quizz & poll

[salinea]

Your result for The Fan Fiction Personality Test...

The Mindgamer

Everything is possible, nothing is ever really over.

Fanfiction is a creative outlet for you. You don't intentionally write it, it just happens. You find inspiration in several fandoms, but are not obsessed with only one.

You like to explore "what if" situations. What if this character had never made this very choice? What if this event had taken place sooner, never, elsewhere? What if these people had never met?

You are likely to write Alternative Universes, fan seasons or sequels and just follow your (sometimes pretty strange) plot bunnies.

Take The Fan Fiction Personality Test at OkCupid

[Poll #1508022]

Comments

[shiinabambi.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a difference between "around certain people" and "ever." A friend told me the word "retard" bothered her because of a mentally disabled member of her family, and TBH I still thought it was kind of silly (said member of family is autistic, not retarded, and people using words to describe unrelated things isn't going to change anything), but she wasn't demanding that I stop using it, just saying how it made her feel, so I made a conscious effort not to use it around her, because as it turns out, I'm a piece of work, but I'm not a total monster. I still use it pretty conversationally, and it's slipped out once or twice around her, which I immediately apologized for, but she was really cool about it.

Thing about LJ, though, is it isn't a one-on-one conversation. So censoring yourself around a member of your flist means censoring yourself in pretty much your main public outlet.

Actually, I find all this censorship to be pretty creepy. It seems like in the PC movement, there's one opinion on any given thing, and if you deviate from that, regardless of your rationale, you get dogpiled and verbally abused until you conform, and once you conform, you go around and verbally abuse anyone else who makes that deviation. What it lacks is, well....diversity. Diversity of opinion. The ability to agree to disagree. So I've pretty much picked up my toys and gone home on the whole PC thing. I'm not going out of my way to oppose them, because in spirit, I actually agree with just about everything they're championing! But their methods bug me, so I don't want to hang out with them anymore.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean, although your example makes me feel uncomfortable because I think the word "retard" used as an insult is much, much more offensive than the word "canon nazi" and the sort of stuff one really shouldn't be using.

I understand how generally speaking people trying to tell other people what they should or shouldn't say can be irritating or feel stifling; on the other hand my experience with what you would call the "PC movement" have been much more varied. There's a lot of different opinions on what is or isn't okay, and a lot of discussions and sometimes arguments in order to reach any kind of consensus; and while I've seen dogpiling happen in cases when I didn't think it was warranted, in the majority of cases I've seen, it occurred because the person being dogpiled was the one reacting in a very aggressive and frequently insulting way in answer to what was first a polite request.

[shiinabambi.livejournal.com]

Well, it's something that each person will see differently, but I don't see how "retard" is so different from "idiot" or "fool," which both originally meant the same thing. I wouldn't use it to insult someone who's actually mentally disabled, in fact, I wouldn't insult someone who's actually mentally disabled at all. But as an insult for an average-intelligence-or-so person who does something really stupid, or even something not human at all "That new law is so retarded" it does make a certain kind of sense. It's hyperbole.

Maybe at the end of the day it comes down to that it makes sense to me as a negative thing to call someone/something because I do think that being retarded is something of an undesirable state--nothing against those who are already there, more, if you had a choice to stay as you are or become retarded, which would you choose? If you were having a child, and it could be of average to above-average intelligence, or retarded, which would you choose? If that makes me an ableist then...I can live with that.

I can understand and respect if some people don't want to use certain words. Like, I don't generally use "gay" in the pejorative sense, as in, "Dude, this class is gay, let's skip it," but I know people who do, and aren't homophobic or trying to malign gay people, and I'm fine with that. I don't challenge them on their use of the word, because I don't think they're doing any harm.

In general, I don't try to control how other people use words. That isn't how language works. Slang tends to change every few years anyway, and it's offensive more often than not. The very nature of slang is to be fresh and new and break all the rules, so putting more rules on it isn't going to be very effective.

It's entirely possible that I have been ruder than I thought in the presentation of my viewpoints. If that's the case, then removing myself from the community was still a wise decision, as I was being disruptive there.

The experience which really soured the whole thing for me, though, wasn't aimed at me. I was on a feminist blog, where the feminists were all in a froth about an advertisement that was run that they found offensive, and complaining that the small-time liberal 'zine it was run in shouldn't have printed something like that. The editor of the 'zine came and defended his (yes, his) choice to run the ad. Thing is, I didn't find the ad to be that offensive either, and their arguments as to why it was offensive felt kind of reaching to me. The (male!) editor made a lot of sense, and presented his arguments logically, at least until he got infuriated and started just attacking them, but even when he did that, I kind of agreed with him (even if I thought he could have handled it better). (So, he was rude, and he was dogpiled, but he was dogpiled before he was rude. They pushed him to it.)

He was constantly being told that as a man he basically had to just take them on their word because he couldn't possibly understand the female experience, so he wasn't allowed to form his own opinions on the matter. But here I was, a woman, agreeing with him!

I've also talked to a lot of people who said they were afraid to voice any kind of dissenting opinion in these kinds of blogs. And I thought, "Afraid?" Because that's really about the last thing anyone should feel when it comes to expressing their opinion, no matter how potentially offensive their opinion is. (In fairness, some people have also confessed to being intimidated by me, and this is really the last thing I want ever.)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I'm going to make a longuer answer later, as I have to leave... just:

I've also talked to a lot of people who said they were afraid to voice any kind of dissenting opinion in these kinds of blogs. And I thought, "Afraid?" Because that's really about the last thing anyone should feel when it comes to expressing their opinion, no matter how potentially offensive their opinion is. (In fairness, some people have also confessed to being intimidated by me, and this is really the last thing I want ever.)
I understand that feeling and I think it is unfortunate, BUT! when you're a member of a minority and you see people off-handedly using words and concepts that have been historically (perhaps in your personal history) used to demean, humiliate and terrorise you and in general teach you your place as a lower member of society/a freak/a subhuman... how do you think that make them feel? Or, more importantly, when they dare to voice a complain or a request to not use those words this way and that in answer people flip out at them angrily, call them names, call them slurs, ignore them, dismiss their right to complaint, question their intent ("you're just looking to be offended") (and I have seen all these things happen, sometimes to me), how do you think that make them feel?
In general, History and society make a good job at making most members of minorities quite a little bit more than afraid of even making a complaint, even in a frivolous context such as fandom.

Because when that person removed me from her flist in punishment for voicing a complaint the message to me was clearly "how dare even voice such a request! Keep silent or else I won't socialise with you"
And it's not the first time I receive such a message.
Do you think I wasn't afraid of commenting?

So, no, I don't think it's good that people in general be afraid of voicing an opinion, but if the choice is between people who have more privilege and advantage in society (though no evil of their own, just the way society is biased in their favour) be afraid of using possibly problematic words or of disagreeing in certain blogs/communities, or the members of minorities who are all too often made to keep silent by the systematic discriminative inertia of society be afraid of voicing their anger and suffering when some expressions are used; I know which one I'd pick.

[shiinabambi.livejournal.com]

That is very unfortunate. I wouldn't defriend someone over something like that! I'm more "to each their own,"; you pick your words, I pick mine, free discourse is great and minds may or may not be changed by it.

In other words, people are free to complain! And I'm not going to hurl slurs at them, but I might shrug. IDK, if they can make a case for why that word made them afraid and unwelcome, I might be convinced! There are some words I don't use, after all. (Mostly racial epithets, I have yet to find any reason to want to use them.)

I don't think "ignored" is as bad as the other things on that list. You have the right to voice your opinion. You don't have the right to have everyone agree with you. And that's what makes debates interesting! :)

So yeah, I'm privileged. I don't deny that. But there are so many ways it's possible to be "privileged," I am in some and not in others. I hate how people assume that just because I have some privileges, I must have all of them. I try not to get into this stuff because it's personal, and it cheapens it to bring it into every internet debate, but yeah, my life kinda sucked too.

I do make an attempt to not be a dick, but I have yet to be convinced that slang is this huge oppressive force. Maybe that's my error. But, it's the conclusion that seemed most natural to me. I'm doing the best I can, but it's in my nature to need to understand a thing before I adopt it into my philosophy--I have trouble just taking someone's word for it.

Back to the original topic, I think "canon nazi" makes linguistic sense, because the Nazis were strict and oppressive. But canon nazis don't put people in ovens, and I find it hard to imagine anyone would seriously confuse the two. I realize it's a lighthearted application of a serious concept, but that's inevitable--the more you tell people to be serious and not laugh, the more irresistible it becomes. It's human nature that in any unfunny event, someone will push that envelope. (I've seen Holocaust/Hitler jokes, 9/11 jokes, recently dead celebrity jokes, dead baby jokes, etc.) I don't think commanding humanity as a whole to be somber is going to work. The word "nazi" is getting reabsorbed into the language (I've seen other uses, like "Christmas nazi") and I think of it kind of like language compost, breaking it down and taking nutrients from it.