Parody and Parody, What is Parody?
I had the unusual experience of receiving two feedbacks in two days. Even more unusual, they were both wrong. Do you ever get the wrong feedback? Yes, both people had read something by me, but it wasn’t quite what I’d written - not unlike the unintentional muse war, I suppose.
One person complained that If Ayn Rand Wrote ST:VOY was an absurd misrepresentation of Rand’s views. (That this was a complaint, rather than praise, became clear later in the missive.) Now, whether you think Rand would eliminate the Borg as an evil menace to the galaxy probably depends on whether you think Janeway ought to have done so. This is a familiar question of fanon, usually seen in after-the-fact regrets on Janeway’s part that she let the big one get away. At least, I think it is - it’s certainly a point I’ve hit on more than once, even reusing my favorite line, “The Borg are not a genus.”
So, we can assume this reader was unfamiliar with the Voyager fanon, promise him a fuller disclaimer for parody, and leave it at that. Well, there’s still the question of whether negative feedback goes in my fanmail folder or not. I don’t think I’ve gotten any before. I think I’ll take the ASC Awards approach - any old feedback in a storm.
The second piece of feedback, however, represents a more serious and more frequent misunderstanding. This isn’t the first time Yesterday, When I was Borg has been praised as a parody. I doubt this is an issue of misunderstanding filk itself - filk is not parody [except for legal, disclaimer purposes], and none of my other filks, if they get feedback at all, get feedback praising them qua parody. No, this one is also an issue of the Borg and fanon. “Yesterday” is a tragic filk about Seven’s separation from the Collective. It’s not whiny, as Seven’s number in “Filk of La Mancha” has been accused of being. “Yesterday” deals, in a remote, filky way, with the question of whether it was moral to remove Seven from the Collective - a question Chakotay also half-asked in Scorpion or the Gift.
Few stories deal with the moral issues of Collectivization, but I still consider it a legitimate question of fanon and therefore assume that the people who see parody in my tragedies are just not up on fanon. I think it’s about time I posted Thrive to ASC, just to see if I get similar reactions over the Borg bits. Meg’s Refugee Camp Voyager novel is a good place to see Borg issues and is a great read all around.