More Thesis Thoughts

[alixtii]

I read Kendall Walton's Mimesis As Make-Believe over Christmas break, but it was simply too large to connect my thoughts on fandom. Here's a more manageable secondary souce (Feeling in Imagination" by Richard Moran) I am now reading as I consider the nature of satire (why isn't Nineteen Eighty-Four triumphant?):

[T]o be afraid you must think you are in danger, and yet you seem to be stricken with fear. [. . . O]ne is experiencing what [Watson] calls quasi-fear, pretending really to be afraid, as part of a game of make-believe in which the movie or story is a prop.

The implication here is that while I could perhaps desire Eliza Dushku or Iyari Limon or Michelle Trachtenberg, I only "quasi-desire" or "fictionally desire" Faith or Kennedy or Dawn as a move in a game. I could desire Dawn Summers in the way that I could desire Iyari Limon (but don't, since I've never met her), but such desire would probably not be completely healthy. This strikes me as correct (although I have doubts about Watson's schema as a whole). Fictional desire isn't the same thing as normal desire. If Faith or Kennedy or Dawn were to walk in my door right now, what would my reaction be? "Sorry, I have girlfriend"? Possibly I'd say that to Kennedy, but I'd probably be turned off by Faith's anti-intellectualism. I'd be repulsed by my Watcher!Dawn's monstrous nature iff she were a real person. But even though I have no real desire at this moment for anyone but my girlfriend, I enjoy immensely playing the game as if I did. To put it in Watson's terms, I desire my fictional desiring.

This sort of desire, then, is constituted within a fictional "game" with a TV series as a prop. In light of this, my turn as a het male to femslash makes perfect sense. Since the desire I (pretend to) feel for a fictional character is constituted wholly in the context of a fictional game, it is never truly mine. It is just as easy to hand it off to another fictional character (who already resides in the world of the object of fictional desire). Since I identify most strongly with the female characters (for whatever reason) I pick a female as my avatar, and thus femslash.

It is also important to remember that I am not the only player in this fictional game (or games). Watson describes multiplayer fictional games extending from children's makebelieve to the more sophisticated sort of make believe that occurs when actors play characters in front of a present audience. But the type of community play that we've instituted in ou fanfiction circles is, I think, very special.After all, it is ultimately you guys who make the game so much fun to play.

That said, I'm not 100% certain about the usefulness of these conceptual categories. If someone is reading secretary_fic one-handed, what sense does it really make to call the desire which they are feeling merely "fictional"? Is that really only a "quasi-desire"? And what about when we use real people (for whatever value of "real") as props in our fictional games. I don't see anything wrong with that, but I can just see a man explaining to his wife, on being caught checking out a much younger woman: "I was only pretending to desire her!"*

*But this distinction strikes me as quite reasonable, however much the wife might not accept it. I can enjoy pretending to desire characters both real and fictional to whom I am not actually sexually attracted, after all, for whatever reason (too young, too old, wrong gender, unattractive, whatever). And my fictional desire may be of a nature (incest, chan, noncon, BDSM, whatever) not applicable to my actual desire. Or so I tell myself.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'd conceptualize it very differently. I'd say that it is more acceptable to desire Dawn or Kennedy than the actors who play them, because fictional characters don't have feelings, can't be afraid of being stalked, and don't have RL partners who also have feelings.

I'd also say that if the reaction to reading something is "That's interesting" you're not even pretending-to-desire. But if the reaction is arousal, then you *are* desiring. Which is not to say that you would ever, ever in a million years *perform* actions that are contrary to your beliefs or responsibilities to other people.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's somehow more or less wrong to desire Iyari than it is Kennedy: they're both attractive women. I would feel more comfortable acting on that desire in the case of the fictional character, because as you point out there's no chance of the fictional character being hurt, but since I don't oppose RPF I can't claim that's normative.

But I'm not sure I agree that there isn't such a thing as fictional desire. It's not that I have a desire to rape fictional characters but not real people (to pick the most ethically charged kink of which I could think), and it's not that I have beliefs or responsibilities standing in the way; it's that I don't feel these desires to begin with. Same with incest, chan, m/m sex, and a bunch of other kinks which I not only wouldn't perform, but have no desire to do so. The objects of my fictional desire may be those towards whom I have absolutely no real desire, perhaps because they are too young for me to find them sexually attractive, too old, or even the wrong gender!

However, I do often find enjoyment in placing myself in a . . .I don't know if "fictional game where I just pretend to desire" is the best way to picture it, but it's not normal desire; it's some type of quasi-desire.

Also, real desire always seeks its satisfaction, but quasi-desire is often the object of real desire, at least for me.

[wisdomeagle]

Will (try to) write more about this after dinner, but can you expand on your last sentence? I'm not sure what you mean by "real desire seeks its satisfaction."

[wisdomeagle]

So, thinking about this, and the desire thing keeps tripping me up because of the ways in which my *tries to find appropriate phrasing* desirous life is so wrapped up in fandom? And in various kinds of unattainability. And fantasy and reality. And the idea that arousal, being a physical reaction, isn't imaginary - if secretary_fic makes one hard or wet then there it is. Physical response.

But it occured to me then that another "fictional emotion" is grief. And tears, like arousal, seem an unmistakable physical (almost typed "fictional", what?) sign... and I have cried at both books and TV, most notably in our shared fictional spaces at Wesley's death. And yet that's not real grief, and is unlike the real grief I really have really experienced.

But some people do seem to grieve fictional characters (and fictional relationships) that deeply. And arguing from me seems fallicious, since clearly other people's experiences are equally valid.

But. Um. (I think I'm getting tripped up in reading your argument about the distinction between characters and their actors since both serve the same function in the fanspace we share. [At least... I think they do! I think I'm less likely than most fen to find actors qua actors attractive - I certainly watch my favorite actors' other work, but there are few whom I'd squee over as much as I do over my characters-of-choice? Only now I'm thinking of more and more actors I do find attractive cross-projects. I don't know!] It's all very confusing and I think celebrities exist in an especially nebulous place anyhow. But then maybe that's the point? That desire for fictional characters can never be "real" while desire for celebrities is more liminal - and desire for real people one really knows is [or can be] very real.)

'Nother thing... you keep talking about what would happen if they showed up on your doorstep - if they were real - and this strikes me as beside the point, since the very essence of their fictionality is that they never would show up on our doorstep demanding sex. I wonder about the distinctions among desire for someone who cannot reciprocate (dead people, fictional characters), and someone who will not reciprocate (er, for instance, one's teachers?) and and someone who simply does not reciprocate. And what does desire really have to do with reciprocity? You said above (confusing me) that real desire seeks its satisfaction, but for me that doesn't ring true. Desire's naught to do with what might or could happen but only with what does happen within me.

(Then again? There aren't any fictional characters I'd actually say I want or desire in this sense except possibly CJ Cregg.

OK, I'm done. Did I max the comment limit?

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

The thing about desire is that we always desire for something. If you were to say "I desired yesterday" you'd probably be asked what it was that you desired. If you answered "Nothing, I just desired" your intelocutors would no doubt think you odd (or odder). Desire has an object, and when we recieve the object the desire ends, or else we desire more.

But when we decide that desiring is in itself enjoyable, we find ourselves in a bind. We can't desire at will anymore than we can believe at will; either we desire something or not. Of course, just as we can place ourselves in circumstances to provoke belief (e.g. electroshock therapy) we can do so with desire. And I don't doubt that the result thereof is desire--perhaps this is the solution to the poaradox of secretary_fic--but insofar as it is real desire it must have an object, and we should be frustrated insofar as our desire is and must be frustrated, since we are incapable of ever recieving the fictional objects of our real desire.

More interesting to me is the possibility that, upon discovering that desire itself is enjoyable (or is only pretending to desire which is?) we engage in a fictional game within which we pretend to desire. Note also that this quasi-desire, unlike real desire, does bring with it the possibility of satisfaction, for we can pretend to find satisfaction within the rules of the fictional game.

I'm not wedded to Watson's conceptualizations, but I do think that it does some things which our usual conceptions of desire do not and which are necessary in theorizing fanfiction. I don't think our current conceptualizations are up to explaining how it is that we desire desire, and how the nature of our fictional desires (And yes, i recognize i'm begging the question here) can be so radically different than our actual desires. I think your point about grief fits in here,too--Watson's theory may not be (in fact, I don't think it is) up to the task either, but we need something other than what we have.

I think I'm getting tripped up in reading your argument about the distinction between characters and their actors since both serve the same function in the fanspace we share.

You think? I can't speak for community standards, but I think I personally would find that conflation . . . odd, if not disturbing. Juliet with an American accent, Summer walking normally: these are not objects of my (real) desire the way Drusilla and River are. Although we still have a distinction between Summer-in-character and River which we haven't quite made, which makes me think of "Going Hollywood" and the way Joss conflates Alexis-in-character and Wesley but not(?) Alexis and Wesley. (Which makes me think, as much as you pointed out in your DVD commentary that Joss/Amy would be disturbing because of the politics of heterosexuality, Joss/Summer would be all that much more disturbing--so much so that I'm tempted to write it. Only not this month, because I have a thesis to do.)

After all, desire--even sexual, physical desire--is always about more than the physical person, and River walking the way she does (drawing upon Summer's training as a dancer) is hot. But I don't think I need to convince you here; I think we pretty much agree and you were just reporting community standards.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

It's all very confusing and I think celebrities exist in an especially nebulous place anyhow. But then maybe that's the point? That desire for fictional characters can never be "real" while desire for celebrities is more liminal - and desire for real people one really knows is [or can be] very real.

I think that's exactly the point! Although I do think that real people one really knows can be the objects of fictional desire, i.e. one can enjoy playing the game of pretending to desire them without having any real desire. (Although I always feel guilty when I insert myself into such fictional games, so there might be a question of whether it's ethical to pretend to desire people you really know..) And then there are the random strangers whom we don't really know but don't come pre-objectified for our desiring convenience either. I'm really thinking of the the fifty- or sixty-year-old man who runs into a twenty-year-old young woman on the street. He enjoys creating a fictional game in his mind with her as the object of his desire without having any real desire to take her to bed.

'Nother thing... you keep talking about what would happen if they showed up on your doorstep - if they were real - and this strikes me as beside the point, since the very essence of their fictionality is that they never would show up on our doorstep demanding sex.

Of course, but I think that asking these sorts of counterfactual questions can help us organize our theorizing of desire just as counterfactual questions about what would have happened if I had acted differently can help me organize a theorizing of causality. Here, your analysis suggests to me that we engage in desire but we don't really want to be satisfied with the object of our desire. To me, that's against the nature of desire and thus paradoxical.

Also, I think that real desire commits us to thinking of the object of our desire as real or at least potentially real. I'm begging the question again, so let me illustrate using another type of desire than the sexualized desire with which we deal most often in fandom: hunger.

Let's say I have hunger for a fictional object, say, roast beast. If I'm experiencing real hunger, then that hunger contains within it the desire that the roast beast should be real, since I can't satisfy my hunger by eating fictional food. So I'm committed to wanting it to show up on my doorstep, as it were. I can however, extract pleasure from pretending to hunger for roast beast, and I can even satisfy that fictional desire within the context of a fictional game by imagining myself to consume roast beast.

You said above (confusing me) that real desire seeks its satisfaction, but for me that doesn't ring true. Desire's naught to do with what might or could happen but only with what does happen within me.

True, but presumably what is happening within you is your wanting something to happen (outside you). If not, what is it exactly that you are desiring? The postulation of fictional desire avoids this paradox by answering that you're not really desiring something--i.e. wanting something outside yourself. While all desire is an internal state, regular desire has an external desire while fictional desire has an intenal (i.e. fictional) object.

There aren't any fictional characters I'd actually say I want or desire in this sense except possibly CJ Cregg.

Me neither. Do you think maybe that's aign that I'm barking up the wrong tee completely in trying to connect the two types of desire (i.e. the sexual desire for a person/object and the type of desire we engage in in our fannices)? I find that completely plausible, but it still leaves open exactly what the nature of that other type of fannish desire is.

[wisdomeagle]

Desire has an object, and when we recieve the object the desire ends, or else we desire more.

Agreed.

insofar as it is real desire it must have an object, and we should be frustrated insofar as our desire is and must be frustrated, since we are incapable of ever recieving the fictional objects of our real desire.

O.K., interesting! This has given me a thought, which is that part of the pleasure of desiring is the frustration. At least for me ymmv. Or rather that... we say desire has two parts, say, arousal (not neccessarily physical) and frustration (because sated desire, as you said above, ceases to be desire.) And I think the pleasure of desire comes from both of these existing at once. (There are, of course, other kinds of pleasure that come from the fulfillment of desire).

discovering that desire itself is enjoyable (or is only pretending to desire which is?) we engage in a fictional game within which we pretend to desire. Note also that this quasi-desire, unlike real desire, does bring with it the possibility of satisfaction, for we can pretend to find satisfaction within the rules of the fictional game.

I don't know what to think about this! I'm not sure what the fannish ways of pretending to find satisfaction might be. Or rather, I can think of some (and in part 23 of my WiP, CJ Cregg asks her underaged girlfriend to marry her!) but they aren't really part of my fannish experience. I mean, I find satisfaction in fandom, obviously, and various kinds of pleasure, but they [and here I wandered away from the computer to eat mousse and forgot the end of this sentence. Sorry!)

I can't speak for community standards, but I think I personally would find that conflation . . . odd, if not disturbing.

Agreed. The first rule of fandom is The Actor != The Character, and that was drilled into my head as a new fan... and I've never been a celeb-worshipper anyhow. But... the latest phenomenon I have seen is D.Boreanaz worship in connection with his roles on Angel and Bones. And for many of the people whose reactions I see, it is neither Angel nor Booth but D.Boreanaz who is the object of desire. And I think in RPS-doms less crackful than mine-and-Karabair's Joss/Alexis dungeon playground (and containing more than two people), it's clearly the actors, not the characters, who are objects of all sorts of fantasy play, e.g., "I want to lick her up and down," the writing of fic, the ogling of breasts, the squealing over cute things said in "canon" (interviews, et al), and so forth. Although my observation of most of this behavior is related to male actors, perhaps it's easier for both of us to think of female actors as potential objects of desire. It's easier for me, anyhow. Hence the use of my hypothetical female actor in the above examples omg I'm shutting up now!

But! Anyhow! This is my point - actors become the subjects of fantasy play. And *especially* in RPS fandoms, there's a strong communal consensus that what they're writing is false, that the real actor isn't the subject of the fantasy play so much as hir public persona. I think... in that sense, for me, actors are just as fantastic as fictional creatures. It's no more likely that Judi Dench will show up on my doorstep than that Fred Burkle will.

But I don't think I need to convince you here; I think we pretty much agree and you were just reporting community standards.

Yup.

[in "Gone Hollywood"]Joss conflates Alexis-in-character and Wesley but not(?) Alexis and Wesley.

Cool! That's something I hadn't noticed, but I think you're right (*cough* insomuch as there is a right and wrong in textual interpretation). I'd have to reread, I think.

[wisdomeagle]

I do think that real people one really knows can be the objects of fictional desire, i.e. one can enjoy playing the game of pretending to desire them without having any real desire. (Although I always feel guilty when I insert myself into such fictional games, so there might be a question of whether it's ethical to pretend to desire people you really know..)

Hmmmm. Okay. I'm trying to figure out how to respond to that without resorting to TMI! Because I suspect that I spent most of my adolescence experiencing exactly this kind of fictional desire. I don't know, though, since I am still so deeply involved in my fantasy-game? Er!

Let's say I have hunger for a fictional object, say, roast beast. If I'm experiencing real hunger, then that hunger contains within it the desire that the roast beast should be real, since I can't satisfy my hunger by eating fictional food. So I'm committed to wanting it to show up on my doorstep, as it were. I can however, extract pleasure from pretending to hunger for roast beast, and I can even satisfy that fictional desire within the context of a fictional game by imagining myself to consume roast beast

Hmm. But... okay. Supposing we should read a story containing an excellent description of a meal (for me this is anorexic!Maggie in the California Diaries describing every meal she doesn't eat. She does it in such loving detail that it makes me completely starving). So, when I read about Maggie's tuna salad, I crave that tuna salad, because it sounds really desirable. I suppose craving is different from hunger in the sense that craving is less a physical response, but I think that's appropriate to our discussion of desire (where arousal and desire aren't neccessarily conflated). So... I guess there's a distinction between Maggie's tuna salad, which I can never have because it's not real, and the tuna salad I make for myself the next day, which satisfies my craving. But I'm just not sure where the analogy rests! I don't pretend to be Maggie when I eat my tuna salad, and I don't pretend it's her tuna salad; I'm still Ari and it's my tuna. But the craving *is* satisfied. I guess tuna salads (and roast beasts) are easier to replicate than people like River or Fred or CJ or Giles.

Oh! But I've thought of another example that makes some sense. Reading Redwall books always makes me hungry, too, but the foods described in those books aren't real foods, per se. On the one hand, it would seem I'd be forever craving something I can't get, but on the other, the cravings are less intense? Maybe!

OR to use another example, there are sometimes descriptions in books of delicious, juicy fried fish. Those always elicit a weird response in me, since I feel "mmm, yum," while at the same time realizing that in meatspace, I *hate* fish and always have. The idea of yummy fish is paradoxical, but there it is in text! (This idea is interesting. I'll have to pursue it more later.)

[wisdomeagle]

True, but presumably what is happening within you is your wanting something to happen (outside you). If not, what is it exactly that you are desiring? The postulation of fictional desire avoids this paradox by answering that you're not really desiring something--i.e. wanting something outside yourself. While all desire is an internal state, regular desire has an external desire while fictional desire has an intenal (i.e. fictional) object.

I see your point, I think, but yeah, I theorize desire as a lot less directional than you do. I mean... yes, desire is for someone or something. But the... the point of desire for me is not its satiation but the desire itself. I guess I think of the actual scenario around which my desire is focused as less important or significant as my desiring of it. Say... it's neither CJ nor McGonagall in and of themselves but the way that People Like CJ make me feel?

But apparently I failed at the lack of TMI...

it still leaves open exactly what the nature of that other type of fannish desire is.

Hmm! I wonder if I feel fannish desire or not. In some ways fandom is for me the natural culmination of a lifetime of storytelling about the people I desire or love, while right at this moment I feel curiously detached from my fannish loves. (This might just be my mood. Ask me again in six months and I suspect I'll have changed my tune! Heck, ask me when I've stopped engaging in HPdom and started engaging in the Buffyverse again!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

This has given me a thought, which is that part of the pleasure of desiring is the frustration.

This seems to be an empirical truth, at least within fannish-type experiences. I just don't know how to account for this truth. Separating desire into arousal and frustration helps us to see the problem more clearly (why do we desire the frustration of our desire?)but doesn't quite give us a solution. I'm not sure Watson does either,of course, but he just might, or at least be a step in that direction. (And of course, the most important thing was to start this discussion in my LJ, and that spawned the parallel discussion in Elizabeth's, so yay me!)


I don't know what to think about this! I'm not sure what the fannish ways of pretending to find satisfaction might be. Or rather, I can think of some (and in part 23 of my WiP, CJ Cregg asks her underaged girlfriend to marry her!) but they aren't really part of my fannish experience.

Well, I'm certainly not above that sort of self-insertion, nor do I think there's anything wrong with it when handled well. And I'm not sure that the drives which motivate your fiction or necessary that different (insofar as I'm able to make these statements, as I think I've gone beyond the text and started psychoanalyzing you here), just more sophisticated and subtle. (Indeed, I think these dynamics are or at least should be present in all literature.)

and here I wandered away from the computer to eat mousse and forgot the end of this sentence. Sorry!)

I think mousse is a perfectly reasonable excuse. Yum.

As for the RPF, I see this as evidence of how real people can be used as objects (and thus fictionalized in the process) of a fictional game, which would be different than their being objects of real desire. God knows I don't want 15-year-old Anna Popplewell appearing on my doorstep, but it pleases me to think of her in an affair with William Mopsely, because she reminds me of the type of girl I desired when I was younger and he's a suitable stand-in for the sort of guy I was when I was younger. (And I will write my Dawn Summers/William Mosely/Anna Popplewell triangle sooner or later, but not sooner. [Because there's no fandom which isn't made better by the introduction of vampires.]) So the way in which celebreties are the object of fantasy play strikes me as evidence towards the instrumental usefulness of Watson's theoretical system.

Although my observation of most of this behavior is related to male actors, perhaps it's easier for both of us to think of female actors as potential objects of desire. It's easier for me, anyhow.

Do you mean that conflation of actor and character is easier for us because we desire females? Because I can see the reasoning there: we may be led to desire a male character (for some nonsexual value of "desire" for me) because of the way the show constructs him, but when all that drops out and there's nothing left but the physical than we lose interest. Whereas with female actors there's still something to keep up our interest: Eliza isn't as hot as Faith, nor is Amy as sexy as Fred, but they're still good-looking women. (And again with Summer and Juliet, who are so radically different than the characters thet play.)

But that sort of purely physical desire just isn't all that strong, at least for me. But you're right in that it does seem that it is much stronger for some fans, e.g. the male celebrity worshippers, and that this sort of ("real"?) desire is more likely to conflate actor and character than the fannish ("fictional"?) desire with which you and I are more comfortable.

And I'm wondering how this physical/other desire dichotomy intersects with Watson's real/fictional desire dualism, because they are striking me as two completely different thing(and so could we construct a PR, PF, OR, OF matrix?).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

[Just a bit too long for the comment limits.]

As for conflation, the fictional game of watching Firefly requires the conflation of River and Summer-in-character. We're never watching River, because River doesn't exist (at least not in the actual world); we're watching Summer play River. But supposedly we know where the game begins and ends, and trying to bed Summer-in-character would not be an apporopriate way of playing the game. When Joss demonstrates a fixation on Alexis-in-character, we think it weird and disturbing (albeit beautiful and exciting at the same time).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I don't know, though, since I am still so deeply involved in my fantasy-game.

This statement has my head swimming, because it seems to me that people can believe, through a specific type of doublethink, that they are in a fantasy-game on one level and not on another level. (Indeed, this is to me the heart of mysticism--if you betray the metaphor, you're not saying anything profound; if you reify the metaphor, then you've fallen into fundamentalism). In a world awash in social fictions, what are truly fantasy games, and is there a concept of reality left over with which to contast it?

Which brings up the fact that I hate Watson's phrase "fictionally true" because it's the sort of thing that only philosophers would ever say. We don't say that "Prof. Moriarty was Holmes' archnemesis" is "fictionally true"; we'd say it was true, although if pressed we might add something like "in the world of the Holmes stories." People are in general quite good at navigating these levels of truth--no one supposes that transubstantiated wine is any less able to intoxicate--and to recognize that the truth or falsity of our statements is relative to certain context. To specify "fictional truth" seems to assume some more ronbust, Platonic notion of truth.

I don't pretend to be Maggie when I eat my tuna salad, and I don't pretend it's her tuna salad; I'm still Ari and it's my tuna. But the craving *is* satisfied.

Now first of all, you could pretend to be Maggie eating Maggie's tuna salad, and normal people would find this practice odd. I don't think most fen would see it as all that weird, though. And that point, you'd be doing too things: you'd be using the tuna salad to satisfy your real hunger while also using it as a prop to satisfy your fictional desire for the fictional tuna salad.

On the one hand, it would seem I'd be forever craving something I can't get, but on the other, the cravings are less intense? Maybe!

Well, that seems to assume that the only way for a desire to go away is to satisfy it, and that's just not the case. I can have a really intense craving for say, peppermints, and tear apart my apartment looking for mints, but not find them for a week. When I do find them, chances are my craving will be over despite the lack of satisfaction.

Those always elicit a weird response in me, since I feel "mmm, yum," while at the same time realizing that in meatspace, I *hate* fish and always have. The idea of yummy fish is paradoxical, but there it is in text!

Yes, exactly. I know this feeling.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, it'sless that I think desire is directional than that our vocabulary of desire constructs it as something directional, and I've needed to overstate that oint to make it clear that there is a problem for which we need new conceptualizations to address. I think our empirical experience of desire does make us question whether or at least how it is directional.

But the... the point of desire for me is not its satiation but the desire itself. I guess I think of the actual scenario around which my desire is focused as less important or significant as my desiring of it.

Certainly. We desire desire. But this is so counterintuitive and weird!

Hmm! I wonder if I feel fannish desire or not. In some ways fandom is for me the natural culmination of a lifetime of storytelling about the people I desire or love, while right at this moment I feel curiously detached from my fannish loves. (This might just be my mood. Ask me again in six months and I suspect I'll have changed my tune! Heck, ask me when I've stopped engaging in HPdom and started engaging in the Buffyverse again!

Wel, you certainly help to bring out the fannish love in others and help us to engage in fannish desire (whatever it is) so I do hope you feel the love again. (Then again, I'm pulling back to due to the thesis. But that's sort of balanced out because I have a shiny new fandom love: Veronica Mars.)

[somercet.livejournal.com]

Let's say I have hunger for a fictional object, say, roast beast. If I'm experiencing real hunger, then that hunger contains within it the desire that the roast beast should be real, since I can't satisfy my hunger by eating fictional food. So I'm committed to wanting it to show up on my doorstep, as it were. I can however, extract pleasure from pretending to hunger for roast beast, and I can even satisfy that fictional desire within the context of a fictional game by imagining myself to consume roast beast.

Dude, I think you're on drugs. ;-) The relationship of desire to object is inherently many-to-many, with one-to-one couplings (so to speak) comparatively very, very rare. Many women are desireable. (Many guys, too, in my case.) However, the thought that most, or even many of those desires could ever be fulfilled is strictly fantasy, and could only be fulfilled by sacrificing almost all of my non-sexual, non-life sustaining desires. Since my desires for many men and women are already at the far end of Thought, as opposed to near me (over here in Actuality), they are already 'fictional'. Actual, fictional characters are just a form of our Actualized horizon.

As for the roast beast, the longer you went, the more you would desire anything to satisfy the hunger. Know your own mind, Grasshopper. ;-)

[wisdomeagle]

Well, I'm certainly not above that sort of self-insertion, nor do I think there's anything wrong with it when handled well. And I'm not sure that the drives which motivate your fiction or necessary that different (insofar as I'm able to make these statements, as I think I've gone beyond the text and started psychoanalyzing you here), just more sophisticated and subtle. (Indeed, I think these dynamics are or at least should be present in all literature.)

Good point! And I certainly wasn't trying to imply that that kind of thing is bad, because I have in the past written exactly "that kind of thing," only not about fictional people and not for public consumption. But the complex ways in which my writing satisfies me. Hm. This reminds me of the discussion we had previously in which you said something along the lines of you'd desire Susan iff you were Peter, and how I conceptualize my object-of-desire characters as so completely Other in some ways -- again using CJ as the best example, when she got kissed onscreen for the first time I squealed and hoped CJ could kiss more people I could pretend were me. But for me CJ is the exception and there are many more characters I love and write who don't produce that same kind of reaction in me. So I don't know.

(I'm really glad you started this discussion. It's making me think, yay.)

Whereas with female actors there's still something to keep up our interest: Eliza isn't as hot as Faith, nor is Amy as sexy as Fred, but they're still good-looking women. (And again with Summer and Juliet, who are so radically different than the characters thet play.)

Yup, exactly.

But that sort of purely physical desire just isn't all that strong, at least for me. But you're right in that it does seem that it is much stronger for some fans, e.g. the male celebrity worshippers, and that this sort of ("real"?) desire is more likely to conflate actor and character than the fannish ("fictional"?) desire with which you and I are more comfortable.

And again, I think you've got it!

There have been people person to whom I've been immediately attracted without reference to her personality or anything but her attractiveness, but even with this person it's a lot to do with who she is to me; I don't ever see people-in-the-street who are attractive. Pretty, yes, and aesthetically yay, but not physical-desire inducing.

[wisdomeagle]

The use of Holmes as an example is great (although confusing since I'm pretty sure the Watson you keep referring to is not Holmes's Watson!) since it's just reminded me of The Game as a way of talking about, well, The Game of pretending that the Canon contains John Watson's works, published by his literary agent, A.C. Doyle. And the Game is the Great Game, the great fictional Game that is fandom.

And how we fit into the game, the point at which the world we know and the world we imagine intersect, is where the question about desiring or wanting or loving or admiring fictional characters comes into play.

Maybe.

(I think the question of shipping should be raised at some point, though it's not directly related to what we're talking about here; my emotional satisfaction with the belief that Holmes and Watson were in love with each other has nothing very little some unknown quantity to do with my attraction to one or both of them.)

[wisdomeagle]

Certainly. We desire desire. But this is so counterintuitive and weird!

Meta-emotions! Desiring desire, enjoying desire... but also enjoying sadness, or anger. (We can also have negative reactions to negative emotions, of course, but I think the positive emotions are more interesting to contemplate.) We can do these things! There is some "higher" level process that can examine and evaluate emotions and then can itself feel a certain way about them.

(I think an analogy can be drawn to physical desire... in some ways arousal is just desire-for-orgasm, but that doesn't mean arousal itself isn't pleasurable.

Yay, VMars!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Dude, I think you're on drugs.

After a week of doing nothing but working on my theis, I sort of wish I were.

Certainly there's generalized hunger (desire-for-food), just as there is generalized arousal (desire-for-orgasm, as wisdomeagle points out above). We have all our base desires, but it's the one-to-one desires which structure our lives and give them meaning, so I have to disagree with you that they are rare. Certainly, an undifferentiated desire-for-sex doesn't explain our fannish experience: why get so caught up with these particular characters?

However, the thought that most, or even many of those desires could ever be fulfilled is strictly fantasy,

The point isn't if we can fulfill our desire, but if we want to.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I suppose we can have negative reactions to positive emotions as well. Although there isn't really a clear line between "positive" and "negative" emotions, of course, as I remember Deanna Troi once saying.

Hmm, yes about desire for orgasm. But that desire is real--we can enjoy the act of desiring, but we (I have no idea who "we" are here) also want the orgasm. But some of these other cases don't seem to be on that pattern.

And yes, yay VMars indeed!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, analytic philosophers like to use Holmes as an example when discussing fictionality and whether fictional characters exist and whether names can refer to fictional characters and the whole theorizing of fiction. I'm not sure why that is--perhaps they assume Holmes is an instantly identifiable figure to more or less everybody--but Rorty was talking about the ways in which "Holmes lived at 221b Baker Street" and "Holmes was married" are false but in different ways in my thesis researh.

But yes "The Game" is an excellent example of fictional game, and especially one of the type I was alluding to earlier, where people go out of their way to not leave the fictional game, to not betray their metaphor. (Does this mean that "The Game" is a type of religion? I'm actually finding the argument quite plausible at the moment!) (Weren't you working on comparing religious and fannish practices at one point, looking at textual interpretation and the urge to fundamentalism?)

And how we fit into the game, the point at which the world we know and the world we imagine intersect, is where the question about desiring or wanting or loving or admiring fictional characters comes into play.

Ooh, that's so beautifully put! But yes, it is at precisely that interstice that all the interesting things begin to happen.

I think the question of shipping should be raised at some point, though it's not directly related to what we're talking about here; my emotional satisfaction with the belief that Holmes and Watson were in love with each other has nothing very little some unknown quantity to do with my attraction to one or both of them.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, although I agree that shipping is an important facet to be understood here. My emotional satisfaction with the belief that Peter and Susan are sexually attracted to each other has everything to do with my attraction to one or both of them, insofar as thar attraction can even be called mine. (Well, it occurs to me that its unclear which way the causation runs. I'm claiming that I'm attracted to them as a result of investment in the 'ship. I'm not sure if you're saying that H/W has an unkown quantity's effect on your interest in Holmes, or that your interest in Holmes has an unknown effect on your investment in H/W.)

So too, I suppose, with those few characters I see through the het male lens (e.g. Fred or Kaylee). With most character's I have a Writer's Eye View, so to speak: I can see them within and without and whatnot (e.g. Dawn or River, whom I can write desiring or being desired just as easy as the other). Whereas those seen through the het male lens almost need the other half of their ship (Simon or Mal for Kaylee, Wesley for Fred).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you started this discussion. It's making me think, yay.

Thank you. That was my hope. (Otherwise I'm just spamming people's flists making them read about my schoolwork.)

And again, I think you've got it!

Yay!

There have been people person to whom I've been immediately attracted without reference to her personality or anything but her attractiveness, but even with this person it's a lot to do with who she is to me; I don't ever see people-in-the-street who are attractive. Pretty, yes, and aesthetically yay, but not physical-desire inducing.

Hmm. To go TMI: I think I have problems theorizing physical desire, since I'm a virgin and I just don't know how to represent itself to myself. So when I see a sexually attractive person, I don't think "I want to have sex with that person"; I think something more like "Guh." But if I had the necessary experience to articulate the feeling (and hmm, yes, biological drives are pre-linguistic, but what does it mean to not be able to represent ones own drives to oneself in ones own conceptual framework?), I do think I would say yes, my reactions to random women sometimes goes beyond thinking they are pretty or aesthetically pleasing. (Cue Joss' line about looking at linoleum.) (Often, I'm able to extrapolate from my own experience to conceptualize my desire in terms that do make sense within my set of categories, and that's probably more about the inside of my mind than you ever wanted to know.)

I agree with you that no look at a person's, erm, aesthetics is ever innocent though. Even if one knows nothing about someone's personality, then that information influences the way that one sees her. (For example, it might make her easier to objectify.)

[frogfarm]

What I desire (for example) is not the actresses who portray Faith and Willow, or even the characters, though of course I do find them attractive. What I desire is Faith and Willow as a couple -- apparently so much so that I'm trying to fulfill it. Even if I weren't in a long-term relationship, the characters feel like they belong with each other, not me.

Actually, there's only two characters on both Buffy and Angel that I've ever thought about "having a relationship" with, and both are the last people I would have expected. One is Harmony, and I recognize this as the horrible desire to make someone a better person (see C. S. Lewis); the other is Dana, which still weirds me more than a little, since I am *definitely* not Spike when it comes to wanting to protect and fix the broken ones.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

And so it is with most of us, I think. But I think our desire to see our OTPs happen is connected with other kinds of desire in more or less complex ways. For most people, for example, at least one member of their OTP is someone they themselves find attractive for one reason or another, and it's not clear why or how we become so invested in our OTPs. But with some special types of pairings, like chan or incest, these relationships can get complicated even more. (As I said to wisdomeagle, I recognize that I would desire Susan Pevensie if and only if I were Peter Pevensie, and so his character ends up inhabiting a weird liminal stage between me and the canon character. In general, I think we desire characters through the eyes of other characters.)

And so, as executrix recognized, it comes back to where we as readers/writers exist within the fics, because we do seem to be involved in much more of an intimate way than as merely matchmaker. (For one thing, we "watch" them have sex!)