(no subject)
Here's something about me: I like meta. I like meta about meta. In fact, the further iteration of meta you get from the real thing, the more I like it. My favorite program on NPR is "On The Media": first there are real events, and then there is media reporting on real events, and then there is media reporting on the media; that's what "On The Media" is. If there was media that reported on the media whose reporting on the media--if there was a show called "On 'On The Media'", I would like it even better than "On The Media".
You can see how this is a problem. I have trouble with the real world. First of all, I'm bad at it, but mostly it's just sort of hard to care about it if I can talk about it, especially if I can talk about talking about it, or talk about talking about talking about it; again, you see my problem.
Recently I wrote a fic called The Chuck Writes Story. It was about SPN, but not really. It was about being about SPN, about SPN fandom, but also about meta of SPN fandom, and meta about meta, and I honestly don't know what. The trouble with this fic was that someone had to be writing it, so I made![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lettered write it; she was there, she had style, she had flair--hell, I was there. I was already writing it, so I might as well, you know, write the story in the story, too.
The problem is that it's much easier to say things aslettered than it is to say, be a real person. I'm not saying that it's easier to live my life online that to live for reals; that's not what I'm saying at all; this is not a cry for help. I'm just saying it's easier for me to convey how I feel in the narrative form than it ever has been in real life.
Here's the thing: I'm not actually good at conveying my opinions in narrative form, and neither are Ayn Rand or Victor Hugo; I'm just more comfortable that way. Rand has been accused of inventing totally flimsy narratives merely to sell her political points; yes, it's true, I completely agree. I also agree with all of you gnashing your teeth and saying, She's crazy; yes, yes, I agree--I find her politics very interesting, but generally untenable, not to imagine somewhat naive and ridiculous. However, Hugo, whose philosophies--I think many of us would agree--tend to be generally opposed (charity! The human heart! Forgiveness! Love of fellow man! Right, so he wasn't a Communism, but Romanticism is pretty much diametrically opposed to Objectivism, isn't it?) also invented flimsy narratives merely to sell his ideas.
Before you say, "Wait, wait wait, those stories are great!" let me say that yes, they are great, and before you say, "Wait, wait wait, he wasn't in it for the fame/fortune/power/politics, etc" let me say, yes, and Rand was totally in it for the politics; it's true. But Hugo still totally wants you to believe in the Beauty of the Common Man and the Holiness of Charity; he does, and he stops for fifty pages at a time to tell you so, and lecture, just like Ayn Rand. Rand actually really admired Hugo, for the way his story-telling delivered his personal beliefs. Neither of them never made any bones at all about using their narratives for vehicles of idea-sharing/preaching.
That's sort of the way I am, even though I don't necessarily want to be; I sort of can't help stopping and preaching in the middle of stories I really care about. If I get a good reader to go over it, such as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stultiloquentia, she'll help me tone it down. But I am more comfortable sharing what I think that way than this way. For one thing, I'm already bored of this post. I'm pretty sure I'll delete it. Even in spite of that fabulous cut tag I thought up!
So anyway, I'm trying to say it's easier for me to stop and preach in the middle of a story, rather than just in a post on a journal, or especially in person. Mostly, it's easier because I feel it is more interesting. I am not interested in reading Ayn Rand's political tracts at all, but nor am I interested in Victor Hugo's; I'm still terribly interested in both of their novels. And I am reluctant to speak unless to say something to impress the whole room, so it is imperative that I am interesting. I hate not being listened to. I hate not being read. I hate not being talked to. I hate it when people don't comment (hello,chuck_writes; do we have something in common?), even though I rarely comment at all: this is what The Chuck Writes Story was about, and I could say it all there because it wasn't really me--or was it? It was, except so much more exaggerated, that I could feel better about it.
(That's the other thing about saying things in narrative form: no one can blame you! If Ayn Rand hadn't been crazy, she could wash her hands of Objectivism at any time. Even if we all might have guessed that she probably was lying, she could have still said that she didn't believe what Howard Roarke, Dagny Taggart, John Galt believed. Ann Rice can never, ever go back and say she didn't say, "You're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective", because the internets tell us so. But if she had only written fic of her saying that, we would never know the truth, even as flimsy as it all is.)
So, since writing The Chuck Writes Story--here's the interesting part, guys--all I've wanted to do is uselettered as a narrative device. The thing is, I could be writing The Chuck Writes Story right now and you wouldn't know it; this could be part of it. This whole journal is part of it, and here's a part of The Chuck Writes Story I took out because it was preachy: this whole journal is a story I've told you.
Sometimes I wonder if I've developed this character enough. Should I flesh her out more? (Does it make me look fat?)
Here's the thing (the real thing, that other thing was just another thing): if I was role-playing myself, or role-playing fandom, or oh! Role-playing a role-player role-playing fandom, I'd feel a lot more comfortable. I would just be telling stories upon stories upon stories. What ifwatsonian wrote posts about fandom neuroses, and lettered linked to them, and what if dean_lives did a poll about--seeing how SPN actually came true, in dean_lives's universe--whether you would want your fandom to come true; there could be a discussion on the nature of reality afterwards; I had this conversation with someone who commented on The Chuck Writes Story, but I can't just do a post about it. I need to do a story about a post about it, and--and my biggest fear is no one will read it, and everyone would just think that I've gone off the deep end.
Iflettered goes off the deep end, it's not really the same as myself doing it, but it would look like I did it. See, this post here looks like lettered has gone off the deep end, but I haven't, really.
Mostly, I feel like I have a minor meltdown whenever I post a fic, because just like Chuck, and so many people, I have fandom neurosis. The meltdown about The Chuck Writes Story, however, is lasting much longer, and that's--well, terribly amusing and ironic, really, since The Chuck Writes Story is about fandom neurosis, and I'm being neurotic over the fic itself, etc. And the truth is, I'd like to post about that, but the idea of posting about being neurotic over something that's about being neurotic is making my head spin, so instead I'm posting about being neurotic over posting something about being neurotic about something that's about being neurotic, and I feel much better.
Possibly I like meta about meta about meta, because it mostly only makes sense in my own head. I can pretend I am very clever, really, instead of admitting that most of what I think and feel doesn't make actual sense in a world that is real. That sounds so worrisome, when I put it that way, but if it was in a story, you wouldn't be worried at all.
Even Mr. Darcy couldn't match that cut tag.
You can see how this is a problem. I have trouble with the real world. First of all, I'm bad at it, but mostly it's just sort of hard to care about it if I can talk about it, especially if I can talk about talking about it, or talk about talking about talking about it; again, you see my problem.
Recently I wrote a fic called The Chuck Writes Story. It was about SPN, but not really. It was about being about SPN, about SPN fandom, but also about meta of SPN fandom, and meta about meta, and I honestly don't know what. The trouble with this fic was that someone had to be writing it, so I made
lettered write it; she was there, she had style, she had flair--hell, I was there. I was already writing it, so I might as well, you know, write the story in the story, too.The problem is that it's much easier to say things as
lettered than it is to say, be a real person. I'm not saying that it's easier to live my life online that to live for reals; that's not what I'm saying at all; this is not a cry for help. I'm just saying it's easier for me to convey how I feel in the narrative form than it ever has been in real life.Here's the thing: I'm not actually good at conveying my opinions in narrative form, and neither are Ayn Rand or Victor Hugo; I'm just more comfortable that way. Rand has been accused of inventing totally flimsy narratives merely to sell her political points; yes, it's true, I completely agree. I also agree with all of you gnashing your teeth and saying, She's crazy; yes, yes, I agree--I find her politics very interesting, but generally untenable, not to imagine somewhat naive and ridiculous. However, Hugo, whose philosophies--I think many of us would agree--tend to be generally opposed (charity! The human heart! Forgiveness! Love of fellow man! Right, so he wasn't a Communism, but Romanticism is pretty much diametrically opposed to Objectivism, isn't it?) also invented flimsy narratives merely to sell his ideas.
Before you say, "Wait, wait wait, those stories are great!" let me say that yes, they are great, and before you say, "Wait, wait wait, he wasn't in it for the fame/fortune/power/politics, etc" let me say, yes, and Rand was totally in it for the politics; it's true. But Hugo still totally wants you to believe in the Beauty of the Common Man and the Holiness of Charity; he does, and he stops for fifty pages at a time to tell you so, and lecture, just like Ayn Rand. Rand actually really admired Hugo, for the way his story-telling delivered his personal beliefs. Neither of them never made any bones at all about using their narratives for vehicles of idea-sharing/preaching.
That's sort of the way I am, even though I don't necessarily want to be; I sort of can't help stopping and preaching in the middle of stories I really care about. If I get a good reader to go over it, such as
stultiloquentia, she'll help me tone it down. But I am more comfortable sharing what I think that way than this way. For one thing, I'm already bored of this post. I'm pretty sure I'll delete it. Even in spite of that fabulous cut tag I thought up!So anyway, I'm trying to say it's easier for me to stop and preach in the middle of a story, rather than just in a post on a journal, or especially in person. Mostly, it's easier because I feel it is more interesting. I am not interested in reading Ayn Rand's political tracts at all, but nor am I interested in Victor Hugo's; I'm still terribly interested in both of their novels. And I am reluctant to speak unless to say something to impress the whole room, so it is imperative that I am interesting. I hate not being listened to. I hate not being read. I hate not being talked to. I hate it when people don't comment (hello,
chuck_writes; do we have something in common?), even though I rarely comment at all: this is what The Chuck Writes Story was about, and I could say it all there because it wasn't really me--or was it? It was, except so much more exaggerated, that I could feel better about it.(That's the other thing about saying things in narrative form: no one can blame you! If Ayn Rand hadn't been crazy, she could wash her hands of Objectivism at any time. Even if we all might have guessed that she probably was lying, she could have still said that she didn't believe what Howard Roarke, Dagny Taggart, John Galt believed. Ann Rice can never, ever go back and say she didn't say, "You're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective", because the internets tell us so. But if she had only written fic of her saying that, we would never know the truth, even as flimsy as it all is.)
So, since writing The Chuck Writes Story--here's the interesting part, guys--all I've wanted to do is use
lettered as a narrative device. The thing is, I could be writing The Chuck Writes Story right now and you wouldn't know it; this could be part of it. This whole journal is part of it, and here's a part of The Chuck Writes Story I took out because it was preachy: this whole journal is a story I've told you.Sometimes I wonder if I've developed this character enough. Should I flesh her out more? (Does it make me look fat?)
Here's the thing (the real thing, that other thing was just another thing): if I was role-playing myself, or role-playing fandom, or oh! Role-playing a role-player role-playing fandom, I'd feel a lot more comfortable. I would just be telling stories upon stories upon stories. What if
watsonian wrote posts about fandom neuroses, and lettered linked to them, and what if dean_lives did a poll about--seeing how SPN actually came true, in dean_lives's universe--whether you would want your fandom to come true; there could be a discussion on the nature of reality afterwards; I had this conversation with someone who commented on The Chuck Writes Story, but I can't just do a post about it. I need to do a story about a post about it, and--and my biggest fear is no one will read it, and everyone would just think that I've gone off the deep end.If
lettered goes off the deep end, it's not really the same as myself doing it, but it would look like I did it. See, this post here looks like lettered has gone off the deep end, but I haven't, really. Mostly, I feel like I have a minor meltdown whenever I post a fic, because just like Chuck, and so many people, I have fandom neurosis. The meltdown about The Chuck Writes Story, however, is lasting much longer, and that's--well, terribly amusing and ironic, really, since The Chuck Writes Story is about fandom neurosis, and I'm being neurotic over the fic itself, etc. And the truth is, I'd like to post about that, but the idea of posting about being neurotic over something that's about being neurotic is making my head spin, so instead I'm posting about being neurotic over posting something about being neurotic about something that's about being neurotic, and I feel much better.
Possibly I like meta about meta about meta, because it mostly only makes sense in my own head. I can pretend I am very clever, really, instead of admitting that most of what I think and feel doesn't make actual sense in a world that is real. That sounds so worrisome, when I put it that way, but if it was in a story, you wouldn't be worried at all.
Even Mr. Darcy couldn't match that cut tag.
no subject
Exactly! You know what, this is so interesting, because I'm a regular writer for the Hooded Utilitarian now, and . . . I find I can't really write articles. Sometimes I do write fannish meta essays, but . . . in the end, if I really want to say something, I generally write fic about it, because I find stories memorable and also . . . well, sort of inarguable in a way that an essay is not. It's not that I don't want people to debate with me. Maybe it's that it's easy to read a story as someone's opinion, or someone's POV; it doesn't tell you how things are, but rather how things could be, or how we could see them. And that's what I hated about academia, too; when you wrote essays about literature you were supposed to say, "this is what it is" rather than "this is what I thought". When I read a genderswap fic by you, I can see not, "You're doing it wrong!" but rather, "I do it this way" and . . . it's such a gentler and easier way for me to respond and self-analyze.
I want to write about girls in reboots for HU, and I was thinking about doing that thing about BBC's Sherlock as a girl, but I just don't know how to make it work. Oy.