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this is sort of productive kind of
SNOWFLAKES: I can haz! Thank you ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
allothi, almostinstinct, briar_pipe, not_sally, and stealingpennies! <333 \o/
You know howpenknife made an SGA starter kit for people who want to get into the show but maybe don’t want to watch the zillion episodes already out? Is there something like this for Supernatural?
Speaking of TV, how about The Office and how I couldn’t finish watching the “Scott’s Tots” episode, argh. I love The Office to bits but this episode was so painful and terrible D-:
To help me think my anthropology final through, under this cut is a discussion of
The problem with my spiel on destiny and identity in Narnia is pretty well-articulated by this recent Missives from Marx post. It’s the primary roadblock between my approach to fannishly overanalyzing Narnia/Merlin/whatever and how I can actually make this flailing a viable academic paper. When I flail about it online, it’s always about “how the characters in the text advance a social agenda within the plot of the text itself” because that’s what I’m interested in as a fic writer. But I reckon my professor would probably prefer an analysis of the relationship between the text and the reader/audience.
There’s a couple of ways I can approach this.
In the case of Narnia, my impulse is to appropriate Susan Pevensie’s POV as the reader/audience’s POV i.e. our POV. The link between Susan and us is that of the rationalism and disenchantment associated with adulthood. So, whenever I write ‘the reader/audience’, I can pretend it’s fanon Susan. This is the more fun approach.
My secondary impulse is to talk about Narnia fandom. About you guys! About us! How do we relate to the text? Why do we engage with it the way we do? And we have an agenda. We criticize Lewis’s Christian moralizing and of-the-era misogyny, and we rescue Susan from judgment, we rescue colonial stories from being narrativized into a romanticized tale of victory and conquest, and we take back life from death when, during The Last Battle, life is declared to be inferior to death.
However, I am intrigued bycaramelsilver’s assertion that there are two Narnia fandoms: one that is primarily bookverse in which Lewis’s image of Narnia as a pastoral idyll is perpetuated, which chills out over at fanfiction.net; and one that I’ve already described in the previous paragraph in which the fantasy is rationalized and critiqued, chilling out primarily on Livejournal (and Skyhawke and AO3?). Perhaps this can be my question in my paper: what does this splinter signify? What is at stake? Then I bring out the big guns about subjectification, identity, internalization, and the subaltern. Why are their agendas different and how are they the same? What draws these fans together and what instigates their self-enclosure in a subsection of fandom? Hmm, this is not to say that the first and second groups of Narnia fen are mutually exclusive.
I started reading Magic Abjured: Closure in Children’s Fantasy Fiction because I’m the kind of dork who reads JSTOR articles for fun. Gilead refers to fantasy stories where the protagonists are whisked off to a magical world Other to our own, and she identifies 3 ways that these stories end:
1) The return to the ‘real world’ justifies the foray into the fantasy world as necessary to the spiritual/emotional/mental growth that the children will need in the non-fantasy world e.g. Baum’s Wizard of Oz and Maurice Sendak’s picture books.
2) The return to the real world dismisses and belittles the fantasy world by treating it sentimentally. The return tends to come as an interruption than as a resolution e.g. Carroll’s Alice books.
3) The return does not justify nor dismiss the fantasy, thus “fostering a neurotic avoidance of social and psychic realities” (Gilead 278) e.g. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
#1 is what Lewis seems to think Narnia is, and what the first group of fen on ffnet perpetuates. #3 is what Narnia actually is. Alternatively, #3 is how the second group of fen interpret Narnia (and I’m obviously part of this group, so). (Just for fun, #2 is how Susan interprets Narnia.) One can of course postulate other ways that these stories end. In her endnotes, Gilead brings up the idea that the closure in Narnia stories are actually none of the above and end with – #4 – the absence of expected return. What this means, she does not elaborate. Also intriguing is the idea of evaluating the series of returns and closures in the whole Chronicles.
And then at this point I usually think, okay, this is all well and good, but how can I tie this back to my readings mythology and ideology? To individuation within and without the group? To conditions of production? To structuralism and poststructuralism and empiricism and imperialism and yaddayaddablahblah-ism and cultural formation? That’s the fucking thing about anthropology, everything is one big amorphous blob. I think what is key is not losing sight of the reader’s relationship with the text, and this can happen by discussing a number of things: the adult/child dichotomy, the reality/fantasy divide, the id/superego conflict, and whether rationalism and innocence are mutually exclusive terms. Maybe I should just write ‘the reader’ when I actually mean Susan. Sure I’d be projecting, but what academic isn’t?
Apparently what I want to do for my final paper is to paraphrase Gilead’s article, but to also include Narnia and Narnia fandom.
Or, I can just write my final paper about fandom in general, or maybe ‘Merlin’ fandom specifically! Hoo man, ideology and mythology in ‘Merlin’ fandom, that is a completely different post.
Randomly, I miss watching Ocean Girl :(. WHERE ARE YOU, OCEAN GIRL SEASON 4.
ETA: Hilarious vid rec of the whenever!: Arthur in the Afternoon. "A dazzling tribute to Arthur Pendragon and his amazing wooing skills. Or, an incisive exploration of the increasingly shameless objectification of Bradley James by the British Broadcasting Corporation."
allothi, almostinstinct, briar_pipe, not_sally, and stealingpennies! <333 \o/You know how
penknife made an SGA starter kit for people who want to get into the show but maybe don’t want to watch the zillion episodes already out? Is there something like this for Supernatural?Speaking of TV, how about The Office and how I couldn’t finish watching the “Scott’s Tots” episode, argh. I love The Office to bits but this episode was so painful and terrible D-:
To help me think my anthropology final through, under this cut is a discussion of
The problem with my spiel on destiny and identity in Narnia is pretty well-articulated by this recent Missives from Marx post. It’s the primary roadblock between my approach to fannishly overanalyzing Narnia/Merlin/whatever and how I can actually make this flailing a viable academic paper. When I flail about it online, it’s always about “how the characters in the text advance a social agenda within the plot of the text itself” because that’s what I’m interested in as a fic writer. But I reckon my professor would probably prefer an analysis of the relationship between the text and the reader/audience.
There’s a couple of ways I can approach this.
In the case of Narnia, my impulse is to appropriate Susan Pevensie’s POV as the reader/audience’s POV i.e. our POV. The link between Susan and us is that of the rationalism and disenchantment associated with adulthood. So, whenever I write ‘the reader/audience’, I can pretend it’s fanon Susan. This is the more fun approach.
My secondary impulse is to talk about Narnia fandom. About you guys! About us! How do we relate to the text? Why do we engage with it the way we do? And we have an agenda. We criticize Lewis’s Christian moralizing and of-the-era misogyny, and we rescue Susan from judgment, we rescue colonial stories from being narrativized into a romanticized tale of victory and conquest, and we take back life from death when, during The Last Battle, life is declared to be inferior to death.
However, I am intrigued by
caramelsilver’s assertion that there are two Narnia fandoms: one that is primarily bookverse in which Lewis’s image of Narnia as a pastoral idyll is perpetuated, which chills out over at fanfiction.net; and one that I’ve already described in the previous paragraph in which the fantasy is rationalized and critiqued, chilling out primarily on Livejournal (and Skyhawke and AO3?). Perhaps this can be my question in my paper: what does this splinter signify? What is at stake? Then I bring out the big guns about subjectification, identity, internalization, and the subaltern. Why are their agendas different and how are they the same? What draws these fans together and what instigates their self-enclosure in a subsection of fandom? Hmm, this is not to say that the first and second groups of Narnia fen are mutually exclusive.I started reading Magic Abjured: Closure in Children’s Fantasy Fiction because I’m the kind of dork who reads JSTOR articles for fun. Gilead refers to fantasy stories where the protagonists are whisked off to a magical world Other to our own, and she identifies 3 ways that these stories end:
1) The return to the ‘real world’ justifies the foray into the fantasy world as necessary to the spiritual/emotional/mental growth that the children will need in the non-fantasy world e.g. Baum’s Wizard of Oz and Maurice Sendak’s picture books.
2) The return to the real world dismisses and belittles the fantasy world by treating it sentimentally. The return tends to come as an interruption than as a resolution e.g. Carroll’s Alice books.
3) The return does not justify nor dismiss the fantasy, thus “fostering a neurotic avoidance of social and psychic realities” (Gilead 278) e.g. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
#1 is what Lewis seems to think Narnia is, and what the first group of fen on ffnet perpetuates. #3 is what Narnia actually is. Alternatively, #3 is how the second group of fen interpret Narnia (and I’m obviously part of this group, so). (Just for fun, #2 is how Susan interprets Narnia.) One can of course postulate other ways that these stories end. In her endnotes, Gilead brings up the idea that the closure in Narnia stories are actually none of the above and end with – #4 – the absence of expected return. What this means, she does not elaborate. Also intriguing is the idea of evaluating the series of returns and closures in the whole Chronicles.
And then at this point I usually think, okay, this is all well and good, but how can I tie this back to my readings mythology and ideology? To individuation within and without the group? To conditions of production? To structuralism and poststructuralism and empiricism and imperialism and yaddayaddablahblah-ism and cultural formation? That’s the fucking thing about anthropology, everything is one big amorphous blob. I think what is key is not losing sight of the reader’s relationship with the text, and this can happen by discussing a number of things: the adult/child dichotomy, the reality/fantasy divide, the id/superego conflict, and whether rationalism and innocence are mutually exclusive terms. Maybe I should just write ‘the reader’ when I actually mean Susan. Sure I’d be projecting, but what academic isn’t?
Apparently what I want to do for my final paper is to paraphrase Gilead’s article, but to also include Narnia and Narnia fandom.
Or, I can just write my final paper about fandom in general, or maybe ‘Merlin’ fandom specifically! Hoo man, ideology and mythology in ‘Merlin’ fandom, that is a completely different post.
Randomly, I miss watching Ocean Girl :(. WHERE ARE YOU, OCEAN GIRL SEASON 4.
ETA: Hilarious vid rec of the whenever!: Arthur in the Afternoon. "A dazzling tribute to Arthur Pendragon and his amazing wooing skills. Or, an incisive exploration of the increasingly shameless objectification of Bradley James by the British Broadcasting Corporation."
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SPEAKING OF WHICH, they are selling seasons 4 and 5 of the X-Files on amazon for like $20 each and I am pretending this is within my budget, which one do I waaaaant. Season 4 was the one with the incesty Pennsylvanian farmers AND WE ALL KNOW HOW I AM ABOUT INCEST AND PENNSYLVANIA but season 5 had some pretty funny episodes and was it also the year that they were on a motherfucking boat and there was kissing? Or was that season 6? WHY HAVE YOU INSPIRED THIS NOSTALGIA IN MEEEEE. Why am I talking like this, more importantly.
I love JSTOR. How much of my life do I waste looking for articles on the appropriation of Lilith into the Judeo-Christian tradition and THINGS OF THAT NATURE and pretending it is fic research? (Lucifer fic about Lilth and bb!Maz, y/y?) So much. That disconnect is so interesting though! I always thought that LJ was pretty consistently divided and at war between squee-y types and meta-y types (not that people who squee can't meta and vice versa but.) so that is pretty crazy! P-possibly it has something to do with the fact that the canon is finished and was long before the advent of online fandom (unlike HP) so people have some more distance, but it is also like, there is undeniable ~literary merit~ (oh CS Lewis, Milton scholar) and also OUR CHILDHOODS so it makes sense that people might not want to touch that. Unlike Merlin, which everyone knows is kind of terrible - I'm pretty sure the writers know that even - so we can read anything into it that we feel like? And also bring the dinosaurs. WHATEVER, WHO KNOWS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT ANYMORE.
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I'm not bothered by the gender/racefail I think, I just can't not notice it. It's like what we were discussing a while back about how now I now have sensitive faildar thanks to fandom. I mean, I don't want to not see it, it's just that now it's a big part of how I process stories. If I want to focus on other aspects of the narrative, I consciously have to tell my faildar to calm down.
LOL RACIST TRUCK WUT
ALSO LOL I actually do not know about your thing with incest and Pennsylvania, I have not seen you mention it. Maybe you should?! WHAT KISSING ON A MOTHERFUCKING BOAT, WHAT. Maybe what you should do is make a list of the shippiest X-Files episode XD.
Lucifer fic about Lilth and bb!Maz, y/y
YYYYYYYYYYYYYY
I agree with
A dinosaur's opinion on fantasy stories. (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=720)
no subject
It's got folklore, Christian mythology, road trips, questionable family dynamics, Right? This is pretty much the reason that I started watching in the first place - although they're really bad at folklore - and also there is Richard Speight Jr occasionally, and I am terrible '60s car nerd and I thought it would be lulzy. But now I've gotten really attached the vibe of S1 and S2 and am worried that I won't be happy when I finally get around to the Christian mythology, which is crazy because I love creative misinterpretations of other people's religions.
Oh they are separate things! There is the incest thing which makes me feel like a bad person sometimes? Whatever, things should stop having so much incesty subtext. And there is also the PA thing, which mostly comes from the fact that I live in PA, so whenever I see Pennsylvanians being portrayed as hillbillies or whatever, it makes me laugh? I should probably feel like a worse person about this, but last year Ms. Palin gave a speech like 20 minutes from my university about how she couldn't believe that the French were wasting their money doing research on flies, and it was very well received. D: Oh Pennsylvania.
YOU WERE NOT AWARE OF THE KISSING ON MOTHERFUCKING BOATS, WHAT? Episode 3, Season 6, the internet tells me. They are in the Bermuda Triangle! It was all a dream! Or was it?! For some reason, I've only seen three or four episodes past season 5, and then a bunch from season 8-9, which I must have watched while it was airing or something. IN GENERAL, THE OCCURRENCE OF KISSING IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE LIKELIHOOD OF MY HAVING WATCHED IT. E-except for the X-Files, shippiest episodes are like, the ones in which they talk to each other. And look at each other awkwardly? Sometimes they talk about their pasts and Mulder's incestuous subtext with his sister, which is just, no.
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WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS on "It's Always Sunny on Philadelphia"? 'Cos at first I was meh, but I have since warmed up muchly to it and now I like it despite myself. DO YOU PREFER GENO'S OR PAT'S? Have you been to Moore State Park? What about Lancaster?! Aaaand that's around for my personal knowledge of PA.
OH WAIT I actually just watched that episode!! YES. omg Forties!Scully, how fabulous was she. SUPERFAB. That was one hell of a trippy episode. Naziverse! WW2 AU! Time-traveling FBI aaaaaaaagents.
IN GENERAL, THE OCCURRENCE OF KISSING IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE LIKELIHOOD OF MY HAVING WATCHED IT.
I WISH FOR THIS TO BE MY EXPERIENCE TOO mostly.
lol incest everywhar. HOW IS IT SO INESCAPABLE.
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When I watched Sunny, it always made me feel like a total dickhead when I laughed, but man did I laugh; but it's been a while, so my ardor is cooling. I go to school in Pittsburgh, though, so my knowledge of Pennsylvania is like: "here is some farm land," "here is some more farm land," "oh here is a pro-life billboard." I am really only well-acquainted with the tri-state area and Massachusetts.
The only other episode that I can think of with kissing but without baby weirdness is that episode in season 7 where it is Y2K or something? I way prefer the earlier episodes where they are all codependent and adorably eyefucking but not entirely comfortable around each other, but I will take what I can get. But tell me: what is your X-Files experience like? I am trying to imagine anyone in this world having seen all like 200 episodes of that series and finding it highly unlikely. I've probs seen like, 50, tops. And that is with a generous margin.
I don't think I've actually been in a fandom that didn't have serious incesty subtext; this either says something about my fandoms or the way I choose to interpret things. I'm not sure which one is worse. Whatever, I blame my mother and her attempts to indoctrinate me in my religion at a very young age. 5 brothers and 1 wife? H'ALL RIGHT THEN, RELIGION. I am pretty bad Hindu.
no subject
When I watched Sunny, it always made me feel like a total dickhead when I laughed, but man did I laugh
omg I knooooow. I've been kicking back to them in the past couple of weeks, which is unfortunate, because prolonged exposure as such always inspires a desire for FIC, of which there are weirdly a couple on ffnet, but outside of that: nada! It's not like Always Sunny is easy to write for either I guess, especially dialogue because everyone usually just talks at the same time anyway.
MASSACHUSETTS. Being that I spent my undergrad there, I have an especial attachment to New England.
When the X-Files was live in the 90s, I tried to follow it but I kind of sucked keeping up with weekly shows. I didn't watch supermany episodes, but enough to gleefully ship Mulder/Scully and to feel dumb that I didn't know what was up with the government conspiracy OR WHATEVER. I didn't have a good handle on the mytharc, and I usually couldn't recognize recurring characters like Spender and Marita and would be like "who?" when they appeared in fic. They were one of the first shows I searched for fic for? Man, the web was such a different place when I was looking for Mulder/Scully fic. But yeah, I've been re-educating myself on the X-Files recently, downloading several episodes (WHICH IS PROBZ WHERE THIS TERRIBLE VIRUS CAME FROM). I have very little idea what happens from Season... 7 onwards? I think? Oh, and fuck Doggett and Reyes >:(.
And I'm a terrible Muslim. Woo?!
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without spoilering you, all I can say is that Lilith does indeed remain fabulous and creepily manipulative and then later both she and Azazel get ret-conned (although since this was planned since day 1, is it actually ret-conning?) into even MORE MAGNIFICENT bastards.
no subject