Don't leave a voicemail, seriously.

When I saw the first couple passes of announcements about the new SPN literary fic community, my reactions went as follows, hahaha!, cringe, oh god!, and frown.

Now, I am giving the whole thing some real thought. Mainly, because I think most of the people I know initially reacted the same way I did, and a whole lot of that has to do with the people not Maygra involved in it. This is one of those situations that makes me remember we're a community and we have patterns and familiar ways of doing things. We have laws and rules and community standards. One of our laws is: for every person who balks at authority, there is someone else who wants to create authoritative systems. So, I personally don't like fic awards, but there's someone else in Utah who thinks they're great! We balance out. There's room for both of us in that I don't submit to fic awards, but it's not like I vandalize their sites or tell people not to participate. Do what you want.

I think in that same vein, I've decided to not get too worked up over the anthology thing. I think Maygra has the best intentions and that whether I find paneled, juried awards (which is what this is, basically) to be valuable isn't the point. Someone wants this, so to fulfill those needs, it must exist.

That being said, I'm not going to be submitting my stories to the anthology. I'm insecure. I can't stand the idea of other people reading my stories and deciding if I'm good enough! I already suffer from anxiety that people mock and ridicule my writing behind my back, what if I submitted a story and got a rejection letter from fellow fangirls? That would validate every fear I've ever had about my writing. I think I would commit fandom seppuku and weep into my journalfen about being rejected by the hall monitors of SPN fandom.

Artists of any kind (and here I make no value judgment about “art,” if you make something creative with your brain, hands, or voice, it's art, other people judge the value of it based on their interaction with it as consumers) are trepidatious about how their art will be received.

I know this is sort of stupid, but when this fandom got off the ground, the best thing about it (to me) was all the “crack” fic and how we encouraged that. Crackfic was our culture. Wingfic, mpreg, unicorns, genderswap, SPN's canon makes all that possible, so we write it. It's FUN. I think the value of this fandom has been the encouragement of the most over the top, cracked out stories ever to see the light of day (however, I have been soundly disabused of this belief of top-notch status by cathybites and starkeymonster who taught us all that Popslash takes the cake).

If some fans want a quality community, that's awesome for them. Do as you like, because that's how I roll, too. But what does happen when the hurt feelings start making people vindictive against the anthology and anyone involved in it? I think hurt feelings and bitterness are bound to come out of it just by virtue of what it is (which is, frankly, a way to validate some people and deny others validation). I would like to think that there is a way for people to submit to a community like that and get constructive criticism on how to improve without getting hurt, but that's not how writers function.

The thing is, it looks like it's not even going to be people who get rejected and start secret coms and hatememes who are going to cause the wank, that's going to happen before the whole project starts because everyone is flipping the hell out in advance. It's probably pointless to even remark on this, but my view is, let them have their fun however they want to. I won't be submitting my fic because I'm way way too insecure to get commentary on my fic from strangers who are going to be objective about it all (shit, I don't even let strangers beta my fic!), but I don't think this is the apocalypse either.

Now, tell me your opinions.