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

[gayalondiel.livejournal.com]

Publishing part of a story is taking part in a social contract, a promise that you will carry it through to the end

With whom have you made that contract? If you very clearly label something as a WIP, there is a responsibility on the part of the reader to recognise that it is not a complete piece of work, understand that life gets in the way, the muse sometimes doesn't play, and either take the risk or leave it until it's completed.

It's just comment-grubbing, without willingness to put in the work to "write properly"
That, as a writer who has on occasion thought "I have no idea if this works, if people will like it, and I can't face the thought of slogging my guts out for weeks months years on it before finding out if anyone beyond me gives a crap," is actually quite offensive. If I were comment grubbing I'd write porn 100% of the time. Different writing is not improper writing and one of the joys of kinkmeme fic is seeing the drafting process take place in public with the author later de-anoning, cleaning it up and posting a finished version. You wouldn't get that in a fanzine, but if you want fanzine styles, read fanzines.

how fanfic ought to work.
That is one of the main reasons I am rejecting fandom more and more these days. Yes there's ettiquette involved in LJ, but imposing a strict set of rules so you can demand how other people operate their creativity, like a critic or publishing house, but not actually paying them in the way a publishing house would, is a little bit fucked. Who chooses how it ought to be, and what makes them more right than me?

Again, the reader is on the other side of that social contract. If you don't want to risk the break, don't read the WIPs.

[sally_maria]

Oh, you should have seen me ten years ago, arguing in favour of people's right to post WIPs and that they weren't automatically inferior. It's an old-fashioned attitude, there's no doubt about it.

Oddly enough, it went hand in hand with a very author-centric attitude to fic - it was an expectation that authors imposed on each other, not something that came from readers. (We were very much second-class citizens in those days.) So it tended to be combined with resistance to a lot of the other requirements that we take for granted these days, headers, warnings, even pairing labels.

I do wonder if the modern jerks who espouse it at the tops of their voices also agree with them on that, or whether it's just an idea that passed on without the context.