Date: 2009-06-29 12:38 Subject: The Raspberry Pineapple Upsidedown Cake Is Done. Security: Public Tags: about depression, fanfiction, fannish: activity, health: emotional, health: physical

trigger_fence offers a hypothetical fiction header that I really like. Check it out.

Unfortunately the more I see and hear of people against warnings or perhaps, against change, the more I'm disinclined to read any fic at all. If I'm not wanted, then I'm not wanted and should act accordingly. And with verbal/written kicks and slaps, sneering, exasperation, disgust, and all the rest - WTF would I want to stick around?

I just saw a mention that someone had warned for racism in historical context and had a moment of elation that someone had been that thoughtful, only to see the following sentence describe that act as going too far. So, yeah, in future, no more fic*. No beta reading. No fic gift exchanges. No being a ficathon pitch hitter.

I dropped Marvel and DC for the same damn reasons - they hurt me. Why should fan written fiction get a pass?

And I'm going to go back to searching out a way to block fic entries off my reading list. Cause that'd be better that dropping people off my default view (on iJay, I've already had to drop people on DW because there are no reading filters).

_____________________________________
* Sami's (to be written) Uhura Tales excluded.

ETA: This has nothing to do with my meta interaction with media and written source materials.

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Date: 2008-09-23 00:18 Subject: Odd Realizations Security: Public Tags: about me, fannish: activity, online: life

I can rattle off reccs of Anime people might want to watch, but yet I don't manage to get reviews up in spite of absolutely adoring some series or being surprised by others. Maybe I'm just not a review person? I have no idea. But it saddens me a little because I watch myself get all excited to recommend something to someone and break down the reasons why I enjoyed a thing, and realize that that it's a little joy I'm not otherwise giving myself unless someone happens to have an open recc post asking for things to watch/read.

I do not yet know the solution to this. But at least I've identified that there's something I want to fix.

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Date: 2008-08-23 22:04 Subject: Watching The Show In Your Head (Pt 2): When You Can't Security: Public Mood: mentally tired Tags: #race issues: fandom, fandom: culture, fandom: is, fannish: activity, meta

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 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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Date: 2008-08-20 19:42 Subject: Watching The Show In Your Head Security: Public Tags: #race issues: fandom, fandom: culture, fandom: is, fannish: activity, meta

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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Date: 2008-01-23 11:47 Subject: Interactive Presentation & Demonstration Vs Passive Essays Security: Public Tags: fannish: activity, thoughts on: things fannish

Elfwreck's essay on fanfiction as literary commentary sparked a comment from me here and adds a little something to the urge I feel inside to do Fusion Fanfic as mentioned recently in my journal.

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Date: 2008-01-11 14:05 Subject: Closed Source Fandoms Please Security: Public Tags: fannish: activity, thoughts on: things fannish

My first fandom was Trek, whether I knew it or not. I read it, watched it and play-by-email rp-ed it.

My second fandom, was Xena. I loved Xena. I knew there were Xena watching parties and Xena fiction on the internet.

But I consider these two my feral firsts. I was not a part of fandom as I know it now. I was either alone with my loves, or incorporated into something that seemed to be about itself (like Trek) vs being a fannish activity.

So The Sentinel remains, to my mind, my first official fandom. It is my first fandom within the Roman empire civilization. And it is the fandom I still turn to on my really bad days. Instead of doing things I've promised various people, therapist included, not to do, I read Sentinel fic. For like Blair, Jim is home and for like Jim, Blair is hope.

Aren't I a mushy little fangirl?

Still, I've realized that part of my attraction to Sentinel was that it was a closed source fandom. I already knew the heartache of the source closing. I didn't have to wonder about what stupidity would happen next - Re: Writers and actors and execs and bad exec decisions, etc. Now having lived through Smallville and stopping at the beginning of S3, having torn asunder my attachment to Trek with Voyager and having mourned the end of Joss' Vampire Verse with Buffy and Angel, I've realized that I want that security again.

But, having made my decision on closed source fandoms, I find myself not knowing of any. In fact in only occurred to me two nights ago that HP is now a pretty much closed source-fandom (if you go by the books alone, at least).

And with HP there's also the little problem of the fact that HP inspires me to original writing, but I'm going to post about that in writers_whinge.

For now...

If you have suggestions for closed source fandoms, please comment here.

Tastes: I've been a Trekker. I love fairytales. I read and like comics (but loathe the editors and their recent decisions). I like urban fantasy and interesting magical fantasies. And please let there be at least one character of colour.

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