“ the moment when, on the internet, creators are in direct competition with their fic-writing fans.”
Yes, I took your huge grain of salt, but it’s worth noting this is a common failure of fandom discourse.
A few hundred fans can ruin a creator’s day. A few dozen can ruin a fanfic author. One persistent jerk with a grudge can make life miserable for creators. I get it, they loon large. However, It takes hundreds of thousands of viewers/readers/merch-buyers to make the real money that attracts and compensates talent.
For every Harry Potter, where controversy endlessly roils close in the fandom and to the creatives (pro reviewers included), there is an Avatar where all the people who made it are left the hell alone to count their millions. Fic writers exist in their own ecosystem, that ecosystem is too scary and angry for normies, and in normie world, which pays for all this stuff, there is no large demand for a lower-quality version of the real thing but with more unusual sex partner combos (but not featuring the original actors). They will be busy eating each other alive, generally out of view, for a long time to come.
I have to give a side-eye to someone who saw Racefail '09 happen and decided "yup, the pseudonymous trolls hurling accusations of racism at innocent people and setting up enemies lists and show trials were the good guys." They were not.
There's an interesting theory here, particularly to the extent that it maps fandom disputes onto stereotypically male or female modes of thought and conflict resolution (and how that gets muddled once you start bringing unstable persons with confused gender identities into the mix) but a more clear-sighted understanding of the morality of the situation would have been appreciated. Especially back in 2009 when it would have been a bit easier to stop all this before it happened.
Sort of interesting how both of these run with the idea of a male/female bifurcation in these typologies. If your thesis is right (and I think it pretty self-apparently is) that distinction has to have broken down somewhere (or never existed) to get hegemonic transformational fandom paradigm.
2009 seems so late for self-awareness on this stuff. Would be interested to see more from late 90's/early aughts (not complaining, these are great finds).
“ the moment when, on the internet, creators are in direct competition with their fic-writing fans.”
Yes, I took your huge grain of salt, but it’s worth noting this is a common failure of fandom discourse.
A few hundred fans can ruin a creator’s day. A few dozen can ruin a fanfic author. One persistent jerk with a grudge can make life miserable for creators. I get it, they loon large. However, It takes hundreds of thousands of viewers/readers/merch-buyers to make the real money that attracts and compensates talent.
For every Harry Potter, where controversy endlessly roils close in the fandom and to the creatives (pro reviewers included), there is an Avatar where all the people who made it are left the hell alone to count their millions. Fic writers exist in their own ecosystem, that ecosystem is too scary and angry for normies, and in normie world, which pays for all this stuff, there is no large demand for a lower-quality version of the real thing but with more unusual sex partner combos (but not featuring the original actors). They will be busy eating each other alive, generally out of view, for a long time to come.
I have to give a side-eye to someone who saw Racefail '09 happen and decided "yup, the pseudonymous trolls hurling accusations of racism at innocent people and setting up enemies lists and show trials were the good guys." They were not.
There's an interesting theory here, particularly to the extent that it maps fandom disputes onto stereotypically male or female modes of thought and conflict resolution (and how that gets muddled once you start bringing unstable persons with confused gender identities into the mix) but a more clear-sighted understanding of the morality of the situation would have been appreciated. Especially back in 2009 when it would have been a bit easier to stop all this before it happened.
Sort of interesting how both of these run with the idea of a male/female bifurcation in these typologies. If your thesis is right (and I think it pretty self-apparently is) that distinction has to have broken down somewhere (or never existed) to get hegemonic transformational fandom paradigm.
2009 seems so late for self-awareness on this stuff. Would be interested to see more from late 90's/early aughts (not complaining, these are great finds).