Yes. Those are your only choices. Thank you for posting. < / irony > < / eye rolling>
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.
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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.