thuviaptarth | Thinking about the spn newsletter

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Thinking about the spn newsletter

[ETA 4/3 9:59pm: I've heavily edited this post to separate out the general discussion of fandom and fantasy space from a specific question of the SPN newsletter; it was thoughtless of me to associate the two.

[This post is public because I did want to get the opinions of fans not on my flist. However, it is not a request itself, and it is not directed at the maintainers of the spn newsletter, although I'm aware some of them may stumble across it; I am trying to figure out if a request is a good idea. A day later I'm inclining towards "not a good idea," but I dislike deleting posts; it feels like trying to cover up your mistakes, and I'd rather acknowledge having made them and move on.]

I've been wondering if it might help settle some nerves in Supernatural fandom for the newsletter to re-arrange the template to list gen stories before Sam/Dean.

I like this idea entirely apart from the recurrent arguments about the role of incest in fiction because it accords with my personal notions of categorization -- you do the gen, which is a subset of stories distinguished by its lack of or failure to focus on pairings, and then you do all the stories that belong to the category of pairing fic, broken down by significant pairings. It seems to me that this makes it easier for non-Wincest readers to cut off their reading when they reach the end of the category, instead of having to skip past the Sam/Dean (unless of course they're also looking for het or other), has a neutral effect on the subset of Sam/Dean slashers who also like gen (which seem to me to be a large percentage of fandom), and offers only a mild inconvenience to the Sam/Dean slashers who do not like gen, as they tend to be indifferent to gen rather than disturbed by it.

There's a lot of "seems" in there because I haven't done any kind of rigorous analysis of this (my life is sadly empty of pie charts), and because I haven't yet gone through the newsletter info/memories to see if this idea has already been proposed, discussed, and rejected. I don't want to re-hash old arguments, and I don't want to express this as a demand or an entitlement; I think the newsletter is a great fandom resource, put together by people who are doing great work for the fandom infrastructure, and I get a lot of good out of it as it is.

But I thought I'd throw it out there as a proposal and see what you guys think and whether you know of any previous fandom history affecting it that I might not be aware of.

[ETA 4/3: Other issues moved to a separate post.]

I'm going to be offline for most of today traveling and celebrating Passover, so I will probably not be able to respond to comments quickly.

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Happy Passover!

I've been trying to niggle out some connections I feel but cannot easily articulate among recent fandom brangles about the harshing of squee, incest in Supernatural, race in SGA, fandom as a safe space, and what I see as the fairly complicated relationship of fantasy and reality.

I've been doing the same: there seems to me to be a clear line connecting the SPN and SGA wanks, and it's something to do with the way our RL experience shapes the worlds we create, and also how the worlds we create shape our understanding of our RL experiences. I'm a little cautious about moving past that, because I think that there are some implications to this which will make a lot of people uncomfortable.

I don't know anything about the arrangement of genres in the SPN newsletter; I think your proposal makes sense, but would prefer to leave the matter in the hands of the people who actually do all the work for it. I have a vague memory that the order used to vary, but that may be some other community.

Happy Pesach to you as well!

I've been doing the same: there seems to me to be a clear line connecting the SPN and SGA wanks, and it's something to do with the way our RL experience shapes the worlds we create, and also how the worlds we create shape our understanding of our RL experiences.

Yes! That's much more concise, thank you. I fear that people will take what I said as a blanket rejection of certain kinds of fantasy or as an argument for censorship, whereas what I'm interested in is teasing out the many and complex interactions between our RL experiences and the worlds we create (and experience through fiction).

I don't know anything about the arrangement of genres in the SPN newsletter; I think your proposal makes sense, but would prefer to leave the matter in the hands of the people who actually do all the work for it.

Yes. My feeling at the moment is that requesting a change might cause more trouble and ill-feeling than it's worth; I don't seem to be able to express clearly that a request isn't a demand and that I'm perfectly okay with being told no.

Well, as a practical matter (and I haven't been paying a great deal of attention, so I may be wrong), I've seen a lot of people speaking for the newsletter mods and compilers, rather than the mods and compilers making any statements of their own.

Your proposal re: the newsletter is one that I would support whole-heartedly, and if I felt that I was in the position to make that proposal without causing a ton of trouble (as a non-Wincester coming into this space and trying to get things changed to fit my own preferences), I might have. You however are in a position to do so, and I appreciate that you have.

And, in fact, I just appreciate you in general. I hope you had a lovely weekend; your name came up a few times yesterday, always with approbation and affection.

(Oh, for the days of the great LJ-vs-boards wank in Farscape fandom.)

Thanks, babe. Talk to you offline.

You are, as I have often said, extraordinarily smart. Your noodling is better-formed and more articulate than almost any of the posts I have seen in the past week on any of these discussions.

What I feel like I'm seeing, a lot of the time, is an automatic defensiveness and fear at being asked to consider how we or what we've said appears to other people, a defensiveness that comes out of the fear that we're wrong, or the inherited shame and discomfort we feel about our positions of relative privilege or fantasies we ourselves may find problematic, or out of the startlement at being called on a sense of entitlement we didn't know we had and may not be read to confront.

This is so perfect, I want to tattoo it on my forehead. Except I'm guessing it wouldn't fit.

Your noodling is better-formed and more articulate than almost any of the posts I have seen in the past week on any of these discussions.

Ha! You are too kind. I love Livia's original post. It is so well done it has me reading about SGA, a show I do not watch and a fandom in which I do not read.

Livia's post is excellent, too, no doubt. But I still really like what you've said here.

I guess if I had to boil it down into a few sentences, I would say that fantasy is inevitable and it can be reactionary or it can be revolutionary and it can be other things entirely; that sometimes fantasy is entirely divorced from the real world, but sometimes it is not; and that, as responsible adults who seek to behave rightly by other people, when we publish our fantasies, our thoughts, our opinions, it behooves us to consider their impact on other people, even if we decide that the positive impact of expression for us outweighs the negative impact of the expression on other people. (plus the part that Laura already quoted)

You are a smart, smart, SMART woman, and fandom is lucky to have you.

Oh, dude. I couldn't care less what the order of the newsletter is, and I would prefer not to touch any of the various wanks with a fifty foot pole. But I have to stand up and say I think it is really rude to go hauling the people who are quietly doing the hard and tedious and incredibly generous fannish work of the newsletter into the middle of wank like this. You have no say in what order the newsletter goes, and neither do I, and neither does anyone else in the fandom who doesn't step up and do the work. They didn't sign up for the job of settling people's nerves.

The reason I posted here rather than simply making the suggestion to the newsletter runners was to get the feedback from my flist, so I'm glad you responded. I don't, however, see a suggestion (or the contemplation of a suggestion, which is what that point was) as dragging the newsletter or its maintainers into wank, and I don't see anything in what I posted that suggests I feel I can determine the newsletter order or that I disrespect the work put into it. I think people do the newsletter because they want to serve the community; that settling nerves does serve the community; that settling nerves isn't the greatest good possible and it shouldn't be the only consideration in any decision, or even an overriding one, or even one that would weigh as much as anyone involved in the newsletter just not feeling like making a change. As part of the community being served by the newsletter, I may or may not make a suggestion that I think would make the newsletter more useful to a wider section of the community; and as the people providing the service, the newsletter maintainers would be free to treat the suggestion as best suits them. How is making a suggestion about a newsletter any different from making a suggestion about a con at a dead dog party?

To very belatedly answer this -- there are many differences, the number one of which is that at a dead dog, the people who do the work and make the decisions are the ones inviting the discussion. This is more like you posted a sign in the con suite saying "How we can improve the con! Discussion in my room!" without asking the concom how they felt about it.

I don't know of any good mods/admins who aren't interested in getting reasonable suggestions. Posting them in *public* is irritating under the best circumstances, because it creates a pressure to respond that the admins may just not want right then. In the middle of a wank it's a lot worse, because now either the admins have to step into the wank to say anything, or they have to sit on their hands while you and other third parties argue over *their* work.

I don't think there's any point in deleting the post now; it didn't turn into anything big, and I'm glad for that. But that's why I said it was rude. Making the suggestion privately would not have been, at all.

I would say that fantasy is inevitable and it can be reactionary or it can be revolutionary and it can be other things entirely; that sometimes fantasy is entirely divorced from the real world, but sometimes it is not; and that, as responsible adults who seek to behave rightly by other people, when we publish our fantasies, our thoughts, our opinions, it behooves us to consider their impact on other people
In just doing your usual amazing noodling, you've expressed *exactly* the kinds of thoughts I've been trying to clarify - to myself and to others - for years. I want to thank you for that, *especially* for noting the step taken from fantasy to publication. This is an extraordinary generous intervention that gives me a lot of hope.

I've been wondering if it might help settle some nerves in Supernatural fandom for the newsletter to re-arrange the template to list gen stories before Sam/Dean

And truly, every time I've seen this pop up in comments, I've wondered what this would actually accomplish. Is the thinking that those who don't like Sam/Dean would not have to see that there are links for it, and thus be upset by the reminder of its existence? They know it exists; what harm is there in having to scroll past some links for it, which don't have any offensive aside from their simple existence? Let's just say for the sake of discussion that the Sam/Dean links are put last in the fiction grouping. What if people are reading on the main journal page - they'll have to scroll past them to go to the next entry, won't they? Or what if they want to click through the icon links - again with having to see those links.

I think this is no real solution, because it implies that by protecting people from seeing those links, they can somehow pretend the incest stories don't exist and their discomfort with what those links represent will be alleviated. And I'm pretty certain it won't. YMMV.

I don't think it's so much about protecting people from the existance of the links as much as it is moving away from giving the impression that the primary, most important, and defining sub-section of SPN fanfic is an incest pairing.

I think people have less trouble co-existing with something they don't like (in any organization) if they don't have to think that what draws their ire is the most important part of that group.

I think that the recent breakdown in fanfics by pairing pie charts shows that incest fanfic is not a majority of the fanfic listed, and in fact is slightly below gen in sheer numbers. While I agree that no change in the way things are listed on the newsletter is going to hide the fact that there is a shit-load of incest fic in this fandom, I think many people would be happier if the fandom-wide newsletter didn't appear to be focused on the Sam/Dean pairing.

I think such a change in the order - if the mods choose to implement it - would reflect a decent compromise between the people in the fandom who are all about the incest-fic all the time and the people in the fandom who don't want any incest-fic, ever. YMMV.

- hg

I think many people would be happier if the fandom-wide newsletter didn't appear to be focused on the Sam/Dean pairing.

Hmm. *thinks about this for a moment* But the thing is, this then appears to be a cosmetic change for the sake of appearances only, to appease gen fans who would prefer that the fandom not appear to be a certain way. (And opinions are of course going to vary wildly as to whether it actually is that way, so I won't touch on that.) In point of fact, the same argument could be made the other way around (not by me, but certainly by someone) that if gen links are first, it appears that the fandom isn't friendly to Wincest. And then we are back where we started, with not being able to please all the people all the time.

It may appear that to have the links first privileges Wincest, but I tend to think that may be a perceptual issue influenced by strong feelings, which is really just a symptom of the underlying problem: many fans just flat don't like incest fiction, and would like to make the fact of its existence easier to bear while they play in this fandom. Though I appreciate your point, and think the change would certainly be better for some on that level, I'm just...not convinced that any changes for appearances' sake are the answer. I'm not sure there's an answer at all. But I'm really interested to see what others have to say about it.

In point of fact, the same argument could be made the other way around (not by me, but certainly by someone) that if gen links are first, it appears that the fandom isn't friendly to Wincest.

...this would be a stretch, imo. And would strain the definition of 'friendly' to border on "obsessed with".

I myself cannot see how having the Sam/Dean pairing consistantly first fails to priviledge incest fic over gen fic.

many fans just flat don't like incest fiction, and would like to make the fact of its existence easier to bear while they play in this fandom.

Exactly. This. Yes.

As I read it, this statement (would like to make the fact of its existence easier to bear) does not include wiping incest fic from fandom. IMO, swapping orders on the newsletter list would only serve to shift the fannish focus, and would not *exclude* anyone. (As a policy aimed at exclusion, it is distinctly unsatisfying.)

We are not going to please everyone, there I do agree. But I see this sort of compromise as neglible in cost, and possibly gaining quite a lot.

I, too, would really like to hear other people's opinions.

- hg

...this would be a stretch, imo. And would strain the definition of 'friendly' to border on "obsessed with".

I myself cannot see how having the Sam/Dean pairing consistantly first fails to priviledge incest fic over gen fic.

These two statements strike me as contradictory. If we're going to state that putting Sam/Dean before gen makes some gen readers feel unwelcome, then we've got to acknowledge the possibility that putting gen first might make some Sam/Dean readers feel unwelcome.

And I don't think having the Sam/Dean listing first is intended as a statement about the fandom; I think it is probably an accident of history based on the interests of the newsletter founders/maintainers or what they perceived to be the majority interests of fandom.

Personally, I think that changing the order now -- thus attributing to it an importance it never had before -- would pretty much guarantee that anyone not listed first would feel unwelcome, so I don't think it would be a good idea.

Right now, I don't see any significance to the ordering. RPS gets listed last among the fic categories, even below het and "other," yet I doubt anyone could claim that RPS is unwelcome or unpopular in the fandom. As a gen fan, I really couldn't care less what the order is. It's certainly never been a factor in whether or not I feel welcome in the fandom (which, for the record, I do).

I'm going to combine my response to your two comments; let me know if I've missed something or if I've conflated issues you see as separate. I think you hit on the exact benefit (and limitation) of putting gen first in

I tend to think that may be a perceptual issue influenced by strong feelings, which is really just a symptom of the underlying problem: many fans just flat don't like incest fiction, and would like to make the fact of its existence easier to bear while they play in this fandom. Though I appreciate your point, and think the change would certainly be better for some on that level, I'm just...not convinced that any changes for appearances' sake are the answer. I'm not sure there's an answer at all.

Have you ever taken one of those project management seminars where the group leader asks you whether it's more important to do the work or to make sure other people know you're doing the work? I tend to be with the techies and, well, the mildly socially inept who vote "Do the work!" and don't want to bother with all this interpersonal communication shit. But I've spent enough time in the workplace to know, however grudgingly, that, in fact, if work gets done and no one knows it's being done, it will be discounted and there were will be more problems later on. So yes, I do think this would be a cosmetic change largely directed at changing perceptions. No, I don't think it would eliminate all wank (or even all incest wank) from SPN fandom forever. (I wish.) I do think it would reduce some of the wank and some of the ill feeling for some people, although I know of no way to measure this -- which is one reason why I wanted to get other opinions and takes.

"Changing perceptions" is vague, of course: Whose perceptions? Of what? This weekend a lot of people I consider valuable members of fandom stated that (a) they feel like they're being made unwelcome in SPN because they dislike Wincest; (b) that they feel that Wincest is the fandom default, so it's assumed they support it if they don't specify otherwise; and (c) if they do specify otherwise, even as a personal statement in their LJ space, they feel it is taken as an attack on Wincest writers and readers. There's a lot of "feel" and "think" there because this is largely about perception. So that leads me to the following questions:

(1) Is some of this perception caused by the default newsletter listing?

(2) If it is, and can be changed by the default listing, who would be hurt by the change?

(3) [somewhat but not entirely separate from the above] Is asking for a change allowable?

(4) Is asking for a change feasible?

I think that the answer to 1 is yes. That is the impression I get when I read the newsletter, anyway, and it seems to me that that is what's behind some of the non-Wincest fans who've said they'd prefer to see gen listed first, since no one is suggesting the elimination of incest listings entirely.

Your positing that someone might want to put Sam/Dean last goes to (2) Who would be hurt by a change? And I think it's a reasonable question. I would not request or support a request to put the Sam/Dean pairing last because it is clearly the pairing sought out by a plurality of fandom and it does not make sense to me to make the newsletter more inconvenient for 40% of fandom to assuage the sensibilities of whatever percentage of gen readers dislike Wincest. Given the overlap between Wincest and gen readers and writers (I read both, and I know you write both, and I personally have gotten comments on gen or het stories from writers I believe write primarily or exclusively Wincest), it is my impression that the majority of Wincest writers won't care if gen goes first and Sam/Dean goes second, because they review both listings. But maybe this impression is wrong. It's one thing I wanted to get feedback on before deciding whether to make a nuisance of myself to the newsletter maintainers. (Which -- given that this is LJ -- maybe was futile and they feel bound to read all this anyway. I personally don't feel anyone is bound to bother even with a "Thanks for your suggestion; we'll continue as we were" unless they're contacted.)

Is the thinking that those who don't like Sam/Dean would not have to see that there are links for it, and thus be upset by the reminder of its existence? They know it exists; what harm is there in having to scroll past some links for it, which don't have any offensive aside from their simple existence? Let's just say for the sake of discussion that the Sam/Dean links are put last in the fiction grouping. What if people are reading on the main journal page - they'll have to scroll past them to go to the next entry, won't they? Or what if they want to click through the icon links - again with having to see those links.

Even with Sam/Dean put second rather than last, all of your points remain good. I think as a matter of psychology and eye-movement, people take in less of the details of Sam/Dean if they're not sort of scrolling it to see when the "Gen" heading pops up, but yeah -- anyone who reads the newsletter is going to have to see incest listings and is going to have to deal with any discomfort that causes them.

3 and 4 are sticking points as big as 1 and 2 to me;

astolat's response indicates she thinks the answer to 3 is no. I disagree for the reasons I stated in my response to her comment, but her comment does contribute to my fears that the answer to 4 is no -- that even if I think, as a matter of general fannish interaction and social structure, it is inoffensive and in fact the nature of fandom for fans to suggest adaptations of existing structures to suit changing needs, it may be that the entire situation is so contentious that, as

cofax7 and

vaznetti fear, the request will be taken as a demand and simply create more ill feeling. I'm afraid of that, too, and increasingly tempted to delete this post.

I'm afraid of that, too, and increasingly tempted to delete this post.

I would hate to see you delete the post, because the localized discussion isn't the same as a demand or question to the mods. It's all theoretical at this point, and there are some interesting issues being raised. Discussion, in my mind, is never a bad thing.

You name us (i.e., metafandom) and we come :) [And I'm glad you already gave tacit permission to get linked, or I might have felt a bit less comfortable linking a multi-purpose post.]

FWIW on the newsletter, on SGA we have gen listed before het and slash, and I'm not even sure how we ended up like that (though our wanky suggestions tend to usually involve the complaint that McShep shouldn't be a separate category, bladibla...or the fact that we categorize at all, which is why we have an uncategorized section!), but it might have been in part to make sure to show that it's not just about the McShep (esp. as all compilers in the beginning were as far as I remember).

Otoh, I'm not sure a public post (esp. if we metafandom) will not be *more* rather than less pressure on the newsletter folks, though. By throwing it out there, they now have to either ignore popular opinion or follow it or...whereas just dropping them a line would have kept it out of the spotlight and put the ball firmly in their court...

Um. Honestly, I thought of metafandom being interested in points 2 and on, and not so much 1, and ... I think you're right about the pressure. If I edited the post to break it into two pieces, would you mind NOT linking to the newsletter suggestion but linking to the other part? You are within your rights to link to anything public, but I'd rather not bring the world down on the newsletter people (or me, though I would feel compelled to accept it as Darwinism in action).

I should not post before running out the door for a three-hour trip. It makes me do dumb things.

most certainly.

i'm taking the link down and will put the new one in as soon as you let me know, OK?

Thank you so much!

The new link is here (http://untrue-accounts.livejournal.com/70800.html), and thank you again from saving me from my own thoughtlessness. :)

on SGA we have gen listed before het and slash, and I'm not even sure how we ended up like that

This may sound wierd but it makes sense to me in this order: gen, het, slash. Why wouldn't you put them in that order? But there's no realy basis for how I think!

This is going to sound weird, but when I was thinking about it yesterday, I thought: "Gen goes first because no pairings, then you break down by pairings, but should het or slash go first? Do it in alphabetical order: het, slash, then OT3s and OT4s."

What? I like the alphabet!

Or mix up het and slash and just do alphabetical order by character name, though that's more for ensemble shows like SGA or Buffy than for partnership shows like XF or SPN.

yeah, i mean, I don't recall any debates or anything...but as I said, maybe unconsciously someone realized that with a bunch of OTP McSheppers, it might be nice to deflect :D

I think having gen first makes a lot of sense...heck, it's alphabetical :D

My Torchwood and Doctor Who newsletters put all fiction together. My Snape/Potter newsletter sorts stories by 'one shot' (by which they mean an actual finished normal story such as people have written, oh, forever but for some reason HP fandom has to give ordinary stories a new name to differentiate them from the preferred HP fandom kind of story: the Work in Progress*), completed stories, works in progress and drabbles.

*Oh yes, I have a grievance.

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Thinking about the spn newsletter

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A possible alternative take

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Part 1: Perception

Part II: Click & scroll; courtesy and feasibility

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