James pretty much invited me to disagree with him, in his analysis and in light of his extensive year-end retrospective. And I find, with all due respect, that I need to do so.

I'll note again at the outset what I did yesterday: It's been a pleasure to work with him in carrying out this Blog. Where I'm differing here is in outlook, and it's where he seems to consciously take on a different persona. (Perhaps the "CincGreen" signature reveals more than he admits.)

Is it time to bury "Daria" fandom? Not yet.

I find it hard to believe that he would say this, in a "fandom blog." After so many productive events and actions being brought into his remembering the past year? Fan ferment and interest that may not be following his preferred paths, but undeniably exists, and is far from dead?

It doesn't work. All this communicates, along with what leads up to it, is contempt. He doesn't believe this, not from how I've interacted with him ... not even from the first part of the same post ... but that's how it comes across.

I have to add that James's resorting to vulgarisms (self-censored, anyway) twice, to punch his concerns across, doesn't work or speak well for him. RLobinske didn't let that stop his making a dignified post-comments reply about the episode transcripts. Nor, for that matter, were he or T.A.G. thus deterred in notes about their own serial fiction and its scope.

[About novella-length fan writings:] Sigh. So much work, and so few readers.

This isn't a legitimate complaint. Fan works always have a limited readership. Few care about their essence -- extending a given character and story universe -- enough to read them for long. Not when compared to those who take up a fictional world, enjoy or find interest in it, and simply move along.

What matters is personal satisfaction. Fan works creators aren't doing it for the marketplace, as the fan works concept excludes a marketplace.

It can be exasperating when the fan works don't follow classical unities -- or even those of Mark Twain, as my Blog colleague has been fond of citing. It can even be maddening to not see them follow grammar and punctuation principles -- my own dark beast of bother. It's worth speaking up to exhort better standards. Yet this kind of comment shades into a dismissal of the entire enterprise.

But I'll take it up anyway, because who doesn't like a good fight?

I don't. Not when it's this pointless. James is spoiling for a fight when, on the basis of the very same post, no need exists for it. If fan activities weren't getting some self-sustaining momentum, there'd be no point for this entire Blog.

The essays at the Green Sink site aren't like this. Go to that link at the left and read some of them, if you haven't. James cuts to the heart of inconsistency, cant, and pretense. He's not doing it here.

To sum up, then, I don't see the point of casual, and not very believable, contempt. Or of ignoring one's own evidence of variety and growth among those sharing an interest. Or of appointing oneself as an arbiter and wanting controversy for its own sake, especially at a site where matters ought to first be reported and highlighted.

I don't agree, James amigo, I had to be blunt, it's not becoming, and it's not like you. I don't know how much of this comes from my spending only a year around these Dariafen creations, rather than six or more. And thus being, perhaps, less jaded. I do know that a more open, less cynical (que ironico) perspective is necessary, whatever brought it about, if a "fandom blog" is going to work.

(And if a "fandom" makes any sense, as a concept and target of dissection, apart from the creative and vigorous fan talents that are being active. But that's another kettle of slippery, hard-to-cook thought-fish. It also impinges on how far "canon" concerns extend, which merits more discussion later.)