Fannish entitlement

[gayalondiel_bak]

Hi all

Recently a friend, I will call them Penfold, expressed upset to me about someone on a fandom Kinkmeme saying they weren't going to finish a story because they had run dry on inspiration. The understanding that I got was that Penfold felt cheated for starting a WIP and being deprived of a conclusion.

That really didn't chime with me.  As a writer my biggest work is sitting half finished as of 2008 because I'm not in the place to finish it, and also because I don't think it's very good. Nevertheless people still follow it on FFN, despite the update dates. Should the Kinkmeme writer have to meep working, devoting evenings and weekends of slot to a story she's not attached to anymore, because god knows, when you're not in a good writing place it can be torturous, just because a few people on a website feel she has an obligation to finish? Should I slog through chapter after chapter of a story I don't even like, because I had the temerity to see if there was an audience for the first chapter before writing the next fifteen? should I be justifying myself and a friend for the collab we started posting before both falling ill, or should I just sit quiet until we're ready? Or should I take it down?

It's an old - and somewhat trite - argument in fandom to point out that we're not paid. But seriously, writing claims on our time - housework, reading, tv, films, cat cuddling all get displaced for fanfic in my house. But if I do it out of obligation with no love, then stories I do love and want to tell are less likely to get written. 

Yes, it's unfortunate when they fall by the wayside.  But the kinkmemes are like that - a quicker and less formal sort of writing, and you don't always know where it will take you. Besides which, there are any number of reasons for not writing more that the author may not be stating, because that's her right too

I am writing on the phone and so even more than usual this is pretty incoherent. Nevertheless I am dying to know if I'm the only one who feels that way about it. Between the entitlement of the loyal reader (who is, after all, choosing to read  work in progress) and the right of the author to choose how to pass their free time, where does everyone else draw the line?

(I'd love to get impressions from beyond my flist, if anyone wants to signal boost. Very interested too to hear from Penfolds variously, when it is right or acceptable for a reader to require continuation?)

A final thought: if JKR had got to the end of Half Blood Prince and decided not to write the last Harry Potter, well, I would have gone into hiding because the reaction would have been apocalyptic. But with the exception of her contracted publisher and by extension Time Warner, would any of us have had the right to demand she complete it?

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

Comments

[marysutherland.livejournal.com]

Can I suggest a slightly different view? The best analogy isn't really producer/consumer: it's pusher/addict. The people who desperately want you to finish a particular story want it because they're hooked on it, because it *matters* to them. It's not just an interchangeable commodity. Are you seeing readers' attitudes as entitlement, when it's really more something visceral along the lines of 'want, want, WANT shiny'? There are authors I love who have stopped writing. There are authors who I love who have died. But that doesn't stop me wanting them to have written more, if it was the good stuff, the hard stuff. There is a reason we're called fanatics, after all.

I've never posted a WIP, because my writing doesn't work like that: I have to have the whole thing written, at least in draft, to tie it together. But I've written stuff that people want sequels to. And sometimes I've felt able to do them and sometimes I haven't: it depends if I can see another story. But the reason people are wanting more is because they think it's good. It's as basic as that.

[gayalondiel.livejournal.com]

Now I have a mental image of Holmes fic being read out piecemeal to desperate addicts in opium dens. Nice.

Briefly, bc my phone is dying: yes, I do see a difference. There are lines between "I want more, shiny!", "I want more, why isn't she delivering?" and "it was unfair (implies: wrong) of her not to finish this story." Sadly, I hear all of these around fandom.

*glares at red battery icon* more anon.

[marysutherland.livejournal.com]

Just to complicate your considerations further (and wear out your new battery), would you consider other criticisms of the way an author continues a story to be valid ones? If Penfold said, for example: "That was a great story up to Chapter 19, but I hated the ending", or "That was a great story up to Chapter 19, but then it went so wrong that I gave up on it, and felt the author had been wasting my time" would you see that as expressing a wrong sense of entitlement from them?

Or is it that criticism of someone for not finishing a work has more general overtones of attitudes towards 'quitters' or 'underachievers' that can seem particularly hurtful to those of us with self-esteem problems? What is the acceptable dividing line between artistic criticism of an author (which has to be allowed) and moral criticism (which is rarely justified)?

[gayalondiel.livejournal.com]

Disliking and critiquing fic are fine. I do that all the time! But, they need to be informed, not just "you suck". On the other hand, if you don't like a story and don't want to write a comment, you are allowed to stop reading - I stopped Paradox in chapter three because I recognised I was never going to like it and I didn't want to waste time trying. If you enjoy 18 chapters and then decide in 19 that your time has been wasted, though, then that was one chapter worth of waste, maximum, because you got pleasure out of the first 18, and you shouldn't bash the author for not doing what you wanted. The main reason I avoid Harry Potter fandom like the plague has to do with the rabid entitlement of the fans, particularly the shippers, and the reactions when they didn't get their way, (although I thought it was all pretty damned obvious what was going to happen). By all means critique, but the author is neither wrong nor a failure because their concept of a story differs from yours.

I also don't think it's the attitude towards underachievers. I don't often give two figs what strangers think of me any more. Friends yes, family definitely, but random people on the internet, I scoff at them more than anything else. I think it's a stretch to say that an entitled reader is expressing moral criticism, though. They are very rarely expressing anything coherent about the author and much more frequently just in sort of afterthought mode, I would think.