How not to academically study fanfiction

[such_heights]

So waldorph has discovered that their fic, along with a lot of others, are assigned reading on a Berkley undergrad syllabus, where part of the assignment includes leaving comments. It's ... not going well.

This is a cache of the syllabus in full (I don't think I spotted any of my rlist there?)

waldorph writes: So Your Fic is Required Reading: Hahahanope.

As many people have said, studying fandom is one thing, but setting your students loose on unsuspecting fic writers is kind of awful.

eta: as people have pointed out, it's important to note that this is a class run by undergrads who are themselves fans that doesn't has a great deal of supervision outside of that.

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In entirely different 'wtf' news, I would like to write my own post about the experience that was Jupiter Ascending, but in the meantime happydork has written a pretty accurate summary of our evening.

Comments

[lizbee]

I love that post so much.

Also, with the gatekeeping, and the doxxings, and Copperbadge encouraging his fans to go dogpile the convenors, and one convenor orphaning her fics and leaving fandom, I feel like fic writers lost the moral high ground REALLY fast.

It's partially because I spent yesterday trying to deal with the flow-on effect of Adam Baldwin's presence at a local con for the con I'm running, but I'm just so done with fandom right now. This is not a safe space, and it's not even fun anymore.

[starlady]

I had literally just gone back on tumblr a day or two before this blew up after leaving for several months due to the Goodreads nonsense. But I totally agree--the idea that this moral panic burn the witches behavior is okay or even proportional is pretty soul-sucking.

[lizbee]

I keep coming back to Copperbadge's argument that attacking the conveners is okay because they're adults. I just ... never mind that they're acceptable targets, why do we have targets at all?

[starlady]

Good damn question! And yes, technically they're adults, but they're undergrads. By definition they are clueless, untrained, and a vulnerable population in some respects. How is this okay? Is this what fandom is? I sincerely hope not.

[lizbee]

Right? How can we distinguish ourselves from GamerGate if this is how we treat people who make a mistake? Or, heaven forbid, come from a part of fandom with different etiquette?

[starlady]

yuuup, I thought of GamerGate too.