Current mood:

*sporfle!*

from the hobbitslash fandom, meet some self-important speechifying...
...from an old-time contributor to the amusement of this hallowed community (i tried to say something about halls or archives, but it just didn't work out). alas, the earlier amusement occurred when fandom_wank was still on livejournal. (but if anyone's curious the progress can be followed via my personal, biased 'kerfluffdates': 1, 2, 3, 4).

background: thou, or the history of us, is daisy_gamgee's epic merry/pippin saga which, in her own words, covers 90 years. it has its own devoted following (and community, thou_support), but it also has certain detractors (the original source of the kerfluffle up there was an anonymous, critical comment. hm... where else have we seen that lately?).

the post, which is kinda like a dear john letter except that she's posting the controversial chapters and not taking them down, pretty much covers everything. basically, she wrote some chapters with non-con and didn't put warnings on them, came under fire, took them down and replaced them with different versions of the chapters, and left them down a long time. now she's putting them back up.

she's given this a lot of thought, evidently. she favors us with a quote from 'The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear, by Ralph Keyes.' an excerpt:

Popularity is a serious brake on artistic expression of any kind. If people like you--and you expect them to like you--the risk of doing anything controversial, or saying anything revealing, is profound.

but don't think she took the chapters down because of criticism. she took them down because they 'really fucked up a during-and-post-Quest Brandy Took episode that is absolutely necessary to the 90-plus-year story I'm trying to tell.'

in fact, you might read the whole thing without realizing she'd gotten any criticism if not for this:

What I *do* regret is posting it without a "non-consensual situation" warning, and being foolish enough to believe that everyone who reads adult fanfiction can respond to such in an adult manner.

(edited to add the link! d'oh.)