An open letter to a few points, debates and blogs around the internet.
Girl-Wonder.org is a collection of sites dedicated to females in mainstream comics. Our goals are to foster an attentive, empowered audience community and to encourage respect and high-quality character depiction within the industry.
Point 1. Slash fiction is not mainstream, nor is it mainstream comics. In fact, it’s a small breakaway movement on the internet that’s largely more self congratulatory than it is noticed by the outside world. As an art form, it’s also old news – Kirk and Spock slash fic is credited as the big break through moment for the sub genre of fan fiction.
In short, slashfic is not mainstream comics. It’s not actually on our watch.
Point 2. Feminism, and girl-wonder.org, are not the borg. As part of Girl-Wonder, I am allowed to hold opinions that differ from other Girl-Wonder staff, and the CEO. This is what makes Girl-Wonder an interesting place. It’s also so far obvious that we’re not the Borg that I have to give back my latex body suit and laser pointer eyepiece before I’ll be allowed in the group photo for the annual report. We can differ in what we do, think, read and write.
Point 3. Girl-Wonder’s mission is to be a clearing house of related themes, starting out like a local store, and maybe one day being the Wal-Mart sized megalith of comics critique work. Maybe. We don’t know, because maybe we won’t need to expand beyond the core of dealing with women in mainstream comics.
Point 4. If you want to start up a site that deals with the portrayal of male or female characters in fan-fiction, you should do that, and you’d probably get a few supporters from fanfiction, mainstream industries and some of the people writing here and reading here might join you. However, the role of Girl-Wonder.org does not currently include fan-fiction. Maybe in the future, maybe not. Right now, Girl-Wonder deals with women in mainstream comics
Point 5. Portrayals of hyperviolent women who castrate men, published under an X-Rated publishing company are outside of the Girl-Wonder gambit, definitely don’t come into Project Girl Wonder, and really, not what we’re dealing with here at Girl-Wonder.org where we deal with women in mainstream comics.
A point of personal opinion. I don’t read slash. I don’t read yaoi, yuri, femmeslash or any other form of slash. That said, I regard slash as a form of fandom, and one that I plan on actively encouraging when I get my fiction writing published. I plan on having a slashfic/fanfic license agreement built into my novels because I regard the fandom (and fanon) as an interesting exploration of the text. I don’t read Harry/Draco or Bruce/Jason because I don’t read any slashfic.
That said, I don’t regard slash fiction (or fanon) as mainstream comics. In fact, I really don’t worry too much about non-mainstream comics here at DS, because I accept that niche markets will serve niche interests. I don’t have to agree with the interests to accept that they exist, or even personally support those interests (personally, I find the whole XXX porn comic industry to be bizarre. Black and white, difficult to hold in one hand? That’s meant to be art isn’t it?).
My reason for wanting to see an improved lot for female characters in mainstream comics has been documented before here on DS. Whether or not my fellow bloggers, my CEO, my readers or anyone else produces content for niche non-mainstream markets doesn’t matter a rat arse to me.
In fact, my response is this – so?
I joined Girl-Wonder.org because I want to contribute to improving the portrayal of females in mainstream comics. What anyone else from this domain does with anything else in their life is their life, and I don’t give a damn whether you like that, agree with that or what you think. Because so long as they’re pulling their weight on this project, kicking some arse on their end of the cause and being willing to let us disagree and be different people outside of the G-W.org work, then I’m damn glad to call them allies, friends and fellow travellers. The world ain’t black and white, it’s a full spectrum of gray scale, and that’s the gorram point to it all.
People can and do hold contradictory positions on issues. It’s human nature. So teh_no? I’m over here if you want to fight me about that. Except that I can accept you can have a different opinion. Can you handle the fact I’m not agreeing with you?
I’m sorry, but what’s this a response to? I’ve got very little idea what’s going here.
Danel:
There’s somebody with the handle (are we calling them “handles” anymore?) ‘teh_no’ on the LJ community scans_daily, I’m guessing this is about him? I think I saw him take a jab at girl-wonder.org once.
Danel – it’s a response to this discussion at the LiveJournal community scans_daily in a (very NSFW, link only shows comments) post in which teh_no shared some scans from a cracky Italian porn comic and made a sarcastic comment on the portrayal of the “strong” woman in the comic which was misunderstood by a handful of people.
While his response (here (NSFW – porn and violence) and here) was very childish and stupid (the one in his own journal), I honestly don’t believe this argument should ever have started.
What have we become if we’re so defensive that we can’t even recognize sarcasm when we see it?
(I sure do hope html works in comments, I’ve never commented here before.)
Maria, Danel, SeanH
It’s partly directed towards teh_no, their statements on scans_daily, and there recent outburst against G-W, that much is certain. It’s also in response to a few places around the blogs/boards where there’s been some attempts to draw G-W into a position on slashfiction. Basically, slashfic isn’t our watch, and the key to a social change movement is to remember what you’re not as much as what you are – G-W handles mainstream comics (given we’re an international community, manga is included as mainstream)
What slashfic writers do with their slashfic, and what fanfic writers do with their fanfic isn’t something I’m going to worry about – unless, y’know, it’s Frank Miller writing homophobic Spartan fanfic, but that’s called 300.
Here’s the thing.
The person in question has known that one of the people behind G-W writes fanfic for several months now. (And there’s oodles of posts to prove this.) The reason he knows is that he’s a fanficer, too.
And he’s just *now* launching his “ZOMG teh geh prawn!” smear campaign.
Which causes him to lose *any* moral highground he ever had.
This is revenge for a perceived slight, this is a *backstab*, pure and simple.
Fandom has 5 deadly sins:
1)You never “out” a writer or vidder.
2)You never give fiction (or vids) to an Actor/Writer/Artist/Other Official Person.
3)You do not have a fellow fan TOS’d.
4)You do not plagiarize.
5)You never use somebody’s fannish activities as a weapon against them in their other endeavors.
He thinks he’s scoring a great moral victory.
Fandom polices its own.
He thinks he’s struck a blow. Actually, he’s just razed his city and sown his own fields with salt.
He’s about to discover that he’s the biggest kind of untouchable in the very community he wants (so very, *VERY* much) to be a BNF in.