Little Tin Gods: a rant
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| Title: | Little Tin Gods: a rant |
| Creator: | Sue the Android |
| Date(s): | October 10, 2003 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | multimedia |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Little Tin Gods: a rant |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Little Tin Gods: a rant is a 2003 essay by Sue the Android.
It was posted at The Android's Dungeon.
Some Topics Discussed
- being weary of fandom, and people constantly reinventing the wheel
- BNFs and their outsized opinions
- freedom of speech, IDIC
- tolerance
- fandom and fanfiction as freedom of expression
From the Essay
I've been asked a couple of times why I don't post fiction to lists and why I'm not in any Yahoo groups. (I am in a couple of those, as it happens, but they're pretty well defunct now. In fact I'm the moderator of one I haven't visited for about a year.) The reason I don't belong to groups or post to lists is simple. Been there, done it, don't need to do it again.
I have been in fandom since the days when we chipped our fanzines onto flat stones with flint chisels. Well, okay, not that long, but I published my first zine in 1979 and in those days slash was an underground movement that you whispered about discreetly to the trusted few. I have lost count of the different fandoms I've visited during that time; the stories you see here on the site are only the ones I'm willing to admit to. The others - some of which even won awards in their time - are so bad by today's standards I'm hoping everyone's forgotten them.
Over the years I have developed an abiding hatred of one particular fannish specimen, and I think you will find there is at least one in every group and on every list. Yes, I'm speaking about the Little Tin God. Little Tin Gods are those fans who think they know everything, and who on that basis are willing to set themselves up as the authority on any subject under the sun. They are the ones who see it as their god-given right to tell other fans how to enjoy their fandom.
In the old days, the Little Tin Gods were anti-slash. They thought it was disgusting and perverted. They knew the networks would hate it and the actors, who of course were all madly heterosexual (yeah, right), would be wildly embarrassed. They took it on themselves to lecture us about the error of our ways. On the whole, we did not rebut them; we let them have their say and did not respond. Slash fans had no desire to be visible, and anyway we did not need their approval and in fact rather enjoyed their condemnation.
Then there were Little Tin Gods who thought one series was inherently superior to another and would shun anyone who had a different view. Well do I remember being told that 'The Professionals' was "a low copy" of 'Starsky and Hutch' and that no loyal fan could possibly like both. As it turned out, that was perfectly true for me; in my opinion Doyle and Bodie have had a greater lasting appeal than Starsky and Hutch ever could.
Oddly, when you consider that most fandom ultimately derives from Trek fandom, in which the motto was always 'Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations', there are an awful lot of people out there who want to instruct other people about how they should enjoy their particular obsession(s). Too many Little Tin Gods set themselves up as final arbiters of what may or may not be done in any given fandom. In fact, a very sweet and well-intentioned friend once tried to get me to 'referee' a particular fandom in that way. Dearly as I love her, and flattered as I was, it simply isn't in me to restrict another fan's enjoyment. Write what you want to write, read what you want to read, don't let anyone stop you; that's my philosophy. Sure, I have things I'm not keen to read. Sure there are things I wouldn't write. I don't like character assassination and I'm not wild about death stories. But that doesn't mean you don't get to write them - and hey, if you want Toby Zeigler dressed as Carmen Miranda with a basket of fruit on his head dancing the flamenco on the White House lawn, go for it. I may not read it, but that isn't the point.
The point is that fandom is to be enjoyed. Creating fiction is far more fun than reading it - slower, but definitely more fun. On the whole I don't care too much if people write crap, just as long as they are writing. Today it may not be worth reading, but tomorrow or the day after it may be a little fannish classic and in a week's time it may be on the bestseller lists. We never know unless we try.
Little Tin Gods are control freaks. They care far too much about the stainless purity of their fandom du jour and fail to recognise the transitory nature of fan obsession. Remind yourself that it may fade as quickly as it arrived; that a new series may start next week which grabs you by the short and curlies and throws you around for a while. Recognise that you will be the better for it, and that those who focus too closely on any one thing run the risk of becoming narrow-minded.
Fandom is, or should be, about diversity and about ways of enjoying and interpreting a series which defy the general expectations. Fandom is the ultimate expression of post-modernism; it is entirely free-form, and those who seek to trammel it with rules only do so because it makes them feel important … and safe. They gain self-esteem from telling others what to do. I don't know about you, but I don't feel that I need people like that in my life.
A reader of a previous version of this rant kindly wrote to me and pointed out that she detested chanslash and object-rape stories and felt that fandom in general would be better without them. While I certainly agree with her, the brutal fact is that freedom of speech is indivisible. If I concede your right to express yourself, I must also concede that you may do so in a way I don't particularly enjoy. Attempting to regulate a fandom so that only certain kinds of stories will appear (banning slash fiction or character death, for example) begets a whole series of moral dilemmas and raises the vexed question of exactly who has the right to control another person's creative output. In a free society we can all vote with our feet and go elsewhere; the question is at what point does it stop being a free society? I'm naive enough to feel that we should impose standards on ourselves, not on one another. If your own good taste does not tell you that what you write will be unacceptable to many people then you must bear the consequences; I will not seek to protect you from the world, or the world from you, and I will not support anyone who does.
I like good characterisation and well-written stories, theme and subject immaterial. I also like free expression. Life is too short to spend any part of it listening to people who know a little about a little. My fiction is what it is; it is an expression of myself, and I'm afraid that all the Little Tin Gods fandom can produce will never persuade me to compromise on any part of it. I hope the same is true of you, because an audience is all these people want, and the last thing I feel they should be given. I think it's time we all stopped listening to them.And that, dear reader, is why I play in my own backyard and not someone else's. I am not willing to submit to a set of rules that someone has invented simply because he - or more likely she - can. Whether, and in what way, this has affected the quality of my output, you must be the judge. My own views on the subject should be pretty clear by now; frankly, I don't feel that I have missed out on a lot!