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selenakAh, fandom. Place of joyful sharing and endless bitching, and each time on thinks one aspect dominates, on gets reminded the other is also there. This meaning, I read a post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
londonkds which put me in a rather cynical mood – more about this below – and then I checked out ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse, and my emails, and lo and behold, two of my muses got presented with paid accounts by a generous fellow player. I’m tickled and thrilled to death about this, and promptly went icon-hunting, telling myself this means I did something right with my writing of these two Jossverse characters.
(Meanwhile, Londo wants to know why he never got presented with a paid account, but I told him three icons are absolutely enough for him, and that he’s mostly on challenge replies and hardly rps these days anyway due to my lack of time. He then sauntered off to have a chat with the Alien Queen which is alltitania_le_fey’s fault.)
Now, about that cynical thing. Seems to me that ever since Arthur Conan Doyle’s readers flamed him into resurrecting Sherlock Holmes, the sense of fannish entitlement has only grown stronger.londonkds brings up fen complaining that an actor doesn’t do DVD commentaries. And I recall a lot of posts citing the fact SMG up to very recently didn’t go to conventions and didn’t do commentaries either as evidence of her being “snobbish” and “ungrateful to the fans”.
Then there is the whole prickly author/headwriter – readers/audience thing. These days, several main producers/headwriters of tv shows grew up being fans themselves. They know about fandom and fannish rituals, and depending on their age, they’re avid users of the internet. I think JMS, the creator of Babylon 5, was one of the earliest examples of someone in this position posting at a regular basis, thus communicating with the fans. Joss Whedon and some of his writers and fellow producers like Tim Minear or David Fury posted regularly on message boards during the course of Buffy, Angel and Firefly (and Joss still posts). Neil Gaiman and some other authors write blogs. J.K. Rowling has a website and answers questions there, and of course she gives interviews. I wasn’t in the fandom, but I seem to recall Aaron Sorkin posted at TWP (and promptly got into a kerfuffle or two, resulting in him being banned). As far as the new Battlestar Galactica is concerned, Ron Moore writes a blog and does podcasts for the episodes.
About two weeks ago, there were some posts along the lines of “Ron Moore needs to shut up”, apropos the podcast for The Farm, I think, or maybe the newest blog. And of course JKR only has to open her mouth in an interview for at least a part of the readership to declare she ought to shut up, too.
The usual argument is that the authors/producers, by giving opinions on their creations, “force” interpretations, and mostly simplistic interpretations, on their readers/watchers who otherwise would be at liberty to go for far more interesting interpretations. I don’t get this. I mean, of course I get that you want to be at liberty to interpret, and that an author’s opinion isn’t necessarily nearly as interesting as some outside interpretations. I absolutely agree with this, and also with the definition of canon as only what the creative work shows us – i.e. the episodes of a tv show, not the commentary, a book by a writer, not the interviews.
But nobody forces people to read the interviews, the blogs, or to listen to the podcast. For that matter, nobody forces the writers to do this. They don’t get paid for this, either. They do it in their spare time, out of enthusiasm for their show/books/whatever, and possibly because they remember being fans themselves. Fans aren’t entitled to get these extra contributions from them. They are entitled to get a good book, a good show. Or, in the case of an actor, a good performance. No more than that. Certainly no convention appearances, DVD commentaries or podcasts. These things are gifts, presents. Do we have to like the presents once we open them? No. I’ve listened to some dreary commentaries in my time. (I also got presents which I really didn’t want.) But in my not so humble opinion, it’s only good manners to regard this stuff as a gift nonetheless, and say thank you. Then you can put it in the attic if you don’t like it, and not look at it ever again.
To react with “shut up”, otoh, is the behaviour of a spoiled child.
londonkds which put me in a rather cynical mood – more about this below – and then I checked out theatrical_muse, and my emails, and lo and behold, two of my muses got presented with paid accounts by a generous fellow player. I’m tickled and thrilled to death about this, and promptly went icon-hunting, telling myself this means I did something right with my writing of these two Jossverse characters.(Meanwhile, Londo wants to know why he never got presented with a paid account, but I told him three icons are absolutely enough for him, and that he’s mostly on challenge replies and hardly rps these days anyway due to my lack of time. He then sauntered off to have a chat with the Alien Queen which is all
titania_le_fey’s fault.) Now, about that cynical thing. Seems to me that ever since Arthur Conan Doyle’s readers flamed him into resurrecting Sherlock Holmes, the sense of fannish entitlement has only grown stronger.
londonkds brings up fen complaining that an actor doesn’t do DVD commentaries. And I recall a lot of posts citing the fact SMG up to very recently didn’t go to conventions and didn’t do commentaries either as evidence of her being “snobbish” and “ungrateful to the fans”. Then there is the whole prickly author/headwriter – readers/audience thing. These days, several main producers/headwriters of tv shows grew up being fans themselves. They know about fandom and fannish rituals, and depending on their age, they’re avid users of the internet. I think JMS, the creator of Babylon 5, was one of the earliest examples of someone in this position posting at a regular basis, thus communicating with the fans. Joss Whedon and some of his writers and fellow producers like Tim Minear or David Fury posted regularly on message boards during the course of Buffy, Angel and Firefly (and Joss still posts). Neil Gaiman and some other authors write blogs. J.K. Rowling has a website and answers questions there, and of course she gives interviews. I wasn’t in the fandom, but I seem to recall Aaron Sorkin posted at TWP (and promptly got into a kerfuffle or two, resulting in him being banned). As far as the new Battlestar Galactica is concerned, Ron Moore writes a blog and does podcasts for the episodes.
About two weeks ago, there were some posts along the lines of “Ron Moore needs to shut up”, apropos the podcast for The Farm, I think, or maybe the newest blog. And of course JKR only has to open her mouth in an interview for at least a part of the readership to declare she ought to shut up, too.
The usual argument is that the authors/producers, by giving opinions on their creations, “force” interpretations, and mostly simplistic interpretations, on their readers/watchers who otherwise would be at liberty to go for far more interesting interpretations. I don’t get this. I mean, of course I get that you want to be at liberty to interpret, and that an author’s opinion isn’t necessarily nearly as interesting as some outside interpretations. I absolutely agree with this, and also with the definition of canon as only what the creative work shows us – i.e. the episodes of a tv show, not the commentary, a book by a writer, not the interviews.
But nobody forces people to read the interviews, the blogs, or to listen to the podcast. For that matter, nobody forces the writers to do this. They don’t get paid for this, either. They do it in their spare time, out of enthusiasm for their show/books/whatever, and possibly because they remember being fans themselves. Fans aren’t entitled to get these extra contributions from them. They are entitled to get a good book, a good show. Or, in the case of an actor, a good performance. No more than that. Certainly no convention appearances, DVD commentaries or podcasts. These things are gifts, presents. Do we have to like the presents once we open them? No. I’ve listened to some dreary commentaries in my time. (I also got presents which I really didn’t want.) But in my not so humble opinion, it’s only good manners to regard this stuff as a gift nonetheless, and say thank you. Then you can put it in the attic if you don’t like it, and not look at it ever again.
To react with “shut up”, otoh, is the behaviour of a spoiled child.
