What kind of fan am I?

[sistermagpie]

I just came across this fabulous quote from teratologist about analyzing the Re-Animator movies. Re-Animator being a movie that contains such classic dialogue as, "Who's going to listen to you? You're a talking head."

Teratologist says:

Re-Animator, Bride of Re-Animator, and Beyond Re-Animator are arguably the films most likely to cause a prominent American author to spin violently in his or her grave. They're based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but they contain very little by way of Deep Thoughts About Man's Place in the Universe and a whole lot of the sort of zombies that Shaun of the Dead was sending up. They are close to the epitome of dumb entertainment. I love them, and the reason I love them is because I can readily dissect them.

And like all dumb, 'it's just entertainment' entertainment, you arguably stand a much better chance of seeing where the collective head of some portion of society is really at by dissecting these works than by dissecting works that were written by self-conscious types with one eye on the critics. It's like observing critters in the wild instead of in a cage in the lab - if the (cue Marlin Perkins/ Mutual of Omaha Voice) Magnificent, Solitary Author is pursuing his or her life cycle blissfully unaware of the people hanging around in the background with lab coats and cameras, s/he will give us a truer picture of what material emotionally resonates with that portion of the public that thinks they just want to be entertained. If you dissect Umberto Eco and J.K. Rowling, you'll learn what Eco thinks from Eco (and that's fun), but you'll learn what's lurking in the hindbrain of Western society from ripping apart Rowling, precisely because she is under the impression that she is writing something that isn't very deep, and therefore isn't working to censor or fancy up the things she just assumes are true about society - and because we have evidence that these unfancied-up hindbrain thoughts resonate with millions of people throughout the world.

If that isn't absolutely fucking fascinating, and a real pleasure to figure out, I don't know what is.

Ah,

Being a "fan," I've realized, really has nothing to do with being a fan in terms of loving or hating something, since fans are known for ranting as much as raving. There's a reason comic book guy's trademark line on The Simpsons is "worst [insert thing here] ever." Me, I've never been much for squeeing. Which is not to say I look down on it. It's just not something I get into. I get into analyzing stuff in...whatever way it is I analyze it.

To give you an idea of what I mean, once a friend of mine grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me because I was working myself into knots trying to work out the hidden meanings of Grease 2, and looking that closely at anything starring Adrian Zmed was just wrong. I just can't help it. I guess it surprises me when anything like this is questioned in fandom because I always thought fandom was where you went when you did stuff like that. You leave the larger community because you're a geek and nobody else likes this stuff, and you find people who are interested in discussing whether Scully got her cross for Christmas or for her 15th birthday and what difference it makes. Maybe you could even get into an argument about it.

In fact, I assume this must be what makes one a "fan" because it's sometimes the only definition I fit. At the moment I seem to be in the HP-fandom, yet I've never been a fan of the books in terms of, you know, really liking them. That's not a dismissal of the books as crap or something that sucks. They're just not books I ever enjoyed that much. They're not a personal love, book-wise. But there was stuff in them I wanted to talk about with people, so I wandered onto the Internet and found other people who liked talking about them too, with me. It seems silly to say I'm not in the fandom, exactly, even if I got into it in a strange way.

I've been thinking, though, about being a fan and how fans shouldn’t judge books on what they should be, according to us, but on what they are. I think that's true--it's a losing battle anyway. How can you judge something for what should have been? I remember saying that plenty of times in LOTR fandom regarding the movies--you can't judge the movies that got made against some fantasy movies in your head that would have been perfect but we'll never know. Otoh, I'm surprised by what sometimes seems like the idea that it's wrong to use a story to discuss your own opinions on something that story brings up because, I guess, to me this is part of fandom and part of what makes people love a book. If I'm talking about LOTR, for instance, I would presumably talk about what Tolkien seems to be saying about the world and things he believes to be true. In my experience as somebody who writes and edits for a living that's a big part of what stories are; a way of communicating an idea to someone. And as teratologist so brilliantly puts it, this is sometimes most obvious in fun stories where you just go with your instinct. I know my agent has pointed out things that are "my thing" that I write about, conflicts that interest me, values that come up again and again. Authors are often pretty open about things like this if they're called on it. Maybe they didn't intentionally set out to say, "This is what I believe," but when asked they often will say, "Well, yes, I guess I do feel that this is so..." Or maybe they'll explain how you misunderstood--that happens to. But there's a reason people make jokes like, "You've read one Thomas Hardy you've read them all." Holly Lisle puts it like this

Writing fiction is standing on the edge of the abyss of ignorance, looking across at the cliffs on the other side, and saying, "With nothing but words, I am going to build myself a bridge that takes me from here to there . . . and when I'm done, other people will be able to cross over that same bridge." It's an act of ultimate hubris, but of ultimate courage, too, because the abyss can eat you, and will if you slip.
So which bridges are worth building? You can't cover the whole abyss. You can run a thousand lines from one side to the other if you live long enough, and you won't even cast a shadow on the voracious ignorance that lies beneath. All you can do is span the darkness with your slender threads, and build them strong enough that people can traverse them, and make them interesting enough that people will take the risk.
Which bridges are worth risking life and limb and hope and soul to create? Only those that take you to someplace you have not yet been.
And how do you decide which bridges those might be? You ask yourself the following question: To what questions in life have I not yet found a satisfactory answer?

Sometimes having your manuscript analyzed --and here I think Original Writing is very different from fanfic because for some reason having someone else's text can remove you from view just a bit--is very much like a therapy session.

It's pointless, therefore, to say that any author should have written *our* story instead of his or her own. The same brain that created the characters and the beginning is going to write the ending. Ultimately that will probably make for the best story it can be, I think. But at the same time, it surprises me when it seems like this means somebody can't argue with whatever point of view seems to be being put forward. For instance, plenty of people read LOTR and remain completely convinced that Sam was the True Hero in the sense that he should have carried the ring to Mount Doom, and if he had he would have been able to destroy it because of his humble good-nature (already proven when he carried the ring briefly before). I've had this discussion with people before. To me, the idea doesn't work--nobody could destroy the ring, any lone ringbearer without a companion wouldn't have made it, there's a reason Frodo was right for his job and Sam was right for his job, yadda yadda yadda. But the point that person is arguing, imo, isn't so much that Tolkien wrote the wrong story the wrong way, but that they see and organize the world very differently. For them it's not just that they want Sam to be the big hero because they love him, but because that would say something about life that validates the way they see life. For them, there will always be that phantom ending, because it is the true answer to the questions the author raised.

That, to me, is part of fandom too. Probably more so if you're dealing with any canon that isn't finished, since we don't know really know what the author is saying until the author says it. It seems impossible to have a fandom without it, really, since fandom is not just about interaction between audience and story but also a community of people interacting with each other through the story. I think that's why, in my experience, people tend to gravitate towards people who respond similarly to the canon, because this is often because they have similar ideas about other things. Mostly everybody I was close with in XF fandom loved Mulder, and thought the idea of The Enemy as The Other was a lie, because the monster was always reflected in us. It seems impossible to think you'd bond with someone over such an abstract thing, but I think it just came out in what you talked about. In LOTR fandom I made close friends with hobbit-folk who liked talking about compassion--it's not all that different. It's easier when your canon happens to share the same priorities, but we don't always get to pick the canon that draws us. But fandom usually thrives on just these kinds of disagreements.

Comments

[oselle.livejournal.com]

And like all dumb, 'it's just entertainment' entertainment, you arguably stand a much better chance of seeing where the collective head of some portion of society is really at by dissecting these works than by dissecting works that were written by self-conscious types with one eye on the critics.

When baylorsr and I first started talking about The Faculty we talked about how the movie represented a big attitudinal shift between Generation X and Generation Y. Generation X was the "baby bust" and so was something of a disenfranchised, powerless generation, always overshadowed by the huge numbers of Baby Boomers, who were hitting their 30s when most Xers were teens. The teen horror movies of the late '70s and '80s that catered to young Gen Xers almost always ended with everyone in the cast getting butchered except for one lone survivor who was either slaughtered in the first five minutes of the sequel (Friday the 13th) or packed off to a nuthouse (Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3). In contrast, The Faculty was made for a Generation Y audience of teens whose population was far bigger and powerful in terms of marketplace and cultural clout, and so ended with the aliens getting vanquished by the kids and not one of the kids dying or even being seriously hurt.

As we later found out, the original ending HAD depicted everyone dying except for Casey and Zeke, who were the only two not infected---test audiences (presumably of teenagers) rejected this ending as too depressing and the new, upbeat one was filmed. I have no doubt that if The Faculty had been made in the '80s, the original ending would have stood intact and it wouldn't have entered any kid's head to call it "depressing."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'd never thought of that but I did always think of The Faculty as having something different about it and couldn't figure out what it was. Being Gen X I was probably thinking the same way, that something in me almost expected everyone except a lone person to survive. And I would say that the original ending is sort of there as a ghost. I'm never sure just how to deal with things like that. It's one thing if the author changes his or her mind, but there seems something kind of different about the story ending one way and then being changed for something like a test group. At the same time, sometimes the audience is telling you something true--hey, you set something up here and your ending doesn't resolve it. But in this case it really does sound more superficial, where the test audiences just didn't see themselves as that disposable.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, when this whole teen horror genre began back in the 1950s, the kids usually won, didn't they? In The Blob the kids vanquished the blob and became heroes. Now maybe that was just because you couldn't show half a dozen kids getting murdered in a 1950s movie, but I really think the opinion kids had of themselves played into it. To be a teenager in the Fifties, as in in the Nineties was to be part of a pretty powerful group. In the Eighties, the reverse was true. Kids in the Eighties were more pessimistic about themselves and their future; we wouldn't really have bought into the idea that we could save the world.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

A lot of people have problems with the ending of that film, don't they? I can't say I liked it very much myself.
Have you read this?
http://rosiesamfrodo.com/~hope/faculty/essay.html

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Just a tangent -- when we were talking about "quality lit" a few weeks back, I was thinking about Re-Aanimator, and about the fact that Pauline Kael loved it and reviewed it favorably in The New Yorker. And her message was sort of: this movie was so perfectly what it intended to be, so perfectly fulfilling and fun on its own precise terms, that there was a kind of achievement in that that was worth recognizing and jumping up and down with pleasure about.

I'm not sure I would agree with teratoligst that the movie was either naive or unconscious in its effects. (I haven't seen the sequels, though.) Kael's point would be that the director knew exactly what he/she was doing, and did it well.

I'm puzzled by the idea of judging a book by what it "should be." The type of misreading of LOTR that you describe just seems pathological. I mean, it's one thing to disagree with a vision, or to criticize it, or even, fanon-style, to invent an alternative that you find more satisfying. All of that is huge fun, anyway. But to be unable to even assimilate a work in the first place suggests a psychological defensiveness and rigidity more epic than any Journey through Middle Earth.

I very much liked your idea, that the genesis of true fandom is that you find a body of work to be discussable, to provoke strong agreement and disagreement. It seems odd to have to defend this perspective against the sort of obsessive appropriation of a text committed by someone who only can read it in one highly personalized and distorted way, but I suppose that's a sociological observation about fandom, and one of the less pretty ones. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Actually I would agree about Re-Animator being exactly what it intended, but having not seen the sequels I can't say that line is wrong. Heh--in fact, I remember seeing that movie right after 2,000 maniacs, so compared to that it was quite polished!

I may have made the alternate reading of LOTR more rigid-sounding than it is, but I'm not sure. It's not always about being unable or unwilling to understand the author's own pov. In speaking to people about the LOTR ending, for instance, it didn't seem like it was always that people felt this was the way Tolkien *should* have written it (unless people were just being snarky and saying, "I can't stand that Frodo; push him over a cliff, Sam"), but more that they felt it was a given that this other possiblity was true because that's the way the world worked.

Sometimes that works out into a reading where the person claims this is what the author meant. For instance, I remember reading something where the critic felt that what Tolkien's point was not that Frodo did the right thing in showing compassion to Gollum and so that carried him through when he inevitably failed, but that Frodo made a mistake in not letting his humble servant carry the ring. Frodo was too proud, so almost blew it and that's why he was kind of punished.

Part of it is probably emotional--you like a character and you want him to be important and the best. But part of it is I think not getting or not going along with some of Tolkien's own ideas, like it's just hard to not think that optimism and competence is what one should aspire to. You're almost discussing two different levels at once. On one hand you can be talking about what happened in the story or what the author intended, on the other you're talking about...truths you believe to be self-evident or something. Unfortunately, when people conflate the two you sometimes get into this weird place where somebody seems to be saying that if they're right that this is what a particular story is saying, then they're right about the world. Does that make sense?

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

It does make sense, and for me, at least, it brings to mind some examples that might at first seem a bit disconnected. But the key phrases here are, first: it's not just that they want Sam to be the big hero because they love him, but because that would say something about life that validates the way they see life. And then: if they're right that this is what a particular story is saying, then they're right about the world.

We might be talking slightly at cross purposes, here, and if I'm misreading you I apologize. But what's intriguing me here is the whole phenomenon of people being unable to assimilate threatening world-views. When I was an undergraduate, I tried to take an economics course and recoiled from it. It just seemed full of poisonous and evil assumptions! I absolutely could not tolerate it or get into it at the time. Now I would see it just as an intellectual problem, a series of hypotheses or models worth testing empirically, even if I had emotional or moral feelings about their implications.

I also remember, late in college, talking with a friend about a third friend who was determined on a very high-powered business career. "He just wants to hang out with the people who run the world," I said, kind of facetiously. And the person I was talking to got very upset about that, was obsessed with denouncing the "falseness" of our mutual friend's ambition, insisted that there was no such thing as a category of people who had real economic power, who had to be reckoned with in that way. I can't really convey her argument because I never found it coherent, but it was clear that she was feeling very threatened and offended and hostile.

I just find this an interesting phenomenon. At a certain stage of life, perhaps a certain stage of personal development, ideas and empirical generalizations about the world can be highly threatening, or highly reinforcing, in a way that has little to do with their demonstrability, and more to do, perhaps, with one's urgent personal efforts to develop coherent and tolerable hypotheses about how the world works. I'm not judging or condemning; it's an interesting thing for what it says about human nature, and, thankfully for rational discourse, I think it's eventually transcended. But it's a phenomenon worth noticing and naming. And since we're sharing a fandom with a lot of very young people, it's an issue that comes up with time to time in critical analysis.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I do think youth can be a big part of it, definitely--and also I've noticed even with myself that sometimes you might not even realize you're doing it. In that book The Alienist I remember there's a moment where the Alienist character refers to some kind of fallacy he realizes he's accidentally committed, which is one where you sort of assume something about your experience that is personal is universal. In his case, for instance, he's dealing with a killer with an abusive mother. But he assumes the killer must have had no mother to have been abused, because his experience growing up was that his father abused him and his mother tried to protect him. Intellectually he knows that this does not have to be the case for everyone, but it's not something he thinks about when he jumps to his conclusions. shusu explains it well below when she talks about a phantom limb and accidentally hitting something personal.

When you're dealing with a writer or fiction it can maybe be even more strange, because the writer's going to be working on his/her own assumptions. So maybe what's close to that person's heart is not close to your own. The point the author is making might be something different than what you're hearing.

In fandom it's best when we can have discussions, imo, where two people can really talk about where they're coming from and both examine what their biases are and why. I know I find it really exciting.:-) Like recently I was talking to somebody who struck me as really out there--I couldn't get into her mindset at all. But we didn't disagree on everything. It was more we had things we agreed on and just jumped off them a certain way. I feel like this is something that's becoming more evident in HP fandom lately--it seems like different people have opposing views when it's really more like we probably agree on most core principles but stress different aspects of them or something.

Of course you'll never figure that out if you're threatened by the mere idea that someone else could think different than you do, and many people are literally threatened by that. It's something a lot of people luckily grow out of, but maybe not all. Some people do seem to find it more disturbing to really believe that somebody else doesn't agree with something they think is a foundation of truth. Like this person I was talking to tended to even use very absolute language that appealed to a common sense everyone shared: everybody knows basic right and wrong; some people are just evil. It wasn't that she never made sense, but the way she was seeing things just didn't seem to allow for differences between people, either subtle or large.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Oh I didn't mean to suggest, by any means, that we ever entirely grow out of unexamined irrationalities or blind spots. I think this is, specifically, why argument and debate is such a joy, and can be such a process of self-discovery through engaging other people. And part of the fun is just speaking frankly enough to reveal those blind spots, so they can be more effectively targeted by one's opponents. What I'm talking about, really, is more the phenomenon of "immunity" to argument, an absolute resistance to engaging contrary ideas. Which is a much narrower issue, and maybe wasn't your own point, so we may be off on a private tangent of mine. :)

The case of reading is an interesting subset of the general argument, because if you let the text stand in for the author's argument, you and the author don't really get to engage in a back and forth -- the text is just there, and you have to make the best of it. (Which may be one reason why talking about texts with other people can seem like such an exhilarating supplement to reading them.) And yes, there are cases where you and the author are so far apart that it's just hard to engage the text. I always find that depressing and disappointing, partly because of my master working hypothesis that the author is always onto something I'm not. But sometimes a text just falls flat for a particular reader, despite the best efforts. And sometimes I'm even inclined to sadly drop my master hypothesis and decide that the author is probably an ass, after all -- though that's usually about a feeling that you totally understand them, that you've been there yourself and found it to be a false or dishonest place.

But I agree that the great fun of any interaction, and the ultimate source of almost all comedy, is the fact that very often we are not hearing or seeing what other people are saying. And I agree with you that sometimes that perception of that failure can really set people off in an unproductive way in argument -- it's as though, you're free to disagree with me, but at least acknowledge that you hear me! And if you don't, then grrrrr!

I guess what I want to make a distinction between is the failure of communication and the refusal of communication, if that makes sense. And things that fall under the heading of refusal are, I admit, things that personally I am not at peace with, things that I have unhealthily intense feelings about even now. Probably because I see them as the root of fundamentalisms and intolerances and interpersonal abuse of all sorts. I find I am happy to confront alien and strange opinions but am frustrated by failures of dialogue, a failure of commitment to a basic mutual acknowledgment and engagement. For example, it should be possible at least in principle for a discussion to change my mind, to secure at least conditional assent to a proposition if one's arguments are persuasive enough -- which makes the contest interesting, because of course often one tries and loses. But the flip side of "I'll believe whatever I need to" is "anyone can believe whatever they want," which is just as wilfully nihilistic, I think. I sometimes get impatient with perspectives that seem to radically deny, just as a matter of will rather than argument, the value of argument itself, reducing it to an exchange of equally valid opinion rather than a process of weighing relative evidence and persuasiveness. Though a rigorous argument to that effect would be fun to engage. :)

I agree that argument is necessarily an open process, unending, yadayada. But scratch a relativist, and I think you will often find a disappointed metaphysician still bitter about losing divine access to the truth, and haunted by the idea that the only alternative to an ironclad guarantee is complete nihilism. And that, I think we'd both agree, is naive.

Hmmmm, I sense we are both, at a subtextual level, riding our own favorite hobbyhorses here, and it's kind of nice to trot along these paths with you once again! :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*Hops on hobbyhorse* Howdy, pardner!

What I'm talking about, really, is more the phenomenon of "immunity" to argument, an absolute resistance to engaging contrary ideas.

I do think that definitely exists as well. I sometimes wonder if this can be a skill that people fail to learn when they can, and then they wind up just unable to engage contrary ideas. Like, I've met people who seemed literally incapable of seeing things from a different pov, and more than once I learned they'd been raised or still were a religious fundamntalist. Being taught that there is one relatively simple truth and that it was evil to doubt it, and that one should see anyone challenging it as the enemy, seemed to seriously affect one's ability to engage contrary opinions on any subject. My roommate works in education publishing and so sometimes runs into this problem--like sometimes she's not allowed to use the word "imagine" and fantasy as a genre is right out. (So they wind up teaching kids about the fantasy genre using the "Arthur" books, which are completely realistic stories except that Arthur looks like an anteater.)

And sometimes I'm even inclined to sadly drop my master hypothesis and decide that the author is probably an ass, after all -- though that's usually about a feeling that you totally understand them, that you've been there yourself and found it to be a false or dishonest place.

Yeah, and then there's always going to be other people who are in that place now and think it's great.:-) There are of course times when people think the author is saying something s/he isn't, like the time Neil Gaiman said he was thought to be making a very specific statement that had never occurred to him, but usually this sort of thing comes from reading a whole book or lots of work by that author and just getting where they come from.

Really, no matter how many characters a writer creates underneath they're all the same person, coming from the same head. An author can imagine him/herself as a different person with different values and a different personality but ultimately the author's limitations are their characters' limitations, and the author's blindspots are their blindspots. You can't write something you can't imagine yourself. It's like you were saying about Stephen King (and if you'd like to elaborate on that I wouldn't mind...;-) and how it's just after a while some basic ideas about how he sees the human race etc. can't help but become clear.

And things that fall under the heading of refusal are, I admit, things that personally I am not at peace with, things that I have unhealthily intense feelings about even now. Probably because I see them as the root of fundamentalisms and intolerances and interpersonal abuse of all sorts.

ITA. Sometimes in fandom people seem to be unwilling to hear what you say, and other times for some reason they can't. Other times, though, I know I've felt like if we could just get past what we superficially feel is being threatened about our ideas we'd see that the other person isn't really disagreeing with us but forcing us to think them through more thoroughly. That won't necessarily lead to the idea that everybody can think whatever they want and nobody can know what's right--it may just lead to you keeping your same ideas but making them more complex.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

(con't)

But that can be hard to get across to people--I know I've had long discussions with people where, like, ten long posts in I'll finally be like, "Oh! Now I get what you're saying!" and see that they're right and I've been off-base all along, or just not really understanding what they were saying. There are some basic areas in HP fandom where so often it seems like people are either constantly creating strawmen of the other side to knock down (so you get posts about how it's so stupid that X group of fans says something that they never said but makes them sound really dumb) or allowing themselves to argue on the other person's terms so they're making themselves sound like they're saying something they're not--something closer to the strawman, in fact. Sometimes it's just more difficult to really get across what you're saying...

...actually, it always reminds me of this drawing. (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/305_html/Gestalt/Woman.html)this drawing. So you get two people arguing that the woman is ugly or beautiful without realizing they're seeing two different women. No wonder people so often say, "Are they reading the same book I am?" In a way, they're not. But they still are. Confused?

I sometimes get impatient with perspectives that seem to radically deny, just as a matter of will rather than argument, the value of argument itself, reducing it to an exchange of equally valid opinion rather than a process of weighing relative evidence and persuasiveness.

Argh, yes. Especially when the person starts out claiming their stance is the best supported and then reaches for "my reading's just as good as yours" when they discover they really can't support it the way they'd like. Sometimes they'll throw in an accusation their free speech is being infringed as well, I've noticed. On a basic level, of course everyone's reactions are their own, but if you're trying to discuss a text with someone you can see why a reading that convinces a lot of people because it can be shown to be supported by the text is different than one that convinces people who happen to find that reading appealing for personal reasons.

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would agree with teratoligst that the movie was either naive or unconscious in its effects. (I haven't seen the sequels, though.) Kael's point would be that the director knew exactly what he/she was doing, and did it well.

That's an interesting point, although I would argue that it's not necessarily an either/or proposition. The fact that the director was engaged in at least some meta-commentary on the genre is definitely true. At the same time, with some elements, it's hard to tell without getting inside the director's head whether the film is being unconscious in its own right or reflecting the extremely unconscious way those topics are often treated in the zombie genre as a whole. In the infamous disembodied head scene, there's obviously commentary going on, for instance, but is the choice to have Herbert West experimenting on the household cat also commentary, or just a reflection of the fact that cats are standard props to have around in this sort of film (and what does that convention say?)

I probably could have made an even better case for some of the other film adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft's work, but I've never been able to sit through any of them.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

You raise an interesting question -- what, exactly, is the process by which a reader or viewer infers sophistication in a work that cultivates a deliberately "naive" surface. Not to be flippant, but maybe there's a clue in your last sentence -- "I've never been able to sit though any of them." -- A sophisticated director just does "naive" better, in a more fun way, than a truly naive one.

I think you just sense a consistent "rightness" in the effects, a controlling intelligence that takes maximum advantage of the possibilities and doesn't falter. The cat may be a common trope, but has anyone else used it to such memorable effect -- first to establish West's creepy disregard for boundaries, then for over-the-top zombie!cat action?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Man, that was inspiring. You make me all teary and fired up about being a writer >:D Yes! I've seen other people talk about how writing is all about answering The Unanswered Question (even if you don't know that's what you're doing)-- Rilke in particular. Though I've not found that I can identify with a whole sections of fandom in terms of what draws me to certain things... like, in H/D, there's maybe a couple of people besides myself that I can fully identify with, and in the end-- man, there's only Aja and I think Ivy, maybe. I think I used to feel more connected to the fandom in that sense back when there was still the old-school H/D fanfic community.

On the other hand, when I went to Nimbus there was that sense of comraderie just because we all loved the books for -some- reason and in -some- way, and that makes for some instinctive geeky bonding sometimes.

Like... we were sitting in the introductory speech with several people talking about the Marauders, right-- and to me, it was so amazing that we could all sit there on the floor and understand what they were talking about and laugh sometimes and seeing that look of startled interest when Peter Pettigrew suddenly seemed sympathetic-- that's fandom, I think, for most people. Just a common background, a common interest that brings you to the same place even if you think differently. So well, yeah, there are different kinds of fans, obviously. I'm something of a hybrid there :>

I mean, I myself never ever argue with the deeper direction any story takes-- I don't mean just HP. It's not that I'm not analytical (though perhaps you can say I'm not?)-- it's that the answer and the question both (basically-- the philosophy) are almost always are central to the appeal of any given story for me. Though I totally dig teratologist's scientific approach (heee! critters!), I tend to want to be entertained by my entertainment. I tend to think over-thinking took away from the entertainment value of these things, and I never needed specifics-- that is, examples-- to think about the trends in society. That is, I don't need any particular book or movie to be my guide. But then I'm a rotten generalist. (And no, this ramble has no point, really, heheh, I'm just spewing at you).

For them, there will always be that phantom ending, because it is the true answer to the questions the author raised.

I really like that image. I mean, sometimes I'm wistful and wishful but I never actually have that 'phantom ending' phenomenon so it's fascinating to me. That idea of two-way communication with books is... odd to me. Partly, it's that my own answers have always been shaped by those in my formative, favorite books-- I learned most of the things I know best through fiction, probably. So my answers, while unique, came as an amalgam of a lot of stories, and I don't wind up having issues with the flow of any particular one 'cause I don't impose myself onto other people or stories, if that makes sense? I am me-- they are them. There's no two-way connection.

...I'm an anti-social reader, it appears ^^;

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Man, that was inspiring. You make me all teary and fired up about being a writer >:D

Hee! Yay!

Though I've not found that I can identify with a whole sections of fandom in terms of what draws me to certain things

Seriously? I think if you need that to happen you're probably always going to be disappointed. Sooner or later you're going to disagree on something. But I guess people do have this impulse because so often there will be stuff calling for all the people who like X to do something or stop doing something. It's like herding cats. Most people, I think, find a few people that they agree with on one very small thing and some of the other things you disagree with maybe don't seem as important.

I guess there's always that tension between wanting the community feeling of sitting around at Nimbus and asserting your own opinions, because that's probably why a lot of people are here, to say what they think.

Heh--it's like fanfic again. Everything's OOC, but if you find a story that gets something important right it's easier for you to overlook everything else. Somebody else who's in the same fandom would read the same story and say, "Ahhh! How could read a story where Neville wears a hat! It's the essence of Neville that he goes hatless!" or whatever.

I really like that image. I mean, sometimes I'm wistful and wishful but I never actually have that 'phantom ending' phenomenon so it's fascinating to me.

Maybe I'm too lazy or too scared, but I really really try to never have any expectations of what the ending should be--though sometimes you just feel like something was set up. Like in the stories I do for work it's easy to see stuff like that; you don't put things in the story that send anybody down the wrong road or raise questions that aren't going to be answered, but in a big book there's going to be lots of things that aren't answered. One story I can think of that had a phantom ending for me, though, was a LOTR-fic where it was just set up perfectly so that Frodo would do something at the end, and the ending seemed completely fake because he didn't. It felt, actually, like the ending was the way it was because the author was into getting off on a particular thing and so she didn't want it resolved. So then it was weird--and it was one of those weird times I even gave concrit and said, "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here!"

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

And like all dumb, 'it's just entertainment' entertainment, you arguably stand a much better chance of seeing where the collective head of some portion of society is really at by dissecting these works than by dissecting works that were written by self-conscious types with one eye on the critics.

Yes exactly. That's why I find it generally find it more interesting to analyse work of "Popular Culture", than something by insert Nobel Price Winner. Since the Popular Culture Writer is generally more likely both to be read by "the masses" and "write for the masses", his/her work is more likely to say something about the reality most people seem to live in, the time it's written. That doesn't mean said writer has set out to write anything about his/her society, and frankly the book would from this perspective probably be less interesting to me if he/she had, but that doesn't mean it doesn't say anything about it nevertheless.

I've been thinking, though, about being a fan and how fans shouldn’t judge books on what they should be, according to us, but on what they are. I think that's true--it's a losing battle anyway. How can you judge something for what should have been?

The problem is when it comes to HP specifically, as you point out later in your post, that we don't know what the books "should have been" yet, since they're not finished. Speculation is a big part of the fandom of an unfinished series. Is it pointless? For some, it probably is, I think it's pretty fun myself, and it's interesting to see how different people make very different predictions, depending on how they read the books, what kind of significance they place on different things. Speculating on future development that may or may not happen in upcoming books is obviously not the same thing as saying "the books should develop my way, or else I'll get mad!", but I think it's probably pretty normal to see two, or more, different possible outcomes to different storylines, and instinctively know that some of those possible outcomes you will like better than others. And if the outcome that becomes Canon is one that you strongly dislike, then it's not unlikely that your judgements of the series as a whole will sink. And that's what the whole "what do you fear" topic seemed to be about to me; you see several possible outcomes, you fear some and would be delighted by others. Obviously you hope that the ones you would be delighted at happens. And just as obvious is it that there's nothing you can do if it's the one you fear that happens, except analysing the entire Canon with that new perspective.

But at the same time, it surprises me when it seems like this means somebody can't argue with whatever point of view seems to be being put forward.

Exactly, it's not the same thing.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes--I admit I'm surprised by some of the cries of "wank" for that thread when that thread seems so casual, like the type of thing anybody would say about a TV show they watched or book series they read. The closer the series gets to the end, obviously, the less time there is for huge surprises. It's speeding towards the climax now, so there's more reason for people to start thinking about the outcomes they would like or not like. Also I felt like a lot of things were just tossed out. If somebody doesn't like scenes where R/Hr interact and finds the idea of reading a romance between them tedious they'd say that was something they feared etc.

I was just talking to somebody, actually, about some article about how so many shows now are serialized and most of the writers really don't know where they're going with the season enders. Lost, for instance, has been throwing out all these mysteries but they know people only have a certain tolerance for that before it becomes annoying and they'll have to tie things up. Plus they've created all these backstories so they don't want to kill good characters, etc. On 24 they apparently had a very tight outline for the first season, but wound up tossing it out early because things just happen along the way. Or on the OC last year very late on they had to change some big thing. So it's not just the fans being nervous there, but the writers sort of juggling on a high wire.

For me, the end of XF definitely changed the way I thought about the series--it was awful. Same thing with another favorite show of mine, Northern Exposure.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Also I felt like a lot of things were just tossed out. If somebody doesn't like scenes where R/Hr interact and finds the idea of reading a romance between them tedious they'd say that was something they feared etc.

Yes, exactly. It was a simple question "what do you fear", and what kind of answer do you expect to read in such a thread, except different people's statements on what they fear? You may of course hope for the outcome that other people fear, but that shouldn't be surprising to anyone (at least not if they've been in the fandom for a while and have discovered for themselves how much opnions can :gasp: differiente). From where I sit, it looks like it's just some people who respond extremely negatively to finding out that certain people fear their own pet theories, and deconstructs those people's opinions to being all about how they "demand that JKR lets them dictate what and how she writes".

On 24 they apparently had a very tight outline for the first season, but wound up tossing it out early because things just happen along the way.

That's interesting. I absolutely loved the first season myself, but I was so incredibly bored by the second one that I haven't even bothered with the third. So you're saying that they diddn't have later seasons as carefully planned out? That might explian why the second one just didn't have thee pacing, or the same ability to engage, as the first.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

his/her work is more likely to say something about the reality most people seem to live in, the time it's written.

I think that's probably true, but I wish I understood how. :)

Maybe it's just much more difficult to do that with music than with literature (and I'm banging my head against the wall trying to write a response to two articles that try to do that very thing with Copland in the 1930's), but the question "what is the relationship of art and society and how does it affect specific content" is like the 500 pound gorilla. Everyone knows that it's there, everyone has a different solution to moving him, but no one can ever get him totally out of the room.

except analysing the entire Canon with that new perspective.

I really enjoy having to throw out my old perspectives every book. I think the price is that I'm not passionately attached to any one idea about what is/was happening (okay, there are some things in the very broad theme category I'm rather fond of), so it's more "ooh new shiny!" and much less "oh, dammit", but it's also a less personal and thrilling engagement.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just much more difficult to do that with music than with literature (and I'm banging my head against the wall trying to write a response to two articles that try to do that very thing with Copland in the 1930's)

Heh, boy I'm not touching music analysis, myself, but I would say that yeah, it seems at least, way easier with literature (or theatre, or movies) than music, if only because because all these types of art tends to imitate life in a much more concrete way than music ever could.

but the question "what is the relationship of art and society and how does it affect specific content" is like the 500 pound gorilla. Everyone knows that it's there, everyone has a different solution to moving him, but no one can ever get him totally out of the room.

Yes, that seems about it. One person's efforts can never get him out aanyway, but maybe collected efforts by many different theorist within time...

I really enjoy having to throw out my old perspectives every book. I think the price is that I'm not passionately attached to any one idea about what is/was happening (okay, there are some things in the very broad theme category I'm rather fond of), so it's more "ooh new shiny!" and much less "oh, dammit", but it's also a less personal and thrilling engagement.

I used to be rather engaged myself. I couldn't wait for OotP to come out, for instance, and it was really thrilling finally having the book in my hands. I don't really feel the same way at all now. I look forward to reading it, and seeing which new clues and questions, and possibly answers it gives us, but it's nowhere near the same eager anticipation I had for book five. I think part of the reason might be because GoF left more of a "cliffhanger-ending", IMO, but it's also that fandom involvement has sort of lowered my expectations.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Heh, boy I'm not touching music analysis, myself

You are very, very wise. It gets marginally easier when you start playing with texted things, but even in the world of opera (my preferred playground) it's fiendishly difficult. I got a real kick the other day out of reading something written by a true-blue hardcore old-style orthodox Marxist--who is also a music theorist specializing in the most abstract and mathematical kind of theory. All the theorists were amused to learn that their activities were a direct reflection of the logic of late capitalism.

fandom involvement has sort of lowered my expectations.

I may be wrong, but what keeps me excited (and with a bit of the genuine ooh!) is that I know there are all of these things I don't know and don't have any predictions for, so at least some things are going to surprise me, and the fandom's overall guessing record the last time around (at least on HPfGU, back when the craziest theorizers were still there) was absolutely abysmal--so I don't think anyone else has gotten it right, either.

I've also had enough times going into something expecting it to suck and having it come out amazingly well (a few opera productions that had no right to work did) that it doesn't really save time anymore to expect the worst and then be pleasantly surprised. I'm expecting to be entertained and questions to be answered, and we'll go from there.

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

The idea of a phantom ending is very interesting.

I can't say, I experienced it very much. The only case that comes to mind is C.S. Lewis "Till We Have Faces" in which the author switches from polytheism to monotheism on the last two pages for not reasons not explained in the text. It is C.S. Lewis, so it's kind of clear why that happens, but I think it doesn't add anything to the Christian allegory going on in the novel, in fact, it kind of detracts from it. But that's not so much a phantom ending, but rather a quibble.

Phantom endings in HP are much more interesting, since at this point the real ending is unknowable to the readers. So every phantom ending can be mistaken at this point for the real ending. I have a phantom ending of HP in my head since I first read Harry's sorting and my reading of the rest of the books strengthened it, rather than weakening it.

There was our hero - who had bullied before, who had been mistaken for weak because of his appearance all of his life, because of false reports from a source of authority (Dudley), when nothing could be further from the truth; who (as we find out later) is destined to fight a madman who simply took his prejudices too far - and there he is and decides that at least 40 people must be unpleasant/evil after looking at them for a few seconds. I think it is exactly this attitude of Harry's what prompts an Ursula Guin to declare HP "mean-spirited", although it is the hypocrisy that's the worst of it, not the mean-spiritedness.

If this kind hypocrisy - "don't judge people by their ancestry, judge them for the house-colours" - continues to the end of the seventh book, then Rowling simply messed up her message. She invalidates her own point about prejudices. And that is not a case for inventing phantom endings, but rather for criticism; criticism that would be totally valid IMO. It wouldn't be such a big point of potential criticism, if Rowling hadn't chosen to condemn her bad guys (Voldemort, the DEs, the Dursleys) on the basis of their prejudices. But as she has, condemning her work for employing such a big double-standard, would be perfectly valid.

So I guess the point is not "how something should be", but how it should be in order to be good or (in case of your Tolkien example) perfect.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's like a phantom limb, except some people start out with arms where others don't.

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

I don't understand your allegory. Could you explain that, please?

[shusu.livejournal.com]

Some people are receptive to certain kinds of phantom endings. Perhaps if a reader has experienced some kind of insult in real life, and they see a character commit the same action... even if other readers don't see what's insulting, that reader will expect some kind of reparation or repercussion for that insult. And often it's not an issue they're aware of -- twinges like a phantom limb.

I had this happen to me recently with a friend. I saw a complete and liberating ending to Spirited Away, and she saw a story that was inherently unfinished and unfair. It affected us both profoundly, just in opposite directions.

Readers won't come to the table with the same experience/knowledge set. Some people will have a limb there, some people wouldn't even miss it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The only time I can really remember feeling like something had a "phantom ending" was this one fic I read where it was a short story and seemed to obviously be leading up to this one thing, so one of the threads in the story wasn't tied up. I guess that's the most basic thing of it--the idea that if you introduce a gun in act 1 it better go off in act 2, etc. Probably more often than we'd think people sort of see something and in their head they have these associations they expect to see addressed somehow.

There was our hero - who had bullied before, who had been mistaken for weak because of his appearance all of his life, because of false reports from a source of authority (Dudley), when nothing could be further from the truth; who (as we find out later) is destined to fight a madman who simply took his prejudices too far - and there he is and decides that at least 40 people must be unpleasant/evil after looking at them for a few seconds. I think it is exactly this attitude of Harry's what prompts an Ursula Guin to declare HP "mean-spirited", although it is the hypocrisy that's the worst of it, not the mean-spiritedness.

See, this is what makes me feel like I'm not insane--and I've always assumed it's the author's intention. It's like the Pensieve scene when Harry comes out furious at his father but says he'd do it to the kid he hates. Often this seems to be taken as saying Harry is "evil" or that he has already become Tom Riddle or something but no, it's more just that this is exactly the challenge the text seems to be laying out. So yes, it's something that I have always felt will be addressed, with the story leading up to it, and the more I read the more things I see that seem like that's what it's talking about. I'd probably be convinced I was completely right if I wasn't in fandom where other people seem to literally be looking at the story in a different way. It's like that drawing where the artist drew either his wife or his mother in law, depending on how you instinctively looked at it.

And yes, I agree, this seems like a valid thing to talk about as criticism, because it's one of those things that seems to be brought up in the text and then not resolved. Perhaps it's just the way I understand the problem isn't the way I'm really supposed to see it. There do seem to be other people who frame the issue very differently. If it doesn't resolve in a way that makes sense to me, I'll probably wind up feeling like it was an unsatisfying story to me, and will be able to describe why.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

So every phantom ending can be mistaken at this point for the real ending.

I think that's the part of Rowling's writing strategy that really hooks people in. While she's not a great elegant prose stylist, and some characters are memorable/filled-out and some are not, she's very good at creating a story that provokes a lot of constructive filling-in on the part of the reader. I tend to consider most of the gaps left as deliberate construction of narrative (although some of them are just plain holes--but they affect the way we read then too). It's a narrative that is extremely interesting to think about as "What effect does it have when I read it straight through, and how does it change when I read earlier things with later knowledge".

(For a little experiment, go back and try to re-read PoA without knowing that Black is innocent, Lupin is a werewolf who probably knows Occlumency, the Order of the Phoenix existed, James was a teenage asshole and that Snape was a Death Eater.)

It is an extremely heavily end-weighted strategy. That will be where much of the ultimate success or failure of the series lies. There are questions we've been asking for five books that I don't think we have enough information to guess about accurately--but any answer will make a lot of sense out of the information given. Hopefully.

And although I disagree on some points, I agree fully that the "judge people by who they are, not by categories" is a place where if she doesn't open it up, if we don't have some exceptions to current categories, that she will be completely open for criticism on wild thematic inconsistency. I'm very curious to see what will happen there.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

(For a little experiment, go back and try to re-read PoA without knowing that Black is innocent, Lupin is a werewolf who probably knows Occlumency, the Order of the Phoenix existed, James was a teenage asshole and that Snape was a Death Eater.)

Heh--I totally thought James being a teenage asshole *was* canon in PoA. I was surprised when I said something about it on FAP before OotP came out and it wasn't more widely thought. I thought Snape was a jerk too; I just thought the hints we got about MWPP in PoA, particularly when they were talking to Snape through the map, foreshadowed...exactly the guys we saw in the Pensieve.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

It beautifully illustrates different kinds of knowledge, though, don't it: it is an entirely different species of animal to have Snape say "Your father was an arrogant )(**&##@", and to see said arrogant (*&^$&^ in action himself.

Show and not tell; isn't that what Rowling is often criticized for not doing adequately? :)

What's still unresolved, of course, is to what degree MWPP/et. al. were teenage assholes, specific actions taken, motivations (I have a fondness for a kind of half-formed Vigilante!James myself), changes in character--all of that good stuff.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes--I mean, when Snape says they're assholes he means something completely different than what the reality was, is my guess. Sometimes what's most interesting is to hear something said by a biased character that's sort of right--even a broken clock is right twice a day, etc.

Similarly, many people seem to have decided that some of Sirius' throwaway disparaging remarks about Snape are lies because Sirius is biased, but just because someone is biased doesn't mean they're always going to give wrong facts. There's a lot of things Sirius has said that made me remember that while he may be be slanting things one way or the other, but there can still be a fact in there somewhere. I believe that Snape did hang around with a gang of Slytherins and if I were Harry I would have pumped Sirius immediately for explanation of his "lapdog" comment. As you said, there's a lot of specific actions, reactions, motivations and changes that are a complete mystery to us. I suspect in the end all the hints we've heard on this subject will lead up to a coherent whole, but I've no idea exactly what it will be yet. I admit it is kind of funny to see fandom happily run from one extreme to the other based on whateve was said last (James was perfect! Oh no! James was the devil and Snape was helpless and picked on!)

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Sometimes what's most interesting is to hear something said by a biased character that's sort of right

There's that, too; what I was thinking of was the theme of knowledge that is hanging over our heads still. What I love is how I (or anyone) can argue that the text hints equally at Snape being trustworthy and untrustworthy. We 'know' he's trustworthy through Dumbledore (Hermione's position), but we don't *know* for ourselves, the basis for Ron's skepticism. [I use that because it's the handiest example, but there are many others. I'd like to think Rowling knows what she's doing, stringing us along like that.]

I admit it is kind of funny to see fandom happily run from one extreme to the other based on whateve was said last

I, ummm, get a lot of kicks out of it. Which makes me a bad person, or something. :)

If you ever have the time and the inclination to masochism, let me again (blah blah blah) pimp the works of Iser, who talks about all of this in dense and impossible language with amazing little insights. They're like Easter eggs hidden in thornbushes. What he gets at so nicely is how texts provoke strong positions, which then run into other bits of text with equally strong and often disjunct positions, and the art of the reader lies in navigating the mess and figuring out the multiple possibilities of what's going on.

Now, back to the last bit of vacation...I always enjoy these discussions, though. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

We 'know' he's trustworthy through Dumbledore (Hermione's position), but we don't *know* for ourselves, the basis for Ron's skepticism. [I use that because it's the handiest example, but there are many others. I'd like to think Rowling knows what she's doing, stringing us along like that.]

Yes, that's a very good point. I was just thinking about that recently, in fact, because I was reading the scene where Ron floats the idea that Harry's dreams in OotP are getting worse because Snape isn't trying to close off his mind but open it up so Voldemort can get in. There's good reason to think Ron is mistaken in that, but still, as that recent post pointed out, Ron is often right about things when you wouldn't think he is, and still can't honestly say why Snape wouldn't be working against Harry. And then following that there are more of those curiously ambiguous moments where it's impossible for us to really understand Snape's reactions.

I, ummm, get a lot of kicks out of it. Which makes me a bad person, or something. :)

I love it except when I'm the one doing the running, I admit.:-)

What he gets at so nicely is how texts provoke strong positions, which then run into other bits of text with equally strong and often disjunct positions, and the art of the reader lies in navigating the mess and figuring out the multiple possibilities of what's going on.

That does sound exactly like what seems to be going on in the text most of the time. Where does one find Iser's works?

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

more of those curiously ambiguous moments where it's impossible for us to really understand Snape's reactions.

Right now, I don't trust Snape. I trust in getting enough information to be able to decide whether he really is trustworthy or not (or under what conditions he is), but as of right now, I'm more with Ron myself. Snape is, at minimum, either extremely contrary to the point of shooting himself in the foot or profoundly insincere, and neither is exactly a positive.

Where does one find Iser's works?

The book we're reading which contains the theory is Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory Of Aesthetic Response. What belongs with it and I don't have but wish I did is The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. The first is very theoretical, the second is the theory in action with lots of examples. Both are in print, and were published in the late 70's--he's certainly been active since (I saw him give a talk a few weeks ago), but I don't know any of his more recent works yet. This is enough to keep one busy...

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

And just to add, which you might find amusing, we're reading this stuff not with an eye towards discussing texts at all, but trying to get at different ways of understanding music, either with or without texts. In some ways the listener becomes even more important, which opens up a very interesting argument; to what degree can music be 'understood' without an understanding of how its syntax functioned at that point in time. Is it a legitimate enterprise to listen to 16th century polyphony with radically different 18th century tonal frameworks in ear? Does music even mean anything to begin with? Fun questions, actually.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

It's pointless, therefore, to say that any author should have written *our* story instead of his or her own.

Yes, I saw the topic teratologist posted in (I really should just delete that place from my list, I almost never read anything I want to see there...) and I also liked bunny's/bunney's (?) point (and chief's, too, OT) which was that people in this particular case appeared uncomfortable with inconsistency in a message, rather than expecting the message to say something they agree with.
Like how, in HP, people commenting seemed to be saying 'Why do others expect a feminist/compassionate/non-prejudiced approach towards X group resolution when that's not what the series is about, and they're just forcing their own PC standards on the books'.
Bunny pointed out that what she personally found difficult was that these values seem to be what Rowling is promoting herself, so it's not a question of 'Her standards don't match my own', it's a question of 'Is she fulfilling the values/ethics that she's trying to?'
So if the books give across say, a politically conservative ethos, fine - we're all big boys and girls (on the Internet anyway, hopefully!) and can agree or disagree with that personally without letting it affect our overall impression. But if they appear to be conveying both, with the author saying that she's only trying for one, there appears to be a problem, and it isn't 'OMG, I think JKR should be a leftie/Tory and she isn't!' it's that she doesn't appear to be aware of her own works' hypocrisy.
(I think no_remorse expressed this better!)
And of course, with an unfinished fandom we can afford to give authors the benefit of the doubt and say they're entirely aware and have everything in hand, and yet here are some things which would make me doubt that; which seems to be how the OP came about.

Me, I've never seen what's the harm in having 'dealbreakers' or whatever in a fandom.
It seems to be viewed as incredibly wanky to have the opinion that if things don't work out in a way you'd want them to, you won't enjoy the finished product so much; but then, how else would people feel?
Look how many people hate the ending of LW because they wanted Jo/Laurie to get together. It's a basic shipping issue, and yet it's a hugely popular opinion and people can write articulately on why they feel it damages the entire story. (Me, I liked Amy/Laurie, personally...*ducks*)
No-one appears to be saying 'OMG, JKR should write that Sirius comes back to life, and Harry and Ginny get married, and Draco gets smacked by the Knight Bus and if she doesn't, someone should make her!' There's no free speech being infringed.
What some (rare) people do appear willing to do is vote with their feet, and say 'If events don't come to the conclusion I want, I won't read any more' and while they're probably making reading anything difficult with that attitude, it's their basic right.
It's like if someone saw LOTR1 and thought it chewed - you don't owe PJ anything, least of all a promise to see the next two.
Not to mention, this is an issue that seems to come up in this fandom more than any other - I don't see people who watched the latter SWs or something being told 'OMG, you should love them every bit as much as the others, because it's George Lucas' story, not yours!' Good. Glad he enjoys it, but how much he enjoys it, or feels that it's true to the originals is not really an issue to an audience, much like authorial intent once a project is complete. (Me, I don't care for SWs or LOTR at all. Different strokes!)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point about this series especially, since I do always think it's odd when people complain that the books shouldn't be PC when in some ways they are admittedly so even in the text. That of course doesn't mean that the author has to address every issue as any one person sees fit, or if they're doing animal rights they have to also do transgender rights or whatever. And sometimes an author just isn't seeing something the same way--I remember Neil Gaiman talking about this one character in The Sandman and how he was taken very differently than was intended. The character was a pre-op transsexual, and there's a story where his nightmare is shown to be getting surgery, and also in that story they do a spell and according to Thessaly the witch he can't walk the moon's road because she insists on regular women. This was taken to be Neil Gaiman saying something about how transsexuals don't really want to lose their dicks and that they weren't "real women" if they did. But really that hadn't occurred to him--the character was just literally phobic about surgery and the moon was not representing his own opinions.

But there's plenty in HP that is obviously supposed to parallel attitudes in the real world. The Dursley chapters seem to very much lay out the kind of person/attitudes that make one Muggle-ish, so if someone is then looking for them throughout the story they can't really be said to be entirely bringing it themselves. It's frustrating, I guess, whenever somebody seems to have their cake and eat it too, like if someone wants to say how the messages of tolerance and anti-bigotry are so important to the book shouldn't we be looking at how it's handled, using our own understanding of the topic too? It's like when people get very offended that allegedly there are all these fans who think the Weasleys are Death Eaters because they're just as bad, but I don't think I've ever seen that. In fact the point is kind of the opposite, that bigotry is not just one generic thing that makes every bigot the same. It's just let's look at these characters attitudes, what are they doing? How do they treat different people? Things like that. None of them have to literally represent the author's views at this very moment.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

At the moment I seem to be in the HP-fandom, yet I've never been a fan of the books in terms of, you know, really liking them. But there was stuff in them I wanted to talk about with people, so I wandered onto the Internet and found other people who liked talking about them too, with me. It seems silly to say I'm not in the fandom, exactly, even if I got into it in a strange way.

That's exactly how I feel about this series, and fandom. *is relieved not to feel the only one!*

Me, I've never been much for squeeing. Which is not to say I look down on it. It's just not something I get into. I get into analyzing stuff in...

No, I find squeeing over something much more...personal? So if a book or movie made me happy, I maybe wouldn't be able to explain why and discussion would be fairly limited for me: I like it. How many times can you go over that?! ;)

I was working myself into knots trying to work out the hidden meanings of Grease 2.

Ha! Any conclusions? I love analyzing movies, and it annoys all my friends and family who keep telling me to stop 'over-thinking' and 'nitpicking'.
(And that...is Johnny Nogarelli's final word!)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Strangely, I can't now even remember what was driving me crazy about Grease 2. I remember being very disturbed in Halloween V at the way this one girl's friends forgot about her so completely that she was murdered and we never heard any response to it--we don't even know if the body was found!

I do think--and I think Elkins has said this--that there's just something very specific that makes you need to go to fandom and it's not always just loving the thing. I never felt any need to discuss LOTR with anyone until the movies came out. There's lots of books I've loved that I didn't need to talk about--in fact, it seems like some kinds of things are suited to making for a vibrant fandom when others aren't, and quality isn't the deciding factor.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I read the rant you refer to. uhm, yeah. that's it, really. wow.

... whenever someone complains about over-analysis these days I translate it to the more honest "dumb your discussion down" version and feel a lot better afterwards in a sort of perverse way.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's so odd. Well, I remember one time there was this person in XF fandom who was really upset by Season 8 because people were so negative. There was one group who snottily criticized those of us they called the "Eight Haters" or the "Discontents," but they were incapable of having a discussion about the series that didn't involve talking about how awful we were for criticizing it--I think because Season 8 just really didn't have anything in it to sustain a good, positive conversation.

Anyway, this one person (not in that group) seemed genuinely upset because it was making her feel badly and she didn't like a lot of analysis because it seemed to hurt the thing. That seemed to be part of that rant...really not that analysis was bad but that it was coming to conclusions one didn't like. Or something.