unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2024-07-03 04:49 pm

Racism in Star Wars

There's a lot of racism in Star Wars, including anti-arab racism, anti-asian racism, and anti-black racism. You can pick any of the main movie trilogies and probably most if not all of the books, movies, tv shows, or games that have been released to see this.

And no, having a few black or asian characters doesn't fix the racist origins of the tropes used to depict the Tusken Raiders or the Gungans or the Ewoks (the latter of who are depicted as noble savage cannibals)!

I've seen a lot of fans try to push back on fandom racism in ways that simultaneously disregard the racism built into the core of the Star Wars canon itself, and I don't think you can grapple with racism in the Star Wars fandom if you ignore racism in Star Wars itself. Doing that just makes it a fandom war between fans upholding different kinds of racism, not people who actually want to address racism in fandom spaces.

Racism isn't a superficial part of Star Wars (or a lot of other popular media), it's not something held just by 'fans who hate on Star Wars', or even something perpetrated only by fandom as a whole, it's a deeply entrenched part of society that manifests in different people in different ways.

Fighting racism requires understanding that.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2023-11-07 10:42 pm
Entry tags:

Ourchive: Software For Archiving Fanworks

Ourchive MVP Announcement

MVP release is  today  

What this means is:
1. A tagged release will appear on GitHub, at some point.
2. An admin install guide will be available.
3. A few final changes will be pushed to https://ourchive.io

In coming weeks we will be opening up the Discord and contacting focus group signups as well. As always, a huge thank you to our beta testers, without whom this project would be moldering in a private GitHub repo.

Is the site broken? Probably! Can you install your own anyway? Yes! A release is tagged and getting started docs are available: https://docs.getourchive.io/admin-getting-started/ 

Thank you again to our lovely beta testers   We're putting together tickets for v.05 now. Onward, upward, inward, etc.

The purpose of this software is to lower the barriers to entry for people wanting to host their own fandom archive by supplying a modern piece of software with user documentation.

I've helped with beta testing this software in the hope that it will be able to supply another option besides static sites for independent fan archives.

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2023-10-12 12:57 am

Customized PDFs of My Fanfic And Breaking The Chains of Centralization

I recently updated my https://unspeakablehorror.net website with custom pdfs of all my fic! I'm looking forward to updating my epubs as well. Epub is imo the more important format of the two but I need to harness my attention for things when it's available, so things aren't necessarily going to happen in order of importance here. But I am very motivated to try to get the most out of the flexibility and freedom of running a small personal website. That's what keeps me going with this project.

I want to break away from the tyranny of platforms, not just the tyranny of particular individuals running those platforms (though breaking away from that tyranny is an added bonus). As much as the convenience of centralized platforms has done for opening up the use of the web, it has also closed off opportunities for expression. It's closed off choice of presentation. It's become a gatekeeper and delimiter for how we express ourselves and even what we express of ourselves.

I want to try to break away from that, as much as it is possible to do so.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2023-07-14 02:59 pm

External Links To My Longfic

Mirrored post from my Pillowfort
 
Just updated my About Me to have external links to epub and pdf files for my longfic. One of my goals is to decentralize my online presence, and making my fic available from more locations online is one way to do that. Nevertheless, I feel strongly that standard social media is a bad format to post longform stories on due to the necessity to manually create links and organization that would exist automatically in a proper interface for such things. 

However, linking external files is another alternative. I've just mirrored the ones available from the AO3 interface for now. I'd love to customize them some more if I get the chance, but availability is my first priority. Based on my unscientific survey, people prefer epub and pdf format, so these are the two formats supplied. If you'd like me to make any additional formats available, feel free to let me know, and I'll see what I can do!

Anyway here they are:

Heart of Shadow (epub)

Heart of Shadow (pdf)

Cut Strings (epub)

Cut Strings (pdf)

Ascent (epub)

Ascent (pdf)

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2023-07-14 12:26 pm

Decentralizing My Fanfic

Oh, I should mention that I've now mirrored all my fic off AO3. You can find it on my Dreamwidth profile. For my longfic, I have both epub and pdf formats available, which I've linked from my protonmail file storage. I'd like to clean up the formatting some more and add more details (like genre and pairings), but I'm pretty excited about the possibility of structuring the metadata for my stories (summaries, etc) in a way that allows for more detail and nuance than the AO3 metadata structuring can.

While a lot of this was prompted by the unfortunate issues of severe volunteer abuse (among other things) I've been reading about regarding AO3, it's also in line with my philosophy of decentralization of the web. While there are certainly advantages of centralization, it nevertheless  creates a single point of failure. This destroys one of the largest advantages of the internet and hampers its full potential. It's one of the 6 main points I mention in my New Old Web manifesto because I view this idea as so important. So even if AO3 were an organization of perfect angels I would consider decentralization of my fanfic an important thing to pursue.

To me the answer to the question of "what's the next big place where everyone will be" is that maybe there shouldn't be only one place that everyone is at. Maybe we should seek to make the web a place where we can still be connected to each other regardless of whether we're in the same 'place' or not.

Maybe that was the point of the web all along.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2023-04-29 11:36 am
Entry tags:

Guess I'll Be the Terrible Person Then

"If you don't reblog this you're a terrible person!"

"you need to update this fic now!"

"fandom is dying because not enough people comment/kudos/reblog"

Hmmmm, maybe trying to shame people you don't know anything about isn't the best way to foster community. And maybe trying to shame people you *do* know something about isn't the best way to say you respect and care about them. Maybe this kind of thing makes me angry because I've seen the damage it can do to certain kinds of people, and also because it says something about how you, the person saying this, view the purpose and place of other people (not as your equals, not as people who may have many other things going on, but as people who exist only for whatever purposes *you* deem worthwhile, on whatever terms *you* deem acceptable).

ramble tags: about me, fandom, though the first one isn't limited to fandom, and not okay when others do it either

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-12-19 02:35 am

Fandom Headcanons and Genres and Daydreams

An interesting thing I've observed is that the focus of many popular fandom headcanons remind me heavily of the various kinds of idle daydream stories I've had over the course of my life.  Though in my case, I didn't necessarily project those onto existing characters.  Oftentimes I'd just make up characters and project the desired archetype onto them.  I just never really felt the urge to share those because I consider them a bit private.  Also the story itself isn't generally what matters to me, but rather the ability of the daydream process itself to use that story to generate the desired emotional result. The story by itself wouldn't have the same effect for me. 

My writing sometimes comes partially out of that process, but tends to be considerably more detailed and specific than my daydreams.  One of the things I view as a major advantage of writing a story down is being able to flesh out full personalities and worlds and plots, whereas what I can hold just inside my head is much more limited. 

I wonder if this is why fandom often has the focuses that it does?  For things like fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, that sort of thing, which seem to be kind of specifically fandom genres? Because they're attempting to focus on a particular emotion, much like a daydream story?  And so a lot of these headcanons and stories are kind of direct or mostly direct transcriptions of daydreams or an attempt to capture the *feel* of a daydream in writing?  I mean, at least for me, I do notice my daydream stories often fit much more neatly into these categories than the ones I write down.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-12-19 01:06 am
Entry tags:

Negativity about Negativity

Though I dislike endless positivity about things, I've also come to really dislike negative criticism that I feel is really shallow in scope, or which entirely misses the point of something.  Sometimes I'm just negative about both the work and the negative criticism put forward for that work.  It's double the negativity!
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-12-19 01:01 am

Me and My Fandom Obsessions

While I do talk about many other topics, when I talk about fandom, I tend to focus.  A lot.  Right now I'm extremely focused on Star Wars, but my previous fandom which I'm still very fond of even if I don't talk about it as much is Legend of Zelda, and especially the character Ghirahim from that videogame series.  So while I very much read books, watch tv and movies, and play games not in those categories, I just don't talk about them as much or am as familiar with minor details in those stories.  

This very much doesn't mean that I think Star Wars or Legend of Zelda are the apex of media.  I do think there is a lot of analysis that can be done on these stories, but they're very, hmmm, commercialized stories, with all the traits that come with that.  Additionally, they're aimed first and foremost at children, a demographic I have not been part of for a long time.  Due to this fact, I generally evaluate them on a different metric than I do stories more appropriate for my age.  They also generally perpetuate a very simplistic, conventional sense of values that often clash with my own sense of ethics.  Nevertheless, knowing about other literature and stories allows me to pick out things from these works I wouldn't have otherwise been able to notice.  Sometimes, they do employ interesting literary techniques or references, or have something valuable to say.

Of course, I certainly do comment on other media, especially books that I've read, and I may even think about these stories a lot, I just generally don't write as many of my thoughts down as meta or make fanworks based on them.  At the same time I will say that I think the quality of much of the media I've been exposed to outside of my fandom obsessions is, well, often a lot better, not only from a literary perspective, but even just from an entertainment perspective.

So uh, yeah.  That's my observation.  I guess with my particular fandom obsessions, I engage more closely because I want to generate things that pair what I enjoy in those fandoms with other things I enjoy, rather than the things in those fandoms that I very much do not enjoy.  And sometimes I feel like I won't have as many problems if I gripe about them?  There's no media or media creator that I think is remotely perfect (though they are very definately not all equal in that imperfection, either), but I feel like negative criticism for some media or media creators is more hazardous.  Though that's definitely not to downplay the problems one can have critiquing stories like Star Wars or Legend of Zelda, either.  I feel like both of those fandoms are quite large and have plenty of staunchly overzealous defenders, it's just there's also plenty of people who are willing to apply negative criticism of them from all sorts of different angles.  Fandoms where most of the people involved are only willing to sing endless praises for it are kind of a downer for me.

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-12-08 02:33 am
Entry tags:

Fan Trivia Gremlin

I try to suppress the impulse to correct people about fandom stuff because I know it's not important and is often taken as unwelcome, but it always makes me twitch a little when I see something and the little fan trivia gremlin in my brain goes ' Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!'
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-10-04 05:11 pm
Entry tags:

Fandom Homogenization

I always feel a lot of alienation when I see trends in fandom that feel like they're moving towards the same aggressive homogenization as American movies seem to be today, just of a different flavor.  The villains issue I have is just one of the many manifestations of that larger issue.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-09-30 02:29 am
Entry tags:

Fandom Crimes

I try to quell the 'someone is wrong on the internet' response when I see someone with a fan interpretation that's wrong that I don't like.  This is largely because if I'm going to judge someone for something, I prefer it to be about something real, and not their fandom crimes.  This is sometimes hard for me because I am just petty like that.  But I try.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-09-24 10:07 pm
Entry tags:

Thoughts on Fandom

The thing is, I have a rather tenuous relation with fan culture in general because I find many, many aspects of it deeply alienating, and yet at the same time, I feel there are some valuable things in it.

But I find it a bit puzzling how many mixed messages I see, that make me feel that a lot of the time what people are claiming as values are only held to as long as self-interest is concerned.


So for example, some of the same fans who claim that fans are capable both of enjoying something and being critical of it, that it's okay to enjoy things that are objectively bad, will then claim this is not true when it is something that triggers the right disgust levers in them.  Now, I am not here to say that those disgust levers are purely preference based in nature.  I have never believed that of my own disgust, though I do believe there is certainly a preference component.  I do however think one is equally capable of hating something and also being critical of it.  

But is it not incompatible to hold to the one ideal sometimes, and then the other at other times?  Is it important not to tell other people what kinds of content they can like, to defend the right to make that content, or should the content people are allowed to make and absorb be rigorously controlled because they are incapable of thinking for themselves, or because it might inoculate bad values in them?

Because I can say that if I genuinely felt the latter was true for fandoms, creators, or works that were 'bad enough', I wouldn't be a Star Wars fan. But I do not take an approach of 'I will only like 'acceptable' things and try to make sure everyone else likes 'acceptable things' only or 'shaming people is bad unless it's something I personally dislike and happen to realize is bad'.  I do not do this both because I do not wish to imply that the issues Star Wars has are somehow 'not bad enough' for people to feel serious antipathy to it, to its creators, or to its fans, and because I'm not going to drop something I like just because it's terrible.  I'm not.  I won't do it.  Nor will I expect anyone else to.

It's wonderful if one can find deep connection to things that aren't aggressively terrible, but I think if one digs far enough, one starts realizing that there are so many skeletons in so many closets.  I encourage people to do that digging, but at the same time, I don't think anyone's obliged to let go of the things they've created personal meaning in for themselves.  If something like that causes one to wish to move on from a work, or simply not be able to connect with it anymore, that's fine, but that's a personal thing, not a moral obligation.

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-09-19 06:45 pm

Palpatine Redemption Fics

I have an enduring fascination with Palpatine redemption fics.  I've thus far read every last one of them (at least the ones in English) that I could find, even the ones that have premises I normally wouldn't give the time of day.  I haven't found that many, but they do exist.  Some of them are short, others long, some complete and some not, but I always want to see how different people approach the idea. 

I also think a lot about these works as I write my story Heart of Shadow.  The approach I'm taking is fundamentally different from the approach others have chosen less out of an intrinsic desire to be different and more because there are different questions I want to explore and different preoccupations that I have (like how I can add as many gratuitous action scenes as possible).  Though, also, if a story is already written, why do the same thing from the same angle?  The original story (not original as in owns the ip but original as in came before) is already written, and it seems to me if someone wants to see that angle explored, they can just read the original.  Though here I only refer to fics beyond a certain level of similarity, since I expect some elements to recur in different fic due to the similar focus.  So that applies to the finished fics at least.  As for the unfinished ones I've seen, they just aren't something my brain can fill in the remainder for (even if the creator of the work would be okay with that, which they very well might not be).  Perhaps someday their authors will.  Still, I think a lot about these works because they all explore this same question of redeeming a character often considered irredeemable.  So I think considering the other approaches and angles that have been taken can be valuable even when you are not exploring those approaches or taking those angles yourself.

Anyway, this is something I'm always on the lookout for, so if anyone ever just wants to point out a Palpatine redemption fic to me, either one they found or one they wrote, it would be much appreciated.  Maybe I should try to formulate a list of the ones I already know about, but as I have yet to do so, I'm fine with people telling me about ones I've already read.  Also if you want to give any commentary on any that *you've* read, I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts, either here or by private message.  I've discussed a couple of the Palpatine redemption fics I'm aware of in the comments of my fic Heart of Shadow with other commenters, if anyone has the same level of curiosity about these things as I do.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2020-08-05 03:11 am

Fandom Musings

One of those things that really gets me is when people go out of their way to, like, highlight one specific ship as being morally wrong rather than saying 'shipping enemies to lovers is immoral' or something like that.  Like, I obviously don't agree with the latter example, but I can respect a  statement like that for its consistency at least. And I think it's fine if people are just like 'I can't stand this ship because of the associations I have with it' but they're not categorically saying that if someone likes that pairing then they *must* advocate some horrifying real-life thing or other.  Like I personally hate the word 'squick' and could never use it to describe my dislike of certain things because it simply doesn't carry the right emotional tone for me lol.  But while there are a lot of fictional things I find deeply unpleasant, I don't assume that the intensity of my emotional reaction to something can tell me if that thing is immoral or not.  I also don't assume that I have to get over disliking things that I don't think are immoral, because people are allowed to dislike things without having to justify that dislike to others.  I just think it's useful to be able to separate 'it's categorically immoral to like this' and 'I'm instating a boundary that I don't want people to bring this up with me' and to just...really firmly separate those two concepts.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2020-06-08 09:39 pm

Some Thoughts on Derivative Works Outside Fanfic and Fanart

Converting a fanfic to an audiobook is an impressive undertaking and I absolutely consider it not only an exercise of great effort (which would itself be impressive) but also a creative endeavor.  Doing voice-acting, deciding intonation, selecting sound effects and music (if applicable), and working with audio software to perform post-processing requires skill and creativity.

Gifsets are an exercise that takes considerable effort and yes, a creative endeavor as well.  People need to learn how to use software to gif, choose what scenes to gif and how long to gif them for.  They may also need to to choose how the images are composed.

Fan music videos take immense effort and producing one can require a great deal of creative composition to get the video to sync in a pleasing way with the audio, in choosing the clips and audio included, and in selecting the type and amount of post-processing used, and in choosing what software to use and learning how to use it.

People who practice any of these endeavors are practicing an art and craft that requires effort, skill, and creativity.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2019-11-28 01:36 am

Fandom Post Thoughts

Sometimes seeing a bunch of random posts for some fandom can spark my interest in it whereas other times it makes me feel some strong antipathy for it that I otherwise may never have felt.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2019-07-28 11:53 pm
Entry tags:

A Criticism of Fandom

I think one reason I don't participate in fandom as an activity as much, besides my extreme introversion, is that I feel like a lot of fandom culture has become (or was always?) predicated on a person's *usefulness* to other people and not on relating to people as another human being.  Like I kind of get the impression that a lot of current fandom culture is oriented around the idea that if a fan doesn't provide fanart, fanfic, reviews, or a personal publicist to other people in the fandom they're not worth being around.  Like those things are the only thing their worth as a person seems to be based on sometimes. It just seems to me to be a very dehumanizing and ableist mindset to view people only through that sort of lens.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2019-03-24 01:35 am
Entry tags:

Fandom Thoughts

I think I feel uneasy about fandom culture in general because I recognize it as an obsession, and it's so easy for that obsession to be twisted into something evil.  And not because of whatever characters or whatever a person happens to enjoy, but because it is an obsession, it can ultimately be prioritized over other things, or over treating other people with compassion.  And that's why everyone in fandom thinks fandom is terrible--because they notice when this malevolence is directed at them or their friends or favorites.  But how many of us realize when we are directing it at others? 

ramble-tags: Am I giving up my obsessions?, lol no, I just think it's interesting, that it's not just people outside of fandom culture who emphatically hate fandom culture, but also those inside of it, and like, that's the norm, like people will often only defend their friends or people who like what they like, in the way that they like it, but most the people in fandom, are as likely, if not more so, to label fans in that fandom as terrible, as people outside the fandom do

unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2018-12-08 05:20 am
Entry tags:

Star Wars and Me

My exposure to Star Wars began with the original trilogy, followed by the EU novels. I read a whole bunch of the EU back in its heyday, and always felt a lot of excitement when a new Star Wars novel came out. I wrote fanfiction and did fanart, but it was never something I shared with others. So, despite being a huge fan, I wasn't really involved in the fandom, which was because I'm an introvert and for much of my life suffered from severe social anxiety. The idea that sharing things with others might be fun was therefore far overshadowed by these factors.

There's a certain, hmm, irony perhaps in my current fixation on the prequels period. When the prequels came out I watched them all in theatres but besides finding them visually stunning and enjoying Grievous and Palpatine's appearances, they didn't strike much of a chord to me. At around the same time, the New Jedi Order series started up, which turned me off to the rest of the EU (I really didn't like the concept of the Yuuzhan Vong as the main antagonists). I largely began to lose interest in new canon Star Wars content at this point.

It was only when The Force Awakens came out that I started becoming interested in Star Wars again. When I went looking for new material, having already read a lot of the EU material for the original trilogy characters, I started looking into the prequels characters that interested me. During this period I watched both Clone Wars and The Clone Wars, and read anything I could get my hands on that featured Grievous or Palpatine. Probably my favorite novel is Darth Plagueis by James Luceno.

I've also read some of the Star Wars novels in the new canon. I've read the Aftermath trilogy and Cobalt Squadron. I've also read Tarkin and Ahsoka. Am currently reading Thrawn. I've watched the entirety of the Rebels cartoon, and I watched the first season of The Freemakers. I've seen all the new Star Wars movies as well.

I recently started playing Knights of the Old Republic and am on Dantooine.

I've written quite a bit of fanfic for Star Wars. Currently working on two long stories and have written a couple one-shots for exchanges. My favorite characters are General Grievous, Darth Plagueis, Darth Sidious, and Darth Maul, though I enjoy a large number of other characters as well. My main ships are ObiGrievous and Talzin/Sidious, though there are many others I enjoy as well. I'm a multishipper with a tendency toward rarepairs.

I love mixing elements from different time periods or media or the old and new canon.