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http://partly-bouncy.livejournal.com/491085.html
It seems like everyone and their neighbor is writing something about the Charlottelennox exposition regarding Msscribe. A number of them are really well written. Some of them are very insightful. Some of them I disagree. In having read these things, three things stick with me. They are 1) Why would anyone do such an exposition?, 2) This is fandom history, and 3) This has never happened before so why did it happen.
1) Why would anyone do such an exposition?
In reading charlottelennox's account, it sounds like the events happened as thus: Charlottelennox had her theories and had been a little tweaked for a bit of time. I'd hazard a guess she was connected to SugarQuill or G. Tower. She chatted with her friends about it, explaining pet theories to her friends based on the evidence she had found on her own. As she talked with her friends, her understanding of the story was fleshed out, made fuller and her friends provided more documentry evidence. Some of the friends probably, interest spiked by the questions and the intrigue of it, by personal vendettas and because of a desire to see the record set straight, went deeper with their exploration of finding evidence. On-line fandom has lots of tools to help document things like the search text of files on your hard drive which you saved everything from the past five years, bookmarks and favorite lists, the memories function on LiveJournal and Journal Fen, the ability to google search, LexisNexis, search functions on sites like SugarQuill and LJFind, IP sniffers like SamSpade, Fandom Wank's wiki, The Way Back Machine. I've no doubt that some of them probably took advantage of this and went searching, giving this extra stuff they found to Charlottelennox. Remember, in reading the introductory bits, Charlottelennox's original story was intended to be more expository, less well exculpatory. For the sake of the story, for the sake of clarification, it was added.
And the evidence makes the story harder to ignore. I'd hazard another guess that by the point that Charlottelennox realized how well that extra information fleshed out her story, after having shown the improved evidence included version, to people who were involved in those events and who also had their own agendas and axes to gring, that Charlottelennox felt pressure from these folks to go public and public in a big way. It would clear up some major wangst, redeem various people, serve the greater fandom, entertain the masses, give a sense of closure and, possibily in my mind the most important part, set those who were culpable in the saga on equal footing with the other masses of fan girls and fan boys. It would also make for a damned interesting read.
As it looks as to how Charlottelennox did what she did, the whys become, to me, glaringly obvious. And not very different from other fan fiction type activities. The major difference here is the period of time for which these events happened which were documented and the wide audience which was interested in the story. The story told encompasses a whole lot of people. Those people who were involved have a vested interest in that story. That gets back to another why would anyone do such an exposition: A lot of people were touched by this event and have a vested interest in how the story is told and how the story is remembered. In terms of fandom, there are generally no victors because fan fiction communities are generally not about beating the other guys. The communities are generally about canon, writing and personal interactions. Given this, there are no victors to tell the story and to give the officially sanctioned version. So who tells the stories of what happened? Anyone can tell the story and, if you can bully enough, one story that is out of line with actual events can become a codified understanding of what happened. You need to look no further than Blake's 7 to see evidence of this, with people with, what was the phrase I used earlier? Oh yes... a vested interest and some bullying to keep that non-accurate version of history circulating.
So in conclusion, such an exposition was done because there were vested interests in telling this story at this time, in this way, by that person.
2) This is fandom history
I have problems with the whole Charlottelennox thing being described as fandom history. I just don't necessarily see Msscribe's actions so much as being about fandom as they are about well, a cult of personality. Fandom is almost secondary to the tale. Harry Potter is almost tangential to the story. If you left out Harry Potter, it could almost be political. It could involve some general websites. It could be about a bunch of very irritated knitters, a Fortune 500 company, or book club members. In her telling of the story, Charlottelennox did not much touch on the fandom. Her story seemed to fundamentally about people. And while people make up fandom, make up fan fiction communities, fandom is generally defined as having some relationship to the canon universe. Fan fiction communities generally are about the relationship between people and how they interact with the text. That isn't present here: Mscribe rarely interacted with the text, rarely interacted with the canon. When she is detailed as doing that, it is almost as a toss away "And then she posted a Harry/Hermione story" before the story moves on.
3) This has never happened before so why did it happen.
Occassionally, I like to read about the history of the science fiction fandom. It really helps to understand the Star Trek fan fiction community, how it came to be and ultimately defined large parts of the fan fiction community for almost thirty years. One history I read talked about this early infusion of science fiction with Star Trek fen in the context of WorldCon, and other science fiction organizations and clubs. The author of the piece said that, at one of the early WorldCons in the late 1930s where the attendance was around 800, an attendee might have been thrilled and incredulous to know that even twenty years later that 5,000 people would show up at WorldCon. It would have thrilled the person to know how big and how widely accepted science fiction had become. But when that time finally came, the number of participants was that high, it wasn't what the person might have envisioned. The new fen just through sheer numbers overwhelmed the existing fan base. And because of that, they started to control those events, those clubs. They voted in their friends into power positions. In doing that, they were kicking out the older fen. The community didn't die; it's membership just changed and some people felt pushed out, personally affronted and like they had lost control.
That whole situation almost sounds like what is going on now. New fen replaced old fen. And those new fen who held positions of power, organization, etc. are, through the latest round of revelation, being pushed out again. Some people are happy that the system is changing and some resent being pushed out.
Given that and other things, claiming that this has never happened before bothers me. Yes, this has happened before in different ways and on large scales. It is just that the definition of large scale is subject to change over time as things become redefined and things are re-examined.
In the fan fiction community, there have been factions. These have been based on things like slash vs. het, fluffy nice feedback vs. constructive criticism and the concept of reviewing period, profitting from fandom vs. not profitting from fandom, those with access to actors and creators vs. those who lack access to the actors and creators, publishers of fanzines vs. non-publishers of fanzines, younger members vs. older members, Han/Leia vs. Luke/Leia. Wait! That last one is a bit too specific. At any rate, factions have existed. The various factions have kerfluffled. They've gone at it. They've crossed lines because of those factions, including the line where people have contacted employers to tell them their employee is a homosexual, or general reporting of fannish activity which might make the person look like a total goofball and jeopordize their job. The various factions have done things like contacting people's parents to report their children's behavior. These factions have tried to get people kicked off websites, threatened physical harm in the name of their faction, hacked sites in the name of their faction. Shit happens because members of these factions, entrenched in their world view, their fannish world view, do shitty things.
In the fan fiction community, there have been people who have lied and misrepresented themselves. They did this back in zine days when people lied about their age to gain access to materials they were not old enough to access. They lied about who they knew like actors to help their own positions in the community. People have created multiple socks to bolster their own position. People have used socks to attack their friends. People have used socks to vote for themselves in fan fiction awards. And these lies have hurt people. The scale, the sceope of the Msscribe case as laid out by Charlottelennox is just bigger because the number of participants is bigger.
So for me, to read that this has never happened before is wrong. This stuff happens all the time but the new definition of scale just makes this thing look much bigger. As Harry Potter seems to have mainstreamed the knowledge of fan fiction to more people and is so widely watched by others, it appears bigger. As people are not aware of all the various history of factional interaction and lying, it appears strange and new. It isn't. Stuff like this has happened before.
Published by :partly_bouncy 2006-06-22 15:54:30.0
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