unpopular opinions no. 92:

[parthenia]

I feel I ought to have an opinion about OTW, just because of the sheer volume of posts about OTW crossing my screen, but I still don't really get it.

Also, the emphasis on 'female community' drives me fucking mental. Sorry. I have many female friends, I think many women are awesome, I can see that fanfic brings loads of women together in a wonderfully countercultural anti-capitalist way, and I think it's marvellous that female fans organise stuff in spite of their ladyparts...I even am a woman myself. But I just don't get it with claiming the femaleness of the fanfic writing community as some special condition in need of praise and attention.

I mean. It's mostly a product of the sodding subject matter, isn't it? The majority of open source code writers are probably male. Gamers are predominantly male. Do they spend their time warbling about what a quintessentially male community they've created, apart from the couple of female programmers and gamers who've wandered by who are a bit of an anomaly but are all right PROVIDING THEY PLAY BY OUR RULES???? DO THEY? Actually maybe they do.

GAH. GAAAAAH, I SAY.

OK. I know I'm out of line with many of you. I just think that our attempts to claim the moral high ground for our odd little hobbies are very strange indeed.

If I had more time, I would love to explore the world of machinima a bit more (films and videos made using gaming software, like World of Warcraft); my son watches simple Runescape videos on Youtube.

I love the fact that the Internet has helped all this amateur, underground culture flourish. I came across a site today with links to recent good machinima,like this rather nice music video. Beautiful texture. Note the quintessentially male comments on the video. *g*

ETA, post-metafandom linkage. Oh holy fuck. I did not intend a personal rant dashed off on a Friday to be listed by Metafandom (to the point where I nearly specifically said so). Still, this is the way of the interwebs. I will reply to comments, eventually. Please be nice.

ETA 2: Don't you lot have homes to go to? *clears glasses, wipes tables, starts to stack chairs*

Comments

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

it will not insulate them from any liability for posting illegal content

*sigh*

See, that's my big problem with it. To be honest, I am willing to bet that OTW end up with a policing system that looks very, very similar to LJ's much-derided adult-content statementing.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

replying to parthenia14: but unless fiction or art is "illegal" in the sense of violating child pornography laws (which is unlikely but not impossible), the potential objection is to fanworks as unauthorized derivative works. A derivative work that is not authorized by the owner of the copyright (or the relevant part of the "bundle of rights") is still an unauthorized derivative work whether 99.99999% of everyone who ever lived would find it disgusting, or whether Pope Benedict thinks it espouses such wonderful values that he wants to put it on his Christmas card.

(here via metafandom, BTW).