On Private Fannishness & Self-Censorship

[kierkegarden]

Anyway, I've been re-evaluating my attitude towards writing and fanfiction specifically, and here's my thoughts.

Firstly, I don't engage in fan stuff IRL outside of talking to my best friend and fiancee about it. This is for a few reasons. For one, my interests even within fandom hover outside the range of socially normal, and fandom is only quasi-normal as it is. I'm a young professional, I spend waaay too much time at work, and being fannish outside of the context of fandom-specific events would complicate things (read: if I turn on nerd-brain, it goes straight to 100%. There is no in-between.) To the point where we're having a superhero day at work and I'm just pretending like I wasn't raised on X-Men and spend my free time on the Marvel wiki. It's kind of sad and makes me miss college.

Academia is such an odd place, as those who are in college/teach college/have been to college know, there's room for fannish behavior or just semi-obsessive behavior, because most people are there to pursue a niche interest like "birds of North Eastern Pennsylvania" or "the third partition of Poland". We're already dealing with people who engage in things in excess, we're all writing theses where we dedicate blood, sweat, and tears to niche. So throw in a real-life meta about Iron Man or your fucking DnD game last Tuesday and nobody thinks anything of it. Where I work, that would be suicide for being taken seriously. So I keep quiet and pretend to be non-fannish, and everything goes smoothly. I'm getting a promotion. I feel like I'm in highschool again. When can I go back to college?

As for fandom-specific events -- hell, I'd love to go to comic con or a Star Wars con and geek out with people, but I know myself and I'd probably spend the entire time with people I already know. The internet is such a blessing because we can make connections with no judgement. Well, little judgement.

Which leads to my next Thing. I've noticed myself not posting stuff because it's not on par with the rest of my writing, or punishing myself for writing the wrong thing, or for engaging in darkfic, with ample self-deprecation ("what are you, 12, edgelord? @ myself") or not engaging in taboo things (to those who follow my Tumblr and have had to endure the stream of Nebula/Gamora content over the past few days, I'M SORRY. But as someone who is rarely fannish anywhere else, I don't have anywhere else for it to go.) 

It's a strange phenomenon, being Public. I guess I got semi-popular for my Grindeldore stuff -- I've been called a Big Name Fan, doubt it's true anymore, now that the fandom's been blown wide open by Fantastic Beasts. -- But still, my fic gets noticed. My blog gets noticed. I started caring about what I post and self-curating it. The problem is that my Tumblr/AO3/Dreamwidth is also my only place to be organically fannish and I'm stifling it by self-censoring. Because of a presumed loss in follower count, I guess, or just the judgement of people whose opinions I value. I can't even really name who. 

"Write for yourself," they said. I used to struggle with this because I wanted views and attention. I remember sitting, trying to eek out a fucking coffee shop AU (lol, to those who know My Style, this is so against my grain unless the coffee is poisoned and bitter and also somehow only luke-warm.) because I wanted The Validation. Then, I dropped it and last Spring, wrote a fic where a Polish!Paul Blart and Luke Skywalker hook up during the reformation in Poland-Lithuania. The Pope is a Sith Lord. Paul Blart's ex is an Italian reformer. It was written horribly. And I never worried less about a project getting views or how it turned out. Every time I wrote that thing, it was cathartic. (Until, of course, somebody linked it on Tumblr and it got a shit ton of views and people screaming about how bad it was. But at that point, I didn't care. I was proud of it. It was my disasterpiece.) 

Now, I still struggle at writing for myself, because I worry it will get views. I know a few people -- mostly friends -- read my work simply because they enjoy my work and my company and I don't want to disappoint them. And I'm sure it's mostly my inner voice judging me, not my friends, because if they hate it, they'd stop reading BUT. I guess I've been side-eyed already for writing Nebula/Gamora (quasi-incest) mostly playfully. It's stupid, because it's such a rarepair, back in the day, I'd feel less concerned about it but now my name is attached and I almost feel ashamed. I'm sure something something Catholic is applicable here. Or, Tumblr purity culture. Lol.

So conscious decision time. It's either post anonymously or claim my darkfic/badfic/crackfic and own it. I choose the latter. I'm tired of being anonymously fannish, quite frankly. The internet is space for socially unacceptable fannish behavior and my name can be attached. If I lose views, fine. It's better than losing track of why I write.

Comments

[sl_walker]

I'd say own it. You're one of the most conscientious people I've ever met and a damned talented writer to boot. Censorship -- the kind perpetuated by fandom -- is an evil that needs challenged. People can fight over interpretations until the end of the world, but the works deserve to be seen, even when people don't agree with them.

[kierkegarden]

Smiled so brightly reading this. You are so kind. I agree totally about censorship being evil. There are many stories on AO3 that I would never go near, for whatever reason, but they are still creations. You can argue all day about the implications and consequences of putting bad art into the world, what qualifies as bad art, but the point stands that works deserve to be seen and furthermore, creators deserve the space to create.

The funny thing is that I'm not super worried about the level of grimdark as I am going "off brand" but I think that, maybe, sometimes, it's okay not to have a brand when it comes to art and just let the inspiration happen as it does. In any case, thanks for the kind words <3

[sl_walker]

I'm of the mind we can speak up about things like ableism or racism, but censoring is a whole other ballgame, and torturing authors/creators does no good for anyone in the end. Just bringing a light to it and doing better ourselves, whatever our better might be on those issues.

But man, grimdark and heavy and painful isn't 'off brand', authors are authors, regardless. Write and post as you are, and if people don't like it, then they can just not read!