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

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

This was really interesting, though a couple of points. I started in fandom in the spring of 99, so while I'm not an oldie by any stretch, I certainly spent more years on MLs than I've been on LJ. However, even there I felt that the community aspect was an important one, whether I was peripherally part of it (in my first fandom) or just looked on from the outside (several of the ones following).

Next assumption is that I only come via fanfic to fandoms. While there have been fandoms where that's the case, there are others where I was in love with the source text long before I ever looked at the fanfic. What my argument is, however, is that even when that's the case, once you've entered fanfic territory it retroactively affects your reading of the source text. I think most of us rarely see, read, interpret in isolation, and if you're exposed to various discussions and fic interpretations constantly, I think it's near impossible to separate those.

Finally,I don't want fanfition judged on a differnt aesthetic criteria; I want all writing considered in its context. I don't take Joyce out of Dublin, Thackerey out of the 19th century or asimov out of sf. Why should I read a piece that very clearly is highly intertextual without acknoelding its intertextuality.

My argument is not that only fanfic is intertextual; my argument is that it tends to be more intertextual (for one, by its very definition it already is intertextual with the source!)

My frustration also was not with the fact that poeople were reading Em's story out of context; it was that they were mocking it in part for the very qualities that were clearly part of its particular context...

[finally, can you be a creator and be a lurker????? i saw an interesting professional survey last year and there was a tiny amount of writers who didn't read...but i'm not even sure the total number was double digit...it was like .1% or something...]

[aerye.livejournal.com]

Interesting post -- thoughtful, well articulated. And a lot of what you wrote resonates with me, with what I sometimes think is a profoundly different experience of fandom and a privileging of one experience of fandom over another. But then I also often feel as though I am straddling fandom experiences -- I am involved in older fandoms that denigrate the LJ experience of fandom, and I am fairly immersed in LJ as a mechanism for fandom, yet find myself twitching when the meta generalizes in ways that seem to preclude another experience.

::g:: Obviously, I'm impossible to please.

Short interruption from an interested bystander...

[bimo.livejournal.com]

Hello Cathexys,

I feel like I should apologize in advance, since my question will probably sound about a hundred times more blunt than I actually intend it...

In your reply to Hmpf you wrote:

I want all writing considered in its context. I don't take Joyce out of Dublin, Thackerey out of the 19th century or asimov out of sf.

As my own literary world view is a rather Modernist one (yeah, I know I'm being a bit old-fashioned here *g*), this remark made my hair stand on end. In my personal opinion, it are exactly the extra-contextual aspects, the ability to be read "out of time", "out of culture", "out of location", which add an important extra dimension to any text's (relative) literary quality, value and meaning.


So I'd like to ask: Why you find it crucial to keep a text's reading confined to what you perceive as its context?

I really don't wish to argue, I'm just perfectly curious, because you appear like the kind of person who would not do so if it wasn't for a very good reason :-)

Thanks for clarifying.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

This is sort of what I meant when I said that my 'reply' ('response' is probably a better word, since it went off on its own tangent so quickly) to your post was a bit beside the point - it was clear to me pretty soon that I was reacting more to my own assumptions and generalisations about some aspects of what you'd said than to what you'd really been saying. :-)

I think our disagreement is perhaps not so much one of principle but one of degree. I do think context is important, and especially in fandom I think the context is deeply fascinating, as well, but I also happen to think that all things can be considered in many ways, and the context does *not* have to come into it in all of these ways. It enhances someone's experience and understanding of a text, but it's not the be all and end all.

As for creating and lurking... well, I wasn't necessarily talking only about 'real' lurkers - I'm by no means a real lurker, for example, and even beccatoria who probably comes closest to being a fannish (and professional) creator who's also a lurker-of-sorts isn't. It's just that I think that the community aspect of creation isn't as central for everybody as you sometimes seem to assume. My writing, for example, is created in isolation as much as that is possible in fandom, except for the usual intertextual influences that you get outside of fanfiction, too - or so I'd argue, anyway.

Anyway... I'd like to stay, but I have to go and pack now to visit my grandparents for my grandpa's 90th birthday! Will be back to 'argue' ;-) on Monday evening...

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

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: Short interruption from an interested bystander...

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

You don't have to apologize. This is a very valid question debated again and again throughout the modernist/postmodernist debates and while my heart certainly will go modernist any day, I *know* better than to believe that I can universalize and generalize the value system that seems natural to me only because I've been taught that it is.

For a long time New Criticism was the standard approach to literary theory, arguing in extremis pretty much what you were saying (Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent may be the single most influential essay here). In fact, as I never tire of retelling, I actually had to write a paper where we were given to nameless texts in order to "judge" which one was aesthetically more sophisticated (i.e., "better") and offer textual support.

Since the late sixties (not incidentally coinciding with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, second wave feminism, post-Stonewall gay rights, etc. etc), literary theory acknowledges a variety of approaches, many allowing author and reader back into the discussion, though the author more often in a general cultural context.

Of course, you can get get something out of Joyce without the context. But oh how much you'd be losing!!!! If I posted a random section of Finnegans Wake, a few very literate would recognize or guess it, a few more would assume that it might be something like that (but maybe only if they knew me? context and ethos!!!), whereas most would deride it as crap.

My Annotations to Ulysses are longer than the book itself (yes, going overboard at times but nevertheless showing the intertextuality as well as historical situatedness of the novel). Merely reading it as a disconnected modernist artifact loses you at best some, at worst, all meaning.

I find it interesting that you choose the word "confined," because I'm suggesting the exact opposite. For me pretending that a text exists outside of time and space, has no author or intended reader, seems confined. Certainly a New Critical approach, i.e., a close textual reading is in most instances a valuable and worthwhile exercise. In a lot of instances, however, it shouldn't be the only one.

There are texts that hold up pretty well without any context and you'll find most of these on a traditional New Critical canon (a lot of poetry, symbolism and irony heavy...); there are others, that were ignored by New Criticists, who require more background. In a way, I think one could gage the difference by how much info a teacher must give for the students to understand a text. Especially to a student who may not share a cultural background!!!

My argument is that fanfiction on the whole tends to fall into the latter section, requiring an awareness of context (if for nothing else, for the source, i.e., even if a story were written completely apart from any community, te fact remains that it's highly intertextual with the source text and if it truly *is* fanfic would not be fully understood by someone who hadn't seen the show) that exceeds that of the standard modernist artifact held up for exhibition by New Critical theorists.

[gloss]

I am fairly immersed in LJ as a mechanism for fandom, yet find myself twitching when the meta generalizes in ways that seem to preclude another experience.
I really like how you've phrased this. There are several (infinite?) ways to participate in fandom and be a fan and fan-producer, and not all of them are as highly *social* as others.

hmpf, thanks very much for this post - both for the historical treatment and the reminder that social success on LJ isn't, necessarily, the only way to be a fan.

[crowie.livejournal.com]

I'm definately a rather new fan (started for real in around 2004) and I didn't really get hooked into fandom as anything other than just a spectator, lurker until I got on LJ.

I've also always read fic in fandoms I haven't seen and often get introduced to new fandoms through fic. So my experiences are definately very different from yours.

I even got into highlander through fic first and never would have watched the show otherwise. This sometimes has the side effect where I actually connect more with the fandom view and the fanon than the show itself which I know irritates the ones that came source first into the fandom.

However we're all here for fun and I think we can co-exist peacefully.

Re: Thanks for clarifying.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Dude, you got metafandom'd! And I'm not sure how much of a lurker I can be if I know what that means... :p

It's also sweet (though kinda inaccurate) to call me a professional creator ;) But you do make an interesting point about 'half-lurking'. A part of that is due to my slight discomfort with the way LJ is set up, although I am getting used to it. I was a much more active participant when the main mechanism for discussion in my fandoms was a central forum.

But speaking purely from a creating-POV, as someone who, over the last five years, has written a couple of fics and made four vids, you're right, I'm much more of a lurker than not, regardless of the internet environment I'm hanging out at. Ironically, my semi-lurking status (i.e. not getting involved in the social aspects of fan creation) also means I have *no* idea how many others like me are out there. If I'm the exception, or the silent majority.

But (without having read the posts leading up to yours) I do agree with much that you're saying. Being a fan and a geek is an extremely important part of my life and identity and I feel a part of that wider community, but I don't so often feel a part of *this* community - the female dominated, fiction oriented, LJ-based community. That's not to say I feel excluded, or that I think this trend of internet communication is inherently negative. But it does raise some interesting questions.

I realise, actually, that I still think of LJ style fandom as "new" and "not the norm" even though, by now, it seems to be the largest forum for fannish discussion, really. So my POV isn't at all accurate.

You talk about the way in which you entered fandom affecting your perception of it - and I think that may hold true for me as well. There are some interesting thoughts forming in my head that should probably be explored on my own LJ, not here - darned comment limits! I'm thinking about roleplaying games being my primary form of fandom and method of fannish creation. This is an area that is still overwhelmingly male-dominated and non-story based (although, ironically, it's the infinite stories that attract me!) I'm still used to associating fandom and geekdom with "male" and "socially inept" instead of "female" and "extremely social" and "highly sexualised."

And now I've gone WAY off-topic. But I think the point is that I agree; how you enter fandom colours a LOT about how you continue to interact with it.

[profshallowness.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom belatedly. I'm glad you wrote this up, because it's important that the loudest and most social experiences of fandom aren't seen to be the only way of being a fan or fandomer, or whatever it's being called these days. I found it very interesting.

This is not all that closely related, really, but...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I was introduced to 'objective hermeneutics' as a method for literary studies recently and I'm wondering what you think about that...

Actually, it *is* related, as the prof in question made a point of letting us read and analyse the book without giving us any social/historical/personal context for it.

I'm not sure what I think about it myself yet - as I said, I've only just been introduced to it.

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.

Much belated reply

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Dude, you got metafandom'd! And I'm not sure how much of a lurker I can be if I know what that means... :p

I didn't know you read metafandom!

>It's also sweet (though kinda inaccurate) to call me a professional creator ;)

Not inaccurate... I can see the future! (Sorry. I was channeling alwaysapoint there for a moment. *g*)

>There are some interesting thoughts forming in my head that should probably be explored on my own LJ, not here - darned comment limits!

Please do!

Late reply - sorry!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

(I was away for a couple of days after I made this post and when I returned sort of got swamped with other stuff a bit.)

>But then I also often feel as though I am straddling fandom experiences -- I am involved in older fandoms that denigrate the LJ experience of fandom, and I am fairly immersed in LJ as a mechanism for fandom...

Yes, I think there's probably quite a few people who feel like that. I think how much you embrace 'the' LJ way of fandom also depends a bit on the kind of fandom experience you had before LJ - you could be involved in intense interaction even before LJ, after all, and if you were, then the shift to LJ probably would be less strange to you than for someone like me, who would join message boards and mailing lists pretty much only to have on-topic discussions about an object of fannish desire in a central place, and not so much to get to know most of the participants on a more intimate level. Ultimately, how social your fandom experience - including your fic writing and reading experience - is, depends on very basic personality traits. For instance, I'm a very solitary person, with very limited *energy* for human interaction (even online), so that obviously colours my perception...

Ehh... sorry... I'm tired. I should be off to bed...

Very belated reply, sorry.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

(Excuse/explanation: first I was travelling, then I got distracted, then I got swamped.)

>hmpf, thanks very much for this post - both for the historical treatment and the reminder that social success on LJ isn't, necessarily, the only way to be a fan.

You're welcome. :-)

Love, peace & understanding... ;-)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>However we're all here for fun and I think we can co-exist peacefully.

Oh, definitely! :-)

BTW, I'm more of a fanon fan in HL, as well. And in Harry Potter fandom, too. Still, what I said about the deep love as the foundation for my fannish involvement there holds true, because in both cases there was *one* canonical element that hooked me totally (Methos, and Sirius/Remus).

(Sorry for the really belated reply. I was travelling, got distracted, and got swamped, in that order. *g*)

Thanks, and your welcome. :-)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

And it's good you dropped by belatedly, because I had forgotten to reply to some of the fine folks who'd replied to my post, and your reply reminded me that there was *something* I still meant to do here... ;-)

I think there's stuff in here I need to reply to in a bit more detail...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

but not today, as I have to get up for work in about five hours, arrgh.