Why *is* it that Life on Mars fandom produces about ten times the crack as, say, Farscape and Highlander fandom combined? (And so much less angst than you'd think, considering the hyper-angsty premise?)
I'm really intrigued by the phenomenon. Can't say I have any clue yet, but it fascinates me.
(As for crossovers: For me it depends - like any fic, really - on how well it's done. A well done crossover can be brilliant. I like the idea of connecting several fictional universes - ideally in ways that illuminate them in a new way, or put a new slant on them, or at least on one of them. They need to be somewhat compatible, of course, and there needs to be a point. Life on Mars is extremely compatible with a lot of stuff - from every present-day 'realistic' British drama to all kinds of historical stuff to science fiction/fantasy/horror. In fact, just about the only way I can make myself believe in the time travel interpretation of LoM is if I mentally cross it over with Doctor Who... *g*
But it's a bit like cracky ideas: to really get a good kick out of a crossover - or a cracky idea, for that matter - for me it needs to be treated seriously, i.e. believably. In fact, if treated seriously, I actually love cracky ideas - and cracky crossovers, too *g*. Because a *lot* of really good plots actually are a bit insane if summed up in a couple of sentences - just check the summaries of sf and fantasy novels given in the comments thread here (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009957.html#009957)!
I just don't have much of a response to the fic equivalent of a joke, which is what crack often seems to end up as. I'll get a laugh out of it, but it won't give me any kind of deeper satisfaction - and I'm in fandom mainly for that satisfaction, which is essentially erotic.)
Well that's why I don't write much crack, to be honest. I did the Sam/Pencil-case crack and really, you put in 'Annie' for 'pencil-case' and it would just be a regular story!!! But for me that IS the joke. That's the only way I made it out of the Thursday Next/LoM crack!fic cross with my brain intact, was to take the character of Thursday seriously. (Of course I am the kind of sick bastard who prefers it when Mike Meyers plays it 'straight' ("So I Married an Ax Murderer") and cannot stand the man as a broad comic ("Ausin Powers [makes me gag]").
(I have actually tried to write a fem!Gene story (how cracky can you GET?) and while there are funny parts to it I basically I turned it into a melodrama about gender issues and questioning sexuality. WTF? )
But as for the rest, everyone gets into fandom for different reasons. Some people really find deep satisfaction in the cheap laughs. I just enjoy them for what they are.
As for crossovers, you nailed it: They need to be somewhat compatible, of course, and there needs to be a point. Most of the time there isn't, and if there isn't, then it is lost on me, because I can almost lay money on the fact that I won't be a fan of the other half of the cross, if I've ever even heard of it (my fandoms are pathologically limited!! LOL!). But hey, to each their own. Some people love 'em. Go, them!
A bit OT, but I think it is very interesting how much the LoM comm tears things up. Hooker!verse and Psycho!Samatic Cylce were real shocks to me; I admire both a lot but I cannot fathom the mindset that would want to do that to a character you love. I wrote "Ripe" just to see if I COULD do something like that and yes, I could...but I don't want to. Very interesting subject, to me, more than the crack!fic.
>(Of course I am the kind of sick bastard who prefers it when Mike Meyers plays it 'straight' ("So I Married an Ax Murderer") and cannot stand the man as a broad comic ("Ausin Powers [makes me gag]").
... I have a kind of crush on serious!Jim Carrey. (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; the latter half of The Truman Show) Can't stand his 'real' comedies. So, totally understand that. *g*
>and while there are funny parts to it I basically I turned it into a melodrama about gender issues and questioning sexuality. WTF?
I'd do the same. And to me, that would *be* the fun of it. And I'm currently contemplating committing some Very Serious Crack with space_oddity_75...
>because I can almost lay money on the fact that I won't be a fan of the other half of the cross
See, I don't need to be a fan of the other half. I find the concept of crossovers intriguing as such (if well done etc.), so I usually will enjoy a crossover even if I don't totally love the other half, as long as I have more than a passing knowledge of it. I think that somewhere deep down I just love the idea that all fiction kind of takes place in one and the same virtual universe, a kind of secondary reality...
>A bit OT, but I think it is very interesting how much the LoM comm tears things up. Hooker!verse and Psycho!Samatic Cylce were real shocks to me; I admire both a lot but I cannot fathom the mindset that would want to do that to a character you love.
But those *are* crack, too! Crack isn't just the 'just for laughs' stuff - it's everything that makes your brain hurt. Or at least that's my definition. Anything that twists the universe and/or the characters so much that it's not really compatible with canon anymore at all is crack. So, I meant those, too, when I talked about the high amount of crack in LoM fandom.
Those series are simply serious crack. Which would make them more appealing to me than the usual, funny crack - if not for the fact that I'm rather attached to Sam, and removing the Sam that we know from the equation of LoM kind of makes it... less interesting to me. I'll probably read them anyway, and I may even end up liking them... but ultimately I'm here for the Sam we know - and his delicious angst. *eg*
Well, preferably the one from before the jump, naturally (since that is the Sam we had for most of the series, and therefore the Sam I fell for). But I'll take the other one in a pinch (if only to torture him or heal him). Anyway, neither of them is all that compatible with the more 'extreme' versions of Sam that are current in this fandom.
Your generalisations about 'this fandom' amuse me. I don't mean that all that snarkily, it's just that you're often treating LoM fandom as some homogenous group, and --- didn't the ending discussion on lifein1973 show you that some of your assumptions in that way are, at least partly, wrong? Hell, some of the more prominent LoMfans are contradictory in themselves, so what do you think the rest of the fandom's like?!
Anyway, neither of them is all that compatible with the more 'extreme' versions of Sam that are current in this fandom.
Well, obviously - but that's because they're extremes! The same could be said for any character in any fandom. Fan writers, often very wisely, concentrate on two or three aspects to explore; of a character, of a situation, of a genre. Certain elements get ignored, or pushed to the side, or downplayed.
You can, very plausibly, have an irate, "I know everything, you know nothing" violent Sam. You can also, very plausibly, have a, "my world is crumbling, I wanna crawl into the hole in the wall" crying Sam. Two extremes, same character. In a fan fic, you don't get the wonderful acting talents of JS, you don't get smash cuts and the thrill of visuals (car chases!) to break up what might be a confusing characterisation shift. You can't convey as much, so you concentrate. With concentration, you can get an extreme.
When I said '... that are current in that fandom' I really just meant certain individual examples - e.g. Prostitute!Sam and SerialKiller!Sam - not a general trend. That was sloppy phrasing, sorry.
(I do think the 'more crack than in other fandoms' thing *is* a valid generalisation, though. It's not supposed to mean 'everybody here writes crack'. It just means what it says - it's more frequent here than elsewhere, from my experience. Same goes for a lot of other things I 'generalise' about - it's never supposed to mean 'everybody does this', it just means I notice certain trends that seem to be significant to me. I believe that those trends do exist; that doesn't mean that I fail to see variety and divergence.)
>Your generalisations about 'this fandom' amuse me. I don't mean that all that snarkily, it's just that you're often treating LoM fandom as some homogenous group,
Am I? In what way?
>and --- didn't the ending discussion on lifein1973 show you that some of your assumptions in that way are, at least partly, wrong?
How? (Possibly I'm being horribly dense here...)
>Hell, some of the more prominent LoMfans are contradictory in themselves, so what do you think the rest of the fandom's like?!
People are contradictory. That's human. Did I ever claim anything else?
Doesn't mean one can't observe certain things they have in common, occasionally. As I said - *trends*. There's a crucial difference between trends and the kind of mental boxes I talked about in my sexuality post - mental boxes are sharply delineated. Trends allow for difference, vagueness, a certain amount of contradictoriness.
>Well, obviously - but that's because they're extremes!
Which is all I was saying, really.
>You can, very plausibly, have an irate, "I know everything, you know nothing" violent Sam. You can also, very plausibly, have a, "my world is crumbling, I wanna crawl into the hole in the wall" crying Sam. Two extremes, same character.
Actually - two sides of the same character. I'd find it difficult to get behind a Sam who was portrayed as *all* this or *all* that, though. Though if it's just a single fic I could still imagine that his other sides simply aren't visible in the slice of his life that the fic presents us with, so that would still be okay with me. But there are fics where Sam ceases to feel like Sam to me, where what I see is not one of his sides but some other character with the same name yet different character traits. From what I've read of them so far, both SerialKiller!Sam and Prostitute!Sam at least verge on that for me (as does loads of crack). This is what I meant when I said that the more extreme versions of Sam that exist in this fandom (see? better phrasing! *g*) are not - to me, anyway; obviously this depends on everyone's personal interpretation of Sam - particularly compatible with what - again, to me - is canon Sam (either version of canon Sam, selfish prick or not).
You may wonder why I keep the distinction of 'canon Sam' if I admit that it's essentially *my* canon Sam, thus admitting the relativity of canon... This is because there is a distinction in my head between 'my canon Sam' (i.e. my interpretation of his character in canon), and 'my Sam' (i.e. a character who diverges from my interpretation of canon Sam in some significant and deliberate ways).
Plus, there's that thing I've had at least three debates about in LoM fandom so far ;-), where I am a bad postmodernist because I say that not *everything* is relative and up for interpretation (although everything is *totally* up for *reinterpretation*), and that there is actually such a thing as, hmm... the authority of the text.
When you talk about trends. It might be phrasing, but it often does come across as, "oh, those crazy LoM fen, look at them now." A type of anthropological study. In some ways, it does seem like you're divorcing yourself from the fandom and looking from the outside in, which I don't think is right. You're one of us.
How? (Possibly I'm being horribly dense here...)
Well, you often say you're highly uncomfortable about the fact many LoMfans wax lyrical about the ending, but, let's face it, many more hardcore fans have a level of criticism about it --- and like I said way back when, the people who love it often love their own interpretation that doesn't fit with Matt's, or yours, or mine. (That green versus blue sky thing... the people who see it one way really are wearing tinted glasses, and I do not blame them one bit.)
I can't say anything about Prozzie!Sam, but I can safely say that SerialKiller!Sam was all about taking three specific elements of Sam's character, focussing on them, and rearranging them (his madness, his attention to detail, his dedication.)
I'm not saying that this is Sam, I'm saying, "what if?" So it's a different headspace, definitely. And,... uh, crack is all about the "what if?" of fiction. "What if Sam imagined him and Gene as Camberwick Green puppets?", "What if Sam was plagued by the Test Card Girl?."
It doesn't have to interest you, I don't mind that at all. However, I do think you notice the crack more because it's not your style --- kind of like I notice the lovey dovey fluff (when I'm not writing it), because it's (usually) not mine.
>When you talk about trends. It might be phrasing, but it often does come across as, "oh, those crazy LoM fen, look at them now." A type of anthropological study. In some ways, it does seem like you're divorcing yourself from the fandom and looking from the outside in, which I don't think is right. You're one of us.
Well, I *am* an anthropologist, too. So, there. *g*
(No, seriously. Okay, I stopped studying it after a while, but even so, I'm still doing a lot of cultural studies stuff in American studies - essentially modern anthropology - and I'm an archaeologist, which is the anthropology of the past, sort of. So, yeah, I do have some of that mindset, naturally. Mind you, I always had. Comes with being an outsider while growing up. You never really lose the outside perspective thing.)
But also:
Of course I'm a fan (and a LoM fan, too). I'm also... female, German, a European, a goldsmith, an archaeologist, a human being, a thirtysomething... Does that mean it's impossible/wrong for me to make general statements about thirtysomethings, humans, archaeologists, goldsmiths, Europeans, Germans, or women? Is it impossible to observe something about a group you're a part of?
>Well, you often say you're highly uncomfortable about the fact many LoMfans wax lyrical about the ending, but, let's face it, many more hardcore fans have a level of criticism about it
Do you remember the immediate reactions, back in April/May? That was some truly widespread blissful squeeing I observed there. Now, maybe all or most or at least many of the people who were so happy back then have backtracked a bit now... maybe. Or maybe critical viewpoints have become more visible now because we, the critics, are the only people who just won't shut up about it. From what I see in discussions, the latter seems the most likely option to me.
But if you can point me to some people whose squee is mixed with criticism, please do so - I'd love to be proved wrong on this, as, yes, it still does make me uncomfortable.
As for interpretations... I've read a lot of interpretations of 2.08 by people who like it and who see something quite different in it from what was there/what we saw/what MG says etc. Very few of them I found undisturbing. I *know* that most of the people who cheer do not see it as a suicide (etc.) - but that is exactly what I find so disturbing. Or, well, it's one part of what I find disturbing - it's a humungous, complex mass of disturbingness, which can't be reduced to just one factor.
>I do think you notice the crack more because it's not your style
Hm. But by that rule I would have to notice it in other fandoms, too.
(And, just to emphasise that once more: I do not *mind* that there is loads of crack in LoM fandom. In fact, I kind of like that; it's an outgrowth of the kind of AU 'headspace' (as you so nicely put it) that I *adore* about fandom and that I think fandom is all about. And some of it even works for me. I was merely making an observation about relative amounts, not a value judgment.)
I thought you were. You read like an anthropologist. :D
And of course I remember the immediate reactions, I was one of those disturbingly happy people! Not for very long. 5 hours? 6? Even then I thought it was flawed.
But if you can point me to some people whose squee is mixed with criticism, please do so - I'd love to be proved wrong on this, as, yes, it still does make me uncomfortable.
That's me, isn't it?
As to your parenthetical thought; it sort of did read as a value judgement, which is why I was a bit taken aback. And I am not a great perpetrator of crack by any means, but I do get defensive on behalf of others. ;)
Having said that, I still don't think there's a disproportionate amount of crack, but then, my first major LJ fandom was due South fandom, where... if you thought LoM fan fic was cracky, give dS a whirl. (Once again, the show was quite cracktastic itself.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Doesn't explain why there's more crack here than elsewhere, though, does it?
Date: 2008-02-19 09:52 pm (UTC)I'm really intrigued by the phenomenon. Can't say I have any clue yet, but it fascinates me.
(As for crossovers: For me it depends - like any fic, really - on how well it's done. A well done crossover can be brilliant. I like the idea of connecting several fictional universes - ideally in ways that illuminate them in a new way, or put a new slant on them, or at least on one of them. They need to be somewhat compatible, of course, and there needs to be a point. Life on Mars is extremely compatible with a lot of stuff - from every present-day 'realistic' British drama to all kinds of historical stuff to science fiction/fantasy/horror. In fact, just about the only way I can make myself believe in the time travel interpretation of LoM is if I mentally cross it over with Doctor Who... *g*
But it's a bit like cracky ideas: to really get a good kick out of a crossover - or a cracky idea, for that matter - for me it needs to be treated seriously, i.e. believably. In fact, if treated seriously, I actually love cracky ideas - and cracky crossovers, too *g*. Because a *lot* of really good plots actually are a bit insane if summed up in a couple of sentences - just check the summaries of sf and fantasy novels given in the comments thread here (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009957.html#009957)!
I just don't have much of a response to the fic equivalent of a joke, which is what crack often seems to end up as. I'll get a laugh out of it, but it won't give me any kind of deeper satisfaction - and I'm in fandom mainly for that satisfaction, which is essentially erotic.)
Re: Doesn't explain why there's more crack here than elsewhere, though, does it?
Date: 2008-02-19 10:41 pm (UTC)(I have actually tried to write a fem!Gene story (how cracky can you GET?) and while there are funny parts to it I basically I turned it into a melodrama about gender issues and questioning sexuality. WTF? )
But as for the rest, everyone gets into fandom for different reasons. Some people really find deep satisfaction in the cheap laughs. I just enjoy them for what they are.
As for crossovers, you nailed it: They need to be somewhat compatible, of course, and there needs to be a point. Most of the time there isn't, and if there isn't, then it is lost on me, because I can almost lay money on the fact that I won't be a fan of the other half of the cross, if I've ever even heard of it (my fandoms are pathologically limited!! LOL!). But hey, to each their own. Some people love 'em. Go, them!
A bit OT, but I think it is very interesting how much the LoM comm tears things up. Hooker!verse and Psycho!Samatic Cylce were real shocks to me; I admire both a lot but I cannot fathom the mindset that would want to do that to a character you love. I wrote "Ripe" just to see if I COULD do something like that and yes, I could...but I don't want to. Very interesting subject, to me, more than the crack!fic.
Re: Doesn't explain why there's more crack here than elsewhere, though, does it?
Date: 2008-02-20 11:46 am (UTC)... I have a kind of crush on serious!Jim Carrey. (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; the latter half of The Truman Show) Can't stand his 'real' comedies. So, totally understand that. *g*
>and while there are funny parts to it I basically I turned it into a melodrama about gender issues and questioning sexuality. WTF?
I'd do the same. And to me, that would *be* the fun of it. And I'm currently contemplating committing some Very Serious Crack with
>because I can almost lay money on the fact that I won't be a fan of the other half of the cross
See, I don't need to be a fan of the other half. I find the concept of crossovers intriguing as such (if well done etc.), so I usually will enjoy a crossover even if I don't totally love the other half, as long as I have more than a passing knowledge of it. I think that somewhere deep down I just love the idea that all fiction kind of takes place in one and the same virtual universe, a kind of secondary reality...
>A bit OT, but I think it is very interesting how much the LoM comm tears things up. Hooker!verse and Psycho!Samatic Cylce were real shocks to me; I admire both a lot but I cannot fathom the mindset that would want to do that to a character you love.
But those *are* crack, too! Crack isn't just the 'just for laughs' stuff - it's everything that makes your brain hurt. Or at least that's my definition. Anything that twists the universe and/or the characters so much that it's not really compatible with canon anymore at all is crack. So, I meant those, too, when I talked about the high amount of crack in LoM fandom.
Those series are simply serious crack. Which would make them more appealing to me than the usual, funny crack - if not for the fact that I'm rather attached to Sam, and removing the Sam that we know from the equation of LoM kind of makes it... less interesting to me. I'll probably read them anyway, and I may even end up liking them... but ultimately I'm here for the Sam we know - and his delicious angst. *eg*
"The Sam we know"...
Date: 2008-02-20 12:54 pm (UTC)Your definition of crack is different from mine. I think that if you take a cracky idea, but don't treat it as crack, it no longer is as such.
Re: "The Sam we know"...
Date: 2008-02-20 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 01:18 pm (UTC)Anyway, neither of them is all that compatible with the more 'extreme' versions of Sam that are current in this fandom.
Well, obviously - but that's because they're extremes! The same could be said for any character in any fandom. Fan writers, often very wisely, concentrate on two or three aspects to explore; of a character, of a situation, of a genre. Certain elements get ignored, or pushed to the side, or downplayed.
You can, very plausibly, have an irate, "I know everything, you know nothing" violent Sam. You can also, very plausibly, have a, "my world is crumbling, I wanna crawl into the hole in the wall" crying Sam. Two extremes, same character. In a fan fic, you don't get the wonderful acting talents of JS, you don't get smash cuts and the thrill of visuals (car chases!) to break up what might be a confusing characterisation shift. You can't convey as much, so you concentrate. With concentration, you can get an extreme.
I wasn't actually generalising.
Date: 2008-02-20 01:39 pm (UTC)(I do think the 'more crack than in other fandoms' thing *is* a valid generalisation, though. It's not supposed to mean 'everybody here writes crack'. It just means what it says - it's more frequent here than elsewhere, from my experience. Same goes for a lot of other things I 'generalise' about - it's never supposed to mean 'everybody does this', it just means I notice certain trends that seem to be significant to me. I believe that those trends do exist; that doesn't mean that I fail to see variety and divergence.)
>Your generalisations about 'this fandom' amuse me. I don't mean that all that snarkily, it's just that you're often treating LoM fandom as some homogenous group,
Am I? In what way?
>and --- didn't the ending discussion on lifein1973 show you that some of your assumptions in that way are, at least partly, wrong?
How? (Possibly I'm being horribly dense here...)
>Hell, some of the more prominent LoMfans are contradictory in themselves, so what do you think the rest of the fandom's like?!
People are contradictory. That's human. Did I ever claim anything else?
Doesn't mean one can't observe certain things they have in common, occasionally. As I said - *trends*. There's a crucial difference between trends and the kind of mental boxes I talked about in my sexuality post - mental boxes are sharply delineated. Trends allow for difference, vagueness, a certain amount of contradictoriness.
>Well, obviously - but that's because they're extremes!
Which is all I was saying, really.
>You can, very plausibly, have an irate, "I know everything, you know nothing" violent Sam. You can also, very plausibly, have a, "my world is crumbling, I wanna crawl into the hole in the wall" crying Sam. Two extremes, same character.
Actually - two sides of the same character. I'd find it difficult to get behind a Sam who was portrayed as *all* this or *all* that, though. Though if it's just a single fic I could still imagine that his other sides simply aren't visible in the slice of his life that the fic presents us with, so that would still be okay with me. But there are fics where Sam ceases to feel like Sam to me, where what I see is not one of his sides but some other character with the same name yet different character traits. From what I've read of them so far, both SerialKiller!Sam and Prostitute!Sam at least verge on that for me (as does loads of crack). This is what I meant when I said that the more extreme versions of Sam that exist in this fandom (see? better phrasing! *g*) are not - to me, anyway; obviously this depends on everyone's personal interpretation of Sam - particularly compatible with what - again, to me - is canon Sam (either version of canon Sam, selfish prick or not).
Addendum
Date: 2008-02-20 01:55 pm (UTC)Plus, there's that thing I've had at least three debates about in LoM fandom so far ;-), where I am a bad postmodernist because I say that not *everything* is relative and up for interpretation (although everything is *totally* up for *reinterpretation*), and that there is actually such a thing as, hmm... the authority of the text.
Re: I wasn't actually generalising.
Date: 2008-02-20 02:05 pm (UTC)When you talk about trends. It might be phrasing, but it often does come across as, "oh, those crazy LoM fen, look at them now." A type of anthropological study. In some ways, it does seem like you're divorcing yourself from the fandom and looking from the outside in, which I don't think is right. You're one of us.
How? (Possibly I'm being horribly dense here...)
Well, you often say you're highly uncomfortable about the fact many LoMfans wax lyrical about the ending, but, let's face it, many more hardcore fans have a level of criticism about it --- and like I said way back when, the people who love it often love their own interpretation that doesn't fit with Matt's, or yours, or mine. (That green versus blue sky thing... the people who see it one way really are wearing tinted glasses, and I do not blame them one bit.)
I can't say anything about Prozzie!Sam, but I can safely say that SerialKiller!Sam was all about taking three specific elements of Sam's character, focussing on them, and rearranging them (his madness, his attention to detail, his dedication.)
I'm not saying that this is Sam, I'm saying, "what if?" So it's a different headspace, definitely. And,... uh, crack is all about the "what if?" of fiction. "What if Sam imagined him and Gene as Camberwick Green puppets?", "What if Sam was plagued by the Test Card Girl?."
It doesn't have to interest you, I don't mind that at all. However, I do think you notice the crack more because it's not your style --- kind of like I notice the lovey dovey fluff (when I'm not writing it), because it's (usually) not mine.
Re: I wasn't actually generalising.
Date: 2008-02-20 02:26 pm (UTC)Well, I *am* an anthropologist, too. So, there. *g*
(No, seriously. Okay, I stopped studying it after a while, but even so, I'm still doing a lot of cultural studies stuff in American studies - essentially modern anthropology - and I'm an archaeologist, which is the anthropology of the past, sort of. So, yeah, I do have some of that mindset, naturally. Mind you, I always had. Comes with being an outsider while growing up. You never really lose the outside perspective thing.)
But also:
Of course I'm a fan (and a LoM fan, too). I'm also... female, German, a European, a goldsmith, an archaeologist, a human being, a thirtysomething... Does that mean it's impossible/wrong for me to make general statements about thirtysomethings, humans, archaeologists, goldsmiths, Europeans, Germans, or women? Is it impossible to observe something about a group you're a part of?
>Well, you often say you're highly uncomfortable about the fact many LoMfans wax lyrical about the ending, but, let's face it, many more hardcore fans have a level of criticism about it
Do you remember the immediate reactions, back in April/May? That was some truly widespread blissful squeeing I observed there. Now, maybe all or most or at least many of the people who were so happy back then have backtracked a bit now... maybe. Or maybe critical viewpoints have become more visible now because we, the critics, are the only people who just won't shut up about it. From what I see in discussions, the latter seems the most likely option to me.
But if you can point me to some people whose squee is mixed with criticism, please do so - I'd love to be proved wrong on this, as, yes, it still does make me uncomfortable.
As for interpretations... I've read a lot of interpretations of 2.08 by people who like it and who see something quite different in it from what was there/what we saw/what MG says etc. Very few of them I found undisturbing. I *know* that most of the people who cheer do not see it as a suicide (etc.) - but that is exactly what I find so disturbing. Or, well, it's one part of what I find disturbing - it's a humungous, complex mass of disturbingness, which can't be reduced to just one factor.
>I do think you notice the crack more because it's not your style
Hm. But by that rule I would have to notice it in other fandoms, too.
(And, just to emphasise that once more: I do not *mind* that there is loads of crack in LoM fandom. In fact, I kind of like that; it's an outgrowth of the kind of AU 'headspace' (as you so nicely put it) that I *adore* about fandom and that I think fandom is all about. And some of it even works for me. I was merely making an observation about relative amounts, not a value judgment.)
I feel like everything is clearer now...
Date: 2008-02-20 02:34 pm (UTC)And of course I remember the immediate reactions, I was one of those disturbingly happy people! Not for very long. 5 hours? 6? Even then I thought it was flawed.
But if you can point me to some people whose squee is mixed with criticism, please do so - I'd love to be proved wrong on this, as, yes, it still does make me uncomfortable.
That's me, isn't it?
As to your parenthetical thought; it sort of did read as a value judgement, which is why I was a bit taken aback. And I am not a great perpetrator of crack by any means, but I do get defensive on behalf of others. ;)
Having said that, I still don't think there's a disproportionate amount of crack, but then, my first major LJ fandom was due South fandom, where... if you thought LoM fan fic was cracky, give dS a whirl. (Once again, the show was quite cracktastic itself.)
Not intended to sound confrontational, btw.
Date: 2008-02-20 02:39 pm (UTC)Re: I wasn't actually generalising.
Date: 2008-02-21 12:21 am (UTC)*G* I studied anthropology as an undergraduate.
Do you think "Jumping Off" might be a haven for those who studied in the more analytical disciplines?