[Babbleon]
May. 30th, 2005 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaHeheh, I just saw ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaiz's post on meta-analysis fatigue (which I share), and it was nice to realize I'm not alone. And yet...
I still get tempted to rant about the very ficcish pet-peeves I'm sick of seeing rants about, sometimes, because while I'm here to read/write fic, yea, there is never quite enough fic I find exciting/enthralling/satisfying, and it's that frustration that often leads me to want to complain. I think that's the main thing people who say 'just enjoy your fic and lemme enjoy mine!!1' are missing. I guess a lot of people are easy to please on a gut level, or at least their kinks match a large enough percentage of fandom, but what happens when next to no one writes the way you like anymore?
...Well, in my case I realized it was me (and my burnout), not them, but-- fact remains that I don't tend to analyze what I like (and why I like it) so much as I analyze what I don't like, in an attempt to purge myself somehow. Though I admit I feedback fics/art I love in great detail too, but that's not the same as meta, which I find to be more of a general analysis. It's like this: to be a fan is to care, and to care is to be pissed at things not measuring up to the past standard of enjoyment, that's just all there is to it. I simply can't be like "omg I love fanfics and adore Draco" and not be like, YOUKILLED KENNY MADE DRACO KISS HUFFLEPUFF ASS, AGAIN!!1 What I'm saying is, I don't really get the idea of pure fannish enjoyment without caring enough to notice/whine when something stinks. It's like imagining a true-blue Star Wars fan who didn't cringe at the prequel movies. I mean. You care, you cringe! Even if you don't really care, you cringe! It's just... the more one's invested, the more one notices these things.
That's really why I'd kept ranting about my least favorite kind of fanon!Draco-- not because I really think he's an abomination and should be eradicated from the minds and hearts of fangirls everywhere, because I do possess some common sense, but just because I'm easily annoyed by awkward/fake-seeming writing, and above all too-good-to-be-true characterizations seem fake and I can't suspend my disbelief, not with my fandom burnout at the time, blah-blah-I-whine. During the worst of my burnout, I didn't stop when reading fic wasn't fun anymore until I couldn't go on even if I wanted to, partly out of sheer inertia.
I remember being really sick of negativity, where every pet-peeves list and canon-snark post just drove one more nail in the coffin into my fandom enjoyment, and I was literally unable to tolerate any more bashing of like, anything. Not even characters I wasn't that invested in; I remember becoming really distraught over some 'Sirius is better than Snape'/'no! Snape is better than Sirius' post last fall. That was probably my deep fatigue speaking, at least in part; it's always easier to tolerate dissent when you're generally satisfied with your fandom experience, to me anyway.
However, I think it's false to imply that critique has to be divisive or disruptive. This probably has something to do with my never intending to tell anyone what to do or how to write or interpret anything whatsoever; basically, I think you can theoretically remain positive when critiquing something, it's just that most people get carried away with their irritation.
Bottom line: I don't think I can ever quit meta, per se, 'cause that'd mean I quit thinking. I could think about frivolous or inconsequential things and I guess that's still meta to me, though I don't think it fits the label if by 'meta' you mean 'linear analysis'; perhaps I'm exempt because I never did linear analysis in the first place? I just babble. I still babble. I will always babble. I live, therefore I babble. The babble is dead; long live the babble!
I just saw an interview with Naomi Wolf, the feminist, on CNBC promoting her new book, and I liked her-- she seemed to be intelligent and charming and talked about writer's inspiration and 'holding out the bucket' every day (man, I really need to start handling that bucket). Then I looked her up online, curious, and came across The Porn Myth, an article in NY Metro, where she basically says the easy online access to het porn has made men... er, disinterested in the real thing 'cause fake women appeal to men more.
Actually, she might be on to something 'cause slash porn has certainly turned what's probably a minority of women off het sex (maybe), though I'd really like to blame that on the not-so-appetizing selection of straight males out there and young women's tendency to go for ideal-slashy-man over reality-pig-man. It's easy to dream about how if a guy wasn't so straight, he'd be... more sensitive, prettier... maybe he'd even smell better, who knows. Man, women really cling to the shortest straws, it's true -.-
According to Wolf, it's a warzone out there, and I just don't know it. Women & girls dressing up and styling themselves to 'please a man' or attract a man or what have you, and they're finding it difficult, so they have to try harder. This sort of doesn't compute to me at all; if you'd asked me why that girl in the store yesterday was wearing tight jeans and a clingy top, I would've thought it's because she liked to look good, not because she's desperately trying to catch a guy. Then again, right before me (in the gas station) some skanky guy was like, "hey baby, you're hot" and she actually seemed interested and gave him her number, etc. You know, seriously; I've seen people say recently that in 'real life' people don't kiss or have sex easily, you have to have lead-up and believable set-up, etc. I wouldn't have thought 'hey baby, you're hot' is believable set up, but clearly I know nothing. I guess this is how the human species survives, or something, but whatever.
I was actually thinking recently about how it bothers me to see all slash fanfic (with sex in it) equated with porn, in responses to posts like this, I guess. There's a line between discussing the basis of enjoyment of fic and the issues of craft in fic which gets forgotten when one gets carried away with defending the right of fic to be written in whichever way pleaseth and ignores the question of quality & the attendant need for research, etc.
It's not as if porn is antithetical to good writing or realism (though it depends whether you think 'realism' is nitty-gritty or more emotionally based-- me, I don't care about the nitty-gritty if they don't have self-lubricating asses, and even then... I mean, I could pretend I just didn't see the panel with the lube), and that's the point-- if you have one, why not have both? In retrospect, I do realize that what some people took issue to isn't the question of improving sex-scenes but rather the implication people have to, or face, um, the elitists' mighty wrath?? Or something. I guess this is what happens when you don't pick your audience.
And on a more meta level, why can't sex just be another aspect of the human experience, not just a dirty thrill (in fiction & reality, though obviously that's not about to happen anytime soon).
Though it was interesting when Wolf quoted a college student casually saying, "sex has no mystery"; that did bother me. I think what she's really talking about isn't anything to do with porn but rather the disintigration of a traditional sexual marital bond, the possessor and the possessed (and the ways in which a husband and wife may possess each other); the suggestion here is that if women can't guarantee their partner's full attention, men's minds wander. I myself find that as anti-feminist a sentiment as On Becoming A Woman, that horrid sex-and-relationships guide for good Christian 50s girls.
To add yet another thread, thinking aboutkayen's post as to how slash could be subversive, I guess if anything, this would be it: not in the queer lib sense at all, really, but sometimes it could be seen that way in a purely feminist sense. I think semi-older women (especially of Naomi Wolf's generation, in their early 40s) are starting to want the security of the possessive male, of a sort of semi-traditional role where they're wanted in some stable fashion, while retaining the freedom of human rights equality. In a lot of ways, I think those things are contradictory, and the moment a relationship becomes possessive, some measure of 'rights' and 'equality' just plain goes out the window. And it's not that real-life gay partnerships are necessarily more equal (and what does that even mean on a person-to-person basis?); but I suppose you could say that even writing the most traditional possessor/possessed relationship becomes somehow different (in some slashers' minds) when no woman is involved, merely based on our associations with male pronouns. So in this sense fantasy itself can be subversive; just ask the guy who wrote that 50s good-girls-don't book.
kaiz's post on meta-analysis fatigue (which I share), and it was nice to realize I'm not alone. And yet...I still get tempted to rant about the very ficcish pet-peeves I'm sick of seeing rants about, sometimes, because while I'm here to read/write fic, yea, there is never quite enough fic I find exciting/enthralling/satisfying, and it's that frustration that often leads me to want to complain. I think that's the main thing people who say 'just enjoy your fic and lemme enjoy mine!!1' are missing. I guess a lot of people are easy to please on a gut level, or at least their kinks match a large enough percentage of fandom, but what happens when next to no one writes the way you like anymore?
...Well, in my case I realized it was me (and my burnout), not them, but-- fact remains that I don't tend to analyze what I like (and why I like it) so much as I analyze what I don't like, in an attempt to purge myself somehow. Though I admit I feedback fics/art I love in great detail too, but that's not the same as meta, which I find to be more of a general analysis. It's like this: to be a fan is to care, and to care is to be pissed at things not measuring up to the past standard of enjoyment, that's just all there is to it. I simply can't be like "omg I love fanfics and adore Draco" and not be like, YOU
That's really why I'd kept ranting about my least favorite kind of fanon!Draco-- not because I really think he's an abomination and should be eradicated from the minds and hearts of fangirls everywhere, because I do possess some common sense, but just because I'm easily annoyed by awkward/fake-seeming writing, and above all too-good-to-be-true characterizations seem fake and I can't suspend my disbelief, not with my fandom burnout at the time, blah-blah-I-whine. During the worst of my burnout, I didn't stop when reading fic wasn't fun anymore until I couldn't go on even if I wanted to, partly out of sheer inertia.
I remember being really sick of negativity, where every pet-peeves list and canon-snark post just drove one more nail in the coffin into my fandom enjoyment, and I was literally unable to tolerate any more bashing of like, anything. Not even characters I wasn't that invested in; I remember becoming really distraught over some 'Sirius is better than Snape'/'no! Snape is better than Sirius' post last fall. That was probably my deep fatigue speaking, at least in part; it's always easier to tolerate dissent when you're generally satisfied with your fandom experience, to me anyway.
However, I think it's false to imply that critique has to be divisive or disruptive. This probably has something to do with my never intending to tell anyone what to do or how to write or interpret anything whatsoever; basically, I think you can theoretically remain positive when critiquing something, it's just that most people get carried away with their irritation.
Bottom line: I don't think I can ever quit meta, per se, 'cause that'd mean I quit thinking. I could think about frivolous or inconsequential things and I guess that's still meta to me, though I don't think it fits the label if by 'meta' you mean 'linear analysis'; perhaps I'm exempt because I never did linear analysis in the first place? I just babble. I still babble. I will always babble. I live, therefore I babble. The babble is dead; long live the babble!
I just saw an interview with Naomi Wolf, the feminist, on CNBC promoting her new book, and I liked her-- she seemed to be intelligent and charming and talked about writer's inspiration and 'holding out the bucket' every day (man, I really need to start handling that bucket). Then I looked her up online, curious, and came across The Porn Myth, an article in NY Metro, where she basically says the easy online access to het porn has made men... er, disinterested in the real thing 'cause fake women appeal to men more.
Actually, she might be on to something 'cause slash porn has certainly turned what's probably a minority of women off het sex (maybe), though I'd really like to blame that on the not-so-appetizing selection of straight males out there and young women's tendency to go for ideal-slashy-man over reality-pig-man. It's easy to dream about how if a guy wasn't so straight, he'd be... more sensitive, prettier... maybe he'd even smell better, who knows. Man, women really cling to the shortest straws, it's true -.-
According to Wolf, it's a warzone out there, and I just don't know it. Women & girls dressing up and styling themselves to 'please a man' or attract a man or what have you, and they're finding it difficult, so they have to try harder. This sort of doesn't compute to me at all; if you'd asked me why that girl in the store yesterday was wearing tight jeans and a clingy top, I would've thought it's because she liked to look good, not because she's desperately trying to catch a guy. Then again, right before me (in the gas station) some skanky guy was like, "hey baby, you're hot" and she actually seemed interested and gave him her number, etc. You know, seriously; I've seen people say recently that in 'real life' people don't kiss or have sex easily, you have to have lead-up and believable set-up, etc. I wouldn't have thought 'hey baby, you're hot' is believable set up, but clearly I know nothing. I guess this is how the human species survives, or something, but whatever.
I was actually thinking recently about how it bothers me to see all slash fanfic (with sex in it) equated with porn, in responses to posts like this, I guess. There's a line between discussing the basis of enjoyment of fic and the issues of craft in fic which gets forgotten when one gets carried away with defending the right of fic to be written in whichever way pleaseth and ignores the question of quality & the attendant need for research, etc.
It's not as if porn is antithetical to good writing or realism (though it depends whether you think 'realism' is nitty-gritty or more emotionally based-- me, I don't care about the nitty-gritty if they don't have self-lubricating asses, and even then... I mean, I could pretend I just didn't see the panel with the lube), and that's the point-- if you have one, why not have both? In retrospect, I do realize that what some people took issue to isn't the question of improving sex-scenes but rather the implication people have to, or face, um, the elitists' mighty wrath?? Or something. I guess this is what happens when you don't pick your audience.
And on a more meta level, why can't sex just be another aspect of the human experience, not just a dirty thrill (in fiction & reality, though obviously that's not about to happen anytime soon).
Though it was interesting when Wolf quoted a college student casually saying, "sex has no mystery"; that did bother me. I think what she's really talking about isn't anything to do with porn but rather the disintigration of a traditional sexual marital bond, the possessor and the possessed (and the ways in which a husband and wife may possess each other); the suggestion here is that if women can't guarantee their partner's full attention, men's minds wander. I myself find that as anti-feminist a sentiment as On Becoming A Woman, that horrid sex-and-relationships guide for good Christian 50s girls.
To add yet another thread, thinking about
kayen's post as to how slash could be subversive, I guess if anything, this would be it: not in the queer lib sense at all, really, but sometimes it could be seen that way in a purely feminist sense. I think semi-older women (especially of Naomi Wolf's generation, in their early 40s) are starting to want the security of the possessive male, of a sort of semi-traditional role where they're wanted in some stable fashion, while retaining the freedom of human rights equality. In a lot of ways, I think those things are contradictory, and the moment a relationship becomes possessive, some measure of 'rights' and 'equality' just plain goes out the window. And it's not that real-life gay partnerships are necessarily more equal (and what does that even mean on a person-to-person basis?); but I suppose you could say that even writing the most traditional possessor/possessed relationship becomes somehow different (in some slashers' minds) when no woman is involved, merely based on our associations with male pronouns. So in this sense fantasy itself can be subversive; just ask the guy who wrote that 50s good-girls-don't book.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:04 am (UTC)Yuh-huh.
and all in the way it's done, man, all in the voice, method, critique. I basically decided not to read anyone who sounded "MEAN TO ME." hahaha.
But adore yours.
And amen on what sex and character can do, and not be 'only this' or 'only that.'(and on a side note the critique of 'realism' as method and idea - and what it can mean. As someone who reads as a English lit person, that word just raises my reading flags every time...)
But it comes down to, uh, bad readings annoy me, and the fact that I, trained as a reader get annoyed by them, not all meta, is usually the result of the new term Analysis Fatigue.
And I love reading your Draco analysis posts.
As for the sexism and male pronouns part - it's 4 am, and I wish it wasn't so I could talk about it... will be back. (got up in middle of the night to pop some pills, now back to bed)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:39 am (UTC)Recently I've thought I like the idea of realism, but I'm pretty sure I define it in my own way, because I'm all about psychological realism and I just don't care about like... um, mundane realism, I guess (I mean, I -am- a fantasy nut). It sort of frustrates me that people so narrowly define it to the point where fantasy can't be realistic. It makes me want to gnaw things. And really, nit-picking doth not reality make. Or something -.-
Wheee-heee, someone likes my Draco posts!! >:D! *dances*
(I totally facepalm when I look over them later, and realize I think a few people probably quietly resent me for them or something.... But man, I have to share my pain. Because I'm a country singer disguised as a slash fangirl, clearly.)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:46 am (UTC)I mean, even as much as I deeply deeply hate a certain kind of Draco, I've been known to enjoy quite a few fics with him -.- Ahahah oh man. Consistent, I am not :>
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 02:27 am (UTC)I guess I just don't read new people too much unless they seem well-informed and like they've got something to say. But then I've never really gotten into the age of the daily_snitch, so I still end up talking with my friendslist, mostly. I think it's more... comfy that way.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 02:37 am (UTC)Heh, there is the age of the d_s? Didn't know that. But it is a pity that it's hard to get into any older group blabla don't wanna start that newbie-bnf again, am apathetic *g* have to stop now, heat really really kills me.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 07:40 am (UTC)I think part of my problem is that even when I'm burnt out on meta I kind of have to do it because somebody says something WRONG. Like recently I for some reason read this list of things about Ron that was totally annoying even though I basically agreed with it, and then it started with the saying this wrong and I felt like I should be able to give people a test about canon facts before they were allowed to do meta.:-) Because like you said, we cringe because we care.
Word on the whole porn section--especially the slash making ordinary guys seem like they just don't measure up. (Maybe they'd smell better--LOL!) I think there probably are also a lot of fantasies about how a relationship can be just as good a relationship without actually being one, if that makes sense. Like you can get the security without having to give up any freedom, and you can be part of a couple but still be totally single.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-31 07:00 am (UTC)I know just what you mean about the holy fight against the Simply Incorrect (or Just Plain Stupid)... I think it's that you're the only person on my flist who does meta much anymore, and it's not like I'm about to rant about your deep offenses towards canon & your clear unholy loyalty towards ice-prince!Draco :> So yes, the answer really is to stay off the daily_snitch :> But man, people who use sloppy thinking that's sort-of-right-but-sort-of-really-really-wrong make me go off even more than really-ridiculous people, 'cause those are just funny. Although we all have our hot-buttons, and for instance mine is probably so well known that I try to slam my ears in the oven whenever I get tempted to write yet another rant about fanon!You-Know-Who. I usually don't even mind so much (I swear), it just especially bothers me when people don't really even care about what the canon is when they ship/write a pairing... argh.... Possibly it's that 'know-your-grammar-before-you-write-free-verse' thing.
So I guess in this sense slash could be seen as a fantasy about men-who're-not-quite-men (and yet look! they are!), really :D ...They're fanon!men ^^;
Me? Going slightly nuts? Haha never...
Date: 2005-05-31 04:39 pm (UTC)It couldn't be the simple fact that the construction of women's (and men's) straight sexuality is SO FUCKED UP! No, nooo, it must be porn. Cos it's not like fantasies are reflections or anything. No of course not. It's all porn's fault, not society's.
I'm just burning my brain out on Kinsey and Masters and Johnson. It's all their fault! Fuckwits...And Naomi Wolf is a wannabe Andrea Dworkin or Michael Moore or whoever she's trying to emulate. That bitch needs a new routine. But seriously...
I think semi-older women (especially of Naomi Wolf's generation, in their early 40s) are starting to want the security of the possessive male, of a sort of semi-traditional role where they're wanted in some stable fashion, while retaining the freedom of human rights equality.
Oh you have no idea. Pseudo-genXers like herself are worse than the Baby Boomers. They get to 40 and realise that they still have to work at all the social justice issues they gave money to (ha) when they were spoiled 20somethings and can't be arsed anymore, so they turn conservative and keep the cash in their own pockets. Or, in this case, they don't have the balls (haha) to handle the backlash in society against feminism, and so buy into the Big Happy Heterosexual Relationship myth society loves to spread faster than a 5dollah Draco-whore on friday night.
You're right though. You can't have a Big Protective Manly Man in Western society (it is different in a few minority examples elsewhere) and expect to have equal footing in the relationship.
Haha I'm just going to go back to my corner and die now. X_x
no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 01:05 am (UTC)She (Wolf) sounded quite normal/sane when not mentioning women's lib issues! She wrote a book about her father's advice.... Though perhaps that's her looking for more male authority figures, I dunno anymore. She also had this whole thing about how Howard Bloom (the Yale prof) harassed her... so maybe she has, er, issues -.-
Ahahahah The Relationship Myth. I think most of us bought into it at some point.... I know I did. I guess I always knew I was unreasonably idealistic though ^^;; Um. Plus my vision of the ideal man at 15 was Spock, not, uh... Big Daddy or whatever. *scrubs out brain*
no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 01:24 am (UTC)Okay, you're officially weirder than me.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 01:52 am (UTC)Ahahah though I probably am weirder, that's no big surprise :))
no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 02:39 am (UTC)Still, it was never anything close to Spock. So you're weirder.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 03:03 am (UTC)