This was written before watching Confidential or reading any other responses. I might have more to say later.
( Meta observation with implied spoilers )
( Meta observation with implied spoilers )
Year of Fail continues
Sep. 30th, 2009 01:48 pmIt's just like the Everready bunny, isn't it? Now we come back to cultural appropriation, from a different direction.
I've got a rotten cold and don't feel up to a detailed argument, so have an outline:
1: Oh, for crying out loud.
2: Original slash is, to a first approximation, written by and for women. Many - the majority, I believe - of the authors are het cis women. The stories are romance, erotica, or both.
Slash has the potential to be subversive, but my mostly-secondhand impression is that it usually isn't.
3: Gay fiction, as it was called in my day (LGBT is what the Lambda Literary Foundation are calling it; other acronyms are available), can be any genre. Its defining characteristic is featuring characters of minority sexuality and/or minority gender, from the viewpoint of someone who knows what they're talking about, unlike the stereotypes we're usually confronted with in the mainstream media.
LGBT fiction might just be written as a romance, detective story, western, SF story etc. with a protagonist the author can relate to, but promoting it as LGBT fiction is inherently political.
4: 2 and 3 are not the same thing.
If slash writers want to win awards, they should roll their own.
In the first post I read about this, Willow disproved a well-meaning but unfounded argument.
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likespring calls out some of the nasty things being said (includes quotations of racism and general cluelessness; I'm using it as a guide to what not to read in the linkspam)
linkspam masterpost
I've got a rotten cold and don't feel up to a detailed argument, so have an outline:
1: Oh, for crying out loud.
2: Original slash is, to a first approximation, written by and for women. Many - the majority, I believe - of the authors are het cis women. The stories are romance, erotica, or both.
Slash has the potential to be subversive, but my mostly-secondhand impression is that it usually isn't.
3: Gay fiction, as it was called in my day (LGBT is what the Lambda Literary Foundation are calling it; other acronyms are available), can be any genre. Its defining characteristic is featuring characters of minority sexuality and/or minority gender, from the viewpoint of someone who knows what they're talking about, unlike the stereotypes we're usually confronted with in the mainstream media.
LGBT fiction might just be written as a romance, detective story, western, SF story etc. with a protagonist the author can relate to, but promoting it as LGBT fiction is inherently political.
4: 2 and 3 are not the same thing.
If slash writers want to win awards, they should roll their own.
In the first post I read about this, Willow disproved a well-meaning but unfounded argument.
likespring calls out some of the nasty things being said (includes quotations of racism and general cluelessness; I'm using it as a guide to what not to read in the linkspam)linkspam masterpost
( Background, cut for length and so certain people don't have to read it )
Positive outcomes that I have observed
The usual disclaimer applies: this is not worth the pain that's been caused. But it looks as if they'll lead to less pain in the future.
Some people have said that now they get it, and they'll be more careful to warn correctly in future, or that they don't like warnings, but other people's pain is more important than their don't like, so they'll do it anyway, or that they're going back through their archive making sure that all necessary warnings are in place.
Some people have said that they don't warn but always say so up front (which is a warning, just a non-specific one), or that they don't warn because there's nothing to warn for and they'll say so explicitly from now on.
A resource for writers:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amadi posted a technical solution for people who want to post warnings while avoiding spoilers, with bonus accessibility considerations. ETA I've experimented with part of this on my Dollhouse post, adding the skip but not the blanking out. As another experiment, the link here should go to the collapsed version of the post. /ETA
A resource for readers:trigger_fence. Lists authors who don't warn for common triggers (the selection is evolving in the comments), and the user info has links to sites with warnings for specific stories. I hope somebody is backing that up just in case LJ Abuse don't laugh in the face of the people who threw a hissy fit about being on the list. Is it being mirrored here yet?
I plan to come back and add to this later (memo to self: update the time stamp). LATER:
What's the word for seeing something everywhere? While I was gone, I was watching part of last night's Glastonbury coverage, and the Specials were playing "Doesn't make it alright", and an in-vision warning appeared: "This footage contains flashing images". This might be something that happens all the time and I don't notice.
Then I read a blog post that begins "(Warning: this post contains details of a car accident.)" (She's "pretty much ok".)
Anyway: does anybody know any other Good Stuff that's come out of this? And I hope that if you think anything I write should be under a cut or have some other kind of warning, that you'll tell me in the comments. I'm still trying things out.
Positive outcomes that I have observed
The usual disclaimer applies: this is not worth the pain that's been caused. But it looks as if they'll lead to less pain in the future.
Some people have said that now they get it, and they'll be more careful to warn correctly in future, or that they don't like warnings, but other people's pain is more important than their don't like, so they'll do it anyway, or that they're going back through their archive making sure that all necessary warnings are in place.
Some people have said that they don't warn but always say so up front (which is a warning, just a non-specific one), or that they don't warn because there's nothing to warn for and they'll say so explicitly from now on.
A resource for writers:
amadi posted a technical solution for people who want to post warnings while avoiding spoilers, with bonus accessibility considerations. ETA I've experimented with part of this on my Dollhouse post, adding the skip but not the blanking out. As another experiment, the link here should go to the collapsed version of the post. /ETAA resource for readers:
trigger_fence. Lists authors who don't warn for common triggers (the selection is evolving in the comments), and the user info has links to sites with warnings for specific stories. I hope somebody is backing that up just in case LJ Abuse don't laugh in the face of the people who threw a hissy fit about being on the list. Is it being mirrored here yet?I plan to come back and add to this later (memo to self: update the time stamp). LATER:
What's the word for seeing something everywhere? While I was gone, I was watching part of last night's Glastonbury coverage, and the Specials were playing "Doesn't make it alright", and an in-vision warning appeared: "This footage contains flashing images". This might be something that happens all the time and I don't notice.
Then I read a blog post that begins "(Warning: this post contains details of a car accident.)" (She's "pretty much ok".)
Anyway: does anybody know any other Good Stuff that's come out of this? And I hope that if you think anything I write should be under a cut or have some other kind of warning, that you'll tell me in the comments. I'm still trying things out.
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