~~intelli-wanking a-go-go....
Feb. 15th, 2003 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkait occurred to me, when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ethrosdemon asked me to define my terms re: meta (which i have been using rather to ill effect recently) that the line on meta and fic discussion and what's what has become pretty fuzzy. no one really seems know -what- meta is as much as they know whether they "approve" or not. there is your textbook, m-w.com definition, as follows:
Main Entry: meta-
Variant(s): or met-
Function: prefix
Etymology: New Latin & Medieval Latin, from Latin or Greek; Latin, from Greek, among, with, after, from meta among, with, after; akin to Old English mid, mith with, Old High German mit
3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending <metapsychology> -- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one <metamathematics>
...but this doesn't touch upon "meta" as in... the movement in and of itself, meta as a type of thought (particularly written-- ie, fiction) that doesn't need to be tied with study of a particular subject.
okay, so the closest expandable word would be "transcending". my most "controversial" use of meta (recently) was meant to imply that something can be inherently transcending itself within itself (thus becoming self-referential), in text anyway (and thus, be metafiction, or fiction which is commenting upon itself-- something that i both feel drawn to and am repelled by). usually, meta is a -discipline- or science that studies and kind of transcends the other science it is a study of. with fiction-- it gets muddy. they actually call fanfiction itself metafiction-- ie, fiction about a work of fiction. also, you could have meta be a reference to a higher reality within the work-- like the movie, "being john malkovich", but after that it gets murky. i found this article about it, but it doesn't really say anything.
elsewhere on the web i found meta-fiction referred to as "examples of fiction that play with the very conventions of fiction. These are not just experiments with form, but works in which form and content comment on, and inform, each other."
here they say "Meta-fiction participates in the conventions of a genre while simultaneously critiquing or analyzing those conventions." (which is totally not what i'm interested in at the moment). while here they say it's "literature which is wholly aware of its status as an artform and relates to its own parts rather than external demands, comprising an analytic or deductive, rather than synthetic or inductive, fiction."
this gets -really- postmodern, understandably, saying it's "fiction which is in the first instance aware of itself as fiction and which may dramatize the false or constructed nature of fiction, on the one hand, or the inevitable fictionality of all experience, on the other."
to me, it's a curious thing. "aware of itself as fiction."
i mean, you could always claim a story is being "aware of itself" when something is said in a certain way. i mean, it's pretty subjective-- you're aware it's a story, and sometimes it doesn't take much to jar you out and to make you stop and say, "hey. this is a story, and this story -knows- it, goddamnit, look at it! MARY SUE!!!" etc~:)
and yes, i smell a grad english thesis i would never want to write: mary sue as the ultimate metafiction. *shudders at the prospect of reading dozens of marysue fics as research*
anyway. to me, a story is becoming aware of itself as fiction when it directly comments on its characters or themes within a (usually but not always) third-person omniscient statement. i dunno if this is precisely "meta" anymore (which isn't a "scientific" but rather a cultural term), or whether it's even metafiction (although, according to one school of thought, if it's fanfiction it's already metafiction, a notion which in light of the recent "keep that literature label away from my fanfic" kerfuffle on f_w i find utterly hilarious).
instinctively, i do feel that metaness (ie, a referencing or study of something else) is inherent in the writing and the phenomenon of fanfiction itself. it feels pretty meta to me, ie, it engages that part of my brain, let's just say. the most direct and plot-based fanfic in the universe is only pretending to be direct. it is actually referencing and commenting on all sorts of issues, implicitly. it is having an opinion of the pre-existing paradigms and characters within the potterverse, based on the "spin" it gives them. i can, i think, easily pinpoint that spin within any fic. gimme a fic and i'll tell you what "school of fannish thought" it subscribes to, 9 times out of 10. now, this might be because people are unoriginal and derivative even of derivative things. yes. but also, i just think that there -are- schools of thought and people -do- fall into camps (ie, opinions on draco, snape, harry, hermione-- there are such things and you inherently -know- of them, most likely, unless you were writing fic in the first few months or whatever and actually were involved in the creation of these paradigms).
anyway, i wasn't even referring to all that when i talked about the "metaness" of any story which comments on its own characters by kind of telling the reader what they feel and what that means. it can be done badly or well (ie, in `mirror of maybe', it's done really badly, whereas zahra's fics and say, lewis carroll do it well, mostly anyway). the point remains, i think it's a sort of greek chorus or commentary placed within the fic. to go back to the greeks, you have the "moral" and the meaning all laid out for you and it's a style. the whole story got framed by it and without this frame, it would actually not work as well. but this is difficult to do in a regular, "modern" story without seeming like the frame is separating and alienating the reader, and you're left with an author, lecturing you (ie, "josh was a sad, sad boy, and he needed tender loving care from someone kind and tender like mike." or, "flying is really the best way for someone to learn how to live.")
but usually i don't mean this when i say meta, and i only ever used meta for that because i think it could actually be seen as related. and that was a really long-winded and (probably) boring way to say, i don't know what the hell i'm talking about ><;;
my biggest thought on the whole intellislasher issue, is that if it -was- a group of people talking hp meta all the time till they dropped, i feel sort of sad that it's over. because... i mean, supposedly it's not, but as the lack of frequent enthusiastic(!) meta discussion on say,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metapotter and on my friends list shows, it's mostly there in flare-ups, when someone posts something inflammatory (even me-- i get the most people responding if i'd said something wankworthy).
the idea that merely a year ago there were like, a whole group of people -obsessively- debating fine points of characterization and pairings and fanon in general makes me green with envy. sigh. because i myself have been going through those first months of fandom love this past half a year, and while i met a lot of great people who seem to like listening to me rant for some reason, i haven't really experienced the feeling of being part of a larger group of people who're all as obsessed and rambly as me.
i know it's all a question of right time, right place. it's just amazing thinking that i'm not all that weird and humongously verbose, even in just retrospective comparison. there hasn't really been a "new wave" or anything, and a lot of this probably has to do with the sheer growth and broadening of the fandom. i'm more "old school" (scary concept, but it serves) just by nature (that whole geek thing, basically), but that's almost like a statistical thing in a fandom so large, where before it was more of a natural geek sanctuary i guess-- though honestly, reading jkr was never a very geeky thing to do, though it probably helped to also be using online journalling before everyone and their mormon brother did it.
it's actually interesting consider what i'd have been doing a year ago, if i was online much. i wasn't. i was taking a break and er... what was i doing? i'm drawing a blank here. i think i was wasting a lot of time. that, or going to school and watching buffy on tuesdays ^^;
i probably would've been part of "it"-- some kind of "it" anyway, were i into journalling. as anyone who reads me can tell, i'm not big on personal journalling, so i never did it. oh sure i can talk about myself-- er... i write poetry and stories and honestly, in a way, that's me talking about myself, heh. i've always followed online diaries since before weblogs (omg! i -am- a dinosaur... the truth comes out), though, since that was where the talent was at-- where the cute webdesign and nifty depressed 15-year-olds and passable poetry (back then not so much with the fanfiction). and when i say always, i mean since 1996, baby. ahahah.
i don't mean this to be some sort of complaint about how i want to be part of the cool people group. though i do think the niftiest thing on the net is meeting/talking with people who are -like- you. i am very lazy and not good at organizing, but i'm obsessed with literary clubs-- the one in my university died and i'm -still- trying to get up the energy to pimp it to life again. sigh. debating the finer points of fiction with people every bit as rabid and obsessive as me seems like a huge amount of fun to me.
i don't know if it has to do with being a -fan- as much as with being a lit-geek. it's just... instinct to me, like the way beer-guzzling 40+ american men want to go to a bar and grunt about the latest football game, ehehehe. i don't want to lead it or start it or guide it, i don't want to be the center of anything. i'd be happier responding and bouncing ideas back and forth. that is my utopia, heh. and not in a disjointed sort of way, hopping from one random little flare-up on someone's lj to another, but in some sort of continuous way.
i'm such a loner, really. i don't get to talk about this stuff to anyone outside of class, and it's just different in class, because, well, i don't really -talk- then, and i do better writing, anyway. there's a part of me that thinks it's too late now. i don't think anyone's all that excited, and everything's been gone over a zillion times and fandom has some sort of Group Memory... or at least, it seems like it. it's almost like there should be an archive where i can look up the salient points people raised on the major issues (ok, so what -about- the finer points of characterizing snape/draco?), and educate myself, like reading old newsgroup entries. sigh. it wouldn't be the same, but hey, at least i'd be up to speed.
i don't think talking a lot precludes writing a lot of fic, either. i think the more i talk, the more i'd be inspired to write. the more i -think-, the more i'm inspired to write, to test my conclusions, to practice. i dunno. maybe i'd even be inspired to -read-/write snape/draco (say) if i read people's excited meta-babbling about it. i'd want to do it -right-. sort of the way i feel about harry/draco. because ok, it's been a year or two, but it's not like some pinnacle has been reached and we, collectively as a fandom, have a finished novel or five to show for it, to exhibit our collective analysis and philosophical statement and such.
and ok, you can go ahead and say it's stupid to even take something like pairings and fanon-picking in a silly ya fantasy novel universe, but it doesn't matter, does it. people study lewis carroll and cs lewis and fairy tales and fables and hans christian andersen and so on, all the time. and i'm not saying i'm in the fandom to "study", far from it. it's just study is such a dirty word, it's like it means homework and no joy and being dry and academic. to me, study is just when you pay a lot of attention and get obsessive and notice the little things and then try to draw conclusions just because you're obsessive-compulsive like that ^^ study is kind of a love thing, to me. you love something, so you study it. you study what you love, love what you study (hopefully).
and btw, the whole moronic idea that fanfic isn't "literature" enough to meta-discuss makes me so, so, so mad i could -kick- things. as in, i like fandom_wank because it is meta. to look down on meta discussion of fanfic because it isn't literature is just so offensive as to make steam pour out of my ears. ie, thinking that this is the majority fandom opinion just depresses me. mostly because -defining- what's literature in the first place and what's worthy of discussion is the biggest wank of all, in my opinion.
anyway. end geek rant. back to drawing naked boys ><
ethrosdemon asked me to define my terms re: meta (which i have been using rather to ill effect recently) that the line on meta and fic discussion and what's what has become pretty fuzzy. no one really seems know -what- meta is as much as they know whether they "approve" or not. there is your textbook, m-w.com definition, as follows:Main Entry: meta-
Variant(s): or met-
Function: prefix
Etymology: New Latin & Medieval Latin, from Latin or Greek; Latin, from Greek, among, with, after, from meta among, with, after; akin to Old English mid, mith with, Old High German mit
3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending <metapsychology> -- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one <metamathematics>
...but this doesn't touch upon "meta" as in... the movement in and of itself, meta as a type of thought (particularly written-- ie, fiction) that doesn't need to be tied with study of a particular subject.
okay, so the closest expandable word would be "transcending". my most "controversial" use of meta (recently) was meant to imply that something can be inherently transcending itself within itself (thus becoming self-referential), in text anyway (and thus, be metafiction, or fiction which is commenting upon itself-- something that i both feel drawn to and am repelled by). usually, meta is a -discipline- or science that studies and kind of transcends the other science it is a study of. with fiction-- it gets muddy. they actually call fanfiction itself metafiction-- ie, fiction about a work of fiction. also, you could have meta be a reference to a higher reality within the work-- like the movie, "being john malkovich", but after that it gets murky. i found this article about it, but it doesn't really say anything.
elsewhere on the web i found meta-fiction referred to as "examples of fiction that play with the very conventions of fiction. These are not just experiments with form, but works in which form and content comment on, and inform, each other."
here they say "Meta-fiction participates in the conventions of a genre while simultaneously critiquing or analyzing those conventions." (which is totally not what i'm interested in at the moment). while here they say it's "literature which is wholly aware of its status as an artform and relates to its own parts rather than external demands, comprising an analytic or deductive, rather than synthetic or inductive, fiction."
this gets -really- postmodern, understandably, saying it's "fiction which is in the first instance aware of itself as fiction and which may dramatize the false or constructed nature of fiction, on the one hand, or the inevitable fictionality of all experience, on the other."
to me, it's a curious thing. "aware of itself as fiction."
i mean, you could always claim a story is being "aware of itself" when something is said in a certain way. i mean, it's pretty subjective-- you're aware it's a story, and sometimes it doesn't take much to jar you out and to make you stop and say, "hey. this is a story, and this story -knows- it, goddamnit, look at it! MARY SUE!!!" etc~:)
and yes, i smell a grad english thesis i would never want to write: mary sue as the ultimate metafiction. *shudders at the prospect of reading dozens of marysue fics as research*
anyway. to me, a story is becoming aware of itself as fiction when it directly comments on its characters or themes within a (usually but not always) third-person omniscient statement. i dunno if this is precisely "meta" anymore (which isn't a "scientific" but rather a cultural term), or whether it's even metafiction (although, according to one school of thought, if it's fanfiction it's already metafiction, a notion which in light of the recent "keep that literature label away from my fanfic" kerfuffle on f_w i find utterly hilarious).
instinctively, i do feel that metaness (ie, a referencing or study of something else) is inherent in the writing and the phenomenon of fanfiction itself. it feels pretty meta to me, ie, it engages that part of my brain, let's just say. the most direct and plot-based fanfic in the universe is only pretending to be direct. it is actually referencing and commenting on all sorts of issues, implicitly. it is having an opinion of the pre-existing paradigms and characters within the potterverse, based on the "spin" it gives them. i can, i think, easily pinpoint that spin within any fic. gimme a fic and i'll tell you what "school of fannish thought" it subscribes to, 9 times out of 10. now, this might be because people are unoriginal and derivative even of derivative things. yes. but also, i just think that there -are- schools of thought and people -do- fall into camps (ie, opinions on draco, snape, harry, hermione-- there are such things and you inherently -know- of them, most likely, unless you were writing fic in the first few months or whatever and actually were involved in the creation of these paradigms).
anyway, i wasn't even referring to all that when i talked about the "metaness" of any story which comments on its own characters by kind of telling the reader what they feel and what that means. it can be done badly or well (ie, in `mirror of maybe', it's done really badly, whereas zahra's fics and say, lewis carroll do it well, mostly anyway). the point remains, i think it's a sort of greek chorus or commentary placed within the fic. to go back to the greeks, you have the "moral" and the meaning all laid out for you and it's a style. the whole story got framed by it and without this frame, it would actually not work as well. but this is difficult to do in a regular, "modern" story without seeming like the frame is separating and alienating the reader, and you're left with an author, lecturing you (ie, "josh was a sad, sad boy, and he needed tender loving care from someone kind and tender like mike." or, "flying is really the best way for someone to learn how to live.")
but usually i don't mean this when i say meta, and i only ever used meta for that because i think it could actually be seen as related. and that was a really long-winded and (probably) boring way to say, i don't know what the hell i'm talking about ><;;
my biggest thought on the whole intellislasher issue, is that if it -was- a group of people talking hp meta all the time till they dropped, i feel sort of sad that it's over. because... i mean, supposedly it's not, but as the lack of frequent enthusiastic(!) meta discussion on say,
metapotter and on my friends list shows, it's mostly there in flare-ups, when someone posts something inflammatory (even me-- i get the most people responding if i'd said something wankworthy).the idea that merely a year ago there were like, a whole group of people -obsessively- debating fine points of characterization and pairings and fanon in general makes me green with envy. sigh. because i myself have been going through those first months of fandom love this past half a year, and while i met a lot of great people who seem to like listening to me rant for some reason, i haven't really experienced the feeling of being part of a larger group of people who're all as obsessed and rambly as me.
i know it's all a question of right time, right place. it's just amazing thinking that i'm not all that weird and humongously verbose, even in just retrospective comparison. there hasn't really been a "new wave" or anything, and a lot of this probably has to do with the sheer growth and broadening of the fandom. i'm more "old school" (scary concept, but it serves) just by nature (that whole geek thing, basically), but that's almost like a statistical thing in a fandom so large, where before it was more of a natural geek sanctuary i guess-- though honestly, reading jkr was never a very geeky thing to do, though it probably helped to also be using online journalling before everyone and their mormon brother did it.
it's actually interesting consider what i'd have been doing a year ago, if i was online much. i wasn't. i was taking a break and er... what was i doing? i'm drawing a blank here. i think i was wasting a lot of time. that, or going to school and watching buffy on tuesdays ^^;
i probably would've been part of "it"-- some kind of "it" anyway, were i into journalling. as anyone who reads me can tell, i'm not big on personal journalling, so i never did it. oh sure i can talk about myself-- er... i write poetry and stories and honestly, in a way, that's me talking about myself, heh. i've always followed online diaries since before weblogs (omg! i -am- a dinosaur... the truth comes out), though, since that was where the talent was at-- where the cute webdesign and nifty depressed 15-year-olds and passable poetry (back then not so much with the fanfiction). and when i say always, i mean since 1996, baby. ahahah.
i don't mean this to be some sort of complaint about how i want to be part of the cool people group. though i do think the niftiest thing on the net is meeting/talking with people who are -like- you. i am very lazy and not good at organizing, but i'm obsessed with literary clubs-- the one in my university died and i'm -still- trying to get up the energy to pimp it to life again. sigh. debating the finer points of fiction with people every bit as rabid and obsessive as me seems like a huge amount of fun to me.
i don't know if it has to do with being a -fan- as much as with being a lit-geek. it's just... instinct to me, like the way beer-guzzling 40+ american men want to go to a bar and grunt about the latest football game, ehehehe. i don't want to lead it or start it or guide it, i don't want to be the center of anything. i'd be happier responding and bouncing ideas back and forth. that is my utopia, heh. and not in a disjointed sort of way, hopping from one random little flare-up on someone's lj to another, but in some sort of continuous way.
i'm such a loner, really. i don't get to talk about this stuff to anyone outside of class, and it's just different in class, because, well, i don't really -talk- then, and i do better writing, anyway. there's a part of me that thinks it's too late now. i don't think anyone's all that excited, and everything's been gone over a zillion times and fandom has some sort of Group Memory... or at least, it seems like it. it's almost like there should be an archive where i can look up the salient points people raised on the major issues (ok, so what -about- the finer points of characterizing snape/draco?), and educate myself, like reading old newsgroup entries. sigh. it wouldn't be the same, but hey, at least i'd be up to speed.
i don't think talking a lot precludes writing a lot of fic, either. i think the more i talk, the more i'd be inspired to write. the more i -think-, the more i'm inspired to write, to test my conclusions, to practice. i dunno. maybe i'd even be inspired to -read-/write snape/draco (say) if i read people's excited meta-babbling about it. i'd want to do it -right-. sort of the way i feel about harry/draco. because ok, it's been a year or two, but it's not like some pinnacle has been reached and we, collectively as a fandom, have a finished novel or five to show for it, to exhibit our collective analysis and philosophical statement and such.
and ok, you can go ahead and say it's stupid to even take something like pairings and fanon-picking in a silly ya fantasy novel universe, but it doesn't matter, does it. people study lewis carroll and cs lewis and fairy tales and fables and hans christian andersen and so on, all the time. and i'm not saying i'm in the fandom to "study", far from it. it's just study is such a dirty word, it's like it means homework and no joy and being dry and academic. to me, study is just when you pay a lot of attention and get obsessive and notice the little things and then try to draw conclusions just because you're obsessive-compulsive like that ^^ study is kind of a love thing, to me. you love something, so you study it. you study what you love, love what you study (hopefully).
and btw, the whole moronic idea that fanfic isn't "literature" enough to meta-discuss makes me so, so, so mad i could -kick- things. as in, i like fandom_wank because it is meta. to look down on meta discussion of fanfic because it isn't literature is just so offensive as to make steam pour out of my ears. ie, thinking that this is the majority fandom opinion just depresses me. mostly because -defining- what's literature in the first place and what's worthy of discussion is the biggest wank of all, in my opinion.
anyway. end geek rant. back to drawing naked boys ><
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Date: 2003-02-16 03:06 am (UTC)