So, Fujimaki kind of fell down on explaining a lot of what Kise did in the semi-final match; this, of course, means that I needed to poke at it and try to come up with a rationale. It's actually surprisingly easy, and over and above that it also suggests some interesting things about the shape of Kise's real talent and why it hasn't manifested completely yet.

The very short version is that Kise simply doesn't have enough experience; his story is the one that has the most need to keep going into next year to develop. It's actually kind of ruthlessly realistic of Fujimaki, considering.

First, though, let's back up and think about what it is he actually does.

( spoilers obviously )

Having watched the latest round of wrangling over fic and copyright, I am starting to think that it's time to stop slanging each other over who better understands what copyright law presently is.

Because copyright law is presently a morass of contradictory statements and precedents that don't gel into any even vaguely coherent policy, aside, perhaps, from "the one with the most money wins".

What we should do instead is think, seriously, about what we do and whether or not we think it is truly right or wrong.

If we think that what we do is wrong, we should stop. Stop ficcing. Stop vidding. Stop arting. If it's wrong.

But if we think it's right, that what we do causes no harm to anyone, either spiritual or monetary, then we should damn well act like it. If what we do is right, then we should, indeed, step forward and talk to the press and insist on legal protection against wrongful persecution--for example, having all your content trashed off the web because someone's lawyers sent a cease and desist notice to your service provider.

What we should be arguing over, and as visibly as possible, is the way in which what we do is just as valid a derivative art form as parody, and that copyright law as it is currently applied to us is abusive and incorrect.

Theoretically, copyright can only protect specific expressions. Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Yet. Every what-if, every missing-scene, every divergent-future is a new expression, and there is no good reason to quash them. Authorial emotional possessiveness does not count as a good reason, and, yes, that's a two-way street, and we need to deal with that fact too. Something that's published is placed into the common cultural dialogue, and you can't have it both ways.

And, while some big authors may use copyright as if it were meant to protect their worldbuilding efforts, they're ultimately shooting themselves in the foot. What copyright is really about, practically, is money, and as soon as they don't have big money behind them, they're SOL just like the rest of us. If copyright is "supposed" to protect worldbuilding, then why could I go out and publish a book about Tom Bottle, who has green eyes and black hair and goes to a school for magic and is destined to save the world and has these two really good friends, and a few arch-enemies, and Rowling would have a hell of an uphill battle to do anything about it? Consider Vanilla Ice versus Queen and David Bowie. Consider the Mitchell estate versus Randall and The Wind Done Gone. In neither case was there any kind of clear or definitive outcome, and the material that got taken to court (or, possibly, threatened with such) is still out there being published and paid for. ... well, probably not in Ice's case, but if the song had more staying power, it could be. The courts in this country don't care about artistic integrity or any of that, or else the outcomes of the conflics I just mentioned wouldn't have been such a bizarre mish-mash.

The point is, history and the balance of precedent are both on our side, not only when we claim fic is a valid artform, but also if we wish to claim fic is a valid commercial product. The latter will be a harder battle, to be sure. But I think it's worth fighting.

Because the current trend of limiting creativity to "valid" outlets, who have paid cash on the barrel for the privilege, of patenting and trademarking and copyrighting absolutely everything one can get one's (corporate) hands on, is going in a very bad direction. I really don't want to spend my writing time looking over my shoulder, wondering when they're going to come for me, and whether Disney has managed to convince a court that children's stories yet unwritten belong to them. And there's no reason any of us should have to.

Copyright, still, only protects particular expressions. We are in the right. I really think it's time we put some work into staying there, and making sure this current, insane trend toward "protecting" ideas is pushed back.

Cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism is a useful mental tool, especially in the field of anthropology but also in day to day life in a global world. It can be boiled down to the reminder that not all cultures are the same, and the conceptual categories of one may well not be what you need to understand another.

This can also be rendered, especially by frustrated anth teachers, as: it's not yours, you are not at home, do not try to make this other place/time/people into your own, because they're NOT! (Case in point of failure to remember, or even consider, this: Wallis Budge's translation of the Book of the Dead.)

This is, as I say, especially useful for people from a dominant, privileged or mechanically/technologically advanced culture who are going off to study people who are not any or all of those things. It keeps the arrogance of understanding (more accurately, assumed understanding) in check.

The thing is, what cultural relativism does is make sure a person does not either a) assume they know all the whys and wherefores or b) dismiss everything unfamiliar to them as stupid and barbaric.

It does not mean that one does not make judgements about what one encounters.

Cultural relativism, especially of the non-anth-specific philosophical variety, does not mean "Oh, it's their own way, they're not from our culture, we can't judge", because that's bullshit. Of course we can judge. And so can they. And so we all do. Pretending otherwise won't help, and the notion that "outsiders have no right to judge" is exactly the kind of thing that prevents both legislation and action against violence inside the family. We have every right to judge, all of us, about everything.

The responsibility of an intelligent and thoughtful person is not to cease judging. It is, rather, to keep in mind that being outside a situation makes some things easier to see and others harder. And that the thing in question might be one of the ones that's harder. An intelligent and thoughtful person has a responsibility to always be willing to look at new information and take that information into account, no matter how well they think they understand the situation already.

An intelligent and thoughtful person also has a responsibility to evaluate the information, of course, taking into consideration the source and occassion.

It's always a balancing act. Always in motion. Judgements that are stable, that have stopped, that are satisfied... those are the ones that are categorically mistaken, not neccessarily in content but in process. Those are the judgements that are insupportable, because time always goes on and you never know when new information will come to light that might change the whole question into something else.

The fact that good judgements are never final, never absolute and never finished does not let anyone off the hook from making them.

Or changing them.

What cultural relativism does is remind us that we might be wrong. Not that we are certain to be wrong, when we are judging someone else's cultural activities, because having grown up with something or not grown up with it does not confer automatic and eternal rightness or wrongness. But that we might be wrong, and should remember where we're standing.

Because another way to boil down cultural relativism is: be aware of your own position.

No one is unbiased, whether inside or outside of a situation. Nor is it always clear where the in/out line lies. This is the other reason no one can make absolute judgements, because every judgement comes from a very specific life experience.

That does not invalidate the judgements in question.

The trick, in all cases, is to be aware of the interest one may have when judging a given cultural practice because one is female or white or the employee of an oil corporation or a dog owner. Be aware of the interest and ask oneself, not whether one's position is influencing one's judgement because of course it will, but instead whether it is obscuring one's ability to view and consider all the information involved. That is what one must strive to avoid, not the making of ongoing judgements as best one can.

In the end, this can be a powerful tool in making judgements and then choosing where and when to act on them. What it should never be is an excuse to avoid the responsibility, as a thinking human being, to have opinions on how human beings act towards each other.

Seeing as the subject has been broached, I suppose it’s about time I posted this one publicly.

I think fandom needs a new word.

Because the word spoiler is far too specific to cover what a large number of people seem to want, which is total information blackout.

A spoiler, traditionally, is information about some pivotal plot or character development, given out before the source material is openly available or very soon after: a character death, if it is of significance and not just the week’s Ensign Redshirt; a character’s past, if some mystery has surrounded it; some significant alteration in behavior or, more than that, the explanation for that alteration. This is information whose concealment from the reader/viewer plays some significant part in the story. Trivial or general information does not constitute a spoiler. No, really, it doesn’t. Fight the brainwashing! Reclaim your common sense!

Ahem. *pulls self together*

Thus (to take an example whose statute of limitations has run out) in the first Harry Potter book the fact that Hermione’s parents are dentists is not a spoiler, nor is the fact that Harry is an orphan. The fact that Harry’s mother died to protect him is a spoiler… or would have been, lo these several years ago before everyone and their cousin’s dog heard it on the Today Show.

(There’s another post about my opinion of the Harry Potter Industry, and the way they’ve encouraged pathological spoiler frenzy in the HP fandom, but that is, as I say, another post.)

So, for example.

Not Spoiler: There’s a tough character named Thusandsuch.
Spoiler: There’s this character, Thusandsuch, and he almost kills the hero’s girlfriend but she gets saved at the last minute.

Not Spoiler: We find out more about Soandso’s past.
Spoiler: We find out that Soandso is really the child of Deity X.

Not Spoiler: Y’s loyalties are ambiguous.
Spoiler: Y starts on side X, switches to side Z and winds up making his own side M. Maybe because he keeps losing.

If it could reasonably be expected to appear in the jacket blurb, supposing the source text were a book, or in the Next Week On, supposing it were a television series, it is not a spoiler. (I don’t include movie trailers since those seem to run more to actual spoilers lately.)

Note of interest: in the current, hair-triggered atmosphere of many fandoms, it is not uncommon for a not-spoiler to be identified as a spoiler by people who have already read/viewed the book/episode/movie in question. This appears to be an honest, if not particularly bright, mistake. Because the person who has already read/viewed knows exactly what the not-spoiler refers to, they immediately assume that the post itself gave that information away, and do not pause to reflect that it was their own prior knowledge that supplied the spoiler-grade details. The ironic twist is that such a not-spoiler only becomes a spoiler if the reader already knows the details of the characters or events alluded to… in which case it is not, of course, a spoiler.

Moving along, though.

Many fans like to avoid spoilers. This is understandable.

However, many fans also like to avoid any information whatsoever. This is also understandable, I suppose, especially if you worry about the people you’re talking to slipping up in their enthusiasm. The trouble comes when this desire is expressed as a desire to not read spoilers. Because while that statement is true, it does not effectively convey the extent of their desire for ignorance.

The most long-standing and well-recognized expression of wishing to avoid spoilers is “Don’t tell me how it ends”. And then there’s the next level which is “Don’t tell me anything!”. The distinction between spoiler-free and blackout is a useful one to keep, and trying to make “spoiler” count for absolutely everything just makes for extra confusion and ire.

Some people like knowing everything; some people like knowing the basics; and some people like knowing nothing. Fandom needs to learn how to a) tell the difference and b) say which one they want.

And then, if we’re lucky, people will stop hollering “That’s a spoiler!” when what they really mean is “That’s information!”. If the comm rules say blackout cut, rather than spoiler cut, then that may, at least, take care of the instances of people innocently posting a not-spoiler only to be belabored for a crime they did not, in fact, commit.

As for the idjits who knowingly post spoilers and just can’t be bothered to figure out how to make an lj cut, well they’re a lost cause anyway.

Spinning off from Resonant8’s entry on character making, and the discussion following, I find myself wandering in thought toward the writers of the Endicott Studio, toward Ursula K. Le Guin and her “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, and toward Lois McMaster Bujold and her Vorkosigan books.

At first glance, one of these things is not like the others.

The Endicott writers such as Emma Bull, Charles Delint, Terri Windling and all her proteges have, I think, an obvious resonance with Le Guin. As Le Guin points out, the story of the Hero and his linear conflict with, not uncommonly, most of the rest of the world, is the most valorized literary model of Western storytelling. There are, however, other ways of telling a story, and other stories worth telling. Those other stories are often the ones that the Endicott writers focus on. The world of their stories does not make sense (as per Mr. Clemens’ dictum); what we see instead is the characters attempting to make sense of their world–not always successfully and certainly never completely. Their stories and characters wander, picking up as they go things that seem meaningful or interesting to stow in the bag of the story. Some of those things prove not to be meaningful to the immediate story, after all, and, in a proper Hero story, would have been snipped out in the telling… or, at least, in the editing. Here, they are not, but rather left in the bag to puzzle everyone with their presence. “Secondary” characters have just as full a life and existence as “primary” ones, only we see far less of those lives, often leaving us wondering what was left untold. We are not directed to the triumphant or tragic end of the story, but rather tempted toward the outskirts and down side alleys. This is especially obvious in the Bordertown anthologies, in which the writers shared their characters back and forth, pulled them into each other’s stories and chucked them out again, willy nilly and with no enlightenment to show for it. The conflict that the characters think they are in often turns out to be a mistaken perception.

This is Carrier Bag writing.

And that brings me to Bujold. Because one of the more consistent themes in the Miles Vorkosigan books is that Miles throws himself into the conflicts in his life with every ounce of energy and spirit that is in him… only to find that the conflict is a mirage and his hands pass through it and he lands in an ungraceful heap in the middle of another situation entirely. By all rights of character, Miles should be a Hero. And sometimes he is. But those times are, as he puts it, matters of “forward momentum”, of running full tilt along a highwire, because if he stops he’ll waver and fall. Exciting. Desperate. Unsustainable.

Is that not the essence of the Hero story?

Recently, and, tellingly, as Miles gets older, Miles comes to reject that model. He is still the Hero, at times. But now, instead of running, he stands still. Instead of his military career he embraces a political one–and not the politics of conflict but the politics of family, of kitchen negotiation, of cultivation. Instead of the stories of the bag-carriers being subordinated to The Story of The Spear-carrier, it happens the other way around. Miles is the Hero in the service, not of Accomplishment, but of Existence–not the linear, or even the circular, but the still and the wandering.

Bujold has put the Hero in the Carrier Bag.

I find this delightful, but it is true that such departures often fail to endear a story to an audience grown to expect Heroes with spears and without bags, and nicely spun yarns that don’t snarl. I suspect that the presence of the Hero, despite his Bagging, is one of the reasons Bujold has better sales, and considerably better market staying power than the Bordertown books. By the same token, I suspect Bujold’s tendency toward bag-narrative is a significant part of why she has a smaller following than, say, Mercedes Lackey.

Jumbled up bags are fascinating, but they are not quick.

These, then, are my own models of character building (and, indeed, world building). The guiding concept I have taken from these stories is not to select a specific conflict to motivate my characters, but rather to elaborate wildly and somewhat omni-directionally on my characters’ potential lives and then choose a handful of threads from that tapestry (or snarl) to tell about in a given moment. The choice of threads narrows the scope of what is told. But my most favorite stories are the ones that tell, one way or another, everything that the chosen viewpoint can see in that swatch.

So, out of the latest go-rounds about writing sensitive issues and writing what one knows have come the following thoughts. In many ways, this little coda only brings a few high points back around, but, then, most good discussions run in spirals. And I did want to toss an extra point or two out for consideration.

( Cut for length )

In the manner proper to a spiral, let me end someplace different. When we write a story, we make a world, be it full-bodied or barely sketched. Sometimes it's only for ourselves; sometimes it goes further than that. Any story, good or bad by whatever measure, is a transformation. I do not think that responsibility to one's story, to oneself, and to one's readers are really seperate things, despite having dealt with them separately above. The meaning of the transformation is something we, writers and readers and history, make together. It serves nothing, even simple enjoyment, to forget or ignore that.

Well, now, there's a thought. Is it possible to be a fan of Story X without being absorbed by/invested in the source text? Can one be a fan of Story X when one only knows it via fanworks?

My knee-jerk reaction is "yes, of course." Which I find odd, because The Story is the center and heart of my concept of fandom. Yet, rummaging around in my own motivation a little more, perhaps it isn't so strange. Because I, too, consider my fannish value system a populist one, and, out of a populist value system, should not all textual producers be equal? Why should the official/original version be privileged over the fannish reworkings?

And now I've got myself in a real fix, because I do feel the originary text has to have some priviledge; it's the primary source, it's the one the fanworks derive from.

Yet, sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes fanon overcomes canon, and the text that is central to a given fandom becomes a body of fanworks which are, sometimes quite noticeably, not much based on the originary text. For example, let me return to Gundam Wing.

Well, actually, let me not return to Gundam Wing, but let me try to draw examples from it anyway.

The canon text was, in most quarters, thoroughly drowned out by a majority-accepted fanon text which used the same names but differed significantly in descriptions, characters and plot points (keywords: cobalt, bouncy, hn, safe house). The canon text became co-equal, as a source text, with this fannish production. Details upon which to base further fanworks were taken indescriminately from either source or both.

GW was certainly fandom. It had all the standard earmarks: passionate investment in the central texts, appropriation of the text, possessiveness of the characters. Was it a fandom consisting of fans of Gundam Wing?

I have to say, yes.

I suppose my reason goes back to my conviction that a text is nothing without its readers, and that the readers are a vital part of how the meaning of any given text is produced. And that one of the most basic moves of fandom is to become author as well as reader to the source text. So, if the meaning that a bunch of fans find in a given story is better expressed by the fan telling of that story than the initial telling... that does not divorce them from the initial telling. It just complicates the relationship. A relationship still exists, even if a given fan never lays eyes on the canon text. If it is a relationship that fans who cleave to the initial telling find frivilous, well, upright, everyday, mainstream culture thinks we're all frivilous, now, doesn't it?


Addendum, which may or may not get incorporated into this particular essay:I do think there's a difference between saying "that activity/approach/value puts you outside of good/acceptable fandom" or even "outside of fandom period", and saying "that activity/approach/value makes you a weird fan who's not like me".

The latter is just discourse communities working themselves out. It's the initial gut response to something strange or uncomfortable. What I find unfortunate is when that gut response becomes the basis of one of the former statements--the universalization of one's own value set, as Cathexys says. Judging a member of one's own discourse community by the values of that community may get ugly, especially if it's part of a renegotiation of what that community's values are. But it is, I would say, part of the basic process of thinking and communicating, and we just have to hack it as best we can. To judge a member of another community by the values of one's own is pointless; fandom has plenty enough room for incompatible communities to ignore each other.

Of course this gets hugely messy, because we all have more than one community, and there are the questions of redefinition, and recruitment, and influence within larger communities. But I still think the basic principle is a useful one to keep in mind while processing the "Weirdo!" reaction.

Concentrated opinionatedness ahead, just in case anyone who hangs out here was in any doubt.

What makes a good online role player:

Thoughtful and rounded character construction. When you're working with derivative characters, this means taking whatever background the source text plus your setting provides and trying to fill in the blanks in a consistent manner. With logs and character journals you have to find the voice of the character, and this works best once you've decided in your own mind how your character thinks and feels about a bunch of things. Does he like his family? How does she do in her classes, and how does she relate with her teachers and classmates? Is he thinking of changing jobs, and what will that mean to his children? Just what secrets does she keep from which people?

Patience. So, here's this great idea, and you really want to see how it works out, and it will be so cool. Great. It will be even cooler if time is taken to let the idea develop at actual, human speed. If you want to take a character from zero to undying love in a week, you should be writing a story arc, not role playing. Role playing works best when you don't try to compress events, and when it's happening in real-time, as much online RP does, that means letting plotlines work out over weeks and months. A bit of relaxation, and enjoyment of filling in the details helps.

Variety. Nothing is so deadly boring, to everyone other than your obsessive self, as one-track play. If your character never experiences anything other than ANGSTANGSTANGST, or, for that matter, SMUTSMUTSMUT, then he or she becomes a) flat and cardboard, and b) a closed circut that is difficult to play with or against. When there's some angst and some fun and some silliness and some smut and some everyday just-doing-them things, there are a whole lot more opportunities for your character to interact with other characters in a way that actually lets them progress instead of freezing into one reaction loop.

Respect. That is, don't buffalo people into the plotline you want when they don't want to go there. That's annoying as hell whether it's done by the GM or by another player. Also, it isn't good to use other people as part of your personal psychotherapy without their knowledge or consent; it's just asking for trouble. So if RP is your way of working out your issues, make sure you're playing with people who accept that agenda.

Discrimination. That is, be a little choosy. Don't pick just any old character, because that so often leads to really careless characterization. Coming at this from the other direction, if you know what kind of character you want to play, pick a character who has those aspects, or, at least, does not have a background that would contradict those characteristics. For example, if you want to play a weepy, wimpy Damsel In Distress (tm), for crying in silence don't pick a proud, determined, self-confident character to do it with.


This concludes today's installment of "essaying instead of clawing my eyes out".

So, one of Hana’s posts made me think–specifically about authority in fandom.

The start of this thought was actually the perennial issue of feedback and commenting, and how well or ill fic authors receive critical reviews. The occasion, this time, was an article noting how badly many students in the current generation (whatever that may be) take criticism in class or at work once they have jobs. And the juxtaposition of these things suddenly snapped something into focus for me.

A lot of the hissing and spitting over this subject in Western fandom seems to come down to authority.

A great many negative responses to negative comments that I’ve seen, my own included, are variations on the theme of “Where do you get off talking like that to me?” Which then gives rise to the standard return, which has become some variation on “You posted it in public and nobody paid me to be nice, get over it.” It may sound like an exchange over manners or freedom of speech or too much/too little personal investment, and those issues are, no doubt, present. But I think the underlying debate has directly to do with how authority is produced in fandom.

The problem, of course, being that there isn’t any one stable way, and the most stable model does not lend itself to calm interaction.

So, author X writes and posts a story (let’s keep this about fic, for now) and reader Y comes along and says that X got some characterization wrong. X goes up in flames and asks how Y can be so rude, was she raised in a pigpen, and things go downhill from there. In particularly bad cases, friends of both X and Y pile on, and ego-fluffing and mud-slinging commence apace. Sound familiar?

I would like to suggest that what X is saying is not (or not only) “how can you do such a mean thing as say my story isn’t perfect” but rather (or also) “where’s your authority to say your character interpretation is more valid than mine?”

And where is the authority?

Fandom is not an academic context, so it doesn’t necessarily do any good for those of us who have advanced degrees to make our CVs into icons for when we post commentary. Teaching as a system of authority has no formal parameters for recognition, here; when it happens it’s a one on one arrangement of personal recognition. Any attempt to arrogate that kind of authority, without getting the individual, personal recognition of it first, tends to be met with especially violent rejection–quite rightly, in my own opinion. Fandom is not a commercial context (at least not this way), so there’s no really big salary to wave around, no fic equivalent of three BMWs and a lake house. A place in a well known archive can sometimes have the same effect as getting the corner office, but those who maintain archives have no particular authority of their own outside that particular site. Thus any insistence that such recognition is based on merit tends to have credence only in very localized terms. Online fandom has no supervisory structure at all, except for moderators who are usually extremely self-limited in their powers. Those who are not seem to often find themselves the targets of scorn and revilement. Awards theoretically mark acclaim by one’s peers, which, in established fields, generally does constitute some authority. But that just begs the question again, because the panels who give out awards are supposed to be experts in the field, supposed to have those tangible marks of success (publication credits, patents, money, etc.) that fandom lacks. Expertise is almost impossible to judge with any surety. The vastly different criteria by which different segments of fandom judge a story good or bad mean that popularity is an extremely unstable basis for authority. It can always be argued, and almost certainly will be, that that doesn’t count.

This takes us toward one of the other difficulties of authority, which fandom shares with all the other performing arts: the double edge of popularity. (Many thanks to Becky for making me think about it.) In the Fine Arts, popularity is desirable and yet suspect. If you’re too popular, then your credentials as a maker of High Art come into question. And in the industries of movies, publishing, music, etc., there’s a strong tendency toward increasing the level, the height, of one’s art. Higher is better. Higher is also narrower in appeal. (This mixes weirdly with the commercial imperative to appeal broadly to make lots of money, but I think that’s a whole different essay.) So judges and panels who are authorities because they are big names, because they are popular, are undermined by the very thing that gives them authority. There’s always room for the rejected one to say ‘well, they’re just a popular success, of course they can’t judge the real worth of my artistic effort’.

I think this carries over into fandom. Not very consciously, because I doubt many of us think of ourselves in terms of High Art. I would, at least, be deeply and lastingly amused, for all sorts of reasons, should anyone contemplate applying for an NEA grant to write fanfiction. But the same dynamic of both desiring and suspecting popularity definitely applies, and I think that feeds very strongly into the ‘poor, misunderstood me’ response that sometimes comes in answer to attempted criticism of any sort, especially if it comes from someone who has gained acclaim.

Both of the authority systems I see actually working, in fandom, are ones with limited scope.

The expertise model does work, but judgments of what constitutes expertise in writing are both very personal and wildly diverse. Even where formal guidelines exist, for grammar, for example, fandom harbors sufficient sophistication to argue the correctness of commonly accepted authoritative sources. One fine example of this is the use of “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun–arguments for correctness or incorrectness can both be made, and are. The use of “blond” as a specifically masculine descriptor is another of these. The fact that a commonly accepted authority does exist only means that both sides agree there is a final authority to be had, can they only triumph over the wrong-headed stubbornness of their opponents. This is not conducive to broad-based authority.

The expertise model works a bit better when dealing with the original text. An exhaustive knowledge of canon generally garners respect. In Western anime fandoms, in particular, those who can read or understand the source text can gain authority by translating and interpreting it. In any fandom, deep familiarity with the details indicates the kind of investment many fans can respect.

The family model of authority, however, seems to me most common, and certainly has resonance with how fandom operates. The family-based authority is an insular one. It requires a virtual blood connection–liking the same source text for the same reason, for example, or sometimes sharing a basic worldview. Authority from outside that connection is discounted. Authority, in this case, is given by usually unspoken consensus reached within the family group, based as much on personal dynamics as the quality of writing. Attempts to assert authoritative critique from outside that circle meet with about as much success as some random adult telling a non-related child to clean her room. (Of course, the fact that fen from non-Western cultures are part of English speaking fandom puts a bit of a crimp in that analogy; within cultures that place more value on respect for elders, this would not, necessarily, draw resentment. *tips hat to Genie for reminding me*)

I choose the terms “adult” and “child” for a reason. Any criticism suggests that the criticizer knows better on the subject than the criticizee. Within the family context this translates pretty automatically into seniority terms: older/younger or adult/child. Coming from someone outside the consensual “family”, such an implied claim can only read as arrogant, unjustified and even predatory. Is it really any wonder that the response is violent? Or that it spreads? After all, when we insult someone’s family, what we generally get is a fight.

A caveat in closing: I do not mean to imply that all negative reaction to criticism is based in fandom’s conflicts of authority. Some of it is simply spoiled whining by people who feel the world should conform in every detail to their whims. I do, however, think that the consistence and vehemence with which criticism is rejected has a great deal to do with those conflicts. Nor do I think that can be resolved. Such is the nature of fandom–decentralized and fluid in its structures.