(no subject)

[reenka]

Thing #1: I finally have Teh Internets at home!!1 D: Sadly, this is not really a good thing, 'cause I'm a rotten stinkin' net addict. Or more like, fanfic & meta-browsing & manga-downloadin' addict, 'cause I barely surf these days, BUT ANYWAY. Yes. Now I'll have to put in more effort to go outside, is what that means.

Thing #2: Reading this rant on the nature of-- well, the idiocy of most fandom discussions, I realized that there's nothing that makes me happy in quite the same way as someone who's both eloquent, intelligent and precise (...precisely delineating why it sucks that fandom tends to be neither eloquent, intelligent or precise). *sigh* I ramble and ramble and ramble, and wish I could sum things up (like, THIS IS WHAT'S WRONG WITH X: 1, 2, 3, 4, thank you, class dismissed) in pithy little darts of dreadful clarity, but.

Aaaanyway, it just made me realize that this divide (like between the masses chanting 'BUT FIC IS NOT REALITY! BUT FIC IS NOT REALITY!' & the rest of us grouchy over-analytical types going 'SHUT UP! SHUT UP! OR MAKE A DECENT ARGUMENT AND -THEN- SHUT UP!')... anyway, it struck me how funny it is, 'cause... Like, it's totally personality-driven. Certain types of people will tend to believe one sort of thing about a subject, other types will believe others. Cross-overs and conversions would probably feel about as weird as seeing that X-Files/Sentinel cross-over-- like, you could almost see it, BUT IT'S STILL WRONG, somehow. I dunno. Um.
    The funny thing is, what -I- mean by 'this is incorrect' isn't necessarily what people may mean by -saying- it, and I realize that-- I mean, the statement 'fic is not reality' is so broad & imprecise that it can have several different applications. You -could- just mean 'well, I'm not harming anyone' (which... DUH) or you could mean that and also 'so none of the rules of plausibility should apply' (which... arguable, at the least). The thing that bugs me is really the implied value-- 'let's throw away reality'-- which is liberating in small doses and in a purely kinky/sexual context, but wildly creatively stifling (to me) in a creative context, which I realize is the opposite of its intent. If fic is not reality, it also has no relevance to reality, which means I cannot fully deal with all my feelings/issues/beliefs which actually stem from the intersection of reality, fantasy/dreams & inner self, which... is what I'm into, so. Without reality there, to me dreams are paltry, anemic things soon to die of starvation. Having people just... generally never get that? REALLY frustrating.

I am babbling -.- Suffice it to say, few things make me want to tear the heads off chickens (...so to speak) like people saying 'leave me alone, I can do whatever I like because [fan]FICTION IS NOT REALITY'. Heh. Can we say 'over-invested'? No denials here. As I was saying in the comments to my last post earlier, possibly the thing that peeves me the most in fandom-- that's behind almost anything else peeving me-- is that feeling like most people don't care about the values/ideals/concepts I care about in writing/reading/etc. It's probably different for analytical types, who're just frustrated people don't see THE TRUTH, because, like, we CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! :D I mean, that annoys me, but I accept it on an intellectual level a lot easier.

...I want to do a little meme but suspect no one will care or respond. But. It's not really a meme if it's not so much with the interactive & more with the navel-gazing & list-making, right.
    
    Always:
1. daydreaming
2. enthusing
3. reading
4. avoiding
5. doubting
6. keenly feeling
7. over-analyzing
8. wondering
9. believing
10. battling windmills in a pissed-off sort of way.

DIE WINDMILL DIIIIIIEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.... that sort of thing.

* * *

    Never:
1. well-organized
2. 100% convinced... just 99.9999%
3. perfectly indifferent
4. a grown-up
5. the things I'd imagined I would be
6. fully satisfied
7. someone who no longer loves the world
8. someone who refuses to understand
9. self-disciplined
10. agreeable

Comments

[labyrinthlace.livejournal.com]

I think it's both personality driven and also driven by sort of ... what people's minds are really open to and what they aren't. For example, some people will never be open to slash in any way shape or form. Some people will never be open to chan or open to kink in fic or open to "insert thing here".

Bear in mind that they don't even have to be open to it in real life so it's all even a little more cerebral. The mind is not open to it; the person will find an argument against it. The arguments are sometimes kind of inane on both sides.

It's kind of like that argument over what is or is not writing. Broadly, if you can string words together to get across an idea then you're writing. Within that though, the debate seems to be endless. To capitalize or not capitalize. To use first person or third. To comma or not comma. It's all down to preference but people are always trying to prove that their view of the thing is more right than someone elses.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

True... though I'd think personality influences what one's mind is & is not open to, though perhaps that's semantics, especially because personal history & education level also has a lot to do with it. I do think that if the mind is not open to such a degree, the person has basically cut off (or had never discovered *coughs*) their ability to reason. If you cannot get beyond any halfway serious bias no matter what, then you're basically incapable of rational thought... which shouldn't amuse me/reassure me, hahahaha but somehow it does :>

Hehe, this 'writing' debate seems perfectly solvable if you add 'good' writing :> In that case, punctuation and using certain tried-and-true methods they teach in writing classes really does help you not write Really Badly. I mean, my preference is to read Good Writing, true; moreover, though, you need a certain level of clarity & grammatical correctness to communicate effectively with other people, and since language is both communication & expression, this gets contested by the expression people & railed about by the communication people :>

[labyrinthlace.livejournal.com]

I think you're probably right that if you aren't able to reason out your bias and where it springs from, you aren't really thinking - you merely have a piece of programming that came from somewhere and you're going with that programming. (As a side note, so many people seem to not think as a matter of course. It seems a very robotic way to live, heh. )

In my experience, adding the word good to the whole debacle seems to make things worse. I'm reminded of a kerfluffle that happened a year or two ago where one person who writes what was called at the time "lit fic" (cough) was railing a bit because she hadn't used standard punctuation and capitalization for the sake of "art" and was therefore turned down by an archive for not meeting the criteria of the archive. Good places a value on the writing and clearly it would seem that agreement on what constitutes good can't be or wasn't at the time, reached.

I think that you and I are in agreement though as to what might help with that good writing. ;)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think that obviously, while it's true people can't agree on what's 'good' and what's 'Arte', fact is some writing is better suited to communicate what it's trying to, and that's where the basic guidelines spring from. That's what I meant about people disagreeing on expression vs. communication; if you really think you're good when you disregard things for not good reason, you're deluded. If, however, you actually -are- good and have a good reason-- not to mention are capable of writing standard also-- then you're perfectly within the realm of Artistic License :D

...and yeah, am something of an unapologetic wanker about this, mostly 'cause I'm sick of tapdancing around people's buttons on this issue & no one who knows me expects me to anymore :>