The Guardian Profile Challenge -- Tell us how great you are

[rthstewart]

This article was just infuriating. If you’ve not followed the epic rants on Twitter, a white male pro author (who is apparently pretty good) and the Guardian suddenly discover Narnia fan fic and wildly praise his scintillating tale of the years before Jadis’ rule and the creation of the Stone Table. The article and a separate opinion piece bemoan that this brilliant story cannot be published nor the author compensated for his amazing work because there is that crotchety thing known as property rights in copyrighted material, in this case owned by the Lewis estate.  But, the praise continues, this fan fic is SO good, maybe it's time to re-examine copyright laws!

Oh such a tragedy. Men extolled for writing fan fic (so much so that his friends start lobbying for the law to be changed) and women mocked.

So, I posted an epic Twitter feed of Narnia recs (with self recs specifically encouraged). After bitching with cofax7 , petra , and WingedFlight others, and getting a few super nice comments, we decided we needed to write glowing puff pieces about ourselves and our uncompensated contributions to any fandom.

Winged calls it the #guardianprofilechallenge.  Please write your own few hundred words extolling your virtues as a fan fic or other creator in fandom.  Or, maybe you're just a really awesome fan!  Write that too!  Post it anywhere -- DW, Twitter, Tumblr, whatever.  Style it as a Guardian article, a press release, a blog post, or whatever you like.   After you are exhausted with praise for yourself, post the link here or reprint it in comments so that we might discover and praise you, too.  Because if white dude author guy can print 75 copies of his fanfic and has the gumption to approach the rights holder about publishing it (yes, really), and gets his friends and the Guardian to make that behavior seem reasonable and praiseworthy, well by Gaia, god, a pint of beer, and Aslan, we can do it too.

And I spent this afternoon high on pain killers after my root canal and writing this so you'd better contribute or I'm going to feel like an idiot.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

Oh, for fuck's sake. Look at his smug-as-fuck face.

[alexseanchai]

v punchable

[rthstewart]

Just... I mean REALLY? By the way, I'm sure you're fan created works are publishable. Obviously.

[alexseanchai]

75 copies?

I think my current record for least time elapsed between posting a thing and clearing 100 kudos on the thing is sixteen hours. I like to think I'm pretty good at this "writing" thing, but let's be real here, my recent work is all the juggernaut pairing in an active megafandom. I am far from a BNF (thank fuck).

75 copies? Am I supposed to be impressed?

[rthstewart]

VERY impressed with the 100 kudos in 16 hours and yes, you are VERY good at this writing thing. So

[alexseanchai]

*blush*

My Guardian Profile

[rthstewart]

https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/147540.html

[finch]

I'd love to see how this actually holds up if he posted it on the AO3. Somehow the men who think they invented the genres women have done all the work in are never as impressive as they think they are.

Or dude, if you are determined to get paid for it, you could file the serial numbers off your Narnia fanfic and see how it stands. It seems to have done fine for Lev Grossman and Neil Gaiman.

[rthstewart]

Cofax7 on Twitter pointed out that what's especially infuriating is that he's being praised for what she and the rest of us are mocked for. You are absolutely right -- it's that quintessential devaluing of women's work. men's creative fannish endeavors are "real" (collecting, gaming) and women's work (writing, website curating, community building) are not.

I've been thinking about the piece that Grossman did about fanfic, The Boy Who Lived Forever, in 2011, http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081784,00.html. Two reasons why I liked the piece so much -- he liked Narnia and HP so much he mashed them together to create Filory so Grossman gets it, and he actually went to fan creators when writing the piece. I've always loved Novik's point that no one criticizes you if you want to play someone else's music. The criticism that you aren't being properly creative if you write fan fic is rooted, in part, in the idea that people must not like to write because the only reason you would do it is to get paid. Which is so laughable at so many levels.

[finch]

It's just such a weirdly silo-ed view I don't understand it. Like it requires ignoring the existence of all actual fanfic, stuff like the Magicians, professionally-published expansions of things out of copyright like Wicked, and heck it's written like most licensed fic doesn't exist either... like even if the Lewis estate enthusiastically ran with it, he'd be writing in the tradition of Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz continuations.

[rthstewart]

But ... he's a published author and the rules are different because it's good!

[alexseanchai]

Ten bucks says stuff like Stone Gryphon, cofax7's Carpetbaggers, and that whole sprawling 'verse of bedlamsbard's is miles better.

[watersword]

It's fine, I meant to be in the corner screaming at the top of my lungs, that was intentional, definitely a choice I made and not an involuntary reaction to uninformed nonsense.

[rthstewart]

Well you are wonderful published poet and beautiful writer. Screaming is perfectly reasonable. As opposed to say, sending your lovely fannish poetry to the license holder and asking them to permit you to publish it because everyone says it's SOOO good.

[edenfalling]

Oh, what a bleeping asshat. *spits in his general direction*

You know what these people always remind me of? Famous lit-fic writers who "discover" genre and try to write science fiction and basically recapitulate tropes that were old and tired sixty years ago as if they're new and amazing ideas. UGH.

[yalumesse]

Wow. I heard a bit about this guy but had no idea it was this arrogant.

You all have the best ideas. I hope everyone does this. I'm going to try.

[cofax7]

I don't know the writer at all; I'm willing to believe he's just enthusiastic and ignorant. But I have no patience for the Guardian, who very well knows better. (An old old fanfriend of mine worked there for many years: they're well-informed in pop culture.)

this was harder than I expected

[cofax7]

Fifty years from now someone will write a master's thesis on the prevalence of apocalypses in the work of the fan-writer cofax, a figure of small repute in the international fanfiction community of the early 2000s. They'll discover that in fact cofax abuses semi-colons but does know how to handle the Oxford comma, and pays close attention to world-building, logistics, and characterization. The student might draw some outlandish connection between the desire of the writer to investigate how characters survive (and sometimes thrive) in times of apocalypse, and the looming ecological and political crises of the 2020s.

After publishing many hundreds of thousands of words in X-Files, Stargate, Supernatural, Farscape, and Narnia fandom, cofax's output petered off after 2013, but their major works continue to be read and recommended as classics of their fandoms.

Re: this was harder than I expected

[alexseanchai]

♥

I should reread Carpetbaggers

Re: this was harder than I expected

[rthstewart]

I thought I responded earlier but it was obviously a pain reliever fever dream post root canal. Cofax, this is just DELIGHTFUL. I just love how you characterize yourself as the purveyor of the apocalypse. I had indeed forgotten that post apocalyptic visions were such an amazing thing in your hands. And as Alex says, I obviously need to re-read Carpetbaggers. It's been too long. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for plugging you, because you deserve it and I'm proud of you and honored to know you and your contributions.

[syrena_of_the_lake]

Just read your Guardian Profile, and it was wonderful! We will wait both patiently and with bated breath! Thank you, my friend :-)

And you made me do it: https://syrena-of-the-lake.dreamwidth.org/16219.html

[archersangel]

very nice.

[katharhino]

So the guy made a newbie mistake: he didn't lurk before posting. But instead of realizing his mistake, that he's not the first person ever to have thought of writing a missing-scene fic, he's got the Guardian begging us all to join in the woe (WOE) that this brilliance will be denied to the world. That is the most annoying part to me, the tone of utter tragedy that we cannot all read his fanfic.

As I've written most of my fic, and all my long-form fic, in Austen fandom, I could actually publish if I wanted to. I'm not going to deny that the thought has occurred as Austen fic has taken off as a cottage industry, and I've seen other fanfic authors either self-publish or traditional publish. And I could use the cash. But without judging other people's choices for themselves which may be equally valid, for me, it just seems like a denial of the reason I wrote the fic in the first place, which was purely for love. (And I have the most kudos of any fic on AO3 in the extremely tiny Mansfield Park fandom, so there.)

[generalleia]

Oh my gosh my BLOOD. IS. BOILING.

[silveradept]

Have taken up the challenge, because I could use the practice at figuring out how to write a piece about myself intended to inflate my ego and sound like I'm some sort of really awesome person in fandom, instead of one of many that gets moderate amounts of likes and comments on my various works.

Silver Adept, Short-Order Cook of Fandom is what resulted. Enjoy!

[archersangel]

nice.

very late to the party, but i did one

[archersangel]

https://archersangel.dreamwidth.org/272586.html