I *Squee* Therefore I Am
Aug. 25th, 2009 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaThese many thought came about because of my slowly becoming more involved in fandom, developing ideas of my own for writing fan fiction, talking to other fans about these issues and real life events paralleling fandom events too closely in my mind.
About a year ago I wrote a post about why I'm obsessing with Torchwood.
Now I have some new thoughts.
But I think I need to write a little something that will further contextualize what I'm writing.
I remember I was once talking to my mother about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was the third season and I was yammering on about Buffy and Angel's non-relationship.
My mother said she was worried about me, that she thought my obsession was unhealthy, that Buffy was warping my mind and getting me into Witchcraft1.
I denied that my mind was warped, admitted that Willow's interest in Magic sparked my own and asked how loving something can be obsession?
She retaliated by asking me if I wanted to sleep with Angel?
Buffy and Angel's sex life was a pretty central theme throughout the third season.
Her question stopped me short. I was at the tender age of 14. My desires were reforming, changing, transforming and my own sense of identity shifting very quickly.
I had only just stopped playing with dolls – not being Mommy or Teacher, but enacting scenes of epic fights, sacrifices to Gods and fantasy adventures I'll write at some point.
And now, I was talking about a fictional character as though he were my friend, as though I knew him as intimately as myself.
But the thing was, he was my friend and I did know him intimately. When he left Buffy and began his own personal journey on Angel I couldn't connect with him as much as I once did.
Buffy remained my big sister, though I never considered myself to be anything like Dawn, though I probably was to my actual older sisters.
Buffy and I parted ways a few years ago. It's still the best show to ever be on television; writing wise, thematically and just plain awesomeness. I have seven academic books about Buffy.
It changed my life, I'll always be grateful2.
All that was a long way of saying, I take my entertainment seriously. Not only that, it takes me seriously as well.
Torchwood changed my life as well, in a vastly different way.
Not too long ago I wrote: I love Torchwood and generally speaking, Torchwood loves me..
It's obvious to me, but I suppose I should disclaim, that I'm well aware that the people on Torchwood , just like every other show, movie and book that I read, are fictional, I will not be able to go to Wales and meet any of them.
And despite a phenomenon like this, they are not real.
Except, that they are.
"Only the Gods are real" writes Neil Gaiman in his Caveat and Warning for Travellers in "American Gods".
It's deification of the old kind, when the Gods were immanent and we creatures of ritual and story telling affected Them as much as They affected Us.
A year ago, when I wrote the entry linked above, I was much less self-aware as to the effect Torchwood had on me and it was a more shallow reading of the New!Whoniverse as a Queer Solace.
It is so much more than that.
I can say without qualification that Torchwood is the first television program in which I felt as though my own identity was validated and that human tragedy is as ridiculous as it is sublime, because that's life.
I recently re-watched "Everything Changes", the first episode of the first season.
It is clunky, filled with holes, the characters are all so stereotypical it's painful (I weep for Tosh) and I can say with much conviction that the only reason I continued watching Torchwood in the first season was because I love Jack and that fellow in the suit intrigued me.
Then came "Cyberwoman" and the fellow in the suit became someone I admired in the same way that I admired Jack, only more so because he is mortal and his tragedy is something that can happen to me.
Ianto's capacity for love, his obsession of love, is a lot like mine. I also deluded myself about an ex and it took a burn to see the truth.
I still regretted how it ended and how it hurt me and other people.
But that's life.
Ianto was (and still is) my friend.
My button nosed, high cheek-boned, witty, sarcastic, coffee loving friend.
Those who know me IRL can stop laughing now.
A friend I enjoyed seeing evolve and get involved with, a man I consider my Hero and be Heroic with him.
I was heroic with him.
He's a boy who always tries his best, growing up knowing he was different from the people around him.
How much more appealing to me could he be?
Fiction isn't escape for me, endings remain happy only if you decide not to see what happens in the "ever after"3.
Fiction also enables me to see what tropes and memes we as people enjoy, are more comfortable with, what is perpetuated, what is subverted, what is retold and how the text is Writerly4 to me.
Fanfiction is the manifestation of the Writerly property of the text.
Not only is the subjectivity of the characters that are transformed changed and challenged, so are the readers' subjectivity.
I'm sorry to go all literary theory on you all, but I can't help it. Torchwood is one of the most pleasurable shows, it yearns for it, it demands that we sink into it, transform it and as we do so, we are transformed.
Not enough has been written about that aspect of Torchwood , or about Transformative works in general, but I can't help but mention it, as I think that in the way that I and others in Fandom relate to our texts very much mesh a lot of those principles into our scope of reading.
When we read, we in fact re-write.
Oooh, serious academic fan rears her head.
When it comes down to it, the past year was hard and I really cannot imagine how I would have gotten through it were it not for my girlfriend and Torchwood (it helps that she enjoys the show as well). I had to deal with a real world that didn't go exactly like I expected.
Wake up call.
As most of you know, during July I was still pretty shook up over what happened in Torchwood: Children of Earth, you just need to browse back to see how deeply affected I was. I don't know how my GF stood me. I don't know how anyone stood me.
Then in August the real life tragedy of a Hate Crime against queer youth struck and I was shook up again.
Living in the country that I do exposes me to violence on a scale that at times is just too much.
I felt so disgusted with myself that I took the death of Ianto Jones as hard as I did.
It's gratifying knowing that I'm not alone. That I am validated and can validate others in their love of text and how it affects them.
How we affect it.
I think I'm going to be writing fic very soon.
Notes
1. I was into that for a couple of years. My Witchcraft phase taught me more about rational thought, doubt and the nature belief than anything else.
Back to text
2. I still watch it of course, I don't own the DVD's for nothing! Damn, I should really get my ass in gear about getting back into Martial Arts. Ugh, I'm so lumpy!
Back to text
3. I have so much to say about JKR's heterosexist and saccharine epilogue (I'm part of the EWE contingent) and the erasure of her provocative liminal characters.
Back to text
4. A term brought to us by Literary Theorist Roland Barthes who made the distinction between a Readerly text, which is a disposable commodity basically. And between A Writerly text, which is by contrast, a text that enables the reader a vast measure of control, it destabilizes the reader's expectations and we approach the text as writers or re-writers (or fan-ficcers) and defy the commodification of the text.
Back to text
About a year ago I wrote a post about why I'm obsessing with Torchwood.
Now I have some new thoughts.
But I think I need to write a little something that will further contextualize what I'm writing.
I remember I was once talking to my mother about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was the third season and I was yammering on about Buffy and Angel's non-relationship.
My mother said she was worried about me, that she thought my obsession was unhealthy, that Buffy was warping my mind and getting me into Witchcraft1.
I denied that my mind was warped, admitted that Willow's interest in Magic sparked my own and asked how loving something can be obsession?
She retaliated by asking me if I wanted to sleep with Angel?
Buffy and Angel's sex life was a pretty central theme throughout the third season.
Her question stopped me short. I was at the tender age of 14. My desires were reforming, changing, transforming and my own sense of identity shifting very quickly.
I had only just stopped playing with dolls – not being Mommy or Teacher, but enacting scenes of epic fights, sacrifices to Gods and fantasy adventures I'll write at some point.
And now, I was talking about a fictional character as though he were my friend, as though I knew him as intimately as myself.
But the thing was, he was my friend and I did know him intimately. When he left Buffy and began his own personal journey on Angel I couldn't connect with him as much as I once did.
Buffy remained my big sister, though I never considered myself to be anything like Dawn, though I probably was to my actual older sisters.
Buffy and I parted ways a few years ago. It's still the best show to ever be on television; writing wise, thematically and just plain awesomeness. I have seven academic books about Buffy.
It changed my life, I'll always be grateful2.
All that was a long way of saying, I take my entertainment seriously. Not only that, it takes me seriously as well.
Torchwood changed my life as well, in a vastly different way.
Not too long ago I wrote: I love Torchwood and generally speaking, Torchwood loves me..
It's obvious to me, but I suppose I should disclaim, that I'm well aware that the people on Torchwood , just like every other show, movie and book that I read, are fictional, I will not be able to go to Wales and meet any of them.
And despite a phenomenon like this, they are not real.
Except, that they are.
"Only the Gods are real" writes Neil Gaiman in his Caveat and Warning for Travellers in "American Gods".
It's deification of the old kind, when the Gods were immanent and we creatures of ritual and story telling affected Them as much as They affected Us.
A year ago, when I wrote the entry linked above, I was much less self-aware as to the effect Torchwood had on me and it was a more shallow reading of the New!Whoniverse as a Queer Solace.
It is so much more than that.
I can say without qualification that Torchwood is the first television program in which I felt as though my own identity was validated and that human tragedy is as ridiculous as it is sublime, because that's life.
I recently re-watched "Everything Changes", the first episode of the first season.
It is clunky, filled with holes, the characters are all so stereotypical it's painful (I weep for Tosh) and I can say with much conviction that the only reason I continued watching Torchwood in the first season was because I love Jack and that fellow in the suit intrigued me.
Then came "Cyberwoman" and the fellow in the suit became someone I admired in the same way that I admired Jack, only more so because he is mortal and his tragedy is something that can happen to me.
Ianto's capacity for love, his obsession of love, is a lot like mine. I also deluded myself about an ex and it took a burn to see the truth.
I still regretted how it ended and how it hurt me and other people.
But that's life.
Ianto was (and still is) my friend.
My button nosed, high cheek-boned, witty, sarcastic, coffee loving friend.
Those who know me IRL can stop laughing now.
A friend I enjoyed seeing evolve and get involved with, a man I consider my Hero and be Heroic with him.
I was heroic with him.
He's a boy who always tries his best, growing up knowing he was different from the people around him.
How much more appealing to me could he be?
Fiction isn't escape for me, endings remain happy only if you decide not to see what happens in the "ever after"3.
Fiction also enables me to see what tropes and memes we as people enjoy, are more comfortable with, what is perpetuated, what is subverted, what is retold and how the text is Writerly4 to me.
Fanfiction is the manifestation of the Writerly property of the text.
Not only is the subjectivity of the characters that are transformed changed and challenged, so are the readers' subjectivity.
I'm sorry to go all literary theory on you all, but I can't help it. Torchwood is one of the most pleasurable shows, it yearns for it, it demands that we sink into it, transform it and as we do so, we are transformed.
Not enough has been written about that aspect of Torchwood , or about Transformative works in general, but I can't help but mention it, as I think that in the way that I and others in Fandom relate to our texts very much mesh a lot of those principles into our scope of reading.
When we read, we in fact re-write.
Oooh, serious academic fan rears her head.
When it comes down to it, the past year was hard and I really cannot imagine how I would have gotten through it were it not for my girlfriend and Torchwood (it helps that she enjoys the show as well). I had to deal with a real world that didn't go exactly like I expected.
Wake up call.
As most of you know, during July I was still pretty shook up over what happened in Torchwood: Children of Earth, you just need to browse back to see how deeply affected I was. I don't know how my GF stood me. I don't know how anyone stood me.
Then in August the real life tragedy of a Hate Crime against queer youth struck and I was shook up again.
Living in the country that I do exposes me to violence on a scale that at times is just too much.
I felt so disgusted with myself that I took the death of Ianto Jones as hard as I did.
It's gratifying knowing that I'm not alone. That I am validated and can validate others in their love of text and how it affects them.
How we affect it.
I think I'm going to be writing fic very soon.
Notes
1. I was into that for a couple of years. My Witchcraft phase taught me more about rational thought, doubt and the nature belief than anything else.
Back to text
2. I still watch it of course, I don't own the DVD's for nothing! Damn, I should really get my ass in gear about getting back into Martial Arts. Ugh, I'm so lumpy!
Back to text
3. I have so much to say about JKR's heterosexist and saccharine epilogue (I'm part of the EWE contingent) and the erasure of her provocative liminal characters.
Back to text
4. A term brought to us by Literary Theorist Roland Barthes who made the distinction between a Readerly text, which is a disposable commodity basically. And between A Writerly text, which is by contrast, a text that enables the reader a vast measure of control, it destabilizes the reader's expectations and we approach the text as writers or re-writers (or fan-ficcers) and defy the commodification of the text.
Back to text
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 04:48 pm (UTC)There are fictional and non-fictional people/bodies/stories/etc.
Not real and and fictional. It'll drive some people mad. But I don't really care. I think it's important to say what I'm saying with that distinction (and somewhere, that brings up another paper, about the personal essay, RPF and the way writers create characters -- what and how are people in the interstitial space between fictional and non-fictional (which of course interests me because of how I conduct my life).
no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 05:09 pm (UTC)Obviously this is something I'm thinking about and struggling with at the mo, if only because I'm putting together a Seminar paper about Shame, the female body as it relates between mother and daughter.
Yeah.
But I'm thinking about bodies a lot lately.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 07:14 pm (UTC)If you haven't read it before, in which case I apologise for the spam, here's a quote from RTD's book that I copied into a lj entry at the time...
To be honest, I have trouble with 'escapism' full stop. It's usually a derogatory term. Or condescending. At best, cute. [...] It makes the pastime, whether it's a hobby or a job, seem tiny and silly, when it's a vital part of your life. [...] Writing is actually my way of engaging with the world, not escaping from it.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 07:23 pm (UTC)Whatever one may think of RTD personally, the man has brilliant insight.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 04:23 pm (UTC)And yet another piece of writing to add to a growing collection on why fictional characters matter. I would go one step farther here, though, and suggest that Barthes' distinction is by no means hard and fast; one of the most vital and problematic aspects of fandom is the contamination of the readerly and the writerly, of consumption and re-invention, the hybrid rather than the pure "truths" we uncover by engaging in its fictions.
(You and fmanalyst should know each other, btw. Check out her journal if you haven't already.)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 05:29 pm (UTC)I had to incorporate him! Ever since we studies a chapter in him in my intro to lit. theory class I was ga-ga over his distinctions, which yes are by no means hard and fast as you say seeing as much of what we as fans make "writerly" is produced to be "readerly".
And stuff :)
I will check out