(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I am to be on one panel at Worldcon:

The importance of the fanfiction community
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 12:00 - 12:50, Wicklow Hall-1 (CCD)

As we can see from the Archive of Our Own – managed and maintained by its creators and readers and supporters – fanfiction isn’t just about the written works, but also about the community surrounding them. What can the fanfiction community offer that other areas of fandom can’t?


I am looking forward to it! (Even though I don't love the last sentence of the panel description for the usual reasons)

Comments

[rosefox]

Congratulations on being on the panel!

Panel descriptions (and titles!) like this drive me up a wall because it would take so little editing to turn this into something more relevant and less annoying. Like... importance to whom? Offer to whom? Why the implicit competition? There is no single "the fanfiction community"! Gnash gnash gnash. Hopefully you and the other panelists can set it on the right course.

[seekingferret]

I have been ranting at con programmers about this for years... somehow it is impossible to write a panel on fanfic that isn't "Justify the Existence of Fanfic".

[rosefox]

I am certainly happy to put good fanfic panels on the Readercon program. If you have a stockpile of ideas you've been dying to share with a sympathetic program chair, feel free to drop them here:

http://readercon.org/program/suggestion.htm

And I'll see about coming up with some as well. We really can do better than this.

[elf]

I'll add these to the readercon suggestions later. Potential panel ideas that could still be interesting at the fanfiction-101 level:

From Paper to Pixels
Fanfiction distribution has changed over time, from paper zines to email lists to online archives. We've gained a lot (longer stories, more readers), but we've lost some things too (art alongside text, poetry). Come hear about the changes and discuss what they mean.

Fanfiction Controversies
What's the most depraved content in fanfiction today? Is it worse than what was being written and shared in the past? How do changing standards for "extreme" stories reflect societal norms and mores? (Note: adults only; possibly triggery topics.)

Western vs Eastern Fanfic Tropes
Or, "you got your hanahaki disease in my werewolf AU!" Fanworks inspired by anime and K-Pop fandoms often have tropes that are rare in western TV and movie fandoms, and vice versa. Find out about several story themes with different cultural origins.

We really could do without the "Fanfiction: Threat or Menace?" panels, and rephrasing them to "Fanfiction: Menacing Threat or Pointless Waste of Time?" is not an improvement. I suppose "Fanfiction: WTF is it and who cares?" is marginally better, but that's awfully basic for an audience who are supposedly hardcore SF fans.

[morbane]

Oh nooo, that reads like something you yourself could have put together out of a mad libs of things you don't like about fanfiction panel descriptions.

'Offer to whom' indeed feels pertinent. *mentally re-writes to 'What can different segments of fandom offer to each other?'*