No Ideas: Must Be Monday

[handful_ofdust]

Well, if nothing else, I finally finished the Book of Tongues Interstitial post I've been working on for Music at Midnight, this time about...actual music, ie the stuff I was listening to when I wrote the book. You can find it here (http://musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.com/2010/04/book-of-tongues-interstitial-music.html). Enjoy!

Meanwhile, I've done all the chores, an am marking time until Steve arrives with the Metropass. My brain, she refuses to function in terms of Chapter Four wordage; whatever, dude. It'll happen.

Oh yeah: And this idea of "Protagonist Privilege", which is once more making the rounds here (http://londonkds.dreamwidth.org/378900.html?format=light), continues to be a huge ball of WTF. So...main characters are "world-warping", always shifting things in their own favor, and you want more/equal time for minor characters whose POVs the narrative was not originally designed to be told from; guess you better get writing, then! This would be where fanfiction comes in, I would think, as a concept. But that doesn't mean you get to shit on the narrative as it exists because it's not giving you more about the person you wish was the protagonist, yet isn't.

Watching "The Eleventh Hour", for example--intro episode for Doctor Who Number Eleven--I'm personally perfectly capable of both appreciating Eleven's old/new qualities for themselves (he already has a heaping pile of truly Four-like traits, which I'm very happy about, since Baker remains my Doctor of choice) and wondering why it was so completely beyond the realm of possibility to rejigger the Doctor as female...to have a woman, for once, who gets to stand there saying: "Yes, I'm the Doctor. Basically, run." Let alone a nerdy or attractive dude who's standing behind her, looking at her bum as she changes with that vaguely interested yet more ruminative "hey, she was really cute even when I was a little kid--but it occurs to me that she's like a massively old lady from another planet in a geeky young lady's body, and she also sort of scares me too" look in his eyes.

Yet obviously, if I want this to happen, I'm going to have to do it myself; though the Moff may not want to actually screw the Doctor, he isn't going to screw with him, either. Such is life. Next?

"Protagonist Privilege"! Jesus God, please.

Comments

[starvinbohemian.livejournal.com]

I... don't understand? I mean, yes, it's annoying when protagonists are less appealing than their sidekicks and it's really annoying when there's moral dissonance going on between the reader and the protagonist.

But that's... where fan fic comes in? The meta is presented as if it's part of the larger "ism" debate, but it's... not. I mean, it can't be, right? O.o *Scratches head*

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

More of the not-so-gradual "ism"-ing of every damn thing, to my mind. People want it all to be utterly interactive, and it's not: Bawww! I sort of wish I could be more diplomatic about it, but...oh, wait. No I don't.;)

[starvinbohemian.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't understand how this particular issue could be more interactive.

I mean, authors could completely do away with main characters and divide all the narrative development equally among an ensemble cast. Which they could and sometimes do, but that would mean the loss of the Chosen One narrative, bildungsromans, coming-of-age stories, etc. And why? No matter what an author does, s/he can't control which characters an individual reader is going to become invested in, so why shouldn't they write what they want?

I feel like I'm missing something here. Like, the real argument is actually about the moral dissonance that arises when an author allows their protagonist too much moral leeway while not affording it to other characters in the same universe?

[starvinbohemian.livejournal.com]

Well, that argument would make more sense than what I read as a lot of complaining about not liking certain main characters because minor characters get less attention in the narrative-- hence, being minor characters.

See, I understand the impulse to reach out to "offending" authors when they write things that are blatantly racist/offensive because there's good intention there and the faith that if only the author could be informed of why they're actually part of the problem they could see the error of their ways and reform. I do. But the internet has caused too much erosion of the boundary between fan and participant, resulting in that pesky entitlement, and the original good intention is lost.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

But the internet has caused too much erosion of the boundary between fan and participant, resulting in that pesky entitlement, and the original good intention is lost.

Best way I've seen it phrased thus far.;)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I think that actually is the real argument/issue here. But when I say "interactive", I guess I mean this increasing apparent idea that if you only call the creator out long enough and hard enough in public for Doin It Rong (IYNSHO), they'll be somehow forced to start doing what you want rather than what they want. And pretty soon there will be no Chosen One narratives, because you personally (and maybe all your friends) have decided they're innately discriminatory against all people who can't identify with the heros/heroines these dumb-ass creators have stupidly invested work in and centralized their narratives around, then unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Tinfoil, meet hat.