Ravings of an emotionally unstable fan.
Jan. 2nd, 2010 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merricatkSo, I heard it through the grapevine that all of the yuletide stories are being moved to A3O. I don't move in that circle, so everything I know comes secondhand. I've only ever written one story that's on the yuletide website, a NYR story. It was a whim, and I was still thinking that fandom might work for me.
This was several years ago. There was nothing bad about the experience.
Since then I've come to a few realizations about myself. One of them is, I was born, and will probably die, an outsider. I don't fit. Sometimes, for short periods, with certain groups, I can be part of the in-crowd. But I always ask the wrong questions, the ones nobody else thinks of. I always cause trouble, and I need way too much down time from people, and I'm way, way too needy.
The movers and shakers of fandom don't want to answer my questions, they don't want to be bothered with my moodiness, and they certainly don't want to cater to my needs, which are emotional in nature.
They do want my stories. I've had more than one offer to archive my stories, and I've said yes more than once because of my neediness. I thought the offer to "work with me" on putting my stories online meant they wanted to spend some time with me. What I found out was that except of approving a layout and emailing the stories, I was now extraneous to the whole process. So I've put my stories back in my pocket and am (slowly) posting them on my LJ.
Now the yuletide stories are being moved to what I, in my infinite ignorance, consider to be a potentially more public venue, which I'm not comfortable with. (Why do I see it as being more public? Because it's supposed to be easier to find things there, because it has been so publicized and so has yuletide. Am I wrong about this? Everyone says so.)
It's also being run by movers and shakers--things always are; they're the ones who run things, they have the temperament for it, it's nothing against them. But I'm not comfortable with them. And I'm in a position of either letting them take my story and be quiet while put it wherever they want it--without, so far, them saying a word to me about it; or taking my story back and have people call me names.
Or I can orphan my story by taking my name off of it.
I wish they weren't using the word orphan. It's too poetic, it puts to sharp a point on the abandonment, it makes me feel terrible. I have abandonment issues. Call me a thief for taking my story back and I can deal with it. Say I'm making my story an orphan, I'll cry.
And I wish they weren't telling me again that I can go--just leave the story. Because I already know I'm extraneous, except for the stories.
I'm perfectly aware that I'm completely wrong about all of this, but being told how wrong I am is only going to push me harder into putting this story in my pocket, too. I'm perfectly aware that my feelings--and all this is nothing but my feelings--are indefensible. But I don't like it when the powerful people come and tell me how unreasonable I am not to want to do things their way. Not ask, just tell.
I can live with being disliked, considered a screwball, or an angry, shitty, classless, selfish jerkass, and I can live with people believing the lie that I'm doing this because I hate OTW and/or A3O. I can live with the whole rest of the world considering me irrational.
This was several years ago. There was nothing bad about the experience.
Since then I've come to a few realizations about myself. One of them is, I was born, and will probably die, an outsider. I don't fit. Sometimes, for short periods, with certain groups, I can be part of the in-crowd. But I always ask the wrong questions, the ones nobody else thinks of. I always cause trouble, and I need way too much down time from people, and I'm way, way too needy.
The movers and shakers of fandom don't want to answer my questions, they don't want to be bothered with my moodiness, and they certainly don't want to cater to my needs, which are emotional in nature.
They do want my stories. I've had more than one offer to archive my stories, and I've said yes more than once because of my neediness. I thought the offer to "work with me" on putting my stories online meant they wanted to spend some time with me. What I found out was that except of approving a layout and emailing the stories, I was now extraneous to the whole process. So I've put my stories back in my pocket and am (slowly) posting them on my LJ.
Now the yuletide stories are being moved to what I, in my infinite ignorance, consider to be a potentially more public venue, which I'm not comfortable with. (Why do I see it as being more public? Because it's supposed to be easier to find things there, because it has been so publicized and so has yuletide. Am I wrong about this? Everyone says so.)
It's also being run by movers and shakers--things always are; they're the ones who run things, they have the temperament for it, it's nothing against them. But I'm not comfortable with them. And I'm in a position of either letting them take my story and be quiet while put it wherever they want it--without, so far, them saying a word to me about it; or taking my story back and have people call me names.
Or I can orphan my story by taking my name off of it.
I wish they weren't using the word orphan. It's too poetic, it puts to sharp a point on the abandonment, it makes me feel terrible. I have abandonment issues. Call me a thief for taking my story back and I can deal with it. Say I'm making my story an orphan, I'll cry.
And I wish they weren't telling me again that I can go--just leave the story. Because I already know I'm extraneous, except for the stories.
I'm perfectly aware that I'm completely wrong about all of this, but being told how wrong I am is only going to push me harder into putting this story in my pocket, too. I'm perfectly aware that my feelings--and all this is nothing but my feelings--are indefensible. But I don't like it when the powerful people come and tell me how unreasonable I am not to want to do things their way. Not ask, just tell.
I can live with being disliked, considered a screwball, or an angry, shitty, classless, selfish jerkass, and I can live with people believing the lie that I'm doing this because I hate OTW and/or A3O. I can live with the whole rest of the world considering me irrational.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 09:15 pm (UTC)Well, that is a damn big difference, AFAIC.
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 11:28 am (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 02:17 pm (UTC)I'm pretty confused by the idea that anyone has reason to fear the academics. What is it that they do to people?
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 02:25 pm (UTC)1) Sockpuppet account: created recently, no profile info, no friends, no interests. This means you know she's deliberately hiding her identity.
2) She's insulting the OTW, showing she's got some history with them, but that history is hidden behind the sockpuppet; she's not giving you any way to see both sides of whatever exchanges brought her to her opinions.
3) She's claiming they're bad academics, without explaining why. Doesn't say which OTW members she means when she says "people who couldn't cut it as 18th century literature junior faculty," and doesn't say which academic circles she means by "OTW is regarded as a joke in most academic circles." Says their academic journal is bad, but provides no examples.
4) Admits she's suspicious of their motives *at the same time* she admits she doesn't know what's going on. (And the "I don't know what's going on" is rather belied by claiming they're bad academics; obviously, she knows enough to have an opinion about them.)
5) Admits she's not a fan of Yuletide, so her whole reason for posting has nothing to do with YT or story archives; she's looking for places to rant about the OTW. Anonymously, so her "real" LJ doesn't have to get the fallout.
Those could all have compelling, sensible explanations. Maybe her RL identity is as a junior clerk for someone on the OTW board, and she fears for her job should her real identity be known. But still... that's a lot of claims to be taken at face value, and a lot of hostility to throw around anonymously.
When you remove the anti-OTW rant from her post, it boils down to, "someone wanted to study my fanfic for academic purpose, and I panicked and removed it. Then I got flak from other fans, and that was icky, so fuck them. If academics have made you panic about your fanfic, remove it if you want, and if anyone objects, fuck them."
Which is a nice message of support, more or less, but it does show a rather tangled concept of academic attention to fandom.