So Your Fic is Required Reading: Hahahanope
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| Title: | So Your Fic is Required Reading: Hahahanope (aka "TheoryofFicgate") |
| Creator: | waldorph |
| Date(s): | February 22, 2015 |
| Medium: | Tumblr |
| Fandom: | Pan-fandom |
| Topic: | see below |
| External Links: | waldorph. - So Your Fic is Required Reading: Hahahanope, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
So Your Fic is Required Reading: Hahahanope is a February 2015 Tumblr post by waldorph. It was created in response to the inclusion of their fic Delilah, along with many other fanfics, on a required reading list for a class syllabus. This alone would have gone unnoticed, but the class also required that students comment in some sort of substantive manner at the fic's site as well.
In their post, waldorph included links to the other fanfics that are on the syllabus. This was done so that these fic's author's could have a "head's up," and so that other fans could "give them some love" after having a spotlight shown upon them in a way they probably did not expect.
This post became the main propellant behind TheoryofFicGate. See that page for much discussion about this post, and subsequent activity.
On Feb 22, 2014 waldorph adopted "TheoryofFicgate" as a tumblr tag.[1]
Excerpt from waldorph's Post
So, I got to the bottom of why I was getting such weird comments on a relatively obscure fic of mine—it’s required reading in a class being taught, and one of the assignments is to leave a comment on the required reading which is more critical than constructive so that the professors know students are “engaging” with the texts in a way that isn’t just “YAY I LIKED IT.”But waldorph, how do you know? Well, one of the teachers of said class commented on my fic, Delilah, which was this week’s required reading, and I was able to track down the syllabus and uncover the assignment which was prompting the flood in my inbox. The comments I received were bizarrely tone-deaf, condescending, rude, and more than that, completely out of step and touch with all fannish norms, and actually prompted me to write a post about concrit and feedback earlier this week. As soon as she explained that it was a class, and that these were fannish-outsiders, it made sense, as opposed to me assuming someone had recc’d it and I was getting way more backlash than usual on a pretty obscure fic. Unfortunately, I dealt with this all week before one of the teachers stepped in, and that was only when I started receiving flaming trolls.
For this reason, I’ve alerted all of the authors listed on the syllabus that they’re about to experience this because, frankly, I would have appreciated a heads up. I’ve also listed them all below, including the weeks that their works will be reviewed. I think that it might be nice if people could spread this around and leave some positive vibes on these works in particular—some of them are pretty well known and some of them aren’t but I think they all equally deserve support from within the community. Additionally, if you know these authors and can contact them directly, please point them in my direction or in the direction of this post and I can provide them with a little more information. I reached out to everyone, but obviously contact information can be out of date.
Ultimately, there’s nothing we can do about people examining works that we never meant to be examined in this way. I think we all have to accept that the way fandom gets interacted with is changing, not just the way that we interact with the rest of the world. I do think that as a community we can and should support each other.
Please signal boost this post so that we can get these authors some good vibes. Obviously we’re into the semester already, so I’ve also included works that have already been through this, please be sure to give them love as well.