Waiting for (the Plumber)

[handful_ofdust]

Man, I am so ready to not have this fucking cold anymore. Sooooo ready. As I sit here all congested, eyes still gummy from seven o'fucking clock A.M., coughing and feeling it rip right down my throat to my esophagus...

So: The trailer for X-Men: First Class just dropped, and it looks promising, but naturally, all this is prompting is a whole lot of "oh well, but I don't trust the Powers That Be anymore because X3 was so scarring, so I don't want to get too invested..." And OTOH, we have people rushing to get caught up on A Game of Thrones before the miniseries starts, thus cueing a whole lot of "oh my GOD, WTF, how can George R.R. Martin be so meeeeeeean!!!!!" Which...man, this really is a triggery goddamn world we live in these days, isn't it? Full of very easily triggered people. I kind of wonder how some of them get out of bed in the morning, frankly.

I don't know about you, but when I pick up a book, I want the author to shock and awe me. To make me care about the characters, then break my heart and run me through the ringer--so long, of course, as they stay true to their own internal logic. Which is why I never think of Game of Thrones as ending on a world-wrecking note, because [spoiler] is so closely followed by [other spoiler]--a twist that elevates through horror, opening up the playing-field once again in a way that changes the world forever. You can see [spoiler] as a sad story, yet not a new one--it's simply human badness, human error, human politicking and bastardry brought to fruition, the triumph of demon practicality over honor and hope. But [other spoiler] is something else entirely, the transformation of a person from one sort of archetype to a completely different one, the karma that everyone responsible for [spoiler] has sown and is now doomed to reap. It's fuckin' opera, man: Someone has to die.

But maybe that's what we're talking about, in the end...that fanfictioneer mindset which wants things static and infinitely reproducible, for nothing to ever grow or change. What amazes me is that they're so intensely conservative--that for people who trumpet the rise of Remix Culture, they often seem incapable of filtering out what they don't like in a narrative, picking and choosing and spackling it back together in a more palatable form. These are the same people who complain about 3:10 to Yuma's ending, and expect sympathy: Oh my God, things didn't go the way I hoped they would! No, they went the way you knew they were likely to, instead, and you see that as a betrayal--so much so, it makes you apparently so bitter you don't want to play anymore. Which is...disappointing, to say the least.

I guess, in the end, I really am like Chess Pargeter, in that I not only expect things to hurt, but firmly believe that that's the sort of contrast which makes the pleasure pop all the better. That that's what makes it good. Or maybe, as Alex Dunkleman tells Bug in My Soul to Take, you have to be a condor and eat death for breakfast, because the trick is to keep on telling them thanks a lot, that felt fucking great, even when it doesn't. Especially when it doesn't.

I mean, really: why would you ever be content to just give your power away like that? No one's got a gun to your head; no one's making you do anything. They're giving you a gift, raw clay with prompts attached, and you're acting like you've been slapped. You're the subversive, revolutionary one here, right? So nut up, or shut up.

Comments

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Great post. I haven't read GRRM but I hope people aren't being triggered by... cruelty? I'm not sure that's possible? Anyway, that's why you don't read books because you want to watch the TV show.

You know, I understand the fanfictioneers' perspective because I was there myself once upon a time - I was so pissed that things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to for my favorite characters (or rather, LOL, that I felt they were being portrayed unfairly by their own creator - in my defense, I was 12). But you're absolutely right about the way to get through that, because that was a huge driver in getting me to write the novel I'm writing now. Partly because hey, this is an experience I can more or less control.

Also, turns out the movie's called My Soul to Take, and we've been using the other line of the prayer...

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Ha! That's hilarious, about My Soul...; I've fixed it now. I think maybe I was conflating it in my head with the book by Tannarive Due, though of course, using the "take" line makes so much more sense for a slasher movie.

BTW, did you notice that in the movie, the sampler Bug had on his wall got the last line wrong? It says something like: "If I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord to mend my ways."

At any rate--glad you liked the post. I know I rag on these ladies pretty hard these days, but that comes from also having been one of them. And yeah, if the transformative aspects of fanfiction are what makes it cool, then how can you ever feel deluded or betrayed by the original canon? But this is where we drop straight into this strange middle ground where people want to pretend that they're not actually making something new, because if they were doing that, then they'd be allying themselves with the stinky creators! So they need to think that what they're doing is "fixing" "mistakes" said stinky creators have made with their own narratives. Because readers always understand stories better than writers, right? It's sort of demented.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

LOL, no, didn't notice that. Maybe Bug's aunt was a bit of a revisionist. I mean, literally, she pretty much was.

That was what I used FF for, in the short time that I wrote it - making myself feel better about what happened in the original canon. But eventually I was like, I can't deny that that's what happens in the original, so I better just make my own thing, because this is ridiculous/unhelpful. Then a few years later, in HS, I went back to the original canon after avoiding it strenuously and sort of forced myself to look at the things that hurt - and it was very, very eye-opening and enlightening. At this point the characters that grew out of other people's characters are my own; I don't think anyone would recognize them. But really, all of this ceases to be about your (the reader's) relationship with the creator, IMO - it's about your relationship with your own thoughts, and the concepts presented to you.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think the rise of RPS or RPF (Real People Slash or Fic) has prioritized or personalized the consumer/creator "relationship" in a way that I simply didn't grow up expecting. People make themselves available on the 'Net, you subscribe to their tweets and shit, you can ask them questions and get answers, and suddenly you think you know/own them. You think your personal reaction to their product means the two of you are joined at the brain and soul in some vaguely creepy way. And then they betraaaaaaay you! Because yes, that's pretty much what you're fucking asking for, right there, when you get all tinfoil-hatted like that.

The truth, which we both know, is that creator and consumer have no relationship whatsoever. Just as the creator has no control over what the consumer "does with" their product post-release, the consumer has no control over the fact that the creator can go merrily on crating, without (horrors!) factoring them into the equation at all. And the sooner people freakin' accept this bunch of facts, the happier everybody's going to be.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh God, RPF. And yeah. Authors that you read =/= your friends writing fanfic for you. I didn't grow up expecting that either - I was too involved with the characters to think about the creator, usually to the point that I forgot there really was a creator - as soon as I remember the creator, I think, "okay, this is fiction, someone invented this, none of these people are real, get a damn grip on yourself." Which indicates I was sliding toward The Crazy, for sure, but at least it wasn't a taking-it-out-on-other-people Crazy. I don't think that level of emotional involvement would even be possible if I was buddy-buddy with the creator. I don't know though; I really should get around to reading your novels.

Totally agree on the second paragraph.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I'd love you to read my novels! Though they might not be your cup of tea at all, considering your reaction to True Grit... But then again, they do have a lot of black magic. And sodomy.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Aw, there are some Western things I like! I like Cormac McCarthy, haha. In any case, I won't know until I try. Sodomy = sure way to my heart.

[baggyeyes]

Oooh! I recommend Kissing Carrion! Awesomely creey, and strange role-playing in it as well. Of a sort, anyway.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I agree with you that that can be really problematic, but I think the problematic thing is the denial rather than the fixing-problems aspect? Like, for example, I desperately love The Dark is Rising books, and I am eternally grateful to Susan Cooper for having written the things, and if I were ever to write fanfic about them it would be because there is this aspect of Silver on the Tree that I think is really fucking stupid and poorly thought out and out of character for everybody. She had every right to do it and it's canon, is the thing. I feel that as a reader I have every right to think it's stupid and rewrite it in my head or elsewhere as much as I like, as long as I don't forget that, or that my version is critique and not what she had in mind, because if I were going to actually try to fix it in the actual text I'd need to be reading it in manuscript and arguing with her pre-publication.

I think it's perfectly valid to feel betrayed by a canon, when it's been going along brilliantly and then something happens that is just like, what the fuck happened to the writer's brain. Because writers do fuck up, and there's a difference between that and the writer making a decision the reader doesn't like. Things like, text has been having great women and then suddenly for no identifiable reason they all have no agency and wind up in various refrigerators, that feels betraying. (Whether it really is or not is another question entirely.) But denying that it happened in canon, which is denying the writer's right to make these decisions, that I think is where the crazy happens.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yes, I actually agree with you on both platforms. Where you and the creator differ is an interesting interstice, because often (if you too are creative) it's the sparking-off point for something new, even potentially equally valid, in which you can address these issues. There's a case to be made for fanfiction as critique, so long as you don't expect the creator to A) accept your revisions and copy them back into their text or B) adjust themselves accordingly, next time 'round. I would've liked to have seen what C.S. Lewis thought of that Gaiman story, for example--or some of Mary Borsellino's more wrenching what-if-Jadis-won stuff--but that's not possible; I'd like to see what Gaiman thought of some of the revisionings of his own work I've come across. Phillip Pullman probably doesn't care, not least because every piece of fic I've seen set in his world tends to agree with him rather than disagree.

And yeah, I think it's valid to feel betrayed by canon if you genuinely think you could argue it point by point with the author: What about this dangling thread? Why does this characterization suddenly seem to change in order to bring about a plot-point which could have been done another, less annoying way? Where we get into trouble, though, is when the sense of "betrayal" becomes toxic. I've literally seen people accuse an author of intentionally fishing them in and playing them along just so they can kick them in the figurative crotch, and...um, no. While I think we all have our little ways, I don't believe anybody does that pre-meditatively; by accident, possibly. By not thinking out all the potential combinations of people who might be reading and how they might react (ie, What do you mean, ladies who've been raped might not want to read about rape? What do you mean, non-default people might not want a non-default villain to be their only representation?). And even if they do, they sure as hell aren't thinking of you, in particular, when they do it!

For me, it always comes back to a fellow reviewer I knew who objected to a scene in Con Air that seemed to put a cild in jeopardy, not because she found it gross and manipulative per se, but because it reminded her of the fact that her own daughter had died of leukemia. How is anyone writing a screenplay (especially an action-movie screenplay) supposed to do that math, exactly? They aren't, any more than the author of Hope Floats knew I, personally, was a child of divorce and would find a particular scene in which a girl runs screaming after her father's car triggery. At points like these, you need to step away from the material, re-group, slap on filters, and just do what you came here to do: Assess the material for what it is, no more, no less. Not what you want it to be. Not what it evokes in you. Not what it was never meant to be.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Nothing has made me want to check out those dauntingly huge books as much as your third paragraph. Lots of things have piqued my curiosity, but

Which is why I never think of Game of Thrones as ending on a world-wrecking note, because [spoiler] is so closely followed by [other spoiler]--a twist that elevates through horror, opening up the playing-field once again in a way that changes the world forever. You can see [spoiler] as a sad story, yet not a new one--it's simply human badness, human error, human politicking and bastardry brought to fruition, the triumph of demon practicality over honor and hope.

--now that I could get into.

Except the books are too huge. And I have reader's block for anything beyond short stories, it seems. As you know. *sigh*

I will get over it I will get over it I will get over it....

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

In a way, I think that the miniseries is going to bridge the gap for a lot of people, in that it comes with the "same" characters and plot, but without a billion words' worth of prose attached. I also think A Song of Ice and Fire generally would've made a better graphic novel series in a lot of ways, because that would've reduced the narrative to bite-sized chunks. But then you have to wait for the art, so...tomato, toMAHto, in terms of time-lag.

One way or the other, I admire these books immensely, and I trust in their creator's sensibility. Which is more than almost anyone else seems to do, these days.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Daniel Abraham is writing a graphic novel adaptation, actually, check his blog for details. I may well be able to read that-- I love Martin, but something about the way he thinks makes him incredibly difficult for me to read, so whereas I can usually read a book in maybe two hours Dying of the Light took me nearly ten and it's like two hundred pages long. I am hoping that after there is a graphic novel and a miniseries I will know what happens in the book well enough to summon the energy to read it.

[sovay]

I also think A Song of Ice and Fire generally would've made a better graphic novel series in a lot of ways, because that would've reduced the narrative to bite-sized chunks.

And solved the problem where George R.R. Martin has a terrific prose style except when he's writing Westeros.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I've really loved his "Dunk and Egg" supplemental material--the Hedge Knight graphic novels. Even more so in retrospect, when I learned that Ser Duncan the Tall might have been an ancestor of Brienne of Tairth.

[baggyeyes]

I'm guilty. There's somebody I should have killed, twice, but didn't, in my writing.

My problem with 3:10's ending was it didn't feel done. But, eh, it was.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

But you're perfectly free to keep writing AUs, is what I'm saying. What I don't understand is the people who resent that the ending of the source material isn't the ending they would have given it, to such an extent that they can't even write "fixit" AUs because said ending has somehow retroactively poisoned the well for them by being triggery and mean. That's not you. That's the very opposite of you, man!;)

[baggyeyes]

Yeah, I get it.

I keep writing and then erasing the rest of my comment. I haven't read their comments, so I can't justify saying 'quitcher bitchin', or 'stop whining'. (To them, not you)

I guess I'm just grouchy these days.


Edited to clarify.