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silveradeptChallenge #1 was about making sure your fannish spaces were tidy, lists updated, permission statements visible, and all of the rest of the things that often come when there's a gentle nudge that perhaps some organization would be useful for you while you are taking a moment to breathe and prepare for the next year.
Challenge #2, on the other hand, asks for our villain origin stories. (Why do I say villain origin story? Because heroes often just are, or their origin stories can be summed down to a single sentence like "radioactive spider-bite gives spider-like abilities." Villains, on the other hand, usually have some kind of social structure they are railing against, or they are seeking a specific kind of revenge, or otherwise are grounded in situations where we might sympathize with their aims, but not their methods. And, in this world of copyright overreach, the act of creating fanworks is almost certainly seen as villainy in some way.)
Anyway, as I was saying, here's challenge #2:
I talked some about origins in a December Days post this year, but I think one of the most accurate things I wrote about myself, while attributing it to someone else, is a bit I described while writing the inside of Calvin's head in Making Exceptions:
Substitute the appropriate pronouns for me, and it still works pretty well. There's not a specific origin as such for me, a single story, fandom, or character that is the catalyst for joining Fandom, and the ranks of transformative fandom, nor is there a specific thing that sparked off the making different adventures in my head. I remember writing fic in a notebook at a young age, but I also remember imaginative play spaces in my room, and getting regular lectures about the differences between fantasy and reality, bolstered to some degree with many of the PSAs for kids that were at the end of the shows in the Saturday Morning lineup. Most children that I have encountered, even of the age where I was watching those programs, had a pretty good grip on the difference between imaginative play and living in the world around them. Most of those children, if you were to gain a position of trust with them, would also tell you about the stories they have in their heads about the characters they encounter in media, because when children engage in imaginative play, they're not simply replicating the stories they've seen or read about into their play, but instead building new stories with familiar characters.
So I think that my origin stories in fandom, and just about everyone else's, really, are rooted in that imaginative play that is encouraged in young children, and then discouraged in older children, teenagers, and adults. Not just the "you should leave behind your fan-characters and creations and focus on original characters and stories," but the belief that one of the signs of transition from childhood to adulthood is setting boundaries around what, where, and when is an acceptable expression of imagination. (See: James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.)
For as much as the United States schooling system says they discourage tracking children and pushing them toward specific career pathways based on their aptitudes and grades, there's definitely a strong attitude that most students, by the time they leave their required schooling, should have been thoroughly discouraged from pursuing a career in creative arts. Only those who have manifested aptitude and had it trained and refined to the point where someone might believe it could be a career should continue on in an artistic way, and even then, there will be a lot of advice about making sure that you have a backup career, something that will pay the bills (if not someone who will pay the bills) while waiting for that moment in time where someone can make enough to pay the bills through their art. Everyone else, while not necessarily told to make no art, is certainly encouraged to think of their artistic measures as "hobbies," or at their most capitalist, "side hustles." If it's not of a quality to be monetized, then it's got to be relegated to the zone of "spare time," not that there's a lot of that going around these days. (One of those things that always works in favor of the universal basic income, or the socialist paradise where basic needs are taken care of by the government, rather than requiring people to be capitalist cogs for their mere survival, is the thought that there would be so much more art in the world. People could pursue their art without worrying about being a true starving artist, and that would create so much more art.)
The gift economy idea of most fanworks (and the OTW's stance on not having ways for people to give you money linked from your AO3 works) is a poke in the eye of the idea that all things, including art, must be monetized, and only those who have the talent and broad appeal to monetize their art should be in the space of that art. And with the other hand, it's a thumb in the eye of the idea that imaginative play and creative work using the characters and archetypes of others is the sign of a juvenile mind or a lack of creativity. Part of my professional practice is about finding sparks and getting kids (and sometimes adults) in front of tools that will allow them to express their creativity and giving them the knowledge to use those tools for that purpose, without necessarily passing judgment on the end result or setting some kind of grading on how close a thing got to a Platonic ideal of it. I'd like to do and offer more of that kind of programming.
The forums and mailing lists of yesteryear were also good training ground for the creation of and publication of fanworks, not that I would have thought of them as such at the time. Journaling software of this and earlier eras, with communities allowing for that collaboration between others, are also helping bring people together with shared stories and environments, and learning how to work with collaborators to do something cool together. It was a very large outpouring of creative material, but because it was disguised as forum games and shared RP between fans, there really wasn't any kind of recognition of the true nature of what was going on. The focus was, and is, still a lot about individual efforts and outputs, and on discrete works that come into existence, can be enjoyed, kudosed, and commented upon. Without that particular step of carving out my own individual space, or having a spot that is "here's where you can see what I've created and completed,", other people wouldn't be able to point and say, "hey, thatsilveradept is a pretty cool writer / is a rotten writer" and pass their judgment on. The opinions, and likely the cruel or "cruel disguised as concrit" opinions of others, did keep me out of creating and publishing for a while, because nobody wants to put a creative endeavor out into the world and then get told how much it sucks. With time and good comments, it's easier to see the negative ones as saying more about the commenter than about the work (which they often do), and that a lot of people have never learned effective methods of giving feedback. Even so, there's still the cognitive effort of dealing with someone else saying how much they disliked your work, often because it failed to meet expectations they imposed upon it, rather than taking the work for what it was.
I think the way that Story in my brain is a bunch of interconnected things all smashed together is part of the reason why I like the exchange circuit. It gives me opportunities to exercise different parts of Story, I often get to think about different things than I might have otherwise, just so that things can be put together for the request in front of me, and it makes more connections when it's done, so that the next time I traverse the tunnels of Story, there's new pathways to walk down, or to pull into the next thing that shows up. And having written this bit about my origins and the way that I intend to continue, I realize that a lot of my creative endeavors have been less about creating the perfect thing that will vault me to the halls of fame and fortune (something that I have thoroughly been discouraged from seeking by seeing how difficult it is to achieve either of those things in a hyper-saturated market) and more about finding, as it were, Beginner's Mind about creative things, getting close to what I used to do as a kid without the worry that there would be resounding negativity that came from indulging in imagination, and sharing out imperfect things that are still loved and cherished all the same.
So, I suppose, if I were to become some sort of costumed villain, my aims would be toward the restoration of childlike creativity and changing the harshness by which creativity is judged, and my methods that would draw the attention of the local costumed hero/vigilante would involve firing the Mitty Ray, where people caught in the beam would be unable to stop following their flights of fancy or their imaginative impulses as they appeared in their brains. (I'd probably be stopped by a neurodivergent hero, who already has a brain that works that way and has learned how to work with it and still accomplish their goals. Next time, Captain VAST, next time!)
Challenge #2, on the other hand, asks for our villain origin stories. (Why do I say villain origin story? Because heroes often just are, or their origin stories can be summed down to a single sentence like "radioactive spider-bite gives spider-like abilities." Villains, on the other hand, usually have some kind of social structure they are railing against, or they are seeking a specific kind of revenge, or otherwise are grounded in situations where we might sympathize with their aims, but not their methods. And, in this world of copyright overreach, the act of creating fanworks is almost certainly seen as villainy in some way.)
Anyway, as I was saying, here's challenge #2:
In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.
[…]
Whether you've been in fandom for a while or just discovered fandom, we'd love to know how you came to fandom! Was is that one book or a TV show or movie or anime/manga or a band/song that gave you that first spaek? Or a character or characters that you wanted more of but the canon material just didn't have enough of them? Or were you introduced to fandom by someone?
I talked some about origins in a December Days post this year, but I think one of the most accurate things I wrote about myself, while attributing it to someone else, is a bit I described while writing the inside of Calvin's head in Making Exceptions:
I think there's a part of his brain that's labeled Story, and anything that's in a story that he likes gets smashed in there and stuck to other parts of other stories until they've become one giant story that connects everywhere to everything inside it.
Substitute the appropriate pronouns for me, and it still works pretty well. There's not a specific origin as such for me, a single story, fandom, or character that is the catalyst for joining Fandom, and the ranks of transformative fandom, nor is there a specific thing that sparked off the making different adventures in my head. I remember writing fic in a notebook at a young age, but I also remember imaginative play spaces in my room, and getting regular lectures about the differences between fantasy and reality, bolstered to some degree with many of the PSAs for kids that were at the end of the shows in the Saturday Morning lineup. Most children that I have encountered, even of the age where I was watching those programs, had a pretty good grip on the difference between imaginative play and living in the world around them. Most of those children, if you were to gain a position of trust with them, would also tell you about the stories they have in their heads about the characters they encounter in media, because when children engage in imaginative play, they're not simply replicating the stories they've seen or read about into their play, but instead building new stories with familiar characters.
So I think that my origin stories in fandom, and just about everyone else's, really, are rooted in that imaginative play that is encouraged in young children, and then discouraged in older children, teenagers, and adults. Not just the "you should leave behind your fan-characters and creations and focus on original characters and stories," but the belief that one of the signs of transition from childhood to adulthood is setting boundaries around what, where, and when is an acceptable expression of imagination. (See: James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.)
For as much as the United States schooling system says they discourage tracking children and pushing them toward specific career pathways based on their aptitudes and grades, there's definitely a strong attitude that most students, by the time they leave their required schooling, should have been thoroughly discouraged from pursuing a career in creative arts. Only those who have manifested aptitude and had it trained and refined to the point where someone might believe it could be a career should continue on in an artistic way, and even then, there will be a lot of advice about making sure that you have a backup career, something that will pay the bills (if not someone who will pay the bills) while waiting for that moment in time where someone can make enough to pay the bills through their art. Everyone else, while not necessarily told to make no art, is certainly encouraged to think of their artistic measures as "hobbies," or at their most capitalist, "side hustles." If it's not of a quality to be monetized, then it's got to be relegated to the zone of "spare time," not that there's a lot of that going around these days. (One of those things that always works in favor of the universal basic income, or the socialist paradise where basic needs are taken care of by the government, rather than requiring people to be capitalist cogs for their mere survival, is the thought that there would be so much more art in the world. People could pursue their art without worrying about being a true starving artist, and that would create so much more art.)
The gift economy idea of most fanworks (and the OTW's stance on not having ways for people to give you money linked from your AO3 works) is a poke in the eye of the idea that all things, including art, must be monetized, and only those who have the talent and broad appeal to monetize their art should be in the space of that art. And with the other hand, it's a thumb in the eye of the idea that imaginative play and creative work using the characters and archetypes of others is the sign of a juvenile mind or a lack of creativity. Part of my professional practice is about finding sparks and getting kids (and sometimes adults) in front of tools that will allow them to express their creativity and giving them the knowledge to use those tools for that purpose, without necessarily passing judgment on the end result or setting some kind of grading on how close a thing got to a Platonic ideal of it. I'd like to do and offer more of that kind of programming.
The forums and mailing lists of yesteryear were also good training ground for the creation of and publication of fanworks, not that I would have thought of them as such at the time. Journaling software of this and earlier eras, with communities allowing for that collaboration between others, are also helping bring people together with shared stories and environments, and learning how to work with collaborators to do something cool together. It was a very large outpouring of creative material, but because it was disguised as forum games and shared RP between fans, there really wasn't any kind of recognition of the true nature of what was going on. The focus was, and is, still a lot about individual efforts and outputs, and on discrete works that come into existence, can be enjoyed, kudosed, and commented upon. Without that particular step of carving out my own individual space, or having a spot that is "here's where you can see what I've created and completed,", other people wouldn't be able to point and say, "hey, that
silveradept is a pretty cool writer / is a rotten writer" and pass their judgment on. The opinions, and likely the cruel or "cruel disguised as concrit" opinions of others, did keep me out of creating and publishing for a while, because nobody wants to put a creative endeavor out into the world and then get told how much it sucks. With time and good comments, it's easier to see the negative ones as saying more about the commenter than about the work (which they often do), and that a lot of people have never learned effective methods of giving feedback. Even so, there's still the cognitive effort of dealing with someone else saying how much they disliked your work, often because it failed to meet expectations they imposed upon it, rather than taking the work for what it was.I think the way that Story in my brain is a bunch of interconnected things all smashed together is part of the reason why I like the exchange circuit. It gives me opportunities to exercise different parts of Story, I often get to think about different things than I might have otherwise, just so that things can be put together for the request in front of me, and it makes more connections when it's done, so that the next time I traverse the tunnels of Story, there's new pathways to walk down, or to pull into the next thing that shows up. And having written this bit about my origins and the way that I intend to continue, I realize that a lot of my creative endeavors have been less about creating the perfect thing that will vault me to the halls of fame and fortune (something that I have thoroughly been discouraged from seeking by seeing how difficult it is to achieve either of those things in a hyper-saturated market) and more about finding, as it were, Beginner's Mind about creative things, getting close to what I used to do as a kid without the worry that there would be resounding negativity that came from indulging in imagination, and sharing out imperfect things that are still loved and cherished all the same.
So, I suppose, if I were to become some sort of costumed villain, my aims would be toward the restoration of childlike creativity and changing the harshness by which creativity is judged, and my methods that would draw the attention of the local costumed hero/vigilante would involve firing the Mitty Ray, where people caught in the beam would be unable to stop following their flights of fancy or their imaginative impulses as they appeared in their brains. (I'd probably be stopped by a neurodivergent hero, who already has a brain that works that way and has learned how to work with it and still accomplish their goals. Next time, Captain VAST, next time!)
