• anna j. clutterbuck-cook
  • contact
  • curriculum vitae
  • find me elsewhere
  • marilyn ross memorial book prize

the feminist librarian

the feminist librarian

Tag Archives: friends

friday evening thoughts on sociality

25 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in life writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

friends, work-life balance

Image via.

I had lunch with a friend today – a rare opportunity though we live in the same city and, until recently, only several streets away from one another. We both work, on opposite sides of the River of Charles, we’re both married — to spouses we like to spend time with on a daily basis –, and both of us are that breed of people society identifies as “introverts.” Working in public services, at the end of a seven, eight, nine hours of being “on” around other people, the last thing we usually have oomph for is happy hour or dinner out. Most days, I can barely string out enough public-space energy to pick up a book at the library or pick up a foodstuff on my way home.

What this means, in practical day-to-day terms, is that the maintenance and cultivation of social connections with my people is spatially and temporally constrained: I need to be careful about how far, how long, and how many commitments I make. Since weekends need to be reserved, to a great extent, for quiet recharging — both Hanna and I need down time — we can usually at most make one social plan a weekend. A booked week, for me, usually looks like a weekend activity and a weekday lunch with a colleague. Three such meetings and I start to feel prostrate with togetherness.

This, I must stress, even with people I like very much and enjoy being around.

I was thinking, after the lovely lunch with my friend today; a lunch at which we talked about our mutual need for such unscheduled weekends, and the affective labor of public services work that — while rewarding in the context of professional work we both chose and (mostly) love — takes a particular toll on the private lives of those introverted people who choose to pursue it. In that it enforces a rather severe rationing of non-waged sociality.

Continue reading →

from the archive: a new mother’s diary from 1910

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in my historian hat

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

children, friends, history, MHS

In honor of my friend and colleague supervisor Elaine who has just given birth to her first child, Sean Alexander, I put together a blog post over at The Beehive. It features the diary of Sophie French Valentine, who gave birth to her daughter in the summer of 1910 and chronicled their early weeks and months together in a page-a-day Standard Diary:

As the summer waned, Sophie recovered from her surgery and chronicled the comings and goings of her household, as well as the growth of her daughter (also christened Sophia). Several weeks after the birth, the family doctor paid a visit and pronounced “the little one…sound and vigorous.” Three days later, infant Sophie “went out in the bassinette in front of the house” for the first of what would be many afternoons in the fresh air with her mother. Sophie’s husband, a diplomat, appears to have been away during much of his wife’s convalescence, but a steady stream of female friends and relatives populate the pages of Sophie’s diary. On August 14th, for example, the day “the little one” was baptized Sophia French Valentine, she “had pictures taken with Harriet, Charles, Aunt Martha, Auntie May; and Elizabeth and Lucy,” as well as with her mother and Aunt Caroline (“who held her and talked to her lots”). Later she was visited by “Theodore, Mrs. Graves, and Auntie Beth.”

You can read the whole thing over at the MHS blog.

and we’re off! vacation starts in 3, 2, 1…

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in our family

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

domesticity, family, friends, travel, west coast

Tomorrow, Hanna and I are taking off for a two-week vacation in Oregon and California. We’ll be catching up with family in Portland and Bend, Oregon, and Corte Madera, California, visiting my old haunts on the Greensprings, participating in a wedding on Hayward, California, and celebrating our first anniversary at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Nye Beach, Oregon.

Oregon Extension (Ashland, Ore.), circa 1975
(photograph by Alison Kling)

I hope we’ll be posting photographs as we go, but expect light posting if any until the week of September 16th.

thanks for the liebster love; let’s have some more!

28 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in linkspam

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blogging, friends, fun

Thanks to follower .breaking into blossom., I’ve been nominated for something called a liebster award: a sort of  blog-based chain letter which encourages small bloggers to give a shout-out to/for other small bloggers.

I don’t normally do chain-letter type things, but 

a) it was sweet of blossom to think of me (thank you!),
b) I just got back from vacation and I’m bored,
c) I like that the Liebster Award shares the same first letter as Lesbian.

So here goes.

It seems there are multiple versions of this “award” going around, but the one blossom is following instructs me to:

a) nominate eleven blogs with under 200 followers (I honestly don’t know how you’d determine that, so I’m just gonna take a stab at it by choosing from the “smallish personal blog” category in my Feedly list)
b) notify said bloggers they’ve been nominated (hey bloggers! thanks for existing!)
c) provide answers to the eleven questions blossom posed in her own Liebster post, and
d) ask eleven questions of my own nominees, to answer if they so choose, along with posting their own eleven nominees (excluding the blogger who nominated you).

My Nominees in Alphabetical Order are…. (drumroll) … 

  1. The Dirty Normal
  2. Eat the Damn Cake
  3. Fannie’s Room
  4. First the Egg
  5. I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write
  6. The Lesbrary
  7. New Porn By Women
  8. Radical Doula
  9. The Thang Blog
  10. Undercover in the Suburbs
  11. Walk the Ridgepole

My responses to blossom’s questions…

  1. What comforts you most when you’re sad? Touch, particularly from my wife (doesn’t have to be sexual). And reading familiar books.
  2. What would you do on a dream day where money and travel time were no object? Enjoy leisurely meals in the good company of friends and family (who are scattered across the continent), go walking in Cumbria in ideal weather, read intellectually engaging things in books, and enjoy unhurried sexytimes with my wife.
  3. Favorite drink (with or without alcohol)? Summer: Elderflower gin & tonic, Winter: Goat’s milk hot cocoa made with belgian chocolate.
  4. What character trait (of yours) do you most struggle to accept about yourself? The fact that physical activity and exercise are not second nature to me.
  5. How much water do you drink in a day? Typically not as much as I should.
  6. If you’re a parent, what has surprised you the most about the gig? If you’re not, what do you like best about not having kids (right now or at all)? I feel uncomfortable framing non-parenting in terms of what’s “best” about that aspect of our family life. In part, we’re non-parents because we can’t picture having enough hours in the day (around work) or emotional resources to parent adequately. So I guess I’d say, “it’s good having enough sleep and down-time that we can function”? But I’d rather say that what’s surprised me about non-parenting is that I’m okay with it. Growing up, I assumed I would be a mother. Life hasn’t turned out that way, and it’s surprising me that I’m as comfortable with that as I am.
  7. What (if anything) makes you feel insecure about either being a parent or not being a parent? Insecurity may not be the right term…but I worry about how to maintain cross-generational connections in the absence of parenting, as that is the clearest model I know.
  8. Top three four television shows of all time? Firefly. Mr. Rogers. Torchwood. The West Wing.
  9. Specialty dish (or baked indulgence)? Something you’ve made time and again. Moosewood brownies.
  10. Favorite thing about the person you’ve grown into? That I can always find something to be interested in and ask questions about.
  11. One simple, happy memory. Stepping off the plane in Redmond, Oregon, en route to visiting my grandparents and smelling the scent of juniper and lava rock dust.
My questions for the Leibster nominees … (should they choose to answer them) … 
  1. First library?
  2. A favorite childhood book or movie you’re now a bit cringe-y about having adored?
  3. Earliest memory of the internet?
  4. Food you disliked in childhood but appreciate now (and why)?
  5. Books currently on your nightstand/active reading pile?
  6. A might-have-been from your twenties (job not taken, relationship not pursued, trip aborted) that you find yourself wondering about?
  7. Favored toothpaste, toothbrush?
  8. Have you ever burned/shredded/junked a piece of personal history you now regret destroying (if so, what and why)?
  9. Have you ever burned/shredded/junked a piece of personal history you have no regrets about (if so, what and why)?
  10. A strong childhood memory of world events?
  11. A project you hope to finish some day (but has currently fallen by the wayside)?
If you (the nominees) choose to spread the liebster love, now or at some later date, please link the post you create back here in comments so others can enjoy!
Again, thank you all for thinking and writing and sharing.

    from the neighborhood: arnold arboretum

    19 Sunday May 2013

    Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in a sense of place

    ≈ 1 Comment

    Tags

    boston, family, friends, fun, photos

    Me on a knit-bombed bench, Arnold Arboretum (photo by Joseph)

    This weekend, my friend Joseph is in town from Michigan, where he works at Arrowhead Alpines and recently published a book on plant breeding at home (aka plantsex!). Obviously, we spent at least some of the weekend exploring plant-y things in the Boston area, including a glorious visit to Arnold Arboretum.

    I hadn’t been to the Arb since maybe 2008? I’m absolutely not going to leave it so long before I go back.

    It was a perfect half-cloudy day to wander around experimenting with nature photography.

    Next time, though, I’m gonna bring a book and a thermos of tea and settle in for a long afternoon of reading out-doors. Maybe in this tree …

    Joseph was super-excited to see this dove tree, planted in 1904; he says it’s the oldest dove tree in the United States (the earliest tree we saw was a bonsai started in the late 1700s!)

    The azaleas were blooming everywhere in all shades from white to deep fuschia. These were a salmon red, though the camera made them come out pink.

    As were the lilacs…

    I’m looking forward to chilling by this lake sometime soon with my wife and a picnic from the Harvest Co-op.

    movienotes: footloose and flashdance

    16 Tuesday Apr 2013

    Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in media

    ≈ 2 Comments

    Tags

    friends, gender and sexuality, movies, politics

    This weekend, Hanna and I had a 1980s dance (movie) party with friends A’Llyn, Nathan, and their 1-year-old sprog who — if his living room moves were any indication — is going to grow up to be the next generation’s Ren McCormack. We watched Footloose (1984), which has stood up surprisingly well, and Flashdance (1983), which has very much not — although maybe I shouldn’t talk since I never saw it in the actual 1980s and this was my first viewing. But those in the audience who had seen it as children confirmed that from an adult perspective it was even creepier than they remembered!

    A few observations about first Footloose and then Flashdance. Spoilers below, fairly obviously, if you care.

    Footloose I first saw at some point in my pre-adolescent period. The two things I remembered most vividly were John Lithgow’s performance as the small-town pastor (whom child-me loved to hate) and the scene where Lori Singer, playing the preacher’s daughter, climbs between her friend’s car and her boyfriend’s truck while they’re driving down a two-lane highway. It’s a scene meant to impress upon us that Ariel (Singer) is a thrill-seeking teenager, but mostly just terrifies me every time I have to watch it! Still, as I said above Footloose still has charm and, think time around, I was struck by a few things I hadn’t noticed, or experienced differently, as a child.

    • John Lithgow’s pastor, Rev. Moore is less fire-and-brimstone than he is sad as a character. In fact, we took to referring to him as “sad John Lithgow” every time he showed up in a scene. The film-makers couldn’t seem to decide whether they wanted to make him a petty tyrant or a fearful father … and ended up trying to go for both with only middling success.
    • Kevin Bacon’s Ren is, like, the most polite Big City Rebel ever. Seriously. He wears a suit and tie to school on his first day, and when he decides to enlist the high school seniors to defy the town prohibition against dancing he … wears the suit and tie to a town council meeting and reads a speech in defense of their case. He refuses to smoke pot, even when a local bad boy foists a joint on him, and chills with his little cousins. 
    • Domestic and intimate partner violence get a look-in, although not much of a mention. On the one hand, we have John Lithgow’s character smacking his daughter across the cheek for talking back to him (probably part of what cemented him in my childhood head as an Evil Character). On the other, we have Ariel’s truck-driving boyfriend who beats her up when she breaks up with him. She takes a pipe out of the back of his truck and smashes his windshield and headlights. He gives her a bloody nose and a black eye. The situation is clearly being set up as the negative contrast to Ariel’s eventual relationship with Ren, but it’s also treated like a weird side-point that’s never substantively addressed.
    • The teenagers get a surprising amount of support from the surrounding adults — for a town where supposedly dancing is Of The Evil. Ren’s mother is fired from her job at one point because her son is causing trouble, and the relatives they’re staying with get momentarily judgy. But, like, the mill owner Ren works for after school offers his building for the dance, and Mrs. Moore sticks up for her daughter and the other students at a couple of key points. 
    • Reverand Moore draws the line a burning books from the library, which is sweet but also makes his prohibition against dancing as a sin nonsensical. He’s set up at the beginning of the film as the Big Baddie, only to emerge toward the end as one of the primary advocates for the teens. It’s disconcerting.
    • And Ren McCormack has more chemistry with his new BFF, Willard, than he ever has with Ariel. The scenes where Ren is teaching Willard to dance have more spark in them than any other scene in the film, frankly, and I’m started to find that there is no fan fiction fleshing this romance out on AO3. Fan writers, you’ve let me down!

    So overall, Footloose is dated and cheesy — but aged surprisingly well.

    The same can most decidedly not be said for Flashdance, which sadly starts out with the promising fact that its female lead, Jennifer Beals plays a welder named Alex Owens who — in addition to holding down a solid, skilled (and I’d bet unionized) working-class job — dreams of successfully applying to the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance. Even the fact that Alex moonlights as an “exotic dancer” (but OMG not a stripper!!) wouldn’t on the face of it be enough to kill the film — this could have been one of your predictable “triumph over obstacles”-cum-marriage-plot movies, wherein the girl wins the guy and the chance to study ballet at the school of her dreams.

    But.

    BUT.

    • There’s this small problem with the love interest being her boss at the building site where she’s working. And, like, a major stalker with the world’s creepiest vibe ever. Starting with the fact that he approaches her at work the day after having seen her dance at the dive bar where she works. So, you know, his interest in her as a person has this double creeptastic factor of “I’ve seen you dance practically naked and I thought that was hot, wanna date?” blended with, “I’m your boss and I’ve just disclosed to you, on the job where I’m supervising you, that I showed up to watch you dance practically naked and I thought that was hot and want to date you.”
    • Ms. Owens (yay feminism!) tells him quite firmly no, she doesn’t date the boss. So he follows her home from the site at night in his car, while she’s riding her bike, and propositions her again. When she insists she doesn’t date the boss he fires her so they can do on a date together the following night.
    • Although she blows him off, she apparently thinks better of it ’cause the following night they’re on a date!
    • And on that “first date” there’s this truly excitingly horrible you-can’t-look-away-from-it scene wherein Alex takes Mr. Manager back to her (loft porn!) apartment for pizza and walks back into the living area in a black negligee and grey warm-up sweater (see DVD cover photo) and proceeds to take her bra off from under her sweatshirt. Our entire audience sort of couldn’t believe it was happening. Not that slutting it up for your partner isn’t fun sometimes, but this was a first date with a stalker boss and the whole thing felt way too close to a professional strip tease. (Needless to say, they proceed to have sex.)
    • Long story short, she continues to perform sexually for him (and I’m framing it like this deliberately — all of their private interludes are echoes of her on-stage performances) and lo and behold he has connections at the Conservatory. So he makes a few calls and she gets an audition!
    • Although Alex protests, nominally, over the wheeling and dealing, in the end she goes to the audition anyway and presumably wins a spot in the Conservatory. We never actually get to find out, since the closing shots are of her making out with her sugar daddy.
    I think what was so frustratingly, jaw-droppingly bad about Flashdance was that with a few tweaks it could have been a charming, though obviously cliched, romantic comedy. Make the love interest someone other than her boss. Make him someone who didn’t proposition her after seeing her perform. Make it clearer what dancing means to her, and dis-entangle the patronage from the romantic relationship. Could her boss at the construction site see her perform and, oh, incidentally, know someone who knows someone … without sex being used as such overt currency? So it was like two degrees away from being a movie that was meh but not actually cringe-inducing, and ended up just being bad. No cookies, people. No cookies.
    Next time around, I think we’re gonna go with Alien and Terminator.

    quick hit: "in loving memory of her little girl: past, present, and place in the gladys potter garden"

    21 Thursday Mar 2013

    Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in linkspam

    ≈ Leave a comment

    Tags

    children, friends, history

    (via)

    My former professor, mentor, and friend Laura Prieto has recently published an essay in the digital humanities project Subjecting History titled “In Loving Memory of Her Little Girl: Past, Present, and Place in the Gladys Potter Garden.” The piece explores how a memorial garden in Laura’s neighborhood came to be, and what it has meant over time:

    Surely I cannot be the only person who has noticed the pair of stone plaques outside one of the heavy wrought iron gates. The inscription on the left side reads: “The Gladys Potter Garden. Dec 4, 1883 – Nov 16, 1891.” Its companion plaque on the right is much more weathered and thus harder to read. But if one squints a bit, one can make out the explanation: “This garden was given by a mother in loving memory of her little girl, who loved this spot and who loved to walk here with her father when it was part of an attractive ravine. MCMXX” [1920].

    I am a historian. I am a mother. The inscription knocks the breath out of me. Among so many boys and girls who have played here, there was Gladys Potter, and she died at my own son’s age. I know how frequently parents have suffered the deaths of their children throughout history. I can prepare myself for these awful object lessons in a cemetery (where I’ve also been known to walk and explore the past). But I do not expect this sharp announcement of grief, this intimate and generous act of mourning, to arrest me at the gates of my children’s playground.

    Hanna and I first heard this piece when Laura read an early version of it as her presidential address before the New England Historical Association several years ago. We are so happy to see it find a home!

    Please go enjoy the essay in full at the Subjecting History interface. The digital volume is currently open for comment and will eventually, with revisions guided by that commentary, be published as a physical print volume. The scholars who are participating hope for broad public involvement — go help them hone their work!

    comment post: shipping as … creativity [survey]

    19 Tuesday Mar 2013

    Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in fandom

    ≈ Leave a comment

    Tags

    comment post, fanfic, friends, writing

    Sam, Dean and Cas … re-imagined (by jasric)

    Our friend tiptoe39 has been authoring a series of posts on “shipping” and fan works over at SpoilerTV, and for the last few posts she’s created surveys to help her generate content. Here are my responses to her survey on “shipping as…creativity”:

    How does shipping enhance your creativity? 

    I think shipping kicks my creativity into gear in part because it pushes my political buttons as a bisexual woman and as a feminist: I experience shipping as a direct intervention in mainstream narratives. It is a form of critically interacting with books, movies, television series that depict human sexuality and human relationships in certain ways, challenging the stereotypes, assumptions, or erasures I see there and re-working the source within the fanwork to tell a different version of events.

    This is going to sound like a weird comparison, but I once attended a talk by Jane Yolan on faith and writing, in which she talked about how some people viewed writing from a Christian perspective as a negative constraint on creativity — but instead she saw it as a limitation that fueled creativity because it gave you a framework that you had to work with … creatively.

    I think fan fiction can work in a similar way to writing “Christian fiction” … in that you have a starting set of assumptions (the canon work) that’s sort of there as a de facto set of prompts. And then whatever inspiration you have for your work, you’ll have to be clever enough to put those two things together. Fitting form (the original material) with function (your particular vision in this instance). It’s a challenge that I think can actually amp up someone’s creative juices, because you can’t afford to be lazy about it. (If nothing else, your fellow fans will call you on it!)

    How does viewing fanworks by others enhance your creativity?

    God, I love the creativity of my fellow fan creators. I’m constantly awed by the dedication with which so many of us write/draw/paint/edit/enact/etc. It’s wonderful to take in so many visions of the same core material; to see how many ways the same narrative(s) can be improvised upon when humans put their minds to it. I definitely feel that my exposure to fanworks and the people who created them has taught me to look at the world in a more multi-faceted way. I see everything through “slash goggles” now, a perspective that necessarily involves holding more than one understanding of a work in mind (and heart) simultaneously.

    Fellow writers have also taught me a LOT about the construction of effective erotica; I do believe I have a strong original voice in that regard, but I’m not going to kid myself into thinking I spontaneously learned how to write smut well. I learned it from my fellow fic-writers (thank you!).

    What are you able to do creatively with shipping and fanworks that you cannot do with “original” creative works?

    I’ve always been a person who thinks best “aloud,” in dialogue with others. With shipping (and fan fiction writing) that conversation is a built-in feature of the activity from the start: you’re in dialogue with the original work that inspired the fan work! I get incredible satisfaction out of participating in that conversation; it generally brings me into a much closer and more positive relationship with the original work (even when I’m highly critical of it) than I would be as a more passive consumer of the original work. I have very little experience with non-transformative fictional work (my non-transformative writing has been in the genres of academic/scholarly papers and creative nonfiction essays / blogging — also forms of conversation in their own right!). But I have tried my hand, occasionally, at non-transformative fiction and I often run out of steam at some point, I don’t have the social accountability to finish the story that the fandom provides. I think I also felt less of a sense of purpose with non-transformative work (it feels less politicized, less like an intervention, which are key kicks-in-the-ass for me as a writer).

    What is your response to the idea that those with creative inclinations should work from their own characters and worlds rather than appropriating another’s?


    I understand the concern of creators who feel threatened by fan works. At first blush, fan works can look like an authorial power-grab, like plagiarism. However, I’d encourage people who are framing fan creations as plagiarism to reconsider that assumption. Instead, I’d argue that fan works are a form of reader/viewer response to the original piece. Like literary or film criticism, they are responsive to the original work, cannot exist (are often meaningless) without that original work with which they are interacting — usually with a mix of praise and critique.

    As long as the pieces are clearly framed as such (transformative works by fans), and the creators are not making money from their creations or passing their work off as actually by the original creator(s), I would argue that original creators can only benefit from the fan community getting excited about their creation enough to generate those responses. That responsive interaction will likely translate into investment in your original creation, which — if you’re a professional of any kind — is going to translate into a larger audience, higher profile, more income. As a fan creator myself, I’ll be honest and say that at least half of the original creations I create for I would not be reading or watching if I were not invested in creating fan works from them. The fan creation IS my investment in the work, my conversation with it.

    Finally, as an historian I would point to the fact that fan works have a long history, as does the tradition of artistic inspiration, musical “quotation,” fashion trends, and other conventions of one original work informing another very directly. While the Internet and other technologies have made this type of interaction more visible, I would argue it has long been a part of the equation in creative economies. This does not mean that creative rights concerns are invalid — in fact, they are crucial to continue defining and advocating for — but it does mean that there is precedent for original works and transformative works living side-by-side in mutual benefit.

    Is there anything about shipping, or the shipping community, that limits you as an artist, creator, or consumer?

    Well, I don’t think this is exactly the kind of “limit” you’re looking for, but I have sometimes found myself as frustrated by the tropes of certain fandoms, and the imbalance of having an endless supply of fic along certain themes, for certain fandoms, and then radio silence along other lines, in other fandoms. Obviously people are inspired to write what they’re inspired to write. But fan works, like original works, are not created in a vacuum. So I think it’s legitimate to note that there are relatively few sexually explicit fan works featuring female couples (compared with the huge pool of m/m slash out there). This can be a self-perpetuating cycle as fan communities reinforce excitement over certain pairings and fans who create in collaboration or through inspiration from one another gather around certain fandoms or pairings and not others.

    I will include myself in this indictment: I write both female and male pairings, but in latter days I’ve been working on male pairings in part because that’s where the community reinforcement comes from. My two Supernatural fics have far and away the most views, kudos, and comments on AO3 of all my fic. The next-highest story in terms of exposure and praise is a female pairing for Downton Abbey that’s been up for almost two years, and is still only half the views as the Supernatural piece that’s been up for five months.

    So I think that even though the fan community often pushes back against canon, and the limitations of mainstream media in terms of human sexual diversity and other types of diversity, they are still often constrained by the “givens” of particular fandoms, and by the pressures of “the market” — even though it’s not a financial economy, but more of a social economy.

    And, you know, we’re human. So to the extent the culture we are steeped in perpetuates racism, sexism, classism, abelism, ageism, etc., etc., etc., as creators/consumers we’re going to fall into those limiting traps as well, from time to time.

    How would you characterize the community surrounding fanworks? (If you have also created non-fan creative works, can you compare the two communities? Those who read/consume are also welcome to compare the two communities.)


    Overall, incredibly positive. These are people who take pleasure in what they do, and who generally engage in the activity as a leisure-time activity, as something fun and joyful. I really appreciate that fan creators are amateurs (“lovers”) of their craft.

    For myself, the pleasure I get from participation in the fanwork community is enhanced by the fact that my creative expression here is option, is non-professional, is what I do for pleasure rather than for work. I am also creative (even writing-creative!) in my professional life, and that feels more deadline driven and like it has a higher risk level to it than in the fanwork community. I feel more alone and (potentially) judged, like there is a much narrower margin for error in that context.

    My fan creations are lower risk because they can be revised and updated as want them to be, and I find my audience to be incredibly supportive and forgiving. Fans are pretty good with the constructive part of constructive criticism — they WANT your work to succeed, and get better, at what it’s trying to do. It’s rather like blogging, in that respect, only with no trolls! Which is lovely.

    And I don’t want it to sound like I haven’t had incredibly warm and supportive feedback from my mentors in the professional settings I move in, either — they’ve been unbeatable! But the stakes there just feel bigger in terms of being taken seriously as a ______. Fans will pretty much take you seriously as a fan as long as you’re enjoying yourself and the object of your fannish love.

    I would say particular fandoms strike me (in my early 30s) as “young” by comparison … but that varies really a lot by fandom, so it’s not a generalization.

    Fan fiction authors also seem to be majority women, but again that would be a gross a generalization in terms of fan participation in responsive mediums.

    What are the major problems you see within and surrounding shipping and fanworks?

    I don’t know if I’d characterize any of these as “major problems” but I do see them as … problematic? issues that fans as a community might do well to have conversations about.

    1) RPF. Real-person fic is something I have major reservations about, as it feels non-consensual and intrusive to me. There’s a difference between someone choosing to portray themselves (or consenting to have themselves portrayed) in a sexual way, publicly, and to have other people create sexually explicit material about them — even with positive, fannish intent! — and make that public. It feels stalkery and, like I said, majorly non-consensual. I think it’s a kissing cousin of “revenge porn” — where sexually explicit pictures of videos (real or faked) of a person is released to the public as a form of character defamation.

    2) Over-identification and emotional investment. This is something I tred carefully on because obviously fans have a long history of being characterized as hysterical, too passionate, etc. (what is too passionate, even, right??). But I have definitely come across people who use fandoms to validate their own identities (like, a character HAS to be gay or they can’t deal, or — conversely — the idea that a character could be read as lesbian freaks them out and pushes them into defensiveness). And I’ve also seen people using fanwork to manage their own trauma or mental health which is totally appropriate alongside getting other forms of help, but I sometimes feel like fanwork is not a replacement for therapy, medication, a social support network, [insert need here].

    3) Territorialness. So one of the great things about fans can be our generosity and collaborative spirit. … and one of the worst things about fans can be our sense of ownership of a particular interpretation of a canon piece. To the extent that people sometimes abuse the folks who support “rival” interpretations, and even abuse original creators whose vision differs from their own. It’s one thing to critique a creator’s vision (the direction a series is going, something they do to a character, etc.) … but I also think it’s important to remember that just as WE (the fans) have a right to our vision of the story or character, so do other fans and the original creator.

    Anything else you would like to add about shipping as creativity?

    Whew! I think this form has me beat, so I’m going to leave it at that 🙂 … looking forward to the post!

    from the neighborhood: plants, handwork, kittens

    14 Thursday Feb 2013

    Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in our family

    ≈ Leave a comment

    Tags

    cat blogging, domesticity, friends, photos

    A couple of weeks ago, we finally decided the only way to get the (apparently tasty!) plants out of Teazle’s acrobatic reach was to buy a basket for them. So now the three most vulnerable plants are hanging from the ceiling. We fully expect to come home from work one day to find Teazle swinging from the wire mesh by her claws!

    She’s similarly fascinated by the daffodils we picked up from Trader Joe’s (note the paw stage left), so we’ve had to drop them in the tall glass vase that at Christmas we used for candles.

    Necessity led to quite a lovely display, I think.

    For some reason, the ivy loves the winter and often sports more new leaves this time of year than in the summer!

    I actually had the camera out to take photographs of the afghan Hanna just finished, so she could post them to her blog as part of a giveaway. Teazle wanted to help!

    While I was taking pictures of Hanna’s project, I decided to capture a few of the (nearly-finished) afghan I made for my friend Anne and her daughter Lilly. Both Teazle and Geraldine wanted in on the action for this one!

    Thanks to Mama Linda for the hand-dyed yarn that makes up the majority of this rainbow!

    in praise of pen-friends [a year-end post]

    22 Saturday Dec 2012

    Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in think pieces

    ≈ 2 Comments

    Tags

    blogging, friends, thankfulness, writing

    As the year 2012 draws to a close, I’ve found myself thinking about the value of my long-distance friendships.

    Such relationships have been a fixture of my life, beginning when I initiated my first “pen pal” correspondence at the age of three.* This was in 1984 and while computers were a thing in the world, Internet access for the commonfolk was not. (Actual paper and writing implements were used, and my personal papers will hopefully make some future historians weep with joy in that several major life relationships are documented almost entirely in analog.)

    (via)

    This year has seen the deepening of some long-distance relationships I’ve developed through blogging, and the initiation of a few more, and thus I’m prompted to once again give thanks for these friends with whom I experience mutual support and intellectual stimulation — despite the fact that we rarely (in some cases have never yet) meet face to face.

    I’m a person with limited in-person social energy — at the end of the workday I generally want to come home to my wife and my two cats and curl up on the couch with a book, a cup of hot cocoa, my laptop, my handwork, whatever, and just be.

    We get home around six and retire to bed around nine. Weekends are for chores, recuperation and for being together as a family. There’s not a lot of time for social activity in our lives right now — it was a major achievement this fall that we managed to see two of our friends on Thanksgiving, and finally have breakfast with a friend and mentor with which we’d been trying to schedule a date for three months.

    But conversation doesn’t take it out of me the way getting together in person does. So email conversations are a brilliant way for me to bridge the gap between my limited energy for social interactions and my boundless energy for relational connection, for intellectual and emotional engagement and sustenance.

    Sometimes, these relationships have been long-distance by necessity: I was politically and culturally isolated in my conservative hometown and finding kindred spirits genuinely took a lot of patience and a search without geographical boundaries. Yes, I had (still have) a handful of friends who happened to live in geographical proximity — but that was the exception rather than the rule.

    And while we generally privilege those next-door-neighbor relationships in our culture over long-distance/virtual ones, I’ve often found those long-distance connections just as (and at times more) meaningful than the “people in my neighborhood” ones.

    So thank you, Elise and Joseph and Molly and Anne and Stephanie and Fannie for your willingness to put energy into creating and sustaining a friendship with me across the miles and time zones. It takes mindfulness to be present with a person when they are not there before you in your day-to-day life of hectic, well, living, and I’m grateful that all of you have, over the years, been willing to commit to connecting with me.

    I look forward to years of friendship to come.

    *to be fair, at three years old my fellow correspondent and I mostly exchanged drawings and dictated random text to our parents to forward on. But that relationship developed into a sustaining friendship that lasted well into my teens, and we remain in occasional contact today.

    ← Older posts
    "the past is a wild party; check your preconceptions at the door." ~ Emma Donoghue

    Recent Posts

    • medical update 11.11.22
    • medical update 6.4.22
    • medical update 1.16.2022
    • medical update 10.13.2021
    • medical update 8.17.2021

    Archives

    Categories

    Creative Commons License

    This work by Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

    Meta

    • Register
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.com

    Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

    • Follow Following
      • the feminist librarian
      • Join 36 other followers
      • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
      • the feminist librarian
      • Customize
      • Follow Following
      • Sign up
      • Log in
      • Report this content
      • View site in Reader
      • Manage subscriptions
      • Collapse this bar