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silveradeptChallenge #10 asks us to talk about inspiration and those who have provided it.
Which provides an interesting juxtaposition for me, as elsewhere in the aether, someone indicated that they found it fascinating the way I approach fandom and being a fan as a field of study. I am sure this was 100% intended as "I appreciate that you talk about structures and history and mechanics and your approach and provide background details so that we see not only the finished product, but how you got there from here," which is the sort of thing I like reading in the first place.
That same phrasing also makes me think of how I usually describe myself as "fandom-adjacent," in the sense that while I do things and experience media through the lens of fandom, and I have been doing that for a significant amount of time, it's often been as a thoughtful and measured process, and sometimes reactive to other people going full-on squee about things. Fandom is vast and contains multitudes, but there's still a small voice somewhere that says "transformative fandom isn't for people who look like you, and your stories take space from others who should otherwise flourish. Observe all you like, pretend all you like, but ultimately, transformative fandom isn't for you, because it is about fixing things and reimagining things, and the hegemony of people who look like you is something that needs fixing." Transformative fandom, of course, needs allies and advocates, much as the revolutionary socialist needs allies and advocates in the capitalist structure, the anti-war platform needs allies and advocates in the imperialist structure, and how marginalized people sometimes need allies and advocates in the majority to provide cover for them and help them establish places for others to follow the same path into being seen as part of society instead of at the margins. Being an ally is ultimately different than being part of the group, even if the goals are perfectly in sync with each other. There's a gap, even if it's slight, and I suppose I see enough of people who are supposed to be allies behaving in ways that aren't helpful (and that don't listen to the people they are supposedly helping) to be worried about what I am (or am not) doing.
The kind that makes someone who looks like I do and who might enjoy a show like My Little Pony think twice about affirmatively saying I like the show, or having to say "yes, I like the show, but I'm not like this vocal group of fans of the show that have made a bad name for themselves in several circles." That's more of a dis-inspiration, and might completely close off the possibility of finding other fans of the show entirely, because having to struggle against the stereotype isn't worth the possibility of the joy coming from finding fellow fans.
Even if transformative fandom is trying to be a place where everyone can play, there's still some struggles about whose voices should be promoted when talking about different experiences (and a certain amount of Discourse about what the acceptable topics to be talked about are, despite the history that fandom has about exploring and bringing forward the socially taboo), and questions of whether the work can exist independently of the creator, to the point where people could construct things connected to the source in only the most tenuous of ways, and yet it reads and feels like a possibility of what could have been. Or what should have been, had the author taken care to think about it (or if the author had the sensibilities of the modern reading audience, rather than the sensibilities of the audience they were writing for at the time.)
Fandoms are not exempt from that lens, either. Witness the significant consternation produced through the resolution of Episode IX of the Star Wars series of movies regarding how characters turn out, the plot drives, and what sort of forces, seen and unseen, loud and quiet, may have contributed to the way in which the canon of the movie turned out. And how fandom reacts to this, because there is a distinction between saying the ship itself is problematic by its very existence and saying that a really significant number of the reasons why people promote a ship are problematic. Writing a ship is not problematic. Writing a ship uncritically might be. On the gripping hand, even the ones who might say "there are a lot of reasons why this ship in this work is pretty bad" to their friends may still say "but that work is still allowed to exist, even if we think it's worse than just falling into the great undifferentiated mass of 'Stuff Sturgeon's Law applies to' if someone else says that problematic content and its creators should be canceled."
I see transformative fandom as existing in a liminal space, the place of possibility, and what-if, things that didn't happen or could have happened. And, unlike a lot of people, I feel like I came to fandom late, because I didn't have conventions, I didn't have zines, I didn't have mailing lists, and I didn't really start visibly, consciously participating until post-university (even if I was doing those things well before that). Complicating things further, I've always been multi-fannish, so I don't have a single author, canon or fannish, or a single fandom that has been my inspiration and the why for doing the things that I do.
We could start with Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, because Tracer Bullet, Calvin's noir-themed, trope-fueled alter-ego was the thematic inspiration for a work that I made as a student that got laughs in all the right places and suggested that, for what it was, it resonated with the audience, and the possibility that this words thing might be okay. Dana Simpson's work in Ozy and Millie (and Phoebe and Her Unicorn) have been similarly in that vein of Calvin and Hobbes, and very enjoyable, and so having a certain amount of Simpsonian or Wattersonian style to me is something that is good for comedy and for less comedic works.
And then the people who played the forum roleplay games with me, and who were fans of various comics, that gave me practice at writing characters and playing well with others in shared narrative spaces. Also, TV Tropes, for giving me language and taxonomy that I can use to describe an see examples of storytelling devices and how they are put into play in a much more expansive way than the way that the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index does for fairy tales. And all of those pieces of storytelling that I've collected from the various media items that I've consumed, too, and enjoyed.
Do I have to acknowledge the author that produced the series where my username is derived from? Because he, and the works that I read that gave this idea, have had Suck Fairy High-Rises™ built all over the place since I took on that idea. Perhaps it's an example of how transformative fandom can do better with less-good source material (even though I've never written anything in that source). If so, then I probably have to acknowledge Jo Rowling, as well, as Potter (and Rowling's encouragement of fans to take ownership of Potter in the early stages) is probably what brought transformative fandom much more to my radar, so much so that by the time I'm into my later university years, I can feel kind of cofident that I know enough of the lingo to be correct in knowing a fellow student is a Harry/Hermione shipper. What Jo Rowling has done with the Potterverse since then is rapidly putting her in the same category as the other author I've decided not to name in this. And do I also need to talk about Pern? My biggest work / meta project to date explicitly takes the position that Pern is a place that the Suck Fairy has also built more than a few high-rises on as well. Do these count as inspiration, in that their works have been important in the devlopment of my fannish identity, even if most of that development has been about how I don't want to do what they've done, and a certain active rejection of their canon?
And then there's the people in fandom that have built places in reaction to decidedly fannishly-unfriendly actions. Because Dreamwidth probably wouldn't have spawned (and had the specific content policies that it does) without the wholesale crackdown that were the [*]through events on Livejournal. I don't know that I would have had both the desire and the skillset that the core DW team had when they forked the open-source part of Livejournal. Or the people-wrangling abilities that have been present to keep the project moving and fix the things that need to be fixed and developed further. And Dreamwidth is a small project compared to the other major fannish thing that developed from those events. AO3 won a Hugo Award, and deservedly so, for being a technical achievement, but also for being a place where the fandom owns the servers and gets to set their own policy about what will be allowed on the Archive and what needs to be attached to it. Because it is a place where the question is "is it properly tagged" rather than "is it allowed in the space", which makes it extremely attractive for people interested in making sure their work has a place where it will stay. And those commitments to making sure there is a place for fandom to be, and providing tools for the fandom to curate their own experiences, are very inspiring to the idea of contributing to the corpus of being a fan on the Web.
Inspiration continues because of all of this.![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
alexseanchai is the person that got me involved in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom, but also has an entire world of things not explicitly pointed out in the canon that I usually think of as part of the world I want to write in as well. I think that world is itself influenced and inspired by other people's statements and headcanons and suppositions scattered across tumblr and Discord and other places as well, so inspiration is recursive and twisty and complex as much as it is finding a lineage of where ideas come from and how they spread. And shadaras just had a post linking to Leonard Cohen songs, which was a thing I recognized from how many people use Cohen lyrics in their works, but now I understand a lot more how Cohen's work is inspiring to others who are making fic.
And sometimes, people take inspiration to their lives from the works they consume. Because sometimes there are characters, situations, songs, and a package that helps you come to terms with your own situation. And seeing those characters succeed and find their way and learn how to believe in themselves, even when they have to make really hard decisions and strike out on their own with a much less solid support system than where they are coming from, can sometimes inspire someone to say, "I might make it after all" and make changes in their own life.
And, perhaps, at some point in time, someone else will say "silveradept inspired me, because they were patient while I struggled, because their ideas are so interesting, because they improve ideas shared with them, because they looked at my work and said 'This is excellent. I look forward to seeing what you produce in the future.' " Or they will talk about things that I have done and contributed to as parts of what inspired them. Because I've had the closure of the loop happen once or twice, but not nearly as often as I'd like, at least for my professional self, and that is both a gratifying and terrifying thing to experience.
Which provides an interesting juxtaposition for me, as elsewhere in the aether, someone indicated that they found it fascinating the way I approach fandom and being a fan as a field of study. I am sure this was 100% intended as "I appreciate that you talk about structures and history and mechanics and your approach and provide background details so that we see not only the finished product, but how you got there from here," which is the sort of thing I like reading in the first place.
That same phrasing also makes me think of how I usually describe myself as "fandom-adjacent," in the sense that while I do things and experience media through the lens of fandom, and I have been doing that for a significant amount of time, it's often been as a thoughtful and measured process, and sometimes reactive to other people going full-on squee about things. Fandom is vast and contains multitudes, but there's still a small voice somewhere that says "transformative fandom isn't for people who look like you, and your stories take space from others who should otherwise flourish. Observe all you like, pretend all you like, but ultimately, transformative fandom isn't for you, because it is about fixing things and reimagining things, and the hegemony of people who look like you is something that needs fixing." Transformative fandom, of course, needs allies and advocates, much as the revolutionary socialist needs allies and advocates in the capitalist structure, the anti-war platform needs allies and advocates in the imperialist structure, and how marginalized people sometimes need allies and advocates in the majority to provide cover for them and help them establish places for others to follow the same path into being seen as part of society instead of at the margins. Being an ally is ultimately different than being part of the group, even if the goals are perfectly in sync with each other. There's a gap, even if it's slight, and I suppose I see enough of people who are supposed to be allies behaving in ways that aren't helpful (and that don't listen to the people they are supposedly helping) to be worried about what I am (or am not) doing.
The kind that makes someone who looks like I do and who might enjoy a show like My Little Pony think twice about affirmatively saying I like the show, or having to say "yes, I like the show, but I'm not like this vocal group of fans of the show that have made a bad name for themselves in several circles." That's more of a dis-inspiration, and might completely close off the possibility of finding other fans of the show entirely, because having to struggle against the stereotype isn't worth the possibility of the joy coming from finding fellow fans.
Even if transformative fandom is trying to be a place where everyone can play, there's still some struggles about whose voices should be promoted when talking about different experiences (and a certain amount of Discourse about what the acceptable topics to be talked about are, despite the history that fandom has about exploring and bringing forward the socially taboo), and questions of whether the work can exist independently of the creator, to the point where people could construct things connected to the source in only the most tenuous of ways, and yet it reads and feels like a possibility of what could have been. Or what should have been, had the author taken care to think about it (or if the author had the sensibilities of the modern reading audience, rather than the sensibilities of the audience they were writing for at the time.)
Fandoms are not exempt from that lens, either. Witness the significant consternation produced through the resolution of Episode IX of the Star Wars series of movies regarding how characters turn out, the plot drives, and what sort of forces, seen and unseen, loud and quiet, may have contributed to the way in which the canon of the movie turned out. And how fandom reacts to this, because there is a distinction between saying the ship itself is problematic by its very existence and saying that a really significant number of the reasons why people promote a ship are problematic. Writing a ship is not problematic. Writing a ship uncritically might be. On the gripping hand, even the ones who might say "there are a lot of reasons why this ship in this work is pretty bad" to their friends may still say "but that work is still allowed to exist, even if we think it's worse than just falling into the great undifferentiated mass of 'Stuff Sturgeon's Law applies to' if someone else says that problematic content and its creators should be canceled."
I see transformative fandom as existing in a liminal space, the place of possibility, and what-if, things that didn't happen or could have happened. And, unlike a lot of people, I feel like I came to fandom late, because I didn't have conventions, I didn't have zines, I didn't have mailing lists, and I didn't really start visibly, consciously participating until post-university (even if I was doing those things well before that). Complicating things further, I've always been multi-fannish, so I don't have a single author, canon or fannish, or a single fandom that has been my inspiration and the why for doing the things that I do.
We could start with Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, because Tracer Bullet, Calvin's noir-themed, trope-fueled alter-ego was the thematic inspiration for a work that I made as a student that got laughs in all the right places and suggested that, for what it was, it resonated with the audience, and the possibility that this words thing might be okay. Dana Simpson's work in Ozy and Millie (and Phoebe and Her Unicorn) have been similarly in that vein of Calvin and Hobbes, and very enjoyable, and so having a certain amount of Simpsonian or Wattersonian style to me is something that is good for comedy and for less comedic works.
And then the people who played the forum roleplay games with me, and who were fans of various comics, that gave me practice at writing characters and playing well with others in shared narrative spaces. Also, TV Tropes, for giving me language and taxonomy that I can use to describe an see examples of storytelling devices and how they are put into play in a much more expansive way than the way that the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index does for fairy tales. And all of those pieces of storytelling that I've collected from the various media items that I've consumed, too, and enjoyed.
Do I have to acknowledge the author that produced the series where my username is derived from? Because he, and the works that I read that gave this idea, have had Suck Fairy High-Rises™ built all over the place since I took on that idea. Perhaps it's an example of how transformative fandom can do better with less-good source material (even though I've never written anything in that source). If so, then I probably have to acknowledge Jo Rowling, as well, as Potter (and Rowling's encouragement of fans to take ownership of Potter in the early stages) is probably what brought transformative fandom much more to my radar, so much so that by the time I'm into my later university years, I can feel kind of cofident that I know enough of the lingo to be correct in knowing a fellow student is a Harry/Hermione shipper. What Jo Rowling has done with the Potterverse since then is rapidly putting her in the same category as the other author I've decided not to name in this. And do I also need to talk about Pern? My biggest work / meta project to date explicitly takes the position that Pern is a place that the Suck Fairy has also built more than a few high-rises on as well. Do these count as inspiration, in that their works have been important in the devlopment of my fannish identity, even if most of that development has been about how I don't want to do what they've done, and a certain active rejection of their canon?
And then there's the people in fandom that have built places in reaction to decidedly fannishly-unfriendly actions. Because Dreamwidth probably wouldn't have spawned (and had the specific content policies that it does) without the wholesale crackdown that were the [*]through events on Livejournal. I don't know that I would have had both the desire and the skillset that the core DW team had when they forked the open-source part of Livejournal. Or the people-wrangling abilities that have been present to keep the project moving and fix the things that need to be fixed and developed further. And Dreamwidth is a small project compared to the other major fannish thing that developed from those events. AO3 won a Hugo Award, and deservedly so, for being a technical achievement, but also for being a place where the fandom owns the servers and gets to set their own policy about what will be allowed on the Archive and what needs to be attached to it. Because it is a place where the question is "is it properly tagged" rather than "is it allowed in the space", which makes it extremely attractive for people interested in making sure their work has a place where it will stay. And those commitments to making sure there is a place for fandom to be, and providing tools for the fandom to curate their own experiences, are very inspiring to the idea of contributing to the corpus of being a fan on the Web.
Inspiration continues because of all of this.
shadaras just had a post linking to Leonard Cohen songs, which was a thing I recognized from how many people use Cohen lyrics in their works, but now I understand a lot more how Cohen's work is inspiring to others who are making fic.And sometimes, people take inspiration to their lives from the works they consume. Because sometimes there are characters, situations, songs, and a package that helps you come to terms with your own situation. And seeing those characters succeed and find their way and learn how to believe in themselves, even when they have to make really hard decisions and strike out on their own with a much less solid support system than where they are coming from, can sometimes inspire someone to say, "I might make it after all" and make changes in their own life.
And, perhaps, at some point in time, someone else will say "
silveradept inspired me, because they were patient while I struggled, because their ideas are so interesting, because they improve ideas shared with them, because they looked at my work and said 'This is excellent. I look forward to seeing what you produce in the future.' " Or they will talk about things that I have done and contributed to as parts of what inspired them. Because I've had the closure of the loop happen once or twice, but not nearly as often as I'd like, at least for my professional self, and that is both a gratifying and terrifying thing to experience.
