Going throught the RSS Feed: Dinosaur Metaphysics and Serial Storytelling

[alixtii]

At least I'm not the only one struggling with these philosophical questions.

Seriously, I seem to not be able to decide whether I want to be a pragmatist or not. Foundationalism has always struck me as anti-feminist, but relativism can't support feminism either. Ideally pragmatism provides a way out of the dilemma, with feminism being more or less the equivalent of "weaponized kissing," but is it really any better than relativism at making normative claims? *is torn*

ETA: Maia at Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty has posted about serial storytelling, lamenting that one can't find it much outside television any more and giving it the credit for the popularity of the Harry Potter series. She says a lot of intelligent things, and of course pretty much everything she says is twice as applicable to fanfiction. For example:

at the end of the Prom on Buffy - where Jonathon gives her the umbrella, and Angel comes and dances with her. Those moments work because you know what she's been through the last three years - you know what this means, you know who Jonathon is (although not what he will be - but telvision shows turning to custard is not the current topic).

Or this:

The other thing I love about serial storytelling is that it is a very social art-form from the viewing end. Part of the whole episodic nature means that you share it with other people - you talk about it with other people, because you're waiting for what is going to happen next.

Of course the serial nature of fanfiction is one of its characteristics that gets at least as much criticism as love: who hasn't heard someone ranting against WIPs, or wondering why someone would post an already-completed story in installments (as I did with, say, Divine Interventions).

ETA2: "Catholicism: Maybe Think About It?"

ETA3: I really love it when my favorite academic blog (languagelog) cites Television Without Pity.

ETA4: Speaking of languagelog, Arnold Zwicky has a post entitled "Goram Motherfrakking!" on fake and made-up curses in science fiction, with a focus on Battlestar Galactica and Firefly.

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

but i'm not sure whether her first example owes as much to episodic storytelling as it does to excessive worldbuilding, i.e., we have huge universes in which our characters live (drawn from the source text and the fantext) and that's why there's more of an emotional charge...and that happens regardless of WiPs...

(Though I'd argue that the entirety of the fantext is a WiP with every new story adding yet another layer of meaning and characterization and...)

Nothing to say on the second quote except that I've realized lately i not only hate WiPs in fic but also in other mediums...I'm waiting to start temeraire until I have the 3rd book next week; I still have 6 or 7 eps of VM waiting to be watched, b/c I do the waiting till I have several and then do it all in one sittt6ing kind of thing...And I lovelovelove shows on DVD...

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, I think she's arguing that only in a serial medium is that level of "excessive worldbuilding" possible. And that's why I said her arguments apply to fanfiction more so and better than they do television, because of the way that the fantext (although I remain skeptical on the subject, because my favorite fanfics relate primarily to the source text with few or superficial relations to other fantexts) can function as a WiP.

As for your last paragraph, well, we've had this conversation. For me, it's a question of trusting the author enough to surrender a little control to them, allowing them to design the experience so as to not provide what one wants so much as what one needs, aesthetically speaking. And as my brother has pointed out to me, there's something that's not just quite right when one watches a show that was originally designed for commercials with those commercials taken out (or put back in in different places, like watching American TV on a British commercial channel); it's not quite the same experience, as one loses the experience of being forced to mull over the last act for a couple minutes....

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i agree with your brother but love my control :D

re fantext: the point is not that the story needs to reference other stories that came before (though i'd argue that many of them do, even if they pretend not to, b/c unless the author hasn't read any stories, (s)he's gonna respond to it one way or another, even if only by avoiding fanon cliches!!!) but that you as reader have these stories in your memory, that you have these multitudes of buffys or whatever in your mind...

so i'd argue that unless you have a virginal writer and a virginal reader, you'll have fantext interaction...does that make sense???

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

i agree with your brother but love my control :D

As do I. My stance on seriality is intellectual; in the heat of the moment, I can get as frustrated with the WiP as anyone else, even if I know in my head that it is good for me, like awfull-tasting medecine.

so i'd argue that unless you have a virginal writer and a virginal reader, you'll have fantext interaction...does that make sense???

Well, I think part of what is going on is that the more virginal a writer is able to act, the more their story is likely to satisfy the requirements of mainstream aesthetics?

And what you say makes sense and is of course true, but I guess I'm unconvinced of its significance. Does the fantext play a role in fanfiction that is somehow different than the equivalent (meta)texts in other social endeavors?

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Does the fantext play a role in fanfiction that is somehow different than the equivalent (meta)texts in other social endeavors?

Yes, I'd argue it does. Fanfic is as dependent on that cultural context as the next original fic, but only fanfic has a ready made authorship familiar with what amounts to loads of shared knowledge and texts...now, I'm assuming community membership (the virgin thing again :-), but there usually are a number of stories community members share (even if they haven't read a given story, they'll have seen discussion), there's discussions that most readers and writers share and are aware of...so, yes, i believe it is another level here that may be similar to that of other tightly knit groups (hmmm..thinking bloomsbury circle or something) but that is differnt in degree if not in kind from reading and writing within the public at large (i.e., even tiue-in novels give info dump and character descriptions...even there where you'd expect source text awareness that can't be presumed!!!!)

for a more detailed explanation, see my recent conference presentation, where i spend a very long time making this argument :D

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes, you have made this argument persuasively before. And now I'm wondering about other reading/writing groups like the ones you mentioned. But even so...you don't have to be writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Wide Sargasso Sea or March to have one's literature operating on the assumption that the reader has various levels of knowledge over and above knowing English and posessing some basic cultural literacy. Where would Eliot or Pound fit in? (Although that brings us back to the question of whether and how something can/should be read outside of its context, as Eliot and Pound wrote more or less knowing that few if any of their readers would have the necessary context to understand the work.)

I suppose I'm left wondering, firstly, whether we are dealing with a difference in kind or only of degree, and secondly whether there are enough similarly-constructed communities (religious novels?) to challenge assumptions about fandom?

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

but how much of wide sargasso sea plays with the text and how much with the reception? i don't think too much of the latter (flaubert's parrot might be a counterexample that employs the latter but there you don't have the fanfic element any more...)

and yes, i've gotten to the point where i think degree and see fanfic communities as an exemplary way to address issues of intertextuality that are really not addressed this much in lit theory...

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, my point was supposed to be that normal literary texts, and not just "pseudo-fanfiction" like WSS, require a text over and above "mere cultural literacy" (which strikes me as a problematic baseline) or linguistic fluency. (So Flaubert's Parrot might be actually type of example I was looking for, even though I'm not familiar with it?)

As for how much a poet like Eliot or Pound is playing with the reception of the texts to which they allude (ones that generally do not fall under mere cultural literacy or linguistic fluency) in addition to those texts themselves? I honestly do not know, and I think a powerful argument can be made either way, but I'm tempted to say "quite a bit." As for authors who go to not quite so esoteric levels, I can easily imagine a modern literary text which assumes the reader's familiarity not only with the works of Shakespeare but also with the common misquotings of those plays, which would fall under reception, no? Or would that constitute a more general cultural literacy, as Shakespeare falls into the established canon of dead white males? (And how do we draw this line?)

One always has to shape one's language, and thus the way one is being intertextual, based on one's shared understanding. If I reference "mad Mrs. Rochester in the attic" I'm alluding to not only Jane Eyre (which I've never read) but also to (and in most cases, primarily to) an entire discourse about epistemology and gender normativity which has since emerged in the feminist criticism. At college I pretty quickly learned that if I made such a comment to a professor in a relevant discipline, I probably would be understood; to a fellow student, probably not. And I don't think this is necessary confined only to the discourse of secondary-source academic nonfictional speech.

A science fiction story doesn't have to define ansible (although a novel might anyway), and other genres (I still can't get religious novels out of my head, although I haven't actually read any from which to provide examples) draw on generic conventions in the same way, so I'm not sure how great the difference in degree truly is, although any excuse to study intertextuality strikes me as a good one.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot...one of the few British examples of experimental metafiction...quite amusing in a Barthelme/Barthes kind of way...

As for the rest...I really don't know. you haven't actually given me an example of a text yet, have you? yes, Eliot&Pound expect a lot, but do they really require you to know the reception history of the texts they reference???? moreover, the wasteland's excessive footnoting suggests that they're aware that their readers don't share a cultural common literacy in the way we can really assume...again, degree, but it makes a difference!!!

you may refer to mad Mrs. Rochester, but does WSS??? (besides the fact that it was written before Gilbert&gubar and thus actually the influence is the other way around...)

i could see carter's bloody chamber maybe commebting oin the fairytales and their variations/receptions but again, i'm not claiming kind, just degree...

and show me the novcel that wouldn't define ansible!!! (as i said, i'm reading a tie in, and they give phydical descriptions!!!)...i'm not sure what you refer to with religious novels...examples would be great.

seriously, i'd not love to be disprovemn, but would love to know if i'm barking up the wrong tree...so if you can find an example, bring it on...i just haven't found one yet (and not for lack of looking!!!)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Looking at my own "academic output" (meaning papers written as a student), concerns of intertextuality have put on the back burner as I focused on individual texts. Maybe as (and when and if) I return to thinking of Shaw and Orwell as members of a movement I'll be able to respond to your empirical challenge.

In the meantime, I understand better the theoretical position from which you are arguing, and can accept the empirical claim which buttresses it as potentially true (i.e., I don't have any evidence against it).

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

LOOL. Debating with you, I know what I'll be in for next semester, I guess. May I just say I'm scared shitless :D

[gloss]

Serialized print storytelling is alive and well in comics. *ponders*

Also, heh. I used to be acquainted with Arnold Zwicky on Usenet. WEIRD.

This is a pointless comment and a roundabout way of apologizing for not geting back (yet!) to yesterday's conversation with you.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

lamenting that one can't find it much outside television any more and giving it the credit for the popularity of the Harry Potter series

What? Obviously she's never read much fantasy...or other children's books. I love HP as much as anyone, but it's not in any way revolutionary. I could point to hundreds of fantasy series and tons of children's and young adult series that are multi-part.

Not to mention, as glossing said, there's comics, and now manga is incredibly popular in the US as well. Most popular manga series span years, if not a decade or more, telling stories about the same characters. One arc can take anywhere from several months to a year, especially with the adventure and battle ones.