Entry tags:
Rambling Incoherence
It seems to me that fantastic texts, through the always-already present reification of the deus ex machina, allow for a type of meta move--although in a limited, constrained way (which arguably ultimately undermines the meta-ness of the move). Buffy can talk to the camera if there's a demon making her hallucinate she's on TV, but not otherwise. My understanding, through fannish osmosis, is that in Supernatural that's done through the device of God and the angels, which--not having watched the show--seems a reasonable in-universe device.
So when I wrote
wisdomeagle into my remix of her story, I used the device of the White Room--also a deliberate homage to
annakovsky writing herself into "Critique of Pure Reason" (is that long enough to deserve italicization?) the same way.
There is a generic difference between "Once More With Feeling" and "Seeing Red"--but so too is there a generic difference between "The Trouble with Tribbles" and (say) "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." (And there are some quite meta episodes in Voyager seasons 6 and 7, arguably beginning with "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," which is hilarious, but now I'm rambling.) I'm just not sure what the difference is; it seems a different kind of difference than between characters who talk to the camera and characters who don't. (And I'm so used to the way that
annakovsky undermined the meta-ness of Jim and Pam talking to the camera in her Office fic that I can't help but let that influence the way I view canon.)
I think I would be quite disturbed if a Devil Wears Prada fic I was reading suddenly got all meta-y. (Of course, RPF seems to me as the natural place for meta and wall-breaking, and presumably there's less in-text foundation for that than in any fictional canon, so.)
So when I wrote
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
There is a generic difference between "Once More With Feeling" and "Seeing Red"--but so too is there a generic difference between "The Trouble with Tribbles" and (say) "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." (And there are some quite meta episodes in Voyager seasons 6 and 7, arguably beginning with "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," which is hilarious, but now I'm rambling.) I'm just not sure what the difference is; it seems a different kind of difference than between characters who talk to the camera and characters who don't. (And I'm so used to the way that
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
I think I would be quite disturbed if a Devil Wears Prada fic I was reading suddenly got all meta-y. (Of course, RPF seems to me as the natural place for meta and wall-breaking, and presumably there's less in-text foundation for that than in any fictional canon, so.)
Don't read if you don't want SPN spoilers!
Most recently, it's done through the discovery that Chuck (a prophet of the Lord) has written the Gospel of Winchester over the past five years, or as we like to call it, a fantasy series for Tor books. LOL We meet Chuck's publisher and at least one Sam/Dean (yeah you read that right) fangirl who READS WINCEST OUT LOUD ON THE AIR.
I won't comment further because I don't think you're all that into (or at all into) SPN, but I can C&P my comments on how I think that meta functions if you're interested.
Re: Don't read if you don't want SPN spoilers!
I'm not interested in watching the show at all, just because I don't care about the two male protagonists (I'll read the genderswap of course), but I am interested in reading the meta and don't worry about being spoiled, so I'd be glad to read your thoughts.
Re: Don't read if you don't want SPN spoilers!
I'll link you to my post about the first episode:
http://lunabee34.livejournal.com/211477.html
and C&P my comments from the other pertinent ep, "Sympathy for the Devil":
Finally, I know some fans are gonna be all weirded out and/or scared by the fangirl scenes, but honestly, I continue to find them really amusing and also a really nice way of paying homage to the people who are the reason this show exists. When Carver Edlund needs help, who does he turn to? I think there's a playfulness about the way fandom is depicted on SPN but also a very real recognition that we are the ones who make SPN successful....
Heeee. The fangirl scene didn't bother me as much as I think it has other fans. I feel like it's really evidence that Kripke *gets* the way that many of us are fannish about the show. From the way we archive our fic to the kinds of tropes we use in them to the pithy names we give our lj comms to Sam girls and Dean girls to the way that some of us lack boundaries when we meet the object of our fannish glee, this scene covers it all. And I think he's using these fangirl scenes to blatantly acknowledge and address the subtextual incest that many fans see in the show. It's a safe way for him to play around with that theme without coming out and actually textualizing the incest. Notice that this time, nobody said slash was gross or weird. It just was. :) Now the girl herself was a little more loopy than I would have liked, but *shrugs*. And yeah, her refusal to leave Sam alone was creepy.