[.....this may or may not sound bitter. *cough*]

[reenka]

It just occurred to me that it's not that I don't like enthusiastic recs, obviously-- 'cause I do that all the time-- and it's not that I'm not 'naturally fannish' in the omg-squee sense, because I totally get obsessive and excitable about things I read or watch-- but what really turns me off is when something's recced or pimped by just saying 'I like it, SO YOU SHOULD TOO!' ^^;;; I mean, I'm okay with the reccing-'cause-liking part, but that's just not a good reason to peer pressure anyone. And yes, it always feels like peer pressure to me. >.>;;;

It's like... the difference between sharing hobbies and 'creating a phenomenon' or marketing a story or a fandom or whatever.
    There are a lot of books (and movies & comics, etc) that mean a lot to me, that are personal to me. But they are personal to me, and therefore it would be disingenuous to defend them or 'sell' them, so when I want people to get into them too (and I do! I tell all my friends to read 'Sandman'), I'm constantly walking the line between assuring them they'll like it and why it's actually awesome and just describing what -I- like about it and such. Some things really are very well-done and worth reading/seeing... but to a person like me, if you over-stress how 'need to see' or 'have to read' something is, it makes me feel like a sucker. :/
    I hate the popularity game-- I mean, I really feel like the more popular or famous something gets, the more its own fans will ignore its real merits (and flaws) and just coast along on the 'obvious' awesomeness of it all and how clearly omg-genius & hot it is.

I guess what I mean is, I hate it when something I initially cared about for partly quirky subjective reasons becomes 'cool' and 'the thing to like'. :/ At a certain point of popularity, it's not okay to critique something as much, to geek out and just talk about all the little things that appeal to you, because rabid fans get uber-defensive, y'know? Of course once it's popular, it's FLAWLESS & GODLIKE. -.-; Like, if someone tells you they don't like something about Tolstoy's work, people would assume that person is an idiot, right? Either that or they'd get pissy you're harshing their buzz. Somehow the story/show/etc becomes an identity or status symbol for people once it reaches a certain level of popularity.
    Of course all larger communities have their good & bad side; on the one hand, you lose the intimate feeling & greater understanding between those first few fans, but on the other hand, more people are being exposed to the material (if you care about that sort of thing) and you get vindicated about how awesome it is. Mer.
~~

Btw, I really liked this post on purposeful misidentification in stories by fictualities, 'cause that's pretty much what makes me feel most uncomfortable while reading (and alienates me in some more critical meta fandom circles). Fighting the narrative is hard work with little reward, and ohhh, I like my rewards, precious. :> Though I'd never feel I'd 'have' to fight the narrative just to identify with the 'missing' main girl-- I mean, um, having that degree of an agenda is hard work too :>
    However, I can like 'bad' characters naturally merely based on the ambiguously-positive cues in the text, while still liking the good characters, simply 'cause I generally don't care who's good & who's bad :D Unless they annoy me & seem stupid. Then it's really on :/ But I totally never felt I was 'supposed' to dislike Draco, not the way I was 'supposed' to dislike the Dursleys, so yeah, it's obvious he's not entirely unsympathetic (so who cares). Seriously. He's always been just so cute!! *___* Man, who wants to be an intellectual -.-

EDIT - I just found fairestcat's year-old post explaining Watsonian vs. Doylist approaches to a given canon (one justifying various events from the author-pov so they'd make sense & one from a character's), and maaaan, that explains a LOT about fandom conflicts :D Needless to say, I'm definitely a faithful Watsonian :> I tend to consider Doylist-style explanations cute and enlightening (ie, author intent & attendant issues are interesting), but ultimately it pulls me out of the flow of a show/story so I tend to compartmentalize it, I guess. Like, if the only way to explain something is to point to the writers' "smoking crack" or having whatever agenda, then I'm just plain disappointed in the show & don't bother with further analysis voluntarily. I guess I'd say it's useful to add some Doylist flavor but not satisfying emotionally to me as a fan ^^;;;; And in some ways, I do think there might be a rational vs. intuitive/emotional-style analysis divide between the two approaches....

Comments

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Watsonian vs. Doylist approaches

Oooooh. That's illuminating, although I guess it's another ramification of the Authorial Intent vs Reader Response showdown (aaargh?). It explains a bit better why I get so frustrated at explanations like "it happened because it's a plot hole" or "X acted like this because the author needed Y to find their panties", and I always feel like saying "IRRELEVANT!" when it pops out in discussions. To me, theoretically, there's no conflict between "why the author made this choice" and "why the character made this choice" because they are two choices that happen in different universes even though obviously the character is moved by the author. However, the author's choices explain the *author*. The only way you explain a character is their actions, aka the text. And the reason my wording is perhaps strong is that it's one of those ideas I assumed as universally true until I came in contact with people who would argue otherwise. I actually tried to word it differently and was simply at a loss ;D

I'm glad you linked this. Thinking about it, it seems like I am Watsonian first, and it's my being Watsonian that makes me a Reader Response fan. Characters come first -- and you can't trust Intent to divine them because Intent is a generic potential, and only becomes a fixed quantity when it's translated into the Text.

It's a complicate issue in fandom because Motives are Suspicious, aka some will say you're ignoring Authorial Intent because you don't like it. That is also frustrating for me because I honest to God have no ulterior motives. It's just not my instinct to ask myself what an author. Even when I was wee, if I was unclear about something I read I didn't go "I wonder what the Author meant" but "I'll read it again" because the person behind the story didn't matter. And whenever I reach conclusions that are in contrast with a stated intent it's not out of an act of conscious subversion, but simply because that's what I thought was happening.

Though I gotta admit I'm not such a purist, I have political reasons to support the Reader Response, ahah. I'm a fan of open canons, I feel the reader should have more power in the relationship, and I only support ownership of a text for financial (& moral) reasons. I wonder how many of those positions can be explained in terms of "what's best for Art" by using Watsonian logic. I was reading a discussion about fanfic recently and the pro arguments focused a lot on issues of ownership (and lack thereof), and when people disagreed pro-fanfic people would use the concept of interpretation in a way that sounds close to what (I think) Watsonian people say. ("An author can't be trusted with control of the text, their interpretation is only good as any other.")

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Forgot this!

Like, if the only way to explain something is to point to the writers' "smoking crack" or having whatever agenda, then I'm just plain disappointed in the show & don't bother with further analysis voluntarily.

Actually for me this is an issue that's independent from my fannish status -- ie, I can love or hate something, but analyzing it and making things work (especially if at a first glance they make no sense) always gives me a huge pleasure. It's not causal with my enjoyment of the show, more like an enjoyment that runs parallel.

So (to make that paragraph about Suspicious Motives meaningful) if someone says "but the author says it's not true" or even the more guilt-trippy "but how can you call yourself a fan if you don't care" I always feel weirded out, because they're just separate issues. I don't need to like (be a fan) something to comment on it -- or even to spend time on it, because my mind just goes there automatically if engaged, and "be seen by me" pretty much = "engaging me". I do agree that it explains a lot of conflict in fandom, because I can see why an attitude like mine may look Suspicious to someone who wouldn't be into a show/book/etc if they didn't trust the authors. On my end, I've become disenchanted with word "fan" because it implies a level of devotion I don't naturally feel. This may be why a lot of the Doylist's efforts seem (to me) focused on making the author appear coherent, not the story per se.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think the debate-being-independent is apparently a J issue, btw :D For me there is no separation between liking to think at all and liking to think because I like it (ie, I'm hugely motivated by preference in general). While I like 'making things work', I don't like doing things I really like if I don't like the circumstances. I'm lazy and flippant that way :> In other words, it's a personality-based preference which leads to me just being rather picky in general :D (...it also hounds me at school, as you can imagine.....)

However, it doesn't go so far for me as to not be into a show/etc if I don't "trust" the author; sure, I'd be -more- into it if I did, but it's enough for me not to actively disrespect or be annoyed by the author. So I was saying if and when I see something that makes me lose respect, I can't really enjoy analyzing it. It's also why sometimes you think I'm a lot more hardcore pro-canon & JKR than I am, I guess. I'm not really a 'fan' of most things I just enjoy (certainly not of the HP books), but I still need to basically feel good about it.

I agree it's about making the author look coherent more than anything. In some circumstances (like the QaF US situation where knowing intent clarified the canon that was there because of a lot of fans' preconceptions), I guess it helps canon, but generally it doesn't work like that, yeah.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I think the debate-being-independent is apparently a J issue, btw :D For me there is no separation between liking to think at all and liking to think because I like it (ie, I'm hugely motivated by preference in general). While I like 'making things work', I don't like doing things I really like if I don't like the circumstances. I'm lazy and flippant that way :> In other words, it's a personality-based preference which leads to me just being rather picky in general :D (...it also hounds me at school, as you can imagine.....)

Heh, yeah. I think the J acts differently whether you're emotionally involved or not, meaning we can get sarcastic, paranoid and pissy when we're involved, but we don't have to be. Even when you're detached, you're driven to offer judgements, which is why the accusations of bitterness when the criticism is particularly harsh don't work for me. I don't have to be angry to be critical! I think people jump to the conclusion that you're bitter (and angry) because they're assuming a fan is emotionally involved all the time, or that if a person is devoting their time and efforts to tear apart something they are emotionally involved anyway. Poor misunderstood INFJs :( Nobody gets our fetish for pointing out that everything sucks.

Being a fan -- I wonder what that even means at this point. The way fandom evolved, you can enjoy being in it and engaging other fans without feeling particularly good about the canon. I feel various degrees of say, admiration and affection towards certain canons (and different degrees of the same towards their authors), but I don't know how else to define myself for being a (satisfied or dissatisfied) viewer who is in the fandom. I can tell you that I'm a fan of Naruto and BSG, but I don't think I'm a fan of HP, even though I enjoy parts of it.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

You know, maybe 'fan' should be someone who's into the material a lot-- more than a casual reader/viewer (since that's its straightforward meaning), and fandom should just get its head out of its ass as to allowing outside or academic-style critique/commentary (...and even heckling). What you're really more into is the academic approach with HP-- not that emotionally involved/happily involved at least, but interested in the ideas being raised or interested in the types of discussion. Most fans just aren't that into that sort of thing, even the ones that like meta & even most academician fans tend to at least enjoy their subjects, so. :> The tendency to think most about what you like isn't that rare even among analysts or TJs, even if 'like' != emotional involvement.

I guess I'd say I don't respect/admire HP but I enjoy it-- I have a childish glee at the fanart, enjoy the book covers (as you know, ehehe) and try not to analyze it to death tooooo much. Initially I hated it, and that just meant I hated the world for liking it & it being everywhere, so this is much more comfortable ^^;;

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking yesterday after reading on Enneagrams that certain types aren't cut for fandom. Like, a Six like me, we can enjoy ourselves reasonably for a month or so before we start zooming in on the flaws. Of course the other side to this is that a Six can become the staunchest supporter of any given canon once the canon has, er, proven itself, so who knows.

I also think the tendency of INFJs to always want to observe and dissect things (to positive or negative evaluations) well, doesn't necessarily make them incompatible with canon, but could annoy fans who are in it mostly for the love and squee -- oldest debate in fandom?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I am confused, because we always kind of butt heads on this 'cause I guess within the text, I'm always saying 'well, let's just go with what Harry's thinking/meaning to do' and you're always like 'but the fans! but JKR! but meta-role & intent/approval!' and so on :)) Though I guess that's talking about slightly different things, it's still about how one explains things in canon. Like, saying Harry's the author's darling and therefore you have to judge his actions/thoughts differently-- that's not Watsonian, though neither is it purely Doylist, but it -feels- Doylist to me, y'know? I'm totally with you when you say the only way to explain the character is the text, 'cause everything else explains the author :D Definitely :D

To me, the question of authorial intent is ever so slightly different; it's not trying to explain something through deux ex machina (from the outside), more nudge you in a certain direction that's supported by the text partly because that's what you're 'really' seeing. This gets tricky, obviously, but usually if I reread or think about it I can see how the text does support whatever the author's intent is, it's just that it's maybe badly communicated or something. Like the people who 'saw' H/Hr as 'intended' were reading different books than JKR was writing (like the way they kept comparing it to 'traditional' stories and romance templates), and I think that's important. Your Reader Response may be telling you this is a Grand Romance, for instance, but if the author is writing a thriller, then your interpretation is just wrong. But usually people aren't as stupid/deluded as the super-extreme H/Hr shippers....

To me it's not about ownership at all, though umm, obviously I'm not into that, and I don't even have any particular moral caveats. It's not 'wrong' to me personally to plagiarize, even, I just think it's pathetic & distasteful (lying and cheating in general just annoy me but they're too widespread and bred into human nature for me to get all huffy-- it would seem hypocritical). People who debate about fanfic just generally annoy me 'cause I feel there's no leg to stand on when people are saying 'don't write harmless stories set in my universe'; that's too much chutzpah for words. 'Don't -sell- stories' is one thing-- writing isn't something that's up to anyone to debate as far as I'm concerned, anymore than it's anyone's business whom I write love-letters to if I'm not selling them; of course, 'publishing' on the web or in zines is what makes things tricky, and it's not helped by people trying to make money through cons or fanart :/ Meh. Basically, I think the author 'controls' their text as far as copyright and while they write it; how they control -other people's creativity- is the question, given it's not infringing on anything. It's not so much that I'd want to stop them from having control so much as I don't see how they could, in fact, have any to start with :>

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I'm always saying 'well, let's just go with what Harry's thinking/meaning to do' and you're always like 'but the fans! but JKR! but meta-role & intent/approval!'

Well, theoretically when I say things like that I am no longer talking about the text but talking about the author and/or the fans. I think it would be weird if being more for Watsonian theories meant you can no longer comment on the author -- like, then you'd never be able to say someone sucks :D Oh noes :D

It's not that you're using the author to explain the text, it's just that you're choosing to explain the author. I don't think my dislike for glorified characters (ie the more the author wants me to like them the more I dislike them) is in contradiction with a Watsonian approach -- it's an emotional reaction, not an analysis. *Then*, when you analyse you can explain why these characters suck because they're made up almost entirely of informed attributes but the text itself doesn't offer real proof of their awesomosity. :D

As you say, authorial intent *is* interesting, but not because it explains the text. It's because it's interesting to see what personal reasons, ideology etc motivated the author, why s/he made certain narrative choices, etc. And I'm not really one who says the Reader Response theory validates *all* responses, because the reading has to be logical and coherent with the text. H/Hr is invalid not because is doesn't stand up to JKR's declared intent, but because it doesn't stand up to the text.

When I said moral ownership (and I may be confused on the lingo) I meant the right to claim the characters/situations/world as your creations. Anyway, I tend to think most anti-fanfic arguments are kinda pathetic, because all seem to stem from either megalomaniac attitudes of the author either a complex some readers have towards the author. They really blow up the power the author has beyond writing the words -- I'm with you, authors have no control over the perceptions and judgements of the readers, but many anti-fanfic people seem to think they should. Not to mention the hysterical rhetorics about hurt feelings -- that's just plain unhealthy.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well, in your case, it's not so much I'm surprised you comment on the author/fans as the fact is, for a long time you -mostly- commented on those subjects :> Probably 'cause they annoyed you most, but you see where I'm coming from, right :> Aaaand also in your case, I do notice 'explaining the author' bleeds into your attitudes towards the text :> :>

The funny thing is, I too hate 'glorified' (or fake, or over-the-top and unnatural in any way) characters (like the Dursleys issue that first turned me off PS when I initially saw it), and yeah, that's an emotional reaction, definitely. :D However, I suppose we're using the Watsonian approach in different ways-- I think in that post, it was implied it'd be used to 'patch holes' & explain apparent character/plot inconsistencies but from the within, something like a closed circle, or A<-->A (as compared to B-->A of the Doylists); what always set me back is that mostly you have a sort of A-->[B]-->A triangular approach where 'B' is the author/extratextual meta, and 'A' is the text-- so you're using the text to justify a critical/deconstructive claim rather than having the basic purpose of studying how it works & providing analytical bridges where things get murky. This is still valid, but my point that is that it seems -different-. I think neither Doylists nor Watsonians are doing what I'd seriously call criticism, y'know? It's a more intrinsically fannish tinkering/meta.

You're right that H/Hr is actually -invalid- because of the text; that's why I guess I agree with blacksatinrose that the best uses for extratextual meta and/or questions of authorial intent are to clarify things that the text always did support, but for some reason a reader needed 'help' to see it :>

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

Well, in your case, it's not so much I'm surprised you comment on the author/fans as the fact is, for a long time you -mostly- commented on those subjects :> Probably 'cause they annoyed you most, but you see where I'm coming from, right :> Aaaand also in your case, I do notice 'explaining the author' bleeds into your attitudes towards the text :> :>

Well, you said it. If I'm more annoyed at fans or an author's attitude, I'm likely to spend some time on it. And impressions of the author's motive (like pushing a character too much) colour my feelings towards the character. I mantain it's a separate issue. Like I said, there's discussion of the author's choices and there's discussion of the character's choices -- they're separate, and they both can happen at the same time without bleeding into each other. When you say my explaining the author bleeds into my attitude towards the text, do you mean emotional attitude or my analysis? I think it's okay as far as emotional reactions go (there's no right or wrong there) but it's bad if it influences your analysis or used as evidence for whatever theory about the character's actions (as opposed to the way it's written -- author's choice!) I admir I did this. But, well, I was wrong :P

so you're using the text to justify a critical/deconstructive claim rather than having the basic purpose of studying how it works & providing analytical bridges where things get murky. This is still valid, but my point that is that it seems -different-. I think neither Doylists nor Watsonians are doing what I'd seriously call criticism, y'know? It's a more intrinsically fannish tinkering/meta.

Isn't it possible to be Watsonian when analysing the text, and also enjoy a different type of discussion (about the author?) Of course you'd use the text when commenting on someone's writing -- that's what they write. It's just seeing the text from different angles.

You're right that H/Hr is actually -invalid- because of the text; that's why I guess I agree with blacksatinrose that the best uses for extratextual meta and/or questions of authorial intent are to clarify things that the text always did support, but for some reason a reader needed 'help' to see it :>

I think it's interesting, because I've been reading JRRM's statements about how he doesn't want his books to be read from the POV that there's villains and good guys, *but* a lot of readers still apply this mindset to his characters. Even though I agree with him and generally think his text supports him, I'd feel uncomfortable using it in an argument with someone promoting the idea that a certain character is a villain. But you're right that pointing out the author agrees gives a larger impact to an argument that the text isn't black and white. But is it just a rhetoric tool or is it also logical??

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I wonder what 'villain' means; is it a moral judgment (ie, 'this person's wrong') or a description of a literary role (ie, 'this character serves the traditional function of a villain in this story, and [by implication] it's a morality play')? One's a literary criticism (ie, correctable through referral to the author somewhat) and the other's just a subjective reaction to the text. You can -prove- that a character isn't a 'villain' in the archetypal sense, but you can't really prove they're not a bad guy except very circumstantially, y'know what I mean? I think, for instance that it's more 'correct' from a lit-crit pov to interpret Harry as 'the hero' and not as some bastard that got lucky-- but if you (while interpreting him as such) find issues with the portrayal on those terms, one has to consider it. There's a boundary between 'explaining' & 'explaining away', definitely.

And yes, I think it's bled a lot of times into your analysis especially when you're feeling personally offended and touchy. I mean, y'know, 'Watsonian' isn't the same thing as 'objective'-- and while you can and do try to be objective, I rarely see you look at Harry 'as is' without the Slytherin slant, I guess. It gets more complicated when the character exists in a world where there are radically different internal philosophies at play-- but I maintain to follow that type of meta to its logical conclusion, you'd have to judge each character entirely within their own philosophy & context. That is, just as I would accept Harry's pov, I would accept Draco's opposing philosophy-pov equally, just using it to explain rather than justify. I think this line between 'explain' & 'justify' works for you with Draco, but with Harry [or character-you-have-issues-with, whatever], you get defensive or more likely to see explaining as justifying sometimes & so there's resistance. ^^;