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Milkshake Butterfly (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} m_butterfly) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} fandom_wank,@ 2006-10-19 22:19:00 |
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| Entry tags: | fandom: stargate, mst |
SGA Calls Shenanigans: Crow is Different!
Popular rumor states that the very best and choicest of SGA fandom wanks are kept from our besmirching little fingers by friendslocks, leaving F_W to content itself with the dregs. Sometimes a wank comes across the desk that makes you not only completely believe that, but marvel at what we must be missing.
This week's SGA explosion begins with the creation of sga_mst, a community dedicated to mocking badfic in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 format and causing enormous amounts of splooge, tl;dr, and BNF guest appearances. Well, perhaps that's inaccurate. We don't really get rains of white from the heaven until the moderators, deciding they didn't have enough members, push their fledgling creation out into the spotlight of the fandom via sga_noticeboard. There's some expressions of dubiousness about the whole thing, and then one of the moderators provides a wavering anon with a link to a discussion of the community in her journal, and the angels blow their mighty faptrumpets to signal the arrival of our main stage and the start of the festivities.
Right off the bat, liviapenn (our first guest BNF!) notices that blade_girl (community mod and our host) has a certain inconsistency going:
"I have to say, I was surprised to see you involved in the creation of sga_mst, because I do remember that we disagreed very strongly on the "remix" debate a while back.Yes, that's right: we've got indirect wank sequel sign! But blade_girl doesn't see any conflict with her previous stated views:
Your argument at the time seemed to be that it was wrong and an offense against the community to create a new work based on someone else's story.
My question is, isn't that what you're doing when you take someone else's story to create a MST?"
"We at [info]sga_mst are using the SGA characters to perform a critical commentary of the selected fanfics, not creating a whole new fic based upon the author's material. If we were to insert our characters into the fanfics we're lampooning, having them actually participate in the plot and so forth, then I'd agree with you that we were crossing that line into remixing."Naturally, liviapenn disagrees with that, but blade_girl continues to defend her stance and adds in that what they're doing shouldn't be considered bad; after all, not only are they keeping authors names out of it, but what they're doing a perfectly respectable form of analysis and critique.
glaeliashows up to offer her thoughts on that argument and blade_girl responds with... well, let's just call it a traditional defense:
glaelia: "You may as well be, in this fandom, people are going to recognise the author. Or you know, they could google a few lines.Elsewhere, liviapenn continues to valiantly attempt to definitively pin blade_girl down on how this is different than the Remix challenge. After threads collapse into the resulting intellectual black hole, a single final message bobs to the surface from our friend livia:
My biggest bone is that you're so cruel as to find it amusing to laugh at other people's downfalls. You're everything I dislike about fandom."
blade_girl: "You are welcome to participate in this discussion, but kindly refrain from getting personal again. I am not smearing you (or anyone else, for that matter) in this journal, nor am I going to yours and flaming you. You are doing both."
glaelia: "Perhaps I should make a community and do it there?"
"So in the end I agree with you: there's no point to this conversation."Would that everyone else had come to so sensible a conclusion--people who are not anons, I mean. blade_girl continues to tout the values of criticism, noting, "In my experience, the only authors that can actually take true constructive criticism are the ones who are already pretty good." glaelia whips out the dictionary to prove constructive criticism is not being had here. blade_girl says they never said they were. glaelia says that they're really just looking for praise for mocking people. blade_girl denies that. People offer sundry... proofs, which blade_girl denies some more. Are we bored yet? Yes? Good, because we've now got incoming second mod sign.
history_gurl is on the scene and ready and willing to debate! She came up with the comm, it seems, and is more than happy--almost eager, one might say--to let anyone who wishes put one of her fics under the knife. She's also eager to defend the idea, bringing in such arguments as 'It's just like Stephen Leacock or Mark Twain' and 'other people do it all the time' both of which go over swimmingly. Liviapenn also inexplicably decides to try her luck again with this person--was she having a slow day? Final words for this round:"Um, okay then."Meanwhile, history_gurl also congratulates glaelia on not being one of those nasty horrible evil icky anons. Mice have such a hard reputation to cope with--especially mice who were, after all, invited to the party. (But only that mouse, it seems. How they can tell that they and their problem mouse are different, I can't say.)
Is it safe to come out yet?
Signs point to no, unfortunately. The angels, winded after this one thread of activity, distract everyone with a random sockpuppet accusation and take a quick bathroom break, and then we're back in it.
witchqueen posts asking, "Why have you created a community whose modus operandi is to steal other people's fanfic?" and history_gurl marches once more unto the breach, inexplicably not tired out yet. dracostella shows back up to wave that But possibly she just gets overlooked as we have the incoming mod sign blinking again:
crazymadi, the third and final of the original mods, has entered the building, and guess what? She's defending the community. At this point, this almost wouldn't be worth mentioning, except for witchqueen's hilarious reply (links are hers):"Oh, I call shenanigans. If you wanted to comment on a badfic practice in general, you would write up your own exemplars. Posting specific stories and making comments about them is commenting on those particular stories."It's possible that I never realized how much I wanted to see someone call shenanigans in a wank until someone did. As a wrap-up to this post,
amireal also drops in to say a few things, completing her self-contracted weigh-in on every single bit of SGA wank she can access. Fortunately, no one cares.Is it safe to come out now?
Um....
Well, even the angels of wank were starting to pack up when the community, which you have to admit achieved their goal of attracting notice quite admirably, added another mod. And like all mods, this new one,
aithine, had to post her thoughts about and defenses of the whole thing. Ooh, scene change! And with a new, broader stage, we've pulled in yet another special BNF guest: maygra, who feels the need to weigh in with her thoughts on the matter as well.Heaven help us all if the SGA fandom doesn't get something better to distract themselves before the weekend, because the angels are beat and the sploogeplows are starting to break down....
