I might be a bit late on this but it is still interesting. The folks at Fansplaining[http://fansplaining.com/] posted a Twitter invite to participate in a short survey on Fanfiction. Off I went and filled it out. You should too.
Fansplaining @fansplaining Mar 20
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It’s time for a new Fansplaining survey—this one on the definition of “fanfic”!
Go, take, and share widely! https://t.co/eWcSLmKsfF
Ok, I spoiled a question. Wait, I got that pic on Twitter, so it’s only a second-hand spoil. Or something… Personally, I had a lot of NO IDEA WHATEVER replies but that’s part of the exercise, right?
In other news:
I am two thirds though my Japan visit and so far it has been more of a decompress time than a run-around-and-buy-experience-things visit. Only 2 more Genshiken volumes left on my hunt list, a ten-day cold shared with she-who-up-with-me… a sprained ankle and some light bicycle trips. The weather has turned cool and wet – sakura blossoms will be delayed a few days. The steampunk fair is still interesting but the door is expensive.
Of course the food is insanely great here, even the cheap stuff that I get chided for indulging in, the air is clean along the Sagami Bay shores and Japan remains wonderful.
I promise I will come up with something to TLDR essay post on sooner of later.
Fansplaining has a survey that will reveal your most intimate fanfiction desires!
With the winding down of Genshiken Nidaime, this blog can revert to its true form; a series of disjointed tracts from a sketchy fundamentalist cult based on vulgar readings of Dr. Saito Tamaki‘s theories on otaku subjectivity and desire. ‘Round these parts, when we ain’t doing snake-handlin’ and speakin’ in tongues (the way of pastor Hopkins), we perform the rituals of libidinised reading and appropriative secondary production; sometimes tarted up for the university heathens as “Transformative works”.
The most fearsome of these doin’s ‘o secondary production is to go into a trance and readeth, even maketh fic. As the Genshiken and Tamaki-dono hath decreed, so mote it be, even if it is best motied off-stage and out of view.
What amazing varieties and ways there be to partake in these spiritual exercises! Such love! Such devotion!
@fansplaining
Wanna help us do a BIG analysis of fanfiction tropes and themes? Our official survey is live! Please take and share:
The good folks at Fansplaining have been making and posting interesting podcasts on western fan practice (with a strong emphasis on slashy fandoms) for a while now. Notable is their commitment to posting transcripts of these, usually a week or so after the podcast.
The Genshiken is all about rude doujin makin. Draw what you know, neh? Kio-gami is a mangaka, not a light novel writer. For those us us who skivved out on drawing classes, scribbling is easier than scratching. Plaisir de texte and all that..
If you have been so bitten by the bug, or are even a bit curious I commend to you the Fansplaining survey; so that you might opine (and gaze in awe!) on their introductory typology of western fic tropes. The survey biases towards slashy narratives, bien sur, because there just ain’t that many dudes writing long grinds about their epic FPS map clearing forays. The absence of sections on machine-generated crapfic and on trollfic are also telling. I am a bit saddened even as the omission is understandable.
That Halo troll-fic machinima ain’t got no schmex might be the most convincing proof of the existence of a merciful deity yet.
Behind my flippant tone is of course a small dumpster full of shame — hey, it’s a guy thing. But the fun of reading or trying one’s own hand at a short “what-if” with your fave charas is more than just a diversion. Nothing short of scanlation encourages such close reading as trying to jam your headcanon onto an existing property. You really, really begin to obsess over minutiae. Even a trash ship (one of those can’t exactly define it but you’ll know it when it sneaks up and bites you on the leg things) demands a serious and very detailed consideration of the original materials. The only risk is having your mind gripped by the unshakeable conviction that the author pulled their lame compromise resolution out of -ahem- the air and that the only possible way it could have gone (if the editors hadn’t spiked it) would have been a beach-front marriage in Hawaii.
Followed by a Saturday afternoon spent shopping for curtains.
Or
113 pages of wooden dialogue between two very hungover idiots trying to wrap their aching heads around their predicament.
Or…
Oh my! So many possibilities. This woobie thing; maybe that’s a bit too squick?
The Genshiken is all about rude doujin makin. Draw what you know, neh? Kio-gami is a mangaka, not a light novel writer. For those us us who skivved out on drawing classes, scribbling is easier than scratching. Plaisir de texte and all that..
HEARTS OF FURIOUS FANCIES 