Vaguely off topic meta monster spawned by discussion in cathexys's lj

[hmpf]

This was originally a response to cathexys's meta post which itself was a reply to another post, but you can just follow the link for *that*... ;-) It got way too long to be posted in the replies thread, and possibly a tad off topic, as well, revealing more about some of my issues than about cathexys's original points, so I decided to rework it a bit and post it here instead.

*dipping my toe into the water* Wow. Cold. And deep.

Well, I'm not sure I can swim well enough to get into this game of meta waterball, but I'll try.

I am always fascinated by the differences in our experiences in fandom, and occasionally I have strong (irrationally strong, unjustifiably strong) reactions against some points cathexys makes that, when I analyse them, I recognise as based in the very foundations of my own fannish experience. cathexys's experience seems to be very much one of fandom in the age of Livejournal and affordable internet access; mine's that of someone who entered fandom in the age of mailing lists and forums, and horribly expensive internet access.

In addition to this difference in technological accessibility we also seem to have a different approach towards entering any particular fandom. cathexys seems to find new fandoms mainly through interaction with other fen whom she already knows from other fandoms, and - please correct me if I'm wrong, cathexys! - her main way of entrance seems to be fic, even before the actual source material. So, her fandom is indeed a very social experience, and fic and fannish community are inextricably linked for her.

My experience of fandom is very different from that, I think. First off, it *always* starts with a deep love for the source material, or at least an aspect of the source material, and while other fen may succeed in raising my curiousity about a new source text by reccing it to me, or just posting about it in general, I do not read fic in fandoms I'm not already emotionally invested in, even if the authors are ones I like immensely. I *will* enter new fandoms because they were recced to me, but I will always enter them by procuring, and reading/watching the source text, never by reading fic first. But in most of my fandoms, the fannish community did not play even that much of a role - most of them I discovered on my own.

So, the first step is a *deep* love for the source, or an aspect thereof (a character, a feeling, a scenario...) This then makes me seek out the fannish community, but when I do, I'm mostly a consumer, not a participant, at least in most cases: I usually try to find every fic that fits my particular parameters, and devour it. I do usually give feedback to the authors of the fics I like best, but that's as far as the interaction with them usually goes (beyond the occasional, simple, non-fic-centred discussion in communities or on forums).

Depending on the intensity of my emotional investment in the source text (and, occasionally, the fanfic) I also am visited by plot bunnies. These I exorcise in the way most of us do, namely, by trying to write. Now, writing is a very lonely business for me. Yes, even writing fanfic is. I love it, because I love crafting things, but it's lonely. Maybe that is because I'm so slow - it usually takes me between months and years, and more often the latter, to finish a story, so by the time I'm done most of the original community I entered when I began writing it is often gone, and the people giving me feedback will not be the ones who were around when I started. To exaggerate slightly: the people who are most likely to know me as an active participant (i.e. during my early days in a fandom) will most likely never know me as a writer, whereas the people who will know me as a writer are likely never to have known me as an active participant. This, of course, is not conducive to a lot of 'community feeling' (although I do feel I am a part of the fannish community, and this is actually an important part of my identity).

Of course, my writing pattern is a bit extreme, and cannot be taken as a model for many people's experience of fandom. However, the decoupling of writing and reading fanfic from the community aspect of fandom happens for other reasons, as well, and, I think, a lot more often than many of the metafandom crowd seem to think. I think the fact that the people many of them are in contact with most closely are on LJ and relatively vocal causes them to subsconsciously privilege an experience of fandom that may well not be the majority's experience. Of course, I have no numbers to back up that claim - it's merely based in *my* experience of eight years in fandom. (I'm sorry; all this is probably too much of a generalisation of you guys on metafandom, really. I just need to define some opposites here to make my point, but I am aware that people don't usually embody exact opposites. Aaaanyway...)

To get to those other reasons for fanfic to be somewhat separated from the community aspect for some, possibly even many people... well, speaking from my own experience again, the basic technological conditions of my first years in fandom - forums that moved so fast that by the time I got back there maybe a week after posting a thread all the replies were already gone; mailing lists that frightened me because of their often impenetrable list cultures and histories (nowadays I'd just jump in, but I was a shy newbie *g*). and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that I could only access the internet for two or three hours per week, usually on the weekends - pretty much forced me to take a passive role in fandom instead of participating. So, on my rare weekend hours on the net, I would trawl the archives and lists and forums for as much fanfic that sounded interesting as possible in so short a time, and then log off again to enjoy the fic offline. I did give feedback to authors even then - but only in one case did this result in any kind of sustained contact (*waves to selenak*). (A few of them friended me years later on LJ, though... *g*) So, to summarize, community was something rather elusive for me in those days. Also, when I would write to authors, I would not really feel on the same 'level' with them - I was 'just' a reader, and they were the writers. I was, essentially, a fan writing fan mail. Since I perceived myself as the lesser partner in the communicative situation, I never really felt that 'community' with these people was even possible. selenak really surprised me when she entered into a real e-mail conversation with me!

When I finally started to write fic, for the first three years or so I got zero to very little response; so, again, not a lot of community experience involved there for me. Which didn't really deter me, because I'm stubborn - but it goes to show that the community aspect of fanfiction was really not even remotely a motivating factor for me to start writing.

Was I influenced by other fic, if I wasn't involved in direct contact with other writers? Yes, of course. But then, professional fiction is influenced by other fiction, as well (and the closer it is, the easier it becomes to speak of 'genre'). It's certainly helpful, even necessary, to keep these influences in mind when reading and 'judging' fic - but I'm not sure they necessarily signify a greater community involvement.

I know for a fact that my type of fannish experience isn't that rare. I know many fen, online and offline, who are much closer to my kind of experience of fandom than to what I assume to becathexys's. People who will participate in fandom a bit, take certain things from it, even sometimes produce something for it, yet be only losely connected to the community. It's easy to forget that on LJ, sometimes, but the non-LJ world still exists - and even on LJ there are people with small f-lists, or no f-lists at all, who aren't part of communities, don't read metafandom, perhaps don't even read other people's fic... (*I* didn't read fic in my main writing fandoms for several years, and those were some of my most productive fanfic writing years).

So, to get back to the argument about the necessity of considering the community context when thinking about fanfiction: I am not at all sure that fanfic is that fundamentally different from other types of fiction. For some people it is an intensely communal experience, true - but for just as many, and possibly more (who can count the lurkers?), I suspect it is not. Of course, most of the fic we write is, as cathexys puts it, a conversation with other fics. But then, most 'serious' literature is in conversation with other literature, too. And some writers have friends, families, workshops, writing groups they share and debate their works with, and others don't. There probably *is* a tendency for fanfic to be more closely tied into a community's social practices than there is for other fiction. But a tendency does not a categorical difference make. ;-)

Another thing that I find interesting is that cathexys does not like the idea of judging fanfiction according to the same aesthetic criteria other fiction gets judged by. Her argument about the necessity of considering fanfic in its social context ties into this; it's an attempt to define a criterion by which to separate fanfic from all the rest of literature. While I agree with her that the social context *is* extremely important (although I may disagree with the amount of weight placed on fanfic as a community activity), I do not have a problem with the idea of judging fanfic according to aesthetic criteria that were not generated by the community that created the fic. I *would* have a problem if it were implied anywhere that this should be the only, universal way to judge any piece of fiction, and I think that this implicit assumption is what cathexys objects to. However, I think that nowadays many people do not find it difficult to imagine that the same text could be judged according to two very different, yet equally legitimate value systems. Of course, judging the aesthetic quality of fiction is *always* difficult, because there *aren't* any universal definitions of what exactly constitutes that quality. Yet with the caveat of differing opinions, some things *can* be agreed on, and even if they weren't agreed on it would still be legitimate for individuals to make aesthetic judgements according to their *own* ideas.

And, of course, none of this means that we should disregard context. It just means that we shouldn't be forced to consider context at all times. There are many ways of looking at a story: is it good craftsmanship? Is it aesthetically pleasing? Does it satisfy me - as a mundane reader, or as a fan? And there are many aspects of context one can consider when thinking about a story, too: what kind of social network was the author a member of? What was the political situation of the day the story was written in? What was the family background of the author? Ultimately, a story is a story is a story, and every reader has every right to apply their own worldview, their own aesthetic and moral standards, their own experiences, etc. to it, and see what they will get out of it that way. Will a reader who judges fanfic by the value system of professional fiction miss the point of the story as intended by the writer? Very likely, yes. Yet it's still a valid perspective. And there *will* be cases where a fic will actually *work* in several cultural contexts, especially since many fanfic writers do write with several sets of differing, but not necessarily completely contradictory or mutually exclusive standards in mind.


There. That was long, and possibly quite beside the point. I should probably read it again before I post it, but I really, really can't be bothered at the moment. I think I need to vid a bit now, and exchange the intellectual frustration of being unable to control my argument tightly enough to keep it from veering away from the original topic with the technological frustration of being unable to insert proper fade transitions between video clips...

Comments

Re: Thanks for clarifying.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

(I really do think we disagree less than I make it sound here; I'm sort of exaggerating my point a bit.) I think you're right :-)

And i'll certainly give on degree and modify and all...

Have fun at the grandparents!!!

Re: Thanks for clarifying.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>I think you're right :-)

Which is probably why this discussion sort of slipped my mind in the weeks after I went to my grandparents' - there wasn't really that much disagreement to clear up. Well, and I got horribly busy with uni and stuff, too.