to say "Well, hell, J.K. Rowling's interpretation of canon contains racist interpretations of the indigenous people of the United States, excuses and encourages the abuse of students by other students and by faculty, and is gender-essentialist in the way it constructs dormitories (among other things, I suspect). So if and when I write Potter fic, I'm going to avoid using J.K.'s interpretation of canon and substitute a more trans-inclusive, less-racist, and less abusive one."

By generating transformative works, most of us, I think, don't want to recreate the canon world perfectly, but instead to create the canon that we wish was there. Which allows us to have dialogue with the canon, so that we take away the bad and add more good things to it. We might have some disagreements about how that gets done, but that conversation is made richer by each new participant. If everyone had simply said "J.K. Rowling is dismissed from the fannish collective consciousness because she supports TERFs," then the people for whom Harry Potter was/is formative are bereft of the ability to talk about that part of their existences. If Anne-of-Green-Dragons is sent off because sex on Pern is almost always bereft of the modern concept of consent, then there's no audience for the Grief-Giving that revisits those scenes from a more modern lens and grapples with the question of "knowing what I do now, do these things still have value?"

Eventually, everyone is going to end up cancelled for something, because values and morals change over time, and no author, not even the purest of cinnamon rolls that you are thinking of right now, is going to successfully have anticipated every change in values to the point where they are timelessly always perfectly moral. And so if you maintain being against everything that's vile and wrong, wherever it should appear, no matter how small, eventually the bubble of acceptable things shrinks to nil. Think about the Bechdel Test. If a person refuses to see any movie or TV show that doesn't pass the Bechdel, that's a large swath of shared culture they're not viewing, some of which they might have a lot of Opinions on or end up really falling in love with, if they were to watch it. Instead, if a person says they'll prioritize their viewing toward things that pass the Bechdel test, that gives them the flexibility to find things they love (and might want to write Bechdel-passing fic of) while still setting their trajectory such that they want to see more of the things that match their values. I think the if we set our minds to encouraging (or creating) the things that we want to see come into existence and stay in existence, we'll find the things we're opposed to or want to stop existing will fade out, or at least, we will have successfully curated our viewing experiences and our friends groups such that we are not supporting the things we don't want to see. I think it ultimately makes us happier and feel more like we're doing something to be enthusiastically for things instead of stridently against them, with the acknowledgement that being stridently for something often also means being intentionally opposed to something else. (Or several somethings else.)


5. Say nice things about me (and others) where I (we) can see them, please.

If you have organically nice things to say, that is. I don't want sycophants or, hell forbid, people to think that they have to praise me and feed my ego to interact with me in some way. The sort of things that, say, if you rec a work of mine, maybe drop a link somewhere so that I can see what you've said about it? Or if you see someone else rec a thing of mine, and it's a public post (or you have permission to share), let me know where it happened? Or if there's one of the many "reply to the comment with this user's name and say something good about them, or something they've said or did that you appreciated or wanted to emulate" threads, maybe participate in it. You don't usually have to be signed in to participate in those, so if you don't want to attach your username to it, that's fine.

I think a lot of transformative works and creative people do a lot of things that get posted, and we see the direct interactions through the kudos buttons and the comments left on the place where the work is posted, but unless we're really tuned into the fandom and where all of it hangs out, there's a good chance we'll miss someone making a recommendation in their own space about the things they enjoyed. I still don't actually know how Chat Noir's Convention Cosplay Crisis became my flagship (Plaggship?) work for just about all of my statistical categories, because I saw all of one outside-of-AO3-bookmarks place where it was mentioned at the time. But a thing does not generate 300+ kudos on one rec (unless the person that recced it has that kind of reach, who knows?) and a growing list of bookmarks that don't have commentary or the rec symbol attached. Unless it does. But, as you can see, the process is pretty opaque.

So it would be nice, in a "re-orient your worth judgment more toward reality instead of the self-deprecation that is your default" sort of way, to have the impacts of what I've done, said, supported, or just sat quietly with you through something foregrounded and made more explicit. Because brainweasels are looking for every weak spot they can find to swarm, and having a more accurate model of how the people around me or the people that interact with me perceive me is helpful at knowing whether what I'm feeling about the world outside is something I need to pay attention to and start putting effort in to change, or whether it's the brainweasels lobbing things over the walls in an attempt to break morale.

Five's a good number, and I think all of those are achievable.

None of these things take any priority over you taking care of you. So if you want to, but you're swamped right now, that's fine. If you looked at the list and didn't see anything that felt worthwhile, that's okay. Thanks for reading. There are other challenge participants who might have something that you can and do want to fulfill.

And update your transformative works statements. People seized by inspiration want to get started right then, rather than having to find a way of contacting you and then waiting for permission. Please.