(no subject)

I think the thing I want to say this morning is that Donald Trump is not scary because he is planning to round up all Muslims tomorrow or anything. He is scary because he is a compulsive liar and we wake up this morning without any clear idea at all of what a Trump Presidency will look like.

He faces a Congress that supports a broad conservative agenda, but that does not like Donald Trump very much. Paul Ryan has called Trump a racist several times, Mitch McConnell barely offered him any support, and a number of Republican Senators and Congressmen have repudiated him. It is unclear what the constraints they will impose on him will look like. It's unclear that they will be able to recover enough unity of purpose to constrain him in any significant way. But on the other hand, they have in Mike Pence a strong and cooperative conservative waiting in the wings. It's hard to believe, but one suspects that the threat of impeachment is the major power that the Republican Party holds over Trump at the moment.

On the other hand, I think even with the addition of another conservative justice, the Roberts court is capable of and likely to constrain some of the most terrifying of Trump's campaign promises. The worst of Trump's threats against immigrants are unconstitutional and there is no debate between conservative and liberal jurists on this question. Trump may have the ability to temporarily violate our decency, but the institutions of American democracy are strong enough to ultimately uphold the constitution over the whims of a would-be authoritarian leader. I believe that very strongly.

Obamacare is likely dead- the question is whether Trump attempts to destroy it in some unthoughtful way that crashes the American economy and ruins lives, or if he can actually muster the attention span to partner with Paul Ryan and unwind it in a reasonable, sane way. I cannot predict that, but I can summon a little, tempered optimism. Obamacare was deeply flawed and broken, and there is the potential for something better to replace it.

Are we going to get a wall? Of course not, there's no way in hell Paul Ryan is going to approve an appropriation that large for something that stupid. And there's no way in America as America is constructed for Trump to build the wall without Congressional approval. But as I've been saying for months, that's not exactly the point. The point is that Trump is going to threaten to do various terrible things, and he may try to carry out some of them, in order to so scare the Mexican government that they will do do more work to keep illegal immigrants out of the US. It will probably not work, but who knows, I've never been able to make sense of anything Trump does. And even if it doesn't work, the bluster will play well to the people who elected Trump, the ones who feel so powerless in the face of the changing world that they've been screaming out for someone to do something drastic to fix America's problems. It doesn't matter if we get a wall, the mere fact that he'll try for something so grand and stupid is why they voted for him.

Drastic is rarely good. That is the cornerstone principle of my conservatism. But drastic is where we live now. Welcome to Donald Trump's America.

(no subject)

Philcon's fanfic panel this year:

Where is Fanfiction Going that Mainstream Media Still Fears to Tread?

What common themes in fanfic rarely appear in published works, and why? Is it a matter of publishers and producers only willing to put out stories based on formulas they know will sell, or is it the pros who are choosing to stick to more limited spheres? Fic archives are full of stories exploring sexuality, gender, unusual romances, and those used as a means to see the racial, religious, and abled diversity that published works aren't providing. There's clearly a huge desire for these kinds of stories, so why do we rarely see them in bookstores or on TV?


It is part of a continued trend of improvement in the Philcon fanfic programming, but it is still a somewhat frustrating panel spec. I saw the first draft of this when I was at Vividcon and got into a nice rant with some people who understood why. One of the reasons Vividcon was great was that it was full of people like that.

As is typical for Philcon fanfic panels, it's misguided in both directions.

A)It undersells published fiction by focusing on 'mainstream media' as the direct comparison, ignoring the fact that huge volumes of 'original' published fiction that transgresses mainstream norms is published, by small presses or by presses catering to niche audiences or by art presses. There is a lot of 'original' fiction exploring sexuality, gender, etc... and making minority identities visible. And I don't think we benefit from praising fanfiction by bashing published fiction, particularly by discounting the work done at the margins. Because fanfiction, too, is at the margins, no matter how much more visible it is today than it was.

B)It undersells fanfiction by acting like fanfiction is driven by some transgressive impulse, when the reality is most people writing fanfic just want Harry and Draco to bone. And you might say that that's not an undersell, that's an oversell, because it is a claim that fanfiction is more serious than a lot of people think it is. Usually saying that fanfic is just a bunch of people who want Harry and Draco to bone is the thing I'm fighting against, the thing people say when they want to dismiss fanfiction. But I think we've won that battle, or at least I'm no longer interested in arguing with people who dismiss fanfiction on those grounds. And so what I'm interested in fighting for now is the thesis that it's okay and important to our community to write fanfic that isn't trying to transgress mainstream norms, just as it's okay and important to our community to write fanfic that is transgressive along various axes. That the body of work that I once termed 'affirmational fanfiction' should not be discounted.



That said, there's a lot in this topic that I'm looking forward to talking about. And it is so, so much better than Fanfiction: Stepping Stone or Cul de Sac?



Edit For reference, my past posts on this subject:

2015: Fanworks that Deserve a Medal
2014: The Value of Transformative Works
2013: Fan Fiction: Stepping Stone or Cul De Sac?