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| 2009-05-02 19:22 |
| I... |
| Public |
| Lily Allen - Fuck You Very Much |
| fandom: is, whee! |
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Want a Smallville Lex Luthor vid set to Lily Allen's, "Fuck You Very Much" - which involves Lionel's demise juxiposed against many moments Lex went against him.
I haven't watched Smallville in YEARS. And yet in my head, this song is very much on Lex's mp3 player.
Huh, the times when a left behind fandom comes up to bite your bum.
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Sorry I'm spammy.
![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dragkovian linked to this. A Ronon centric fic; My Home & Native Land, which has in at, all the qualities that I wanted out of SGA and never fricking got, because it was about The White People Conquering Space and not about home and identity and colonization vs indigenous peoples and family and friendship.
And the suckage comes because I've just discovered in the latest round about the HUGE ASS SKANY ISSUES OF copperbadge aka Sam the Storyteller.
But SGA made me want to cry, scream or grit my teeth. So it owes me. And I willstill enjoyed this story and will now leave Sam the frell alone.
On the other hand, I'm still left feeling as if what I really want to do in life is not so much spontaneously create out of thin air certain original stories, so much as PoC-ify stories I already thought had potential. I'm not sure what to think of that - is it fanfiction? What is it? Should I bother trying to figure it out or just write it cause it'll bring me joy and who cares about getting published?
Right now, maybe at least for the rest of 2009, I think I'm going to be all about - What brings me joy and who cares about getting published. Except maybe I might submit a thing or three for ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif) verb_noire. Guess part of my writing pseud, or one of them anyway, is gonna include the name Willow after all.
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Just sent a friend my WiP Sentinel Fic.
I started it in 2006 and added to it January of this year. But Sentinel is my first slash fandom. It's comfort fic/comfort food/comfort reading. And I'm not sure I ever will finish any of my fics to put them up anywhere for other people to read them. How odd is that? So I guess I'm nervous at sending it out to someone curious enough, when I mentioned I tried to subvert a bit of a trope.
Maybe I don't think of myself as a fanficer anymore - that it doesn't count if I'm writing just for me, or writing gift fic for a friend.
ETA: She liked it. It made her laugh. And I'm fairly certain she'd have mentioned if she felt it was OOC.
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This post was actually started sometime last year, but I don't think I ever went through and posted it and on finding it I realize it was a perfect part two of the query and discussion I started here; Watching The Show In Your Head.
I had wanted to write about the tv show Monk. Then I had wanted to write about all the tv shows I'd liked and or dropped and how lately I'd realized that the tv show I liked, was NOT the tv show the executives inevitably decided to push. And so past the 1st season (or the season that caught my eye) - I simply didn't watch tv anymore. At least not on my own, without someone watching with me ie, bugging me and cajoling me to watch with them or keep them company.
Then later on I'd ended up thinking out and talking about the subject with a friend, (I believe it was kdorian). I realized there's so much more with Monk that I'd found disappointing. I found it the waste of a good actor. I found it a waste of a good premise...
I started watching a show about a man who'd been so traumatized by the loss/murder of his wife than his OCD went mega - total overddrive. He wasn't functional. But he was still a brilliant mystery solver. Solving mysteries was a way to make the world right and a way to hone his skills so he could track down the person who'd taken his wife away from him.
I loved that show. Yes it had silly moments and yes sometimes it also made me cringe. But I loved the show. It was about survival and growth and trauma and recovery and yes, I know I can take those themes very personally. But I was so happy with it. I wanted to buy the DVD when it came out. I couldn't wait for where they'd pick up in the next season to move along the arc involving his wife's killer. And where they would go with the friendship he was developing with his assistant's son.
And then I saw the Season 2 trailers. And it was all "Crazy man is afraid of germs. Watch him dodge monkey poop and try to solve crime!".
I was aghast. But the commercial played over and over again. Despite where the last season's arc had ended they were going to play up the disease/ the illness as a JOKE. They were going to play up the mental health issue and the trauma AS A FUCKING JOKE.
What whacky things will freak him out this season!"
Shock became disgust and I never went back. I even changed the channel when previews and ads came on. I still do. There was nothing I could salvage to continue to watch. There was no mental re-writing I could do. The ads made me afraid to go back and watch the first season, for fear I'd suddenly realize how exploitative it had always been.
SGA is another similar show. (To those currently mourning I suggest you skip. I'm not aiming to be particularly reverent).
( More here )
I started off both of my posts not sure why I mentally re-wrote on the fly and what prompted it, and what differentiated it from privilege. And the few responses I got back seemed to agree that privilege was denying that problems caused the need to re-write, vs just an active imagination.
So if there are other things that interest me(in a given media) then I have something to lose; I've been captivated and I don't want to have to come down from that experience. So in order to make the media palatable to me I have to work around/re-write/re-think the scuzzy parts - that is the problems.
But if the loss is far too big; if the scuzzy parts take over something conceptual I was waiting for, along with taking over too many other parts of the show/book, then there's no point in re-writing, because that'd be basically doing it all over from scratch - not imagining if this or that pitfall had been avoided / could be reinterpreted as something else.
This hints at a continuum for me and reminds me of when ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/openid-profile.gif) zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com wrote a post asking and eventually describing the attributes that make a show fannish. (I can't find said post now, so Zvi if you're reading and you remember what I'm talking about could you drop a line? I think you did tables and it had something to do with less content = more fandom filling)
Even without checking Zvi's post though, I think it's safe to say for me there does seem to be a continuum. If I place Memoirs of a Geisha on one end and SGA on the other, it feels Smallville is an example of a show that started somewhat near the middle and eventually drifted right into SGA's side of the fence and thus I dropped it completely.
(odd aside: I dropped Smallville before I dropped SGA I think. And yet SGA definitely feels like the best marker for the disappointed side of the spectrum. Maybe because the moment they changed Elizabeth I immediately started watching the show in my head, whereas that was something I turned to in Smallville until I couldn't anymore) When can't I watch the show in my head? When there's not enough to anchor me into the world of the show itself, I guess. When there's not enough to draw me in to be invested and caring if I 'throw out the baby with the bathwater'. But that phrase makes me think about privilege again and how I have heard that phrase used when I've complained about what a show or series of books or comic etc was lacking. I have been accused of doing that, while harshing someone's buzz about their show because I was letting a little thing upset everything. But the point is, it isn't little to me. Everyone probably has different things that cross the line from needing to Watch The Show In Your Head to being Unable To Watch. Maybe continuum isn't the best word choice. Scales suddenly seem much better. If a show starts off balanced with things that interest me and no, or little problems then I can watch it. As things go wrong, as problems begin, in order for me to keep watching, then I need to watch the show in my head. But as the problems pile up things become very lopsided and when I think of it in terms of weight, then suddenly I need energy to deal with that weight. I guess I feel like there probably needs to be respect for the fact that when you can't watch anymore, it means there's too much weighed on the side of dislike and disappointment. And those weights can be aspects of racism, sexism, classcism, national isolationism or just not enough plot (ala, in some Urban Fantasy novels - being unable to read the book you're reading in your head vs the actual text). *ponders* I doubt there'll be a part three, I'm currently tired of thinking and typing. But I think I'm going to pay more attention to when someone tells me they can't even watch the show in their heads anymore and I hope those who know me will pay attention to me when I say the same thing. Hmm, best thing about doing the opposite was in realizing that the very act of Watching The Show In My Head, means that I'm working around problems I see; whether or not I'm conscious of what I'm doing, whether or not the discomfort is momentary or even lucid.
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Discussing Memoirs of a Geisha with tatterpunk@LJ, here, I stumbled into the thought that watching the show in your head has similarities to privilege and how things are ignored or invisible or immediately dismissed when one re-writes the narrative on the fly.
As I stated here I began to wonder if the difference between watching the show you want to see as a fan (in fandom, discussing the source and interacting with it and having that mentality) and watching the show as a 'mundane' is that discussing the source and talking about it brings you moments of realizing just exactly how and where and why you ended up seeing what you wanted to see.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, I saw tropes I loathed and so I chose to interpret them in ways that made me feel more comfortable with the story and that gave the characters more depth. But I suddenly realized there might be no difference in the actions themselves to someone who chooses not to see the racial problems and dynamics of say SGA with Teyla and Ronon, or racial dynamics in any other tv show or book/fandom property.
When brought up in discussion I can tell you why I chose to see something in a particular way. But while watching it, I don't think I was at all consciously aware of what I was doing. I was so wrapped up in the music and the costumes and the cinematography that I didn't want to have shallow stereotypes ruin things, so I changed my view. I ignored things and created my own fannish reality. If I wrote a review analyzing Memoirs, for example, I'm not sure if I'd have written about the movie I wanted to watch, or the movie I actually did watch. And I wonder if it's only in fandom that someone would understand what I did and understand that my interpretation was my reactions to the things that bothered me and thus were an acknowledgement those things existed.
So I'm suddenly confused about how my re-writing of the story acknowledges what's wrong with it vs how someone else who watched what they wanted to see, might have been blinded by privilege.
Is it privilege to re-write like that?
Is this precisely what infuriates me about the fans who watch SGA for example and see Ronon the MoC Fantasy Fodder and completely miss or dismiss valid notes on racism, colonialism and manifest destiny?
I admit that slash is an example of re-writing thing on the fly. You watch the show and you see subtext and you fill in backstory even if you never write it out as fic (perhaps you postulate in a meta post). But the point is you filter your experience. Is my anger at the fans who dismiss my and others complaints about the hurtful aspects of some shows, as turbulent as it is because I'm already aware they have an ability to filter their experience and I'm angry that they don't consider using my filter?
I'd probably be writing a much less hesitant post if I could figure out the right words to describe this moment of confusilation (it's like illumination, but with confusion)
ETA: Pt 2 (I'm not sure why Metafandom listed it under an SGA tag. But I do discuss SGA in part 2, which I only just posted Saturday the 23rd Aug)
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This: http://spinningspinsters.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/in-the-tradition-of-the-wickedary-part-two-by-dissenter/
Anyone have links to people who're not so 'OMG, look at the CRAZY WOMAN', that they've actually posted responses in their own journal spaces? Miss Thing having decided that other spaces in fandom are pro-slash, so she hid/deleted all defenses of slash on her post and won't allow others.
Mallet hon? Don't look. That link heads towards one of those ALL MEN ARE OPPRESSORS bs. Actually das_dingi, you shouldn't look either.
I can't even finish reading it myself, my mind keeps being blown apart by the bright pink neon letters that say: My Cisgendered Female Self Has Been Oppressed By The Patriarchy! With a little "Rise up my sisters everywhere and defeat this self repugnance against feminine qualities - bash the oppressors" and other nonsense.
I want to have a strong analytical argument about the essay. But all I can do is shake my head and think "Wow, she's full of shit." Maybe the essay is turning me towards my inner Clint Eastwood - taciturn and orally fixated (yeah yeah, I'm already orally fixated - but who's counting).
WWS - Coming To devour A Meta Fandom Near You.
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| 2008-07-28 11:00 |
| More On Nice vs Mean (Fannish) |
| Public |
| fandom: is, meta |
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Long comment reply to carodee
( Comment here )
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If you want to read the message go here to Svmadelyn @ LJ.
Meanwhile I laugh and giggle and revel in feeling naughty. Fanlib.Com is dead. DEAD DEAD DEAD.
How dead?
Deader than dead. Never gonna be reanimated dead.
Heh. I'm not sure when I knew they were gonna burst, pop and die. I want to say it was from the beginning and I gave them some time. But my clear memory of knowing how much they failed? Was when they did a writing contest for the horror that was Walden Media's: The Seeker: We Spit On Susan Cooper's Creative & Epic Work To Bring You HoHum Regergitated Hollywood Blantasy That Made Even The Eragon Movie Look Good. Rather long title, but it deserves it. Seriously they had the gall to try and collect fanfiction for the movie, before it opened. There was a writing contest! Fanlib trying to get fan interest for a story that didn't utilize much of anything from the source, which had gathered the actual fans. I said "It is of the Dark." And now a Rider of the Dark is Dead/Gone/Lost!
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This and also this and unbelievably but true this all relate to purplepopple here on iJay being an individual who shamelessly and boldly links fannish pseud's to RL Identities and may have a thing for harassing the OTW folk in particular.
I'm not pro OTW. I rather avoid thinking about it where I can.
But people I care about are involved in OTW. It brings them squee.
Calling up BS about how if they have their real identities listed a) anywhere on the net, b) as part of OTW then it's all public property / a simple connection/ wtf ever? That's... I don't even have words for that.
I went to the _fanhistory wiki_ that the outer is promoting and did a quick search to make sure none of the fans I've known and cared for who've since died are in the directory. It wasn't likely since it seems to be build_me_a_wiki_via_bot_&_ff.net profiles_ but I needed to double-check.
It's been asked that folk not link to the _fanhistory wiki_ because doing so pushes up the page's google-rankings.
Just today I posted about how I view fandom vs how other people seem to be viewing it and the 'Cult of Nice'. And yet I don't think there's anyone who believes in reviews and recs (or concrit for that matter) who'd be all for linking identities.
JC, Mary, Joseph and the Prophet Elijah. That's some bold faced vindictiveness.
If you want more information please do read the links, on LJ or not. Because those are well phrased and spaced explanations of what's going on. This right here is as coherent as I get before the cussing starts.
( The Cussing )
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My fandom, my fannish space involves critique. It involves opinion, contrary or agreeing. It involves meta and analysis. It involves reviews. it involves constructive thought. It involves deconstructing the source.
And when I can't enjoy doing that anymore, when at the end my constructive thoughts and analysis result in utter frustration because nothing changes in the source and I feel personally hurt by the exclusion of people of colour, or the inclusion of stereotypes and just plain foolishness - I walk away.
I walked away from SGA and SG1. I walked away from Harry Potter, tried to circle back to it, but that hasn't worked out quite so well.
My fandom is not a solely happy funtime place.
I realize there are people in fandom who come to it from an all squee, all the time, only positive place. Those people need to avoid me. I saw it quoted in the recent hubub that:
...so why is the concept of why people are in fandom so terribly hard to understand? We come to it from a mutual love - of canon, of actors, of fannishness itself. No one comes to fandom looking for a grade and critique from a professor.
--shayheyred @ lj This is a fundamental mistake. If people are assuming that everyone comes to fandom for the same thing, from the same place in life / pov / comprehension and understanding - then no wonder they're throwing hissy fits when they discover the world is not filled with clones of them. I came to fandom to learn. I learned about male characterization. I learned about female bonding. I learned about media analysis. I learned other people did more than just blink at the screen and absorb the spoon fed bits. I learned how to write and how to think and how to figure out what matters to me in story and plot. I learned that other people saw a lack of Characters of Colour. I learned about tropes for PoC in media fandom and other fandoms. I learned about bad villains and good villains and how far back some tropes go. I learned history and philosophy. I learned vocabulary. Sometimes my learning involved getting a grade - whatever form that grade took; feedback, meta, im conversations, email, etc. Sometimes my learning involved watching other people get grades. And sometimes it involved my giving people grades. Most recently I've been giving out a whole lot of F's in diversity and thinking about issues unrelated to White America. That is my fandom. That is the fandom I'm trying to hold on to even as source material after source material leaves me shaking my head and backing away from watching tv. ( ETA: Oh for crying out loud! Yes, this is a sign I should stop reading the stupid. )
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No mail.
Someone in HP fandom just managed to make the books extremely disgusting to me.
Waiting up for the mail, then crashing but never really resting/sleeping, then crashing again once I tried to get online resulted in me missing Fickle and not eating much of anything today - not really DOING much of anything today (besides putting the futon cover in the wash and scrubbing the mattress).
Fuck.
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Now that I've got 'the day' post out of the way. I have a post I'm working on about the tv shows I watch vs what's actually on the screen. But I want to write this little bit first.
My beloved former roommie and boston marriage wife of - wait would it be former wife? Ok whatever - witchqueen.livejournal.com now zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com knowing that The Sentinel fic is my comfort fic of choice, sent me here to read about this wonderful AU that spins the premise of Sentinels and Guides and incorporates characters from other shows who'd fit into the formula.
I really enjoyed it, from Jessica Fletcher (yes, you heard me) all the way down. It's a series I will continue to look forward to reading. But it made me think about fandom and remixes and original product.
I realized I think of Imperfections as a Remix of PetFly's universe. A wonderful, well thought out, cracky and funny and poignant remix, but a remix. This is how else things could have gone, given a and b and a little of z y and #2.
I realize that not all fanfic falls into this, because there are stories that are deleted scenes and stories that are 'The Continuing Adventures'; just like the show but in text. But slash and AU pairings, isn't it all a remix? Isn't it all a retake on the plots and how the characters developed? Maybe even why they developed?
Anyway, pondering this I realized that a lot of my favourite story telling, fanfic wise is Remix of Canon. I love the AU verses which seem to hint that this is what could have happened if the show had been pitched like this instead of like that or if the creators had their eyes opened about racial inequities, various cliches and tropes, othering and the invisible powerful woman; she's there, somewhere, but doesn't get much screen time.
This post isn't really meant as a "And that's why people who don't want their babies to be remixed are...." - insert your opinion here, for or against. This is mostly about me realizing that I'm not likely to get either side of that, because for the most part the minute you change something; the moment you make me think "Oh... so this is what would have happened if", even if it's just a case/planet/whatever they never saw/dealt with on the show, but that would have affected the characters away from the status quo - I think remix.
I wanted to add little bit here about elseworlds and comics and the tv show Smallville and how much I think it could have benefited from being thought of a remix of Superman Canon- so the producers didn't have to keep hopping forward to milestones 'just because' despite the rest of the hands flailing at them in the universe. But the thoughts are not at all clearly out. I tend to just throw up my hands with SV anyway. Huh, I wonder if I think it's an incredibly bad Remix of Comic Canon Superman? Hmm. That puts a new spin for how I process remakes.
*goes to think more thinky thoughts*
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thoughtful
weird
mentally tired
incredulous
naughty