A Book Lover’s Rant on Respect and Bullying

Posted by Pemberly Rose in Confessions of a Closeted FanFic Writer | 2 comments

R. E. S. P. E. C. T.

by: Pemberly Rose

First let me preface this with, yes it has indeed been far too long since I’ve done one of these. Family drama in the extreme. Divorce, death, all that wonderfully *not* angsty stuff that has taken up all of my free time that wasn’t occupied by school.

Also a disclaimer. This will have statements that will seem like sweeping generalizations but it is imperative to keep in mind that I’m not saying these things about ALL fans but only SOME of them. There is quite a distinction. Names will not be given of the fandom offenders, simply because I don’t think it’s right to single certain people out and it’s too hard to narrow it down. I wanted to put this disclaimer so that no one misinterprets what I will say. I posted a shorter version of this on my tumblr account the other night.

Okay, now onto the subject at hand. There are several trends I have noticed within several different fandoms to which I humbly belong to.

The first is a lot of interfandom hate. I noticed this quite a bit during the MTV movie awards when the tired/played out/inconsequential Twilight vs Harry Potter debate made its resurgence. I saw it on both sides with hate being slung at Emma Watson for not smiling cheerfully when she lost to Kristen Stewart in the Best Female category. I also saw a lot of anti-Twilight hate coming from HP fans. As a fan of both this disconcerted me. For example I’ve noticed a lot in the HP fandom that many people will try to tear you down if you say you like another popular book series, even one as epic as Lord of the Rings. Is this at all fair? Who made these small percentages in each fandom out there think they can judge what people should enjoy and what they should be ashamed of?

Personally, as a journalist myself who’s well versed in books/movies/music/art and pop culture I have seen it in every kind of fandom out there. Some Star Wars fans bash the Trekkies and vice versa. Some DnD players I went to high school with actually would scowl if you so much as mention a computerized MMORPG like World of Warcraft. I just don’t get it. I don’t see why we as fans of one thing or another have to apologize when we say we like a particular thing, person, book, song, etc. When I was a teen I was a huge, huge teeny-bopper and loved the Backstreet Boys. Yet all through high school (2000-2004) I found myself apologizing or all together hiding my fan-girl nature from my real life friends for fear of massive derision.

I’m going to admit something. I love to read. I love books. I love all genres and all types of stories.

Stories I like and am not ashamed to admit it in no particular order:

1. All Jane Austen Books
2. Twilight
3. Harry Potter
4. Black Dagger Brotherhood
5. The Hunger Games
6. Anne Rice’s books
7. Outlander Series
8. Lord of the Rings
9. The Chronicles of Narnia

and the list goes on and on.

I love classic literature, I love modern fantasy, horror and sci-fi. I love the written word. I don’t care if it’s epic writing only that I’m entertained.  What I don’t get is why bash others for liking what they like? If you don’t like it? Who cares? If you’re not a book critic or in publishing you really are just stating an opinion. Opinions are like assholes – everyone has one. If I don’t like a book I stop reading it and move on

Furthermore, what this first trend’s problem boils down to is preference. Different people like different things. You know different strokes for different folks. Not everyone is going to enjoy the same thing. The very essence of being in a fandom is that many people come together under one common thread: the preference for a particular story, show, movie, song, artist, etc. What I’ve noticed is that within each fandom there’s becoming no room for liking something else or even a particular pairing. Some people even get laughed at for liking/writing about it. We live in a society that has become hyper sensitized to the darker aspects of the internet. Namely this is cyberbullying. What we do when we “poke fun” incessantly at an actor for “not smiling enough” or an author for following her own vision instead of caving to fandom demands is a form of cyberbullying.

Another example in the Twilight fandom is when I see on a so-called fan-blog is alot of fan-girling over Robert Pattinson, yet hating on Kristen Stewart and Stephenie Meyer. The point of reading is to enjoy one’s self in a different world that is not reality. Stephenie accomplishes this very well with an entertaining story. Is it Shakespeare caliber? No, but let us remember even when Shakespeare was a humble playwright he wasn’t the literary legend we know of in the history books. Stephenie gets a lot of hate for her writing style and that it’s not as strong as some would like it to be. She also has garnered a lot of cyberbullying type behavior for her choices in the course that the final book of the Twilight Saga took. Instead of taking the high road and respecting the author’s choices for her story and it is, after all, HER story to tell, fans bashed Breaking Dawn for not having a ton of gratuitously described sex, or that Bella didn’t end up with Jacob, and so on, ad nauseum. Don’t even get me started on the hate an innocent fictional child received after Breaking Dawn dropped in 2008. I mean really? You’re going to call yourself a fan and hate on a fictional child? Yet what has SM done, I mean, really done to deserve this kind of hatred? She hasn’t come out slinging mud at other authors saying they “can’t write worth a damn”. I’m lookin’ at you Stephen King, well meaning criticism or no it was a classic example of being the big kid pushing around the younger ones in the sandbox. No she hasn’t said anything rude, or condescending about anyone, even those who seem to suit themselves with incessantly maligning the Saga and it’s more loyal fanbase. She’s been nothing but supportive and fan-girly like the rest of us over other authors like Suzanne Collins (author of The Hunger Games). So honestly it isn’t all that fair to show that much hate no matter how much you like or dislike the story.

Yet another thing with the Twilight fandom in particular I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of fanfiction writers who bash Stephenie’s writing yet their own fanfics are carbon-copies of the basic twi-plot just set in a random human situation. Writing a fic that is set in a human world and using the same basic plot points that Stephenie used is not creative nor is it real writing. It’s more pandering to the audience to be popular while spitting in the face of the actual creative mind behind the story.

When people bash a story I’ve noticed two major things:

1. They either don’t like, or don’t agree with it but don’t have the capacity to be an adult to respect an author’s unique decision in a more respectful manner.

2. I get you may be overly attached to a story and characters but it’s NOT your story. You’re not the editor, the writer or the publishers. And if you don’t like the story at all, why are you even involved in the fandom period? Did you think as a fanfic writer you could write it better? You’d probably enjoy it better if you just focused on what you like instead of what you don’t.

What I also don’t get is the constant maligning people do/receive for no apparent reason other than they don’t like a pairing, or they’re upset the author made their own decision instead of caving to fandom demands. Just like in the Twilight fandom (as aforementioned by the BD hatred) In the Harry Potter fandom I’ve seen some hatred thrown at JK Rowling from time to time. This is much more subversive than in Twi-land. A lot of the more subversive comments I’ve seen were about how she had killed off many, much beloved characters within the HP universe. The story itself wouldn’t have had as much of an emotional impact upon several generations if JK Rowling had caved to pressure of her fans and let Dumbledore live or paired Harry/Hermione together. And don’t say it would be Twilight either. Because in all honesty as a fan of both stories you can’t compare the two. They’re about two VASTLY different situations/characters/themes/ideas. Not any of it is closely related. The only correlation is some of the fanbase and that it’s in the fantasy genre. Pretty weak correlation if you ask me.

1. They either don’t like, or don’t agree with it but don’t have the capacity to be an adult and to respect an author’s unique decision.

2. I get you may be overly attached to a story and characters but it’s NOT your story. You’re not the editor, the writer or the publishers.

I don’t get bashing on ANY author for any reason. If you don’t like their writing it’s not a big deal and you don’t have to go announcing it to the world. I don’t think it’s right that we live in a society that we have to be “ashamed” or apologize when we like something that may be popular and has a bit of what I liked to call “hipster backlash”. These are people who liked it when it was “underground” but when it went mainstream they’re like “oh I hate that shit”.

It happens with music, books, everything it seems. Why can’t we just respect other people’s different opinions? I don’t care if you have a different opinion than me. It’s your right to as an individual. I may not agree with you, but I am not going to say something like “well you’re stupid for liking…,”. Prime example: I write canon Twi-fic, yet one of my best friends writes AU and in a pairing I’m not particularly fond of. Am I going to make fun of her for writing it? No. She happens to like the pairing so I’m not going to say she’s this, that or the other for liking it just because I happen to find it less appealing. Why don’t more of us, when we see a pairing we don’t like, instead of going “EW GOD GET IT AWAY!” to “Hey that’s cool I’m not a big fan of that pairing or plot idea but if it works it works”. When did fandom in general resort to Mean Girls type behavior?

I think the problem with fandom in general is that there is a sense of bullying within, and out of the fandoms (all of them). If you’re in one fandom and like another, someone within any fandom will find a way to deride you for it. Is that really fair to anyone? Is that right? In a world where bullying has become so prevalent in the news as a result of tragic teen suicides I think we all need to reexamine how we view ourselves, and other fandoms at large.

Anyways, that’s just my feeling on it. If you were offended in anyway by this then you may want to reexamine your words/actions on different fandoms because you just might be one of the offenders, too.