Friday News: Net Neutrality ruling, fan fiction goes to college, more comics come to TV, and women of the Harlem Renaissance
Publishing Newsadaptation / Comics / common carriers / diversity / fan-fiction / FCC / Harlem Renaissance / Internet / Literary Criticism / Modernism / net neutrality / television / women writers10 Comments
FCC votes for net neutrality, a ban on paid fast lanes, and Title II – So the FCC finally reached a decision to enforce net neutrality by reclassifying internet service providers as common carriers, which puts them in the category of, for example, phone companies, and subjecting them to much greater oversight and regulation. Although cable companies like Comcast were pushing heavily against this move, by changing the rules for these companies, the FCC has thwarted a multi-tiered approach (aka more pay for faster play) to internet speed and access. If you still need to catch up on the issue, The Atlantic has an essential reading list that serves as a good reference guide.
Clyburn, Google, and consumer advocacy groups told Wheeler that language classifying a business relationship between ISPs and Web services as a common carrier service could give ISPs grounds to charge online content providers for access to their networks. This language was removed, but service that ISPs offer to home and business Internet users was still reclassified as a common carrier service. FCC officials believe this classification alone gives them power to enforce net neutrality rules and oversee network interconnection disputes that affect consumers.
Internet service providers such as Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon lobbied heavily against the Title II decision and could sue to overturn the rules. But Wheeler believes Title II puts the FCC on stronger legal ground. The FCC previously passed net neutrality rules in 2010, relying on some of its weaker authority, but the rules were largely overturned after a Verizon lawsuit. –Ars Technica
What not to do when teaching a class about fanfiction – So UC Berkeley has a program called DeCal, which gives undergraduate students the opportunity to design and teach classes for their peers on topics that interest them. The program also provides some teacher training, and allows for a wide range of subject matter, including fan fiction, with a focus on erotic material. Unfortunately, the course required students to comment critically on some of the stories they read, which resulted in a very powerful pushback on the part of some of the authors.
This Daily Dot piece, written by one of the fanfic authors, argues that even though fanfic is posted in a public space, it’s essentially a private community activity, and that privacy should be respected. From an academic perspective, of course, all legitimate literary material is fair game for analysis, but with fanfic, its complex legal status legitimately makes some authors feel protective of the insularity of community spaces with certain shared assumptions about how the work will be referenced and distributed. Especially if stories were being reproduced and handed out to students. As the undergraduate instructor is a fan fiction reader herself, she may have been able to find some authors who would provide their work for the course, which also would have solved the problem of critical commentary. Still, the backlash was REALLY extensive and often pretty enraged.
Unfortunately, the damage was already done. Disgruntled readers rebelled against the idea of outsiders blundering into their community, and a Tumblr post detailing the situation racked up 8,000 notes overnight. Then someone suggested emailing the supervisor who supposedly signed off on the class, and one of the student teachers wound up apologizing and deleting her personal fanfic account because of the backlash. She’d been drummed out of the very community she wanted to share with her students. Hardly an ideal outcome for anyone involved, and hopefully not one that will be repeated in future. –Daily Dot
Comic Book Writers Matt Fraction & Kelly Sue DeConnick Sign Deal With Universal TV, Will Adapt ‘Sex Criminals’ To Series – The continually growing popularity of comic book adaptations may have something to do with the recent snubs such adaptations received at the Oscars and other awards ceremonies, and the new deal that Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick have made with Universal TV is a testament to the confidence television execs have in the appeal of both mainstream and edgier stories, from Thor and the Avengers to Bitch Planet and Sex Criminals.
As their MCM is expanding into television, Fraction and DeConnick have hired Lauren Sankovitch as Managing Editor. One of the first projects the company is developing under the Uni TV deal is an adaptation of the Eisner Award- and Harvey Award-winning comic Sex Criminals, created by Fraction with partner Chip Zdarsky. Image Comics’ Sex Criminals, named the best comic of the year in 2013 by Time magazine, centers on a female librarian and male actor who discover they can freeze time when they orgasm. –Deadline
20 Female Harlem Renaissance Writers You Should Know – As we close in on the end of Black History Month, here’s a great compendium by Flavorwire’s Jonathon Sturgeon of 21 women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, which lasted for about 15 years, from around 1918 to the mid 1930s. White Modernist writers like James Joyce, Jean Rhys, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others are well-known and well-taught in schools, but writers of the Harlem Renaissance still do not get the mainstream attention they deserve, especially the women, despite the quality and amount of work they produced. From Dorothy West, a colleague of Langston Hughes, to Alice Dunbar-Nelson, who was married to fellow-poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, to Zora Neale Hurston, these women wrote in every medium and were active in a number of different social and political venues and movements.
I’ll keep this brief: we know too little about the women of the Harlem Renaissance. The more I look into these poets, writers, dramatists, essayists, critics, social critics, young adult writers, and editors, the more astounded I am at their range and literary output. These women writers run the gamut of political perspectives, editorial and aesthetic approaches, and backgrounds and nationalities. Yet they all converged to create one of the richest periods in American literary history. Here’s to learning more, and please, if I’ve made any mistakes or omissions, include your notes in the comments. –Flavorwire
Bobbi Dumas at NPR has a nice obituary for Ms Small. I still can’t find anything else.
I think the Fanfic thing is silly. Why would it bother them that their material is being used for a class? Were they so racy or bad? I’ve written several stories, and I certainly wouldn’t have an issue with it. I would rather be curious about what they have to say. Perhaps some people are just insecure and easily offended. Or they want to be loud and promote themselves.
As I understand it, the problem was less the “read this for class” and more the “and now go interact with the author!” I would not care two whits if any of my fic were being read in a class. However, when you have assigned work, there are going to be a number — quite possibly a large percentage of the class — of people reading it who would otherwise DNF said fic. When forced to finish it, they’re going to resent it somewhat (just as I have resented more than one annoying thing I read in college), and if they are then required, by the class, to interact with the author…
Um, no. That’s not “introducing people to the community.” That’s “let’s bring in a bunch of clueless people and trample the daisies.” It is, essentially, dogpiling the authors in question with a bunch of people who A: don’t understand the fanfic conventions, B: may not want to understand them, and C: have been required to talk to the author about this thing they don’t understand, maybe don’t like, and if so, almost certainly resent having to read.
It’s “required to interact with the author” where the thing fell down. If a class read anything I wrote, fanfic or original work, and dissected it in class? I would kind of prefer the teacher encourage the students to put comments in their spaces, if at all. Not because I’m against comments, but because the dynamics of such comments shift when the work was required-reading.
It’s rather similar to the school assignments where kids are supposed to read a book and then write to the author; I have read a few of these where the authors are telling teachers to stop making “write a letter to the author” an assignment, and especially stop giving “write a paper about the author and get the author to tell you things for it” assignments. Those disrespect the author, treating her (or him) as an object of study, whose priorities are subjugated to the teacher’s.
I just loved the comic SEX CRIMINALS, but I can’t imagine how they could put it on television without gutting it. There is a ton of graphic sex depicted (not to mention the porn shop setting, and the explicit potty humor) that is not for the sake of titillation but essential to the characterization and the plot.
@Zelda:
I agree with Elizabeth McCoy. I’m part of the fanfic community. It would bother me to wake up to an inbox full of feedback from non-fans. I appreciate that fic posted online is available to all, but it was not written for that audience and that audience, unless they’re also part of the community would, as the saying goes, interrogate it from the wrong perspective.
There’s a bit in Rocky Horror where Rocky is criticized by Janet for being too muscular. Frank snaps back, “I didn’t make him for YOU.”
it’s like that with fic. We write it for ourselves and fellow fans. The rest of the world can mind its own business and stop poking at us. We contain any number of acafen. We can poke ourselves ;-)
I’m so annoyed by fanfic being pushed to the forefront. It’s not meant to be front page! Ugh.
If fanfic authors don’t want to be read and criticized by the general public there is a very simple solution. Post your fanfiction in a closed community or to an opt-in mailing list. Under the current conditions the displayed reaction is extremely hypocritical. The internet is the internet, the biggest possible audience.
@Anon: Many of us archive our fic on personal webpages, or, most commonly these days, Archive of Our Own. AO3 is great. We want the fic to be accessible, able to be narrowed down by searching for pairing, rating, fandom, length, kink. We want it to be easy to read and find and download to ereaders.
But not by people seeking to analyze it with no understanding of the tropes and traditions who then take it upon themselves to leave uninformed critiques.
Fandom isn’t naive. We know when something’s posted, it’s out there. I’m sure if I really wanted to (which I don’t), I could still find a copy of the fic Fifty Shades was originally, despite the author’s efforts to eradicate it from existence.
We have no right to tell people they can’t read it. We have no expectation of privacy. But we have the right to get annoyed when we’re criticized by people who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about and have no stake in the game.
Fic stems from a love and knowledge of the source, whether you’re reading it or writing it. Take those two away and you’re left unable to appreciate what’s going on in a story. You miss nuances. You don’t get the joke. It’s like reading Chaucer in Word and saying he can’t spell correctly.
@Jane Davitt: I am kind of torn. I have an utmost respect for your position that fanfic writing should stay in the realm of fanfiction and not become pulled for publication because I share this view and dislike that the opposite one is becoming the norm (or already became the norm?). Anyway, the only reason I am bringing this up is because it does seem like a reasonable extension of that argument to me that since fanfic is not an original fiction and does depend heavily on the knowledge of the original source, the least one could do before reading and criticizing fanfic is to know the source. But it could be so much fun to discuss fanfiction if one does know the sources, so all the teacher had to do is to require students to have at least some familiarity with the originals before reading fanfic based on it, no?
In my years of reading Harry Potter fanfic (only reading, never writing, but boy I have read a lot of it), I participated in some spirited discussions, but I cant imagine somebody who had no clue who Snape and Sirius were (because favorite couple ;)) coming in and trying to talk about story based on their characters, since no matter how different the characters will eventually become in fanfic (because anybody who read Harry Potter knows how ridiculous the idea of these two being together even as friends sounds in canon), good story always has its roots in the original, right?
I guess what I am trying to say is that I like discussions like that in theory, but yeah I would want people to acquire some knowledge of the originals first, even if very basic.
@Sirius:
Oh, for sure. I adore books written about fanfic when they’re by people who know what they’re doing, ones exploring the history and the tropes. What bugs me is the idea of some snot-nosed, aren’t we the best and the brightest, uni students (I speak with tongue in cheek remembering my own uni days and that sensation of superiority, soon lost after graduation) pontificating learnedly and sneering.
Fanfic contains multitudes. It has some godawful punctuation and grammar at times (I remember one writer who ended every sentence with a !) but there’s always a beta reader to help if you ask and even if you don’t, even if you post it and it’s dire, utter drivel, fandom will roll its eyes tolerantly or offer encouragement because it was written from love of the source and a need to contribute.
Would an outsider get that? I don’t know. I looked at some of the fics they had up for examination and some are brilliant by authors I love and there probably isn’t a lot bad to say about them, but…