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I've been going over some meta stuff from earlier in the month that I only gave a cursory glance to the first time around, and particularly ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cesperanza's post on identification and "over"-identification with our characters (particularly as writers, but I think the dynamic is as visible with fans whose dominant discourse is criticism, as well as obviously visible with fic writers). I've known Ces for many years now, and I've always appreciated and admired her belief that joy and desire are both central to fannishness and deserve to be central to fannishness, requiring no excuses or outside validation -- but at the same time, I've never managed to become the beautiful hedonist that she is -- I blame my grim, schadenfreudian [tm!] Teutonic DNA. *g* Hence, I argue with her sometimes -- like now!
The original post is here.kassrachel commented:
One of the other things I did, when I was first getting into fandom, was clunkily write Blair as a kind of thinly-veiled Kass. I gave him my tics and my anachronistic phrasings, and I was totally hot for Jim the way he was hot for Jim. My fannishness matured, in a certain way, when I realized I was also hot for Blair when I saw him through Jim's eyes -- that I could inhabit both partners in the pairing, both sides of the dynamic. Not either/or but both/and.
Ces's responding comment was:
No, no, no, no== it's TOTALLY AT THE HEART OF WHAT WE DO!! OMG, was I not ironic enough??? Because--YES, it's what we're "supposed" to be embarrassed about, the idea that we make these guys like us, see ourselves in them, blah blah! But Kass--you know me--but if the choice is between the embarrassment of overidentification and the cold cold hell of distance: dude! Distance kills!
And, I mean, but.... Are those really my only choices?
Isn't there something sort of -- not just childish, but genuinely selfish and reductive, about an unqualified embrace of "identification" as our primary response -- the *heart* of what we do with/for/to these characters? It seems almost stuck in that mindset where people fall into one and only one of two categories: A) OMG, totally just like me!!!, ergo interesting and valuable, and B) not recognizeably like me, ergo invisible or free to be fixed-up until they *do* fit into A. In that way, the race issue isn't the exception to the rule at all -- it's just that these issues that got discussed in the original post in re: identifying up vs. down the power scale from yourself (and it was good stuff; you should go read some of those comment threads) make it so that white writers feel unable to apply the fix-it solution to the problem of B and largely default to the ignore solution.
Isn't there -- can't there be an option C, where we like and write characters *even though* they aren't us? Maybe find them interesting because of their alienness, or even, like Kass was saying, extend ourselves artistically and emotionally to the point where we can feel genuine love for a character not because we've managed to make Blair Sandburg a reflection of us, but just because he's potentially loveable as the person he is? Like, does Sheppard always HAVE to be a secret emo math nerd before we can love him as much as we love Our Own Kind, or can he be an adrenaline junkie where we're couch potatoes, a professional killer while we generally assume we'll never have to take a human life, a sports enthusiast where we're bored sick by sports, a laconic loner when our hobby is going on and on and on about our every thought with our four hundred closest internet friends? *g* If he really, truly is Not Us, can we like him, love him, want him anyway?
This is why I love fiction, you know? I'm not Dean, I'm not Scully, I'm not Fraser, I'm sure as hell not Ronon, not in any way, and I won't ever be any of those people that I'm not, but fiction makes me able to shift my boundaries so that I can temporarily be in their space and outside of my own, and I love that. That's what professional fiction gives me -- I may be betraying my genre roots here, but be that cause or effect, there it is. I love temporarily being the alien, because it gives this shot of multiplicity to my one single life. Hell, my first slash pairing, not only before I knew what slash was, but probably before I reliably knew what *sex* was, was Davidge and Jerry from Enemy Mine (yes, my first interracial OTP was human/lizard. Look, y'all have your kinks and I have mine.) I love the idea that, since all love is a leap into the unknown, the more unknown you can make yourself vulnerable to, the greater your powers of love. I love that as a story and as just a way to make sense out of life (which secretly I believe is a redundant sentence, but that's another topic for another time.)
And I love fandom and fanfiction with all my heart, and I hate to think there's no place for that there, because the type of writing that's always lionized is the type that replicates me endlessly, with a sometimes creepy subtext of "everyone worth your attention is you, or just like you." Which I know isn't Ces's intent, or presumably anyone's, but by placing that homogenizing function of fanfic as the HEART of the fannish experience, doesn't that give pride of place to an A-or-B worldview where people conform or disappear? And even if the worldview being replicated and its concerns aren't the same one that exists in the mainstream (our concerns so frequently include problematized bodies, complications of desire, outsiderness/queerness, all the other stuff that you can't leave fandom and reliably get), it's still at best sort of parochial and at worst inevitably marginalizing for other potential fans, for whom race or class are issues with as much heft as gender, or who simply don't relate to the prevailing romance-novel/rom-com tropes that shippy fic lifts from the middle-class heteronormative perceptions of love.
cesperanza's post on identification and "over"-identification with our characters (particularly as writers, but I think the dynamic is as visible with fans whose dominant discourse is criticism, as well as obviously visible with fic writers). I've known Ces for many years now, and I've always appreciated and admired her belief that joy and desire are both central to fannishness and deserve to be central to fannishness, requiring no excuses or outside validation -- but at the same time, I've never managed to become the beautiful hedonist that she is -- I blame my grim, schadenfreudian [tm!] Teutonic DNA. *g* Hence, I argue with her sometimes -- like now!The original post is here.
kassrachel commented:One of the other things I did, when I was first getting into fandom, was clunkily write Blair as a kind of thinly-veiled Kass. I gave him my tics and my anachronistic phrasings, and I was totally hot for Jim the way he was hot for Jim. My fannishness matured, in a certain way, when I realized I was also hot for Blair when I saw him through Jim's eyes -- that I could inhabit both partners in the pairing, both sides of the dynamic. Not either/or but both/and.
Ces's responding comment was:
No, no, no, no== it's TOTALLY AT THE HEART OF WHAT WE DO!! OMG, was I not ironic enough??? Because--YES, it's what we're "supposed" to be embarrassed about, the idea that we make these guys like us, see ourselves in them, blah blah! But Kass--you know me--but if the choice is between the embarrassment of overidentification and the cold cold hell of distance: dude! Distance kills!
And, I mean, but.... Are those really my only choices?
Isn't there something sort of -- not just childish, but genuinely selfish and reductive, about an unqualified embrace of "identification" as our primary response -- the *heart* of what we do with/for/to these characters? It seems almost stuck in that mindset where people fall into one and only one of two categories: A) OMG, totally just like me!!!, ergo interesting and valuable, and B) not recognizeably like me, ergo invisible or free to be fixed-up until they *do* fit into A. In that way, the race issue isn't the exception to the rule at all -- it's just that these issues that got discussed in the original post in re: identifying up vs. down the power scale from yourself (and it was good stuff; you should go read some of those comment threads) make it so that white writers feel unable to apply the fix-it solution to the problem of B and largely default to the ignore solution.
Isn't there -- can't there be an option C, where we like and write characters *even though* they aren't us? Maybe find them interesting because of their alienness, or even, like Kass was saying, extend ourselves artistically and emotionally to the point where we can feel genuine love for a character not because we've managed to make Blair Sandburg a reflection of us, but just because he's potentially loveable as the person he is? Like, does Sheppard always HAVE to be a secret emo math nerd before we can love him as much as we love Our Own Kind, or can he be an adrenaline junkie where we're couch potatoes, a professional killer while we generally assume we'll never have to take a human life, a sports enthusiast where we're bored sick by sports, a laconic loner when our hobby is going on and on and on about our every thought with our four hundred closest internet friends? *g* If he really, truly is Not Us, can we like him, love him, want him anyway?
This is why I love fiction, you know? I'm not Dean, I'm not Scully, I'm not Fraser, I'm sure as hell not Ronon, not in any way, and I won't ever be any of those people that I'm not, but fiction makes me able to shift my boundaries so that I can temporarily be in their space and outside of my own, and I love that. That's what professional fiction gives me -- I may be betraying my genre roots here, but be that cause or effect, there it is. I love temporarily being the alien, because it gives this shot of multiplicity to my one single life. Hell, my first slash pairing, not only before I knew what slash was, but probably before I reliably knew what *sex* was, was Davidge and Jerry from Enemy Mine (yes, my first interracial OTP was human/lizard. Look, y'all have your kinks and I have mine.) I love the idea that, since all love is a leap into the unknown, the more unknown you can make yourself vulnerable to, the greater your powers of love. I love that as a story and as just a way to make sense out of life (which secretly I believe is a redundant sentence, but that's another topic for another time.)
And I love fandom and fanfiction with all my heart, and I hate to think there's no place for that there, because the type of writing that's always lionized is the type that replicates me endlessly, with a sometimes creepy subtext of "everyone worth your attention is you, or just like you." Which I know isn't Ces's intent, or presumably anyone's, but by placing that homogenizing function of fanfic as the HEART of the fannish experience, doesn't that give pride of place to an A-or-B worldview where people conform or disappear? And even if the worldview being replicated and its concerns aren't the same one that exists in the mainstream (our concerns so frequently include problematized bodies, complications of desire, outsiderness/queerness, all the other stuff that you can't leave fandom and reliably get), it's still at best sort of parochial and at worst inevitably marginalizing for other potential fans, for whom race or class are issues with as much heft as gender, or who simply don't relate to the prevailing romance-novel/rom-com tropes that shippy fic lifts from the middle-class heteronormative perceptions of love.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 12:11 am (UTC)From:Whereas I, of course, am an Italianate woman of hearty appetites.
And, I mean, but.... Are those really my only choices?
Yes. Those are your only choices. Thank you for posting. < / irony > < / eye rolling>
No, but seriously, I do actually resent your turning my celebration of identification and empathy--FOR the alien, the distant, the geek, the freak, whatever--into "that homogenizing function of fanfic". I mean, what you've done is say, "But don't we like freaks OTHER than our (apparently now typical) freaks of the Spocky, math-nerdy, cranky, emotionless, socially-dysfunctional variety?" To which I say, yes, sure, great; bring it on! I mean, I'm with you that the point of subculture is NOT to bond with your disfunctional tribe so you can go beat up the kids on the next block. On the other hand,there is a (IMO) perverse section of fandom (which I am not accusing you of being in, but) that seems always to demand outsider status at all times, to feel that whatever definition of other, however broadly framed, could not possibly ever include them. And that's...I don't know. That's something.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 12:41 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-22 12:43 am (UTC)From:I understood her to be questioning the view that the practice of identifying with character is the heart of fannish experience. The question I read was, can we not appreciate our characters, love them, work with them, talk about them, or judge them on a scale which doesn't go from "is like me" to "is not like me"?
Are there not other axes of interaction with the characters that are as valid mediafan practices as the one you're positing as the heart of fannish practice (which I read as Character Sue)?
Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-22 12:07 pm (UTC)From:I'm not sure what this means, or whether it means the same thing in the context of
Which. I find the framing of the question confusing - maybe because I'm not clear on what "not like me" means. To some extent, to write a character's point of view I have to deny that they are absolutely Other or Not Like Me - writing Ronon Dex's point of view means asking "what if I were Ronon Dex?" I have to refuse the idea that all Ronon's differences from me make him incomprehensibly different, deny that his otherness makes him genuinely Other. I have to identify with him. The problem, I guess, is taking the opposite approach - "what if Ronon Dex were me?" And then deciding - precisely because I believe that his differences
make him alien, other - that that's too hard and I'm going to write from Rodney's point-of-view instead. If Hth is calling people out for doing the second of those, that makes perfect sense to me; but I'm not sure there's a way around the first. Is there a way of writing a fictional person as a subject without asking "what if I were you"?
Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-22 04:15 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-23 04:03 pm (UTC)From:Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-22 05:10 pm (UTC)From:But what I'm saying is that I don't think identification *is* a fair opposite to objectification, so when she says, "well, if those are the choices, here's what I pick!" my response is, "but you invented that dichotomy; those aren't The Choices." The opposite of an object is a subject; to avoid objectifying your characters, you have to treat them as *subjects* in their own right, not necessarily as subjects with whom you identify (except in the most cursory way, in that I could probably find points of commonality between myself and any sentient being in the world; there's bound to be *something* we have in common.)
writing Ronon Dex's point of view means asking "what if I were Ronon Dex?" I have to refuse the idea that all Ronon's differences from me make him incomprehensibly different, deny that his otherness makes him genuinely Other.
I don't think that's an unfair or incorrect way to write, but you have to understand, it isn't the way I write. I've never asked myself that. When I sit down to write a story, what I do is build a little backstory around the character so I have a sense of who he is, both in canon and within the confines of this story, and then what I ask is, "What does he want? If I put him in X situation, how would this person respond?" It's usually nothing at all like the way I would respond, which is the source of my interest in the character and the story. I like what you say about refusing the idea that the character is "incomprehensibly different," but what I think identification does is fix that by eliding the "different" (he's not so different from me after all! it just looked that way at first!), whereas I'm sticking up for the value of fixing that by eliding the "incomprehensible" (I can see his point of view even when it's not my own! I am up to this task!)
The problem, I guess, is taking the opposite approach - "what if Ronon Dex were me?" And then deciding - precisely because I believe that his differences make him alien, other - that that's too hard and I'm going to write from Rodney's point-of-view instead.
That's exactly the problem that concerns me, only unfortunately I don't find the line between "what if I were him?" and "what if he were me?" as clear as you do -- that one of them is safe and one is dangerous. I think they're pretty similar statements, and whatever temptations and dangers lurk in one, necessarily lurk in the other, too -- the temptation to begin dismissing or ignoring characters who seem too hard to do that for.
From some of the other comments in the main post, it seems like Ces is making a case that "identify" means exactly the same thing as "empathize" -- and if that's how we want to apply language, I agree with her. My thing is, those words really do have two separate meanings, and I think it's unfair, confusing, and unnecessary to crush them together so we can interchange them at will. My dictionary even has a little usage note that says "Identify is well established in the sense, popularized by psychology, of "to see oneself as one with." A majority of the Usage Panel accepts this example: He identified himself with the hero of a new novel." It's important to me to suggest that you really can empathize with someone you don't see yourself as one with -- because people really aren't all the same, and if we wait until we see ourselves mirrored in everyone around us, when will we ever start practicing empathy for others? Hence my strong feelings about not conflating those two words.
Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-23 04:01 pm (UTC)From:But I do see your point about eliding the two words being risky. I hadn't thought of that before. I might just be too optimistic, though, in that I do see most fannish - or writerly - behaviour as cheerfully attempting as much empathy as it does identification. And I agree with Cesperanza's point about how identification - provided it doesn't swallow the whole field - can be and is a useful and pleasurable form of storytelling in itself. At the end of the day, even reading someone else's extreme Mary Sue fantasy is still teaching me something about someone other than myself - the writer. That links, in my head, somehow, with the community and sharing aspect of fandom but I'm not too clear about that.
Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-23 05:37 pm (UTC)From:Oh, I do think a lot of people write in the empathic-mode rather than the identified-mode, or write in both modes at different times -- maybe a minority of fanwriters (maybe? it seems like?), but it's definitely going on. Which was exactly why I thought it was important to post something like this -- Ces has a HUGE, GIANT audience and her words carry a lot of weight, so when she says "this is what fandom is all about!" I think people are inclined to believe her. So I wanted to amend that to, "This is a big part of fannish experience, but don't forget this other stuff that's a big part for a lot of other fans."
And I agree with Cesperanza's point about how identification - provided it doesn't swallow the whole field - can be and is a useful and pleasurable form of storytelling in itself.
I actually do, too. I just think it's not the only way to tell stories or to read stories, and I think that setting it up as the unqualified central and very best way all the time where there's no such thing as too much, ever, is problematic for me.
Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-22 06:34 pm (UTC)From:I read Cesperanza's 'identifying with character X' as choosing a character for fanactivity because of their canonical or presumed similarities to the fan doing the choosing. So, to me, objectify vs. identify works out as something like, 'pick characters because of what I'd like to do to them' as opposed to 'pick characters because of what I'd like to do.'
And I agree with hth's position on how and why it's problematic to posit 'identify' with as the heart of fannish activity.
Re: Correction to deleted post above
Date: 2007-06-23 04:05 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 01:52 am (UTC)From:Okay, let me rephrase, paring out the dumb girly vestigial interrogatives. "And if those were our only two choices I would agree, but I don't think those are our only two choices. [etc.]"
No, but seriously, I do actually resent your turning my celebration of identification and empathy--FOR the alien, the distant, the geek, the freak, whatever--into "that homogenizing function of fanfic".
Well, I'm genuinely sorry you resent it, but appealing to my guilt over having said something that makes you unhappy doesn't actually change my point of view. It just makes me feel bad. And my opinion is, after lo these many years in fandom, that just like any other genre, slash has its safety zone, and a certain type of story about certain types of characters that are produced over and over and over, with enormous fan effort that goes into making source material fit those patterns and tropes. And it's fine to say that we produce that because that's what "we" like, and that it reflects "our" desires and preferences, and that's probably very true for a majority of fans. But just like with any other genre, if operating within our safety zone is held up as the best or only way to do something, you have a homogenizing effect, IMO -- having read lots and lots of "group of adventurers go on a quest" high fantasy, I feel confident saying that slash is not unique in that.
On the other hand,there is a (IMO) perverse section of fandom (which I am not accusing you of being in, but) that seems always to demand outsider status at all times, to feel that whatever definition of other, however broadly framed, could not possibly ever include them.
And that's as may be, but I don't think it's related to what I was trying to say, which is really just the opposite -- that however much we *think* of ourselves as outsiders, there's always further outside that we could choose to go, if we wanted to. I think it's good to act as the subject of our stories, to place ourselves there as if we deserve to be there, which we do. But I also think it's good to treat characters that we find hard to relate to as subjects, to speculate on what the world looks like from their point of view -- people whom *we* identify as Other, not just those who are home-base for us even though they represent Other for mainstream society.
I'm sorry you feel like I've put a "reading" on fandom that doesn't give sufficient appreciation for your values, because I tried to make it clear that I *like* your values -- just not as the only values, or unassailable and unquestionable values. The heart of what I do in fandom, the reason I came and the reason I stay and the reason I care, is different from your reasons, in ways that make me uncomfortable with some (not all, by any means, but some) of the things you celebrate. Maybe I'm a cock-eyed optimist, but I think it's all right that our needs and our priorities are sometimes different, even sometimes at odds. Life is like that. Even inside our beloved community, we're not all coming at everything from the same angle. I don't resent that, and I don't want you to, either, although I realize I have no control over whether you do or not.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 12:39 am (UTC)From:But, if a character's position in canon is not convincing to me, if the behaviors and qualities of the character that I observe don't match the relationship that the other characters on the show have with the character, I won't like a character. And if a character's relationship to other characters changes in a way where I don't find canon convincing, I will begin to dislike a character.
So, I think there is at least one additional way to interact with characters besides straight up identification.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 01:34 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:36 am (UTC)From:But also, yeah, that's interesting what you said above -- that what motivates you is in some sense holistic, that it's not any one character or any one thing about them, but how they fit into the fabric of canon. I can definitely see that, and I think it's an intersting way to deal with canon: not as having context, but as being made of context.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 01:04 am (UTC)From:So when I read her call to unqualified identification, I see it merely as balancing something that was out of whack...I'd never read it as the only and proper and homogenizing way to experience fannishness. It's just that noone needs to be convinced that disinterested analysis and literary value are good--those are cultural values surrounding us (and it's interesting that the yay squee attitude seems to especially prevalent among those of us who do the detached reading thingy for a living :). To embrace the squee and the overidentification, however, is a counterintuitive move that often goes against any fiber of our being.
I like the way
So, not so much marginalizing anyone or any approach as much as counterbalancing to have a better spectrum of engagement...
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 01:33 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:23 am (UTC)From:I reread Ces's post and didn't quite see the normative claims that you're pointing toward. For me at least, it's about having fandom opening a space that may be lacking elsewhere...that doesn't mean that space is better or privileged or normative...only that it's there and to be celebrated, b/c unlike other spaces it's not easily accessible outside of fandom.
I'm not sure all of us are really violently disagreeing or talking past one another...hmpf.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 03:56 am (UTC)From:But, is a direct quote (http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/163390.html?thread=4080446#t4080446) and it is followed later by this thread where cesperanza insists that people who tell her they don't identify with characters don't know what the word means. (http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/163390.html?thread=4090174#t4090174)
(And as a fan of color who is forcefully confronted with white fans' inability to identify with CoC again and again and again, I actually find it a little threatening, because if the only method to 'get close' is overidentification, white fans are never going to get close to the CoC.
So I am opposed to the theory that identification is the heart of fandom, because it writes me and many of my favorite characters out. If race is a giant barrier to identification, then I'm not identifying properly with the majority BSO's and the CoCs will never be BSO's. Just to admit that I've got a horse in this race besides disliking essentialist statements of correct fannish behavior.)
You said below,
I can't do that. I tend to think that there's been enough flamewars and f_w mobbings and metafandom'ing that people should know better than to use absolute statements unless they, you know, mean something absolutely.
So, maybe cesperanza habitually gets more enthusiastic and less careful in her comments than she is in her initial posts, but I don't read her often enough to know that. I can
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:13 am (UTC)From:I don't have any real interest in academia, which is why I'm not in grad school and not hoping to go to grad school; those cautious academic values aren't mine, and there's no one in my life insisting I adopt them or judging my work on the degree to which I adopt them. My world is saturated in fan-values, which privilege loyalty to the community and reward squee -- I've lost count of how many times in how many fandoms I've heard people who feel at odds with canon get told, "Well, if you don't like the show, then stop watching it" -- my fannishness happens in an environment where I'm aware that certain kinds of analysis are viewed as being a bad fan by an awful lot of my peers. So what I perceive to be out of whack or to need defending in discourse about fandom is wildly different from your perceptions, and that just makes sense, given the differences in our positions.
I'm not sure that the people who write Obi-Wan throwing his hairbrush across the room or Rodney sneaking off the city after "Trinity" because nobody loves him anymore -- I'm not sure those people *are* embracing what they write counterintuitively. That kind of emotive, hyper-identified, gut-level, revved-up melodrama isn't necessarily subversive for all of fandom, even though it probably seems subversive to people with a love of and attraction to academia. I think it's normative within fandom, not the exception, and so privileging it isn't neccessarily corrective the way you feel that it is.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:19 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:29 am (UTC)From:Lately my world seems full of people who want to pin fandom and fannishness down, to say this is what we do and this is how we do it -- in ways that, yes, sometimes are very reflective of me, but also sometimes are very not. And I want to be able to say, "Okay, that's a fair thing to say, but here's my stance, here's what I like and don't like about my interactions with the fan community." And I literally don't know how to do that anymore without pissing somebody off. Which I actually don't enjoy doing, and I'm so fucking exhausted with trying and failing miserably to interact with fandom in a way that guards my own needs at the same time that other fans don't feel as if I'm interfering with their needs.
I'm honestly -- I really need advice from someone. I don't know how to do this anymore. I know I'm not in the fannish mainstream and haven't been for many years now, but I don't mind being the loyal opposition, as long as I get to stay in the conversation. And obviously I need to learn some much better communicating skills. I really would take all advice under consideration at this point.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:48 am (UTC)From:I can only speak for myself, but just because you don't get exactly the same out of it or don't see it exactly the same way doesn't mean to me that you're not part of this space, just like you writing a different pairing doesn't mean that you're better or worse a fan but only that your interests are slightly off the mainstream...
I do think your post was a bit aggressive, and I understand where you're coming from...heck, I seem to especially collect people who dissent with what I'd consider mainstream, and I know how frustrated they often are (in general and with me :)
I do feel that Ces was simply pointing toward what she felt was special and unusual...not that everyone needed to engage that way. I think any statement like fandom is X clearly is excluding large numbers of people, but I never read these statements as seriously saying that not being or liking X makes one not a fan or not deserving of participating and engaging..
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 03:29 am (UTC)From:You have several choices.
You can use a meta filter.
You can refuse engagement with anyone who decides their feelings are hurt when you point out their definition of fannishness defines you out.
You can wait and post things off cycle without reference to the original which sparked your discussion, i.e. posting about this two weeks after ces brought it up, but without namechecking ces.
You can make an enemies list and ignore comments from anyone who's on it.
You can approach discussion with the attitude that people are dumb and will misunderstand you, so you only speak to the people who are clever enough to get you.
You can post meta with your comments turned off (this will also stop metafandom from picking you up.)
You can post meta and not have the comments mailed to you, so you only deal with them when you have the energy and go look.
You can create a third journal (or convert the bettyp journal into the meta journal) and only use it when you feel like wrassling.
I'm not suggesting that you do any of the above, but those are the first options that I think of when I think of how to handle publishing fannish dissent without making yourself miserable.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 04:04 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 02:20 am (UTC)From:but probably before I reliably knew what *sex* was, was Davidge and Jerry from Enemy Mine
YES! WOO HOO! I finally saw this movie. Human/lizard mpreg slash love 4eva! So good! Man, that movie is so weirdly sweet. I'm not sure why there isn't more fan-love for it.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 01:08 pm (UTC)From:Thirded.
Igonoring the metafandomish issue here, because I'm not coherent about it.
Comment #2 (let the rambling begin)
Date: 2007-06-22 04:07 am (UTC)From:Okay, this is what I got out of Ces' post, and I would be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong: Basically, a piece of fanfic where Obi-Wan's a scantily-clad sex-slave != say, a Gor novel. Because we fans are identifying with *Obi-Wan*, rather than purely objectifying him. Basically, the post seemed to be a response to the argument that we, as slash fans, can't complain about stuff like the MJ statue because we do stuff that's "just as bad." And it seems like Ces doesn't think we do.
And *I* don't think we do, partly because I do think there's (usually) an empathy going on in (most) fanfic that mitigates or complicates the objectification. And also, partly because... basically, it's the same reason that I don't believe in "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism." What we're doing isn't, I don't feel, contributing to a harmful status quo that damages the other gender in question, whereas when men objectify women, I think it's doing exactly that.
Again, apologies if I'm totally off-base, here.
And then it seemed like some fans went, "Hey, whoah, whoah, could you not say 'we' when you say that empathizing/identifying/etc. is what 'we' fans are doing? 'Cause that's not the way I play in the fannish sandbox."
So, Hth, it seems like you are elaborating on that point...? So, it's sort of become a discussion about the way we play and...discuss, and about what types of play and discussion get privileged in... discussion? Yes? No? Maybe so?
In that way, the race issue isn't the exception to the rule at all -- it's just that these issues that got discussed in the original post in re: identifying up vs. down the power scale from yourself [...] make it so that white writers feel unable to apply the fix-it solution to the problem of B and largely default to the ignore solution.
I want to respond to this, but I worry that I'm misunderstanding it. Here goes, anyway: Are you saying that when identification/empathy/over-empathizing is privileged, this way of engaging keeps many white writers from writing CoC, 'cause they feel for whatever reason that they can't identify with CoC, and the dominant mode is for fanwriters to write characters they identify with?
For me -- and I'm not really directing this at you here, but more in general -- I'm not really sure I buy the "I can't write [insert CoC here] 'cause I don't identify with him/her" argument, anyway... I mean, I think you could make the case that Jeeves is more alien to us than Ronon. And yet. (Hm. Maybe that's a bad example.)
I hope it doesn't seem like I'm piling on you, here, btw, because I think it's good that fans are saying, "Hey, wait a minute, that's not how I play."
Again, I am happy to be corrected if I'm mangling people's arguments.
Re: Comment #2 (let the rambling begin)
Date: 2007-06-22 05:47 am (UTC)From:So, Hth, it seems like you are elaborating on that point...? So, it's sort of become a discussion about the way we play and...discuss, and about what types of play and discussion get privileged in... discussion? Yes? No? Maybe so?
That seems about right to me. I mean, not to speak for everyone else, but your read matches mine.
Are you saying that when identification/empathy/over-empathizing is privileged, this way of engaging keeps many white writers from writing CoC, 'cause they feel for whatever reason that they can't identify with CoC, and the dominant mode is for fanwriters to write characters they identify with?
I am saying that. And when you say you don't buy that argument, all I can say is that that's the defense that a lot of people mount for why they personally don't write CoCs -- they don't know enough, they don't feel connected to these characters. I think it is weird, but it's the world we live in, particularly because at least for white American women, there are ten bazillion issues specifically tied up with black men and sex; that's always there and always *visible,* in a way that the things that should make Methos or whomever unlike us aren't instantly visible. Fandom could prove me wrong about this one -- I'd love for that to happen! But it hasn't happened yet.
I don't feel at all piled-on by any of this! I truly admire your desire to really get to the bottom of something.
Re: Comment #2 (let the rambling begin)
Date: 2007-06-22 06:48 pm (UTC)From:I've been talking about this issue in con panels, and variations on, "The CoCs are so different from me. I don't know where to start," are pretty common statements about why CoC isn't getting written.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 03:12 am (UTC)From: