Ben says Hi from cyberspace

[evildrem]

In case any of you are actually interested in viewing the thread of argument about fanfic that Ben is involved in it's here You should be able to guess who Ben is! This one should run and run and I for one, am finding it all highly amusing.

Bet you never knew slash fanfic was so intellectual. *grins*

The Barbelith Forum is an intriguing place to hang out. I wander in and read from time to time more then I post I must admit. Its home to some highly opinionated people and it has a tendency to degenerate into intellectual masturbation of the highest order. Still, its all good fun and the posters are on the whole an interesting and good hearted bunch.

I think Ben should get a round of applause for actually bothering to ask actual fanfic writers what they think, rather then just hypothesizing! All hail the Ben.

Comments

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I loooove intellectual masturbation, I think I'll go look!

Well this is wank of the highest order...

[evildrem.livejournal.com]

But its fun, and you can lay bets on who's going to pull out which reference next :)

[jkb.livejournal.com]

I tried to check it out, but at the point I jumped in on, it looked like just pseudo-intellectual babbling and posturing. (I kept waiting for the phrase 'subverting the postmodernist paradigm' to pop up -- these look like those kinds of people.) Sarcasm aside, does anyone on there have anything interesting to say? Any ideas worth considering? Or is the value of the thread just in the opportunity to smirk at these people's intellectual pretensions? I'm always curious about discussions of fanfic, but this one is slow going. If it's just that you need to skip a couple of pages to get to some interesting points, please let me know where to look.

*laughing*

[evildrem.livejournal.com]

The previous thread that is referenced at the beginning of this one has some interesting thoughts in it, amongst all the wank. Don't say I didn't warn you about the type of forum this is however. It might also be worth pointing out that this particular discussion is in the part of the forum called 'The Head Shop' which is particularly set aside for discussion of "Philosophy and Cultural Studies: Postmodernity, Deconstruction, Marxism, Queer Theory, Feminism - analysing the 21st Century"....so be warned *grins*

Personally I am quite taken with the 'necessary violence' argument in regard to fanfiction and slash in particular, but I don't have the time or inclination to argue with anyone about the why and wherefore of what I do. To be honest, I consider most discussions of the *why* of fanfiction to be rather pointless. This is a good example of the same argument (only using 'big' words) which occurs on every fandom mailing list or board at some time.

As far as do thse people have anything to say? Um, I can't really answer that...as its not my place to *grins*. At the end of the day is you find this kind of thing interesting then they may do otherwise its going to mean nothing. Much like anything else on the net really. Who is judge whether any of us have *anything* to say :)

The only reason I posted the link is because I was mailed by many people who were responding to Ben's questionnaire asking to view the thread. Normally I'd ignore this type of thing but I applaud Ben's attempt to actually get the viewpoints of writers of slash fanfic and also because I found the questions he asked intrinsically interesting to answer.