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Kathryn Andersen
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Kathryn Andersen |
| Alias(es): | KerrAvonsen, SnarkHunt, possibly others |
| Type: | fanwriter, fanzine publisher, fanartist, reviewer |
| Fandoms: | multifannish |
| Communities: | multific [1] |
| Other: | KatSpace |
| URL: | kerravonsen at Dreamwidth KerrAvonsen on AO3 |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Kathryn Andersen is an Australian fan. Her first contribution to fandom was in 1986, with illustrations for The Chronicles, the Australian Blake's 7 fanzine.
Attitudes Toward Slash
Andersen has been very outspoken in her dislike of slash fanworks. One example is Andersen's 1995 essay, Slash Summary.
On January 1, 1995: Andersen posted:
Slash is perverted. I can't stop people writing it, I can't stop people reading it if they really want to. If I ran a con I would do my best to stop people selling adult or slash zines, probably by the mild incentive of requesting hucksters not to do so. But I don't run a con, and I'm not likely to in a million years. Yes, I would like to discourage people from reading and writing slash and adult fiction, but I'll never do that by yelling at people and abusing them. I suppose the only real thing I can do is to encourage people who feel the same way as I, letting them know that they're not alone, and that it is quite okay to be nonconformist in this area. [1]
One of her arguments is that slash cheapens close non-sexual friendships between same sex characters. From a 1997 comment at Lysator:
One of the things that distresses me about m/m and f/f stories is the devaluation and dismissal of the validity of strong, same-gender relationships that are completely platonic. And I'm not just talking about fannish slash here, actually. One of the first encounters I had with it was in one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels, where the heroine has (off-stage) sex with a female friend, and the implication (actually, it may have been explicitly stated) was that sex was the ultimate expression of their deep affection, and *not* to have sex meant that their relationship wasn't really that deep after all.
(picture of Kathryn tearing her hair)
... Deep platonic relationships are intense in another dimension, and to drag sex into it is not only completely unnecessary, but it takes a chainsaw to what the actual relationship *is*. It is a different *kind* of violation of cannonicity: a violation of the nature of relationships; to do a story where they stage a bloodless revolution of niceness is merely a violation of plot. [2]
Art
A selection of her fan art can be seen at her Fannish Illustrations Gallery.
She has contributed art to the following fanzines, among others:
Fiction
Her first fan fiction was published in fanzines such as Chronicles, Enarrare and Southern Seven.
- personal fiction page
- at fanfiction.net
- at AO3
- Doctor Who fic at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind
- at Ashwinder as SnarkHunt (Severus Snape/Hermione Granger Harry Potter fic)
Fanzines
- Co-editor of some issues of Enarrare
- Editor of Refractions
- Editor of Staked Blake
Fanfic Reviews & Meta
- What I Like in Fan Fiction
- Fanzine reviews
- Slash Summary, essay (1995)
- Net-Fic reviews
- Let Me Count The Ways The World Ends. Blake's 7 article surveying the fates of characters post-Gauda Prime (1992)
- Mary-Sue Revisited
- The Ten Commandments of Fan Fiction
- Why do we write?
- Thoughts about Crossovers in general
- Beta-Readers
Community
She has been an active participant in a number of fan mailing lists (such as the Lysator Blake's 7 mailing list, and the TPDIS (Tomorrow People discussion) mailing list).
From 2001-2009, she ran the Gen Fic Crit Mailing List, a list dedicated to the discussion of gen fan fiction.
She has run a number of ficathons from the multific comm at LiveJournal.
She has also attended a number of fan-run conventions, such as ConQuest, Parliament of Dreams, Redemption, and a few WorldCons.