~~a bunch of disparate meta threads.

[reenka]

my professor rocks so hardcore i want to -cry-. i'm just so happy remembering it, especially seeing the question (on slashphilosophy) "what does it mean to be, as a large number of slash writers are, women writing about the sexual experiences of men?"
    i handed in the smut with draco and person X, and i've talked to him about it yesterday. he's a gay male, btw (all blatant and cute about it, too). he thought it was very well written, but when i pressed him on it from the pov of "is it authentic or worthwhile, considering it doesn't have a `real' gay-male voice", he just said, there -is- no such thing as an authentic voice. gahd, how i love that.

of course, he's a philosophy professor. but it means so much to me to have such a basic thing (to me) validated. it's obvious to me, because i write fantasy-- i write about things i can't know, don't know, will never know-- all the time. it means very little, really, in some larger societal sense, that i write about faeries and may be "misrepresenting" them. but people do think they ARE gay males, not just, males who are gay, people are possessive about their identities and their experiences. since i'm sympathetic to them, i consider this argument whereas if it was a white russian female trying to appropriate her identity and tell me she knows what's it's like and no one's imagination can encompass such subtlety and complexity, i'd just laugh at her.


there's no such thing as appropriation. there's only such a thing as imagination. you can't fucking own your life, your experiences, as a -person-. you can't -become- some sort of representative of a hive mind that IS this cultural group. people are all unique-- and yet their minds operate on very similar principles. no other white russian-jewish immigrant female can seriously claim to understand me any better than an 80-year-old tibetan monk. no other fat bi chick knows me any better than an anorexic mexican whore-- not necessarily. we think we have this grand universality of experience, and yet we break up this universality into little pieces, little definitions we attach to certain aspects of our history and behavior patterns.

personally, i find that people understand each other, one on one, but groups as a whole fail spectacularly at being united in mind, unless you mean by brainwashing and peer pressure. i'm not saying that the question of similarity and identity within groups is inherently pointless, i'm just saying that claiming a completely unique possession of identity for a group is the basically a willful loss of our shared humanity. we are human. human. all of us.

we may be queer, fat, short, blind, chinese, artists, scientists, religious freaks, athletes, businessmen, evil overlords, jewish, goth, puritan, bipolar, barren, promiscuous, manic, depressive, old, verbose, moral, criminal-- yes. but to start to say that any one of these cannot fully understand the other-- and -can- fully understand people within that subgroup-- that's when you start to lose touch with reality. you begin to define reality by the signifiers within your little circle. you're either in or you're out. if you're out, what are you? how can you be -as good-? you may be "just different", but it's just benevolence and rationality that tells you this is a "good" different. easy enough to decide it's a wrong, disgusting difference, you can't understand it, thus it must be too alien to be borne living.

many, many, many people hate what they don't think they can understand, what they don't want to understand. they hate -because- they don't understand and they think they have comraderie because they think they're understood via similarity. they -force- and pretend said similarity to be liked because they're understood. the identification is a shearing and reduction of self until you're merely a bad copy of a bad copy of a bad copy of a person. you are a representative of this group, which has an identity-- but you don't, really. you don't have that identity yourself-- the group took it from you.

if i didn't think i could understand everything, everyone, equally-- or not understand them equally, doesn't matter-- i would start prioritizing. i would start filtering. i would start imposing my will upon the world i see around me until i wouldn't see -people- anymore, i'd see ideas, memes, objects carrying out the demands of those memes. that is just truly frightening. people say, "i can't understand why you could like this-- thus you're wrong", all the time. all. the. time.

it's not just bigots or just the white supremacy or just the people with the power. it's anyone who defines boundaries for their understanding as limited by their identity. if who you think you are is a conscious, finite thing-- and if what you can understand is limited by that finite thing-- of course you hate what's outside it. it's very scary. it's the Great Unknown. monsters lurk there. the bogey man hides there. we think we're more mature now-- we think we can embrace diversity and the unknown doesn't scare us but rather delights us-- bullshit. if you truly feel you don't understand, you most likely don't -want- to understand, and you most likely either avoid, distrust, or outright detest.
~~

and yes, i'm trying not to start talking about genocide and you know, those things that kill threads. *coughs* yah, i wrote this yesterday, and got myself rather riled up. i feel rather embarrassed at my strength of conviction, and realize that i sound... er... well, i -always- sound... ill-considered to myself. i think that was largely hyperbole and me getting myself way too bent out of shape to think clearly. not saying i really stand behind everything i said, especially some of the more obviously stupid things, eheheh. still, attached to own ranting ><;;
~~

it often seems most people only really want to read about characters they can identify with. they insist on projecting their own understanding of what people are like and what they're likely to do onto everybody, every character. "i recognize myself" is so often the delighted response to a particularly beloved character (or hated, depending, i guess). but isn't it more interesting, more of a transcendent, true power of literature to create identification with someone whom you'd never be or want to be, find disgusting, even? you could get outside of your own identity, see what's out there. that's what imagination is for, isn't it....
~~

i was thinking how weird it is that considering i know rather little highlander canon, i already feel characterizations in fanfic are more or less "them", more or less real. it goes beyond merely whether they work for me-- i think a part of me already knows what i want, even if i couldn't quite articulate it. it's interesting that this sense is rather strong, and yet obviously not a deduction based on extensive study of canon. people make all sorts of claims and try to base them on canon-- whereas i'm rather too aware that the most intense sorts of character knowledge come from within, from your own imagination and perception of whatever your present knowledge of these characters consists of.


there's a template of expectations, a chemistry of ideas based on condensation (which would need to be fleshed out with specifics to become realistic characters). the condensation comes from a sample of canon (larger than a vartying personal threshold amount of data) which fits an aesthetic, the pre-existing vulnerabilities of the reader.
    a template which is formed by a combination of knowledge & desire, as well as an interpolation of a text which fits one's subliminal interests in character traits in general.
    there is a wide variation possible in terms of facts, particular re-creations of this basal, original template. i think it gets formed in fanfic by combining original source material, however much you think you know it, and stories which seem strongly real in their own right, as well as resonating with your own desires and preferences in terms of world and characterization.

so if wit is paramount in terms of attractiveness to you, you will probably find witty characterizations more valid-- more chemistry is present to you not just between the characters, but between -you- and the characters. their attraction is then your attraction.
    i think for me, a lot of this somewhat abstract template isn't conscious-- i couldn't easily -write- the story myself, it's a pure "know it when i see it" sort of thing, a process of discovery. and yet you know what you want to discover.
    with more data, you come closer to being able to verbalize the scenarios consciously, though there's still always a lot of possible variation.

it's considered weird-- unusual-- to be able to judge or have a "template" based on condensations and abstracts, but it's actually commonly done in terms of commercials and news-bites & re-tellings on the backs of books & movies. viewers ideas get formed just from tidbits about those actors, directors, genre, and so on.
~~

meanwhile, read blythely's extremely cute owl reproduction h/d fics, for the birds & its sequel. mmmm, owl sex :D smiling is a Good Thing.
~~

and i think there is something i wish for more than i wish for peace. i wish for understanding. i just want people (in general) to communicate and stop lying through their goddamned teeth making me angry enough to throw off my gentle-healer outfit and just punch them in the mouth. okay, not them. him. except once i started punching people in the mouth, they'd get the wrong idea. misunderstand me and my holy, great cause. weird, huh?? so here i sit, keeping my anger to myself, because i wish for understanding, and i wish for sanity, and i wish for humanity, and i wish for it to wake up and smell the scent of its great big arse, burning.
    and yes, this is why i will not say anything about it.