pointless lust for geeky consumer goods

I want the Team Erik t-shirt so much. And there's absolutely no way. When I started reading the announcement I thought I could just ask someone who was going to SDCC to buy one for me, but no, you get one by pre-ordering the DVD at Comic Con, and of course anyone doing that will want the t-shirt themselves. *whimpers*

There are Team Charles t-shirts too, but alas, they are yellow and ugly.

yayness!

Warehouse 13 has just ( made me very happy )

30 days of fanfic meme, questions 13-15

13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I tend to think of fanon as a bad thing, as when fanon characterization (oversimplified woobification or vilification, for example) becomes dominant in fanfiction, with each fic imitating previous ones and the fanon overshadowing the actual complexity of a given character in canon. So I try to avoid and sometimes directly challenge fanon in my own writing; sometimes this means that I don't read other people's fic while I'm actively writing one of my own.

But not all fanon is bad! Some of it amounts to a fandom-wide, or nearly, queering of the text; most people who write X-Men fanfic, for instance, accept the fanon that Charles and Erik were lovers at some point, even if the story they're writing is not Charles/Erik. Same for Giles/Ethan, Doctor/Master, and (interestingly, because we never even see them together in canon) James/Declan in Sanctuary.

In general, though, I think fanon is negative because its effect is to reduce reinterpretation. Fanfic is more creative if it goes back to the source text and re-solves whatever problem from scratch.


14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?

*laughs* The first fanfic I ever wrote contained a sex scene. I have written explicit father/son incest (consensual, with the son an adult) and a man having sex with his own duplicate. I've also, if we're including ratings for violence (and we should) written a scene of torture.

On the other hand, much of what I've written is not explicit, sexually or otherwise. I'm more interested in characterization and relationships than porn, so I've long since stopped feeling obliged to include a sex scene if the story doesn't truly need one. In particular, I think the existence of non-explicit slash is great, because it's good that young people can read about queer characters, relationships, and issues without having to read explicit sex if they're not ready for that. Plus, you know, queerness is about more than sex.


15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?

I started writing fanfic before warnings were commonplace, but I think the spread of warnings is good. I warn for things that are likely to be triggers or deeply upsetting for some readers: rape or other nonconsensual sex, underage sex, graphic violence, abuse, suicide, self-harm, and major character death. At times I've used the AO3's "choose not to warn" feature, either because of spoilers or because the way a particular scenario played out in the story seemed to me more complex than the warnings allowed for. And for those concerned about spoilers (which I understand!), here is a post telling you how to make warnings both highlight-to-read and skippable by voice readers.

I don't do "joke warnings" because I think they trivialize people's real concerns about triggering content.