Fandom's Ten Commandments
You may be looking for similar fanworks: The Ten Commandments or The Ten Commandments of Crossovers.
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Fandom's Ten Commandments |
| Creator: | Media Cannibals |
| Date(s): | 1996 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | meta |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In 1996, the Media Cannibals composed a list of 10 commandments for fandom at one of their monthly slashbashes.
When Sandy Herrold reposted it in 2008,[1] her main comment was "Yeah, times have changed."
The Commandments
- Honor the Holy Source Material.
- Your Fandom's OK; My Fandom's OK. (but, see commandment #3)
- Worship not false gods: Wrestlers, Ice Skaters, Dolls...
- Honor thy Convention Dates, and keep the Con Calendar holy.
- Honor thy Fannish Mentor, even if she be a Doyley, and you turn out to be a Bodie fan.
- Thou shall not commit Character Murder, nor Character Rape; nor shall Blond touch Blond, nor Curly touch Curly... [2]
- Thou shall not abandon thy friends for a new Fandom (though proselytizing your new pairing to your old friends is fine in the sight of Fandom).
- Thou shall not steal (unless it is a really good story idea).
- Thou shall not bear false witness against another fan (unless it makes a really good story).
- Thou shall not covet another fans first-run episodes, nor her music videos, nor her Suzie Lovett originals, nor her tales of meeting fannish actors at long-ago conventions, nor her amazingly muscled husband which she uses as the model for her Bodie drawings..."
Fan Comments
On another list, someone reviewed a terrible Sentinel story with a comment something like this, "And Jim's wife and family and family exist only so that they can be killed off and we can watch Jim in torment. That also gets them conveniently out of the way for Jim and Blair to get together."
A couple of years ago, another good friend reviewed *the* novel in Tris/Alex fandom (For All the Gods Departed), saying, 'it's wonderfully, written, and the guys suffer wonderfully, but I couldn't stand the way that the woman is just blithefully written out of the story as soon as the guys need her to be gone."
I'm sure there are other examples, too, but, here's my confession:
- these stories don't bother me.
I dislike it when all the women are written as total bitches; but I'm rarely bothered at all when women are killed off, or sent out of the picture so that our boys (TM) can live happily ever after.
And I call myself a feminist...
[3]
References
- ^ another blast from the past, Dreamwidth entry Oct 8 2008.
- ^ First mentioned in August 1994 or before, this trope was referenced by name in June 18, 1995: "... the true rule is "Curly shall not touch curly." I read all S/H x Pros stories with enormous trepidation, fearing the author will not respect this most serious of all slash rules (and no, you can't just say that Doyle's is a perm. Hmpt!). - Snady" -- Sandy Herrold's comments at Virgule-L (June 13, 1995), quoted with permission
- ^ comments by Sandy Herrold (member of Media Cannibals, and one of the main originators of the Commandments) on Virgule-L (December 18, 1997), quoted with permission