Yeah, I remember talking about the politics of canon formation with you over dinner at the IP/Gender Symposium back in 2009. :D
I think I may be more okay with certain kinds of canon construction than you are; I am perfectly comfortable saying that I think some vids are better than others, period, and I get really frustrated when scholars who are only minimally familiar with vidding treat mediocre vids as if they're terrific. (Henry Jenkins' discussion of "Come What May," in Convergence Culture, never fails to make me roll my eyes: no discussion of that vid is complete if it doesn't acknowledge the amount of eye-rolling, not to say derision, that the vid provoked within fandom.)
That said, one of the things I like about fandom is that it generally allows for multiple and flexible canons. I can read and enjoy fics because they're insightful, because they're hot, because they're hilarious, because they're thought-provoking, or for any combination of those reasons and a hundred more besides. One of the things I always found fascinating about fans' elaborate tagging systems on delicious is that they usually reflected this very wide range of reasons for reading and were designed to let the bookmarker (and her subscribers) identify and locate Fics For All Occasions.
Put another way, I think fandom allows us to think about canons in the sense of distinctive groups without necessarily locking us into hierarchical value judgments -- though of course fans do make individual judgments every time we decide which WIP to follow, which story to bookmark, whether to leave a gushing comment or click the Kudos button or not comment at all or hit the back button before the third paragraph because OMG my eyes my eyes.
Basically, I want to write about really good vids; I just want to insist (as I know you do too!) that there are really good vids across a wide range of types and styles. I don't want to limit myself to, as you say, the ones that "make fandom look more creative, more political, more subversive to outsiders."
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I think I may be more okay with certain kinds of canon construction than you are; I am perfectly comfortable saying that I think some vids are better than others, period, and I get really frustrated when scholars who are only minimally familiar with vidding treat mediocre vids as if they're terrific. (Henry Jenkins' discussion of "Come What May," in Convergence Culture, never fails to make me roll my eyes: no discussion of that vid is complete if it doesn't acknowledge the amount of eye-rolling, not to say derision, that the vid provoked within fandom.)
That said, one of the things I like about fandom is that it generally allows for multiple and flexible canons. I can read and enjoy fics because they're insightful, because they're hot, because they're hilarious, because they're thought-provoking, or for any combination of those reasons and a hundred more besides. One of the things I always found fascinating about fans' elaborate tagging systems on delicious is that they usually reflected this very wide range of reasons for reading and were designed to let the bookmarker (and her subscribers) identify and locate Fics For All Occasions.
Put another way, I think fandom allows us to think about canons in the sense of distinctive groups without necessarily locking us into hierarchical value judgments -- though of course fans do make individual judgments every time we decide which WIP to follow, which story to bookmark, whether to leave a gushing comment or click the Kudos button or not comment at all or hit the back button before the third paragraph because OMG my eyes my eyes.
Basically, I want to write about really good vids; I just want to insist (as I know you do too!) that there are really good vids across a wide range of types and styles. I don't want to limit myself to, as you say, the ones that "make fandom look more creative, more political, more subversive to outsiders."