[proof that time outside doesn't make one grow saner....]

[reenka]

I had [yet another] nice little rant brewing in my head last night when I made the mistake of... uh, actually going to a Barnes&Noble and browsing before rabidly checking email. Um. And I'm not even talking about the porn-stars book next to the gardening section [which is where I was actually headed! ...honest!] where they were shown dressed & nude on the opposite page 'body portrait'. Um. Which may not sound so bad until you realize how SERIOUSLY disturbing 'serious!look' porn-stars are, of either gender. SERIOUSLY, OMFG!!1 I AM NOT EVEN TALKING ABOUT THAT GUY WITH THAT BEER-BELLY OR ALL THOSE IMPLANTS AND THE HUGE PINK FAKELY-SWOLLEN MOUTHS OMGWTF WTFWTF THEY ARE COMING TO GET ME, AAAARGHhgfkjhgjkhglkjhlkuylkjlj D:! ...*breathes*

Wow. Oh wait, yes, I am. *facepalm* It's just... okay, it's tacky in actual porn movies, but seen all glittery in an 'artsy' coffee-table book... they are just. Freaks of nature, okay. I don't even. THEY ARE SCARY. :O I WAS SHUDDERING. :O! [...and I like sex-books & nudity & porn, okay. Just. Not. Like. This.]

Clearly, going to the bookstore is bad for my mental health & I should stick to the nice, safe&sane sterile confines of fandom. *nodnod* [The real world is SCAWWY, someone hold hide me!!1 Augh!]

...In other words, I also had the misfortune to read People ['cause I have an unpaid-for-magazines fetish in that I read them compulsively as long as I don't have to buy them or look for them v. hard] and... there's a Bible school for 'delinquents' called 'Heartland' in Missouri [I think??] run by this crazy millionaire guy who thinks beating people up, abusing & torturing them constitutes a good Christian education. Which... should be shocking & isn't. Um. -.-
    
Yeah, so it's pretty much got a looooooong history of similar institutions & belief systems [Victorian age, anyone?? nearly current boarding-school system in Britain, anyone?? haha, okay no] behind it, but... what's really depressing is how easily it happens NOW in one of the supposedly most 'progressive' countries on the planet. [Ha...haha...ha.] Not even talking about it being state-sanctioned (for once, we are Not That Bad, I guess), but rather that apparently there are plenty of 'average' people, parents, who're willing to send their 'problem' kids to a place like that. Christ.

I was really nearly crying when I read descriptions of some of the stuff that routinely happens there; just... realizing people who do that to other people exist. Or maybe just because I myself went to a 'school for delinquents' [in Brooklyn] in my time, & ran away from a tiny tiny fraction of the badness of this hellhole, and have always been fascinated by the idea of how to help & educate the misfits and teenage delinquents of the world. It's really hits on a personal level, the idea that immersing a person in, you know, HELL ON EARTH would help them escape from someone else's [their parents'] idea of a 'bad crowd' or whatever. Not like this is really all that -unusual- as far as ideas go; no, it's actually got quite a pedigree-- and that's prolly why it gets to me the way it does. People -have- always thought 'hey, a little brainwashing and military-style torture may be JUST THE THING to help my wayward child'. And that. THAT. Seems somehow more criminal than simply, you know, pulling someone's guts out, in a way. It's more... insiduously, quietly evil.

An everyday evil is a lot more scary, man. Like. This is worse than evil accountants, okay, because evil accountants [and lawyers! well, that was a joke] seem almost -normal-, whereas evil PARENTS [and teachers] are both normal & yet never... actually... expected. Always the same level of Deeply Wrong no matter how jaded you get, in that wounded-child corner of your head that never goes away. Always with that tiny little 'but how COULD they??' at the back of your mind even though you've grown up & realized that okay, Grown-ups Suck but there are -reasons- and society's messed-up & they can't help being idiots & really, everyone's got problems. You know? (I can't help making fun of my own pained rant in my head, btw. Yes, I made the 'no one expects... THE SPANISH INQUISITION' joke to myself at this point. Le sigh.)

Anyway, er... it's funny, I can accept various sorts of [sanctioned & non] killers, child-molesters and rapists a lot more easily-- they anger me at times, but I don't -boggle- at their existence 'cause I've spent a lot of time trying to 'understand the Devil' & get in touch with my dark side, so as not to get self-righteous & therefore delusional [which would be almost as bad a sin in my mind, hahah]. This is just sort of... beyond 'Dark Side' & into 'Dark Ages', y'know? Which seems harder for me to accept just because I -know- we will always have killers & child-molesters [probably], but I like to nurse the idea that us modern human beings wouldn't let an anachronism like that exist. Silly, because tons of -other- anachronisms-- from the Amish & SCA to outdated public-behavior laws-- certainly do exist. Feh.
~~

But back to fandom, my dear refuge of sanity & joy...

....*coughs*

...my stillborn rant/ramble-type-thing had to do with why I have such a knee-jerk negative reaction to the common fandom idea of 'escapism' to excuse 'fanony fluff' & other ridiculous little bon-bons. Naturally, I thought this had to do with my ideas on Life, The Universe & Everything.
    
    I was thinking that it's actually a sort of ethical [moral?? the difference always confuses me] issue in my head, 'cause I attach moral value both to Fantasy & the idealizations and dreams that come with it, and to Truth, especially of the true-to-self and not-lying-to-self varieties.
    So I reconcile that by saying that Fantasy [and its escapist fluffy offspring] should ideally (heh!) be in the Tolkien-inspired tradition, going by his essay 'On Fairy Stories'. It should elevate and enlighten, lead us closer to the truth about ourselves through the use of eucatastrophe [the ultimate happy ending, the cataclysm of joy, etcetc Tolkien-was-a-bit-of-a-Christiancakes]. Not implying that every stupid 'fluffy fanon' kinkfic should have to aspire to those heights of [truthful] Joy in each specific case, but that in talking meta about one's preferences, people seem to be igniting my -own- frustrated desire for transcendence & need to reconcile that with an escapist's yen for guilty pleasure.

The mainstream run of open-minded people say 'accept all kinks, for they are kinks', and I do, all right. I accept (in practice, in terms of individuals, and in terms of how I relate directly to people in general-- I don't judge when it's a specific case). But at the same time, I can't help worrying at it in my head & needing to write it out, trying to come to terms with the idea that people have different needs/psychological make-ups, obviously [so maybe they do need to 'run away' & they just NEED to do it with a fanfic pairing that's eminently unsuited because THEY LIKE IT SO MUCH], and yet I still have my ideals and they are still something I believe in quite strongly, so. It's not that I want anyone to -do- anything or think like I do, obviously, but at the same time I want to believe that escapism is (could be?) Good and not just Convenient, and the truth is, it's mostly convenient. Yet if that's true, I can't say anything to all my friends who're 'meh' at it because they share the common definition. So really this is about me & my ideas about ideas and not about other people at all (even though it involves other people). Just to like... alienate you while trying not to alienate you [look ma, I'm addressing the reader! quite common on lj, but it seriously freaks me out to think of any real person reading this, so I indulge in a little so-called "escapism" just to write most posts without freaking out & locking it to hell & back... um]?? Or something :P

Perhaps it's also an escapist need to believe(!) that not lying to yourself about the [canon] characters' actual (flawed, warty, difficult & unfluffy) nature as you read just to get a buzz, you could yet find a deeper, more intense fulfillment by making realism work for your fantasy-fulfillment needs. That is my ultimate dream, y'know, one I so rarely see other shippers and lovers of happy endings share [to my continuing peevish irritation, haha]. It's like in fairy-tales, you could only -really- have a Happily Ever After after lots of trials and missteps and Evil Witches and Dastardly Princes and Horrible Toads. I can't keep skipping to the end without feeling jipped and upset, and can feel no unity of purpose in hearing anyone claiming to like romantic fantasy of any sort & yet liking to do just that!

In conclusion: where, oh where is my Mr Toad??! Without him, THERE CAN BE NO PRINCE & NO STORY! D:!!1 And that, ladies & gents, is why I'm an escapist romantic yet also an anti-fanony-fluff canon-thumpy freak, The End.

(And speaking of Reena The Escapist Freak... mmm, reading yaoi crack makes EVERYTHING BETTER. But see, fanfic just doesn't do it if I care about the canon characters! Woe. Except I love hp_secrets, so I HAVE NO EXCUSE D: Except, you know, that one where 'if it's cute & funny it's okay! cute & funny makes EVERYTHING OKAY! I DON'T KNOW! WHAT!' Um. It's just that I don't... take it seriously, I guess? That's a small difference, I know.) ...And yeah, you probably win a prize if you figure out just how many times I contradicted myself in this post; well, I plead the Whitman! C'mon, that one was cute, wasn't it... lame, but like one's favorite little stuffed toy is lame. OKAY I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, SOMEBODY SSSSSTOP... me!!1

Comments

[frayach-nicuill.livejournal.com]

Okay. I have a real-life porn star story, which will serve to confirm your suspicions about their freak of nature status. I used to work in publishing. In the spring of '99, the publishing world was all a-twitter gearing up for the big millennial coffee table books - like 100 years of cars, baseball and dental floss. Anyway, Grove Atlantic was publishing a super-expensive high-concept book called "A Century of Sex," and Hugh Hefner was writing the introduction.

Fast-forward to the annual ABA book fair, held that year in L.A. The publishers always throw blow-out parties, but 1999 was particularly crazy with all the Y2K marketing going on. Most of the parties that year were themed to each publisher's big coffee table book. So you can see where this is headed. Grove threw a party themed on "A Century of Sex" and it was hosted by Hefner at his bunny farm/house/grotto. Of course that was the party *everyone* and their brother had to go to - it was hilarious standing around at the Playboy Mansion sipping neon drinks and feeding little monkeys bits of bananas with a hundred nearly-identical looking (male and female both) publishing types all wearing dark knits and dark-rimmed rectangular glasses. In sum: well worth the hassle of having to park on the UCLA campus and be transported in a windowless bus to the Undisclosed Location of All that is Carnal. And to top it all off, it turned out one of the Playmates in attendance shared my name - first and last. So, I have a photo of myself standing between a bathrobed Hefner and this . . . this .. . *thing*. Her calves were about as big around as a chair leg, and she only came up to my shoulder (and I am not tall by any means). But her boobs were *beyond* out of control. They were so huge and her legs were so spindly and she wore such high heels that she was tottering around like a tipsy octogenarian. She literally couldn't see her feet and must have been in a constant state of vertigo. On top of that (and this seriously is not an exaggeration), her lips were so full of silicon that she'd obviously lost all sensation in them. I could only assume this was true because of the unbelievable amount of food clinging to them for the whole evening. Honestly. It was sad. And Not. Sexy.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Omg!! Wow. I would have liked to be invisible for maybe 5 miinutes at a place like that, before I ran away screaming of course. People who dress/look the same always frighten me a little... I don't just mean porn-stars but the people who all wear similar suits/glasses/etc (normal people?? hahaha...ha). I guess plastic surgery is their 'uniform' in the sex industry *___*

The guys were equally disturbing without the surgery, though-- just something about looking so pleased and comfortable with yourself, or like 'omg so serious and artsy!' when you're a... let's face it, aging, hairy nekkid person with a limp penis. *coughs* I have to say the nekkid Adonis types were marginally more acceptable to me, because I am just shallow in the end. :(

And I remember all those coffee books! A little. I remember a bit of the hype, but I rarely watch TV except a show I'm specifically after, so. Now I'm especially glad :>

[shaggirl.livejournal.com]

You, in a school for delinquents? But...but...my brain will not wrap around that concept.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

...I love how I said all those provocative things about like, the ethical questionability of fluffy-fanon-kinkfic or whatever & no one's come over to yell at me yet but everyone's ignoring it :D :D I love my flist ))

Anyway, uh... yeah, I'm [still] quite rebellious, have been since I was a baby, but it was worse then & my school sucked so... uh... I didn't go & spent time in the library and the bookstore & like, parks [reading... and borrowing anime, but that came later]. I didn't do anything 'bad' except... avoiding, which... you know I'm good at :)) I couldn't make it to any 'super-speshul' school 'cause like, I didn't go to school long enough to get good grades & my Junior High was an academically weak Jewish school [which I went to to avoid a public school 'cause they were meeeeean & SCARY AND WEIRD]. So as a last resort, I went to an 'alternative' school where it was really small & we got lots of individual attention [which I like!] and they tried not to push us so we'd actuallyfinish school & -go- & stuff. It worked!! Haha, you -couldn't- push me like in that Heartland place. You couldn't get me there -or- keep me there... I mean, I know I seem mild-mannered etc but you know I'm actually not when I have my mind set, don't you :>

[frayach-nicuill.livejournal.com]

Sorry. Got side-tracked by porn-stars.

To me the idea that fluff/kinkfic is nebulously immoral, or at least unethical, is not necessarily a provocative idea to me. That's a discussion I had **alot** in the LotR fandom. I wrote Frodo/Sam exclusively, and because of what they had done and the nature of their relationship - it's mysteriousness (in an almost religious sense) and sublimity - I had allergic reactions to fluff fic, PWPs, kinkfic or smut fic. I wanted to read serious fic or nothing at all. In fact I have only been able to read one writer in the fandom for the last three years, and she's hardly writing anymore. As far as Harry/Draco is concerned, the issue doesn't feel as clear-cut to me. When I read fluff/kink fic, it's doesn't have that spitting-in-church-feel to it that fluff/kink in LotR engendered in me. As far as kink fic is concerned, maybe I'm still trying to work out in my head what kinds of boundaries exist between Harry and Draco - there seems to be *a lot* of darkness between them to explore that I could be convinced manifests itself in certain ways. The fluff is a lot harder for me to deal with actually, because it usually entails chucking realistic characterization out the window. Is that a moral qualm or an aesthetic one? I'm not sure. To the extent that I take my own writing ridiculously seriously and hope that other writers do the same, maybe it *is* a moral qualm. But perhaps it does go beyond upholding some kind of standard in writing . . . maybe it also goes to what I think Harry (and Draco) *could* stand for. There are very important themes there: sacrifice, courage, etc. etc. Sex & romance - no matter how titillating or ah-shucks - seem formulaic after awhile and a too-steady-diet of either starts to bleach some of the magic and mystery out of things. At least that's been my experience in other fandoms. Anyway. My glass of wine is empty and the Gregorian Chants CD I put in is starting to put me to sleep. Also, I think I stopped making sense sometime between "little monkeys" and anorexic porn-stars with nerveless lips.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I don't really understand what you mean by fantasy having moral value. I can't accept anything having any kind of ethical status without involving harm or potential harm to actual people, unless you really mean that fantasy can have a didactic meaning/role, if the writer wants it to have one.

But, since the other people don't have your goals in mind, how can what they do or don't undermine them? Anyway, most fanficcers aren't descendants of Tolkien. They're working in the romance/erotica genre, not the fantasy.

[shaggirl.livejournal.com]

Only you would find a school for malcontents less scary than public school. You do tend to think outside of the box. ;)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I meant 'fantasy' in a pretty wide sense, not the only the literary genre-- like, um, including 'fantasizing' and 'imagination' and 'mental play' and all those things. I think... well, the thing about 'harm' certainly gets it out of the running in that definition, but then that's why I was confused about what term I should use & had a caveat before the 'ethical/moral' label. It's only an ideal-- of the sort the Romantics had-- about what sort of concepts & mental habits would enlighten and further human development. A Good thing-- not something that's prescribed, but then I personally don't think of ethics or morals as prescriptive? It's purely a personal guide for living kinda thing. I mean, even to the point of killing-is-bad-- I'm extremely morally relativist in regards to other people's behavior, but do have a rather eccentric personal system of what I might call moral/ethical beliefs, maybe. So by that measure, Fantasy would not be 'didactic' because of the non-prescriptiveness; it would merely be Good, and therefore any situation where I find it's not so on a large scale makes me question its overall moral value. If that makes sense. Probably not :>

I guess it's like... I know I said I'm relativist in terms of others' behavior, so in that sense they can't undermine my beliefs/feelings by acting in whatever way, but on the other hand, observing people consistently misusing Fantasy to shallow ends discourages me. I never said I was being rational, also :)

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I would say it's a question of aesthetics. But how can morals and ethics not be prescriptive? The essence of prescriptivism is that it's a guide, and that they're social terms, instead of merely personal ones. Literature and fantasizing, in the psychological sense, are just not the same thing, and I think Tolkien's essay is about the fantasy genre.

Works contain their own justifications, because most of them have something to say about art also. To say that Fantasy is Good (whatever good is) is a didactic message, I'm afraid. It's promoting some kind of value. You say "concepts and mental habits that enlighten and further human development;" that is the essence of the didactic view of art, that the purpose of art is to fruther human development, and to foster "good" ways of thinking. Didactic is not just saying "giving to the poor is good" but "thinking a certain way is good," "being a certain kind of person is good," "this kind of literature is good." I guess where I differ is that fantasy is not centered on promoting an ethic of human development. It is merely something that fantasy can do, if the author is inclined.

Ah, but that they're "misusing it" is just your judgement on them. I see it as another use. (See, that's moralism, the "misusing" part).

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Having thought about it, and seeing as I wasn't attached to saying 'ethics' or what have you, I do think it's an aesthetic... I mean, I try not to have a didactic language, but whenever I feel too emphatic about something, I stop being careful & pure feeling dictates what I say. I -feel- something is 'wrong' without actually thinking it's so; I don't know if that makes sense. I mean, I'm fully aware of the laughability of saying 'Fantasy is Good'-- it's not that I believe it in an entirely serious 'I would come up on a pulpit and preach this to the masses' sort of way-- it's a feeling. I know... well, I guess I know that if I did try to project it at people, how I feel would become didactic, but I wonder if there can be 'didactic thinking'. I know you can have didactic speech or writing, but thought & feeling are more tangled up and contained within the self. How can one cast no judgments [ie, have no biases]? I don't think I cast judgments in the 'drawing conclusions' sense, but I realize I have biases-- I think I spent half the time I was on the subject apologizing for that, in my scattered way-- I do feel uncomfortable about it.

Anyway, I don't feel any work needs a 'justification' or is necessarily going to have a bad effect on a given individual; that's why it's definitely a personal problem, reconciling what -I- see as my personal ethic in conflict with another [Truth in a specific sense]. I feel awkward using 'ethic' precisely because it's a social & not a personal term, but in many ways, my aesthetics are my 'personal ethics' because I don't have -another- system-- they're not fully separate to me. I shy away from didactic views of any kind, really, so I hate any hint of prescriptivism in myself, but I do have strong reactions that sort of... evidence a system of aesthetics/ethics in place anyway. I realize it's a subjective thing, but at the same time-- knowing that Fantasy is only potentially good [as I do, and tend to forget] just sort of... throws me off? I realize it's true though.

Eh, mostly it was just people saying the equivalent of 'I see challenging, truthful depictions in fiction as Good, but I want to get my buzz so often enough I ignore that & don't care'. This is what brings that into conflict; if someone just went for fanony fluff & didn't see my 'idealized' use as Good, it wouldn't be an issue for me.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ohh, I didn't mean to say 'kink' as in, 'sexual kink' was partly what I had any problem with considering how much I wrote of it myself, that would be...silly-- nor is 'fluff' an issue. It's the 'kink for fanony fluff' when coupled with someone who already admits they find the aesthetic of realistic challengic IC fics 'Good'. It's not like... in general, I have issues with fluff/kinkfic, ahahah-- I mean, let the people knock themselves out, I guess? But when it comes to caring but also discarding that in favor of surface pleasure or a buzz-- that's what bothers me. If someone just doesn't care & is in it for the porn, hell-- go ahead. I wave the PR0N banner along with everyone else [though it weirded me out a bit with Kirk/Spock somewhat for your Frodo/Sam reasons-- 'cause it was about a strong canonical platonic bond-- and I was generally only okay with 'serious' longfic slash for them-- in the end I just don't slash characters I consider to be that... special].

So yeah, I guess I was being too generalist to avoid offending whoever it was that made those comments on a post & wound up being unclear/confusing or losing my point ^^;; This... often happens :>

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Well, didactic doesn't only mean morals/ethics, it can also be about any information/opinion. The essence of the word is "teaching." Like, if the work wants to teach the reader something, or "enlighten," that's a didactic motive. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that wanting fiction to instruct and enlighten is wanting fiction to be more didactic, in the non-pejorative sense. I mean, telling people "open up your mind!" is prescriptivism, because you're telling them what to do. Yes, one can't avoid having judgments. It's just a natural result of having values. The trick is to separate what are merely preferences from moral principles. Anyway, I don't think it's a bad thing to believe that people should not do certain things, and that it is better for them to do X than Y, nor is it bad to stand up for what you believe is right, in terms of morality.

Eh, Sturgeon's Law in action. But sometimes people don't feel like reading challenging fiction. They just wanna have fun, and fanfiction is more to the latter mindset than the former.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't mind having morals, but I don't want to moralize! I also kind of... dislike it when a book is overtly didactic-- like, I can usually tell if it is, like the Narnia books or HP, and have to get over it through effort because I try concentrating specifically on some other aspect. It's an aesthetic consideration, really, 'cause I consider overt author insertion [of which didacticism is one variant] to be bad writing... but err, that's a bit of a tangent.

So, I mean... I keep seeing these IQ test ask if I like reading 'challenging' books, and I don't even know how to answer that-- it's not like I like straining myself, but other people might think what I consider to be fun to be a strain. I dunno. Um. Sometimes [...a lot of times], I just want to have fun too; it's more... the dismissiveness that bothers me. Like, they may superficially value the same things ideally, but they really don't, or they don't really understand the, well, -value- of what they supposedly value, that kind of thing. I dunno if that clarifies, but yeah.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, too much of anything done badly is a bad thing, but I think the parable is a legit form, you know? Bad writing about morality is bad writing, really. Eh, I don't really agree that authorial insertion is automatically bad. What about autobiographical novels, and hybrids of the novel and essay?

It's possible to value more than one thing, I guess. Or to pay lip service to it because it's expected, whatever's going on. However, I guess you can't find out what they really think unless you ask them.