From: Lisa Williams lcw@dallas.net
Interesting! I'd be interested in discussing it further, but that would be getting well off topic.
Well, there is always the spin list; that's the sort of thing it's there for.
True-- but one's time on earth is finite...:)
Again, I can understand that but still do find it a little surprising (just out of curiosity, and I don't expect an answer if you don't want to give one, but do you live in a small town?).
No; large metropolitan areas, all my life.
That *is* interesting. Speaking from my own experience (I've lived in both) it seems easier to find fandom in large city (I even found it once without looking when visiting a large city for two days once-- wandered into a sci-fi bookshop and promptly got told about a con going on there-- I didn't go, but it was a bit disturbing :) ). But I don't know if that's the norm or not.
The general pattern I've encountered has been that people don't tend to set out to find fandom, but happen across it due to their interest in a programme:
That may well be the most common pattern; it just hasn't been mine.
Dunno if it's the most common one at that; it's just what I've encountered the most, so I'm interested in finding out if it *is* more common.
I'm not very social, and I tend to enjoy things on my own.
A sentiment I can well appreciate.
But in the "is slash canon" discussion, what we were all interested in, on all sides, was that root,
I think the point (or *a* point) where I'm getting confused is that I'm not able to identify one of the two "sides" here. Who is claiming that the characters were *portrayed* as having homosexual inclinations
Hang on, let me check the archive--what sparked the initial thread was post #44419, which started off being about "interpretation" but then got into whether or not certain characters give any "hints as to their sexuality," and it was the last bit that got siezed on :). Although something Dana said earlier regarding the "Duel" scene being "plain evidence" that B and A fancied each other sparked a similar discussion which got sidetracked.
-- as
opposed to being *perceived* as having them, by specific viewers? I admit I've heard that argument made once or twice, but it's a rare extreme in my experience. (I except those instances where we *do* have documentary evidence that deliberate hints were being included -- they occur in several fandoms, even if not in this one.) When the average slash fan says that she can "see slash" in the canon, she's usually talking about perception, not deliberate portrayal. She's saying that her perceptions arise from what she saw and heard in the show, rather than being invented independently of it -- *not* that the folks making the show were trying to create that impression. So, I'm not sure where the argument, and the need to go tabulate gestures and expressions, is coming from.
I think from a different discussion entirely. Fair enough then.
(I know you like Eroica-- are you into anime too? Because if you've seen it, you'll notice that there are visual conventions in anime which look very strange and stylised to us, but which Japanese viewers don't remark on,
No, I'm not into manga/anime fandom; just Eroica. (Western Eroica fandom draws its members from general manga/anime fans, from slash media fans, and a few who find their way in via Led Zeppelin. I'm in the second group.)
Which is why I asked-- just cos I've only encountered Eroica in anime/manga circles, but also figured that not everybody who liked it was necessarily into the whole package.
But interestingly, it's one of the ones for which we actually have documentary evidence that the look was intentional and *intended* to convey homosexual interest, given that Scott Fredericks has spoken about it later on, and how it got put into the story.
I know. But I still don't see it myself (and I've tried.) So, it works both ways -- what the folks on the far side of the screen are trying to convey may not get through to the viewer. And the viewer's own mental processes may derive meanings the creators of the material never thought of.
Very true, for both. A similar case, of course, is the infamous Ben-Hur-subtext story...
I could probably find dozens of phrases in my own or anybody else's writing which would bother me if they were used in a totally different context; that is the nature of language. Nevertheless, I respond to them in the context where they occur, since that is where I have the best chance of picking up the author's meaning and I am genuinely trying to understand, and to be understood.
Let's take the phrase again, in its context, then.
<Either I see it, or I don't. I don't expect other people to regard things the same way I do, but I do expect them to realize that these are *fictional* characters and open to *multiple* interpretations, no single one of which is the One True Way.>
This comment was made in regard to Betty's and my argument-from-canon postings. Now, both of us, as I said, were keeping our interpretations as much out of the picture as possible, and neither of us were particularly making any claims to our own interpretations being the One True Way. We were, however, taking the premise that there is a "reality," i.e. the canon, and I think we're both agreed that as far as canon is concerned the situation is *not* anything-goes; one can't see what's not on the screen. And that as far as interpretations of characters are concerned, there are some that are closer to what's on the screen than others. So to say that all interpretations are equally valid (which is what the phrase "....no single one of which is the One True Way" does suggest) is actually not true within the context of arguing from the canon.
Twisting someone's words to try to make it appear she was saying, or advocating, something she wasn't is generally a baiting tactic intended to shut down any meaningful exchange, and I don't play that game. If that isn't what you had in mind, fine, but I would appreciate what I say being taken in the context where *I* put it and not in any of the thousands of other contexts where someone, somewhere, might happen to use the same words.
I hate to say this, but using the phrase "twisting someone's words" is also a baiting tactic. If that isn't how you meant it, fine, but please use different language. And I *have* quoted that phrase in its context now, and analysed it, and discussed how its usage in the context might in fact be analogous to other areas in which some "ways" are more justifiable than others.
invoking Godwin (which actually bothers me, because it suggests that Nazism cannot be discussed and considered as a historical example,
On-topic references to Nazism as part of an historical discussion are not generally considered to be covered by Godwin;
What about sociological or political discussions?
the law is concerned with invidious and off-topic comparisons to Hitler/Nazis used as a baiting tactic. (And before some Usenet pedant gets after me, yes, I *know* Godwin's Law itself doesn't say anything about the discussion ending -- it's one of the numerous corollaries, whose name I forget, which says that once such a comparison has been made, the signal-to-noise ratio of the thread will rapidly approach zero. And yet another corollary which says that such threads will usually divert into (1) an all-out flame war, (2) a discussion of Nazism, or (3) a discussion of Godwin's Law.)
Heh. However, I'm rapidly coming to think that there's *no* law about behaviour on the Internet that can't be disproved... so I'm going to try and avoid all three options here :).
ObB7: On the age thread--Servalan always seems to me to be pretty young to be Supreme Commander, let alone President. She may, of course, be older than she looks (anti-aging treatments?) or else the Federation's answer to JFK...
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Enduring for a thousand years at http://nyder.r67.net
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Oh, dear. I *swore* I wasn't going to post any more on this topic, or anything relating to it, because, overall, I would very much like to just see it die a quiet, ignominious death. But my name has come up several times here, and I feel like my own position is being very slightly mischaracterized, albeit in a completely understandable and non-malicious way, and I simply can't resist the impulse to respond. (This is entirely about interpretation-of-canon, though, not about slash, so that'll be my excuse.)
Responding to snippets from a couple of different posts by Fiona here:
This comment was made in regard to Betty's and my argument-from-canon postings. Now, both of us, as I said, were keeping our interpretations as much out of the picture as possible, and neither of us were particularly making any claims to our own interpretations being the One True Way. We were, however, taking the premise that there is a "reality," i.e. the canon, and I think we're both agreed that as far as canon is concerned the situation is *not* anything-goes; one can't see what's not on the screen. And that as far as interpretations of characters are concerned, there are some that are closer to what's on the screen than others. So to say that all interpretations are equally valid (which is what the phrase "....no single one of which is the One True Way" does suggest) is actually not true within the context of arguing from the canon.
Actually... To begin with, I feel the need to point out that the main reason why I was keeping my own interpretations out of the picture and restricting myself to canon were a) that that seemed to be the sort of discussion Fiona wanted, and the kind that many other people on the Lyst (though by no means all!) were primarily interested in, and 2) that canon was really the only main point of intersection that we had in common *to* discuss. I certainly could have started going on about my own interpretations of things, but I image that Fiona (not unreasonably) would have dismissed those as irrelevant in the same way that I dismissed as irrelevant her points about the intentions of the show's creators. So, we discuss things based on canon because the simple facts of what's-on-the-screen are the one thing we have even a hope of agreeing on (and even there, I think it was obvious that agreement didn't always happen).
However, I must admit that, although I can find such discussions interesting (the Blake-and-Inga argument was certainly a fun intellectual game), I *do* also find them limited and generallty not terribly fruitful, precisely because what's-on-the-screen is so limited. Most of the really interesting stuff, like character motivations, isn't explicit on the screen at all. IMHO, the show *requires* active, creative participation fromt the viewer to really come to life, and I personally regard that as a very positive thing.
When Betty convincingly pointed out, from onscreen evidence alone, that Blake and Inga could not have been having a sexual relationship, I didn't say "That's your opinion" or "Well, *I* sense sexual tension between them," I admitted that the onscreen evidence was for Betty.
The thing is, though, if you *had* said that, I wouldn't have been in the slightest offended, or upset, or even taken aback (except by the fact that it would have seemed out of character for you :)). Indeed, I would have been extremely interested, even delighted, as that would likely have taken us off into an entirely different -- and, to my tastes, more interesting -- type of discussion. It doesn't seem in the least ridiculous to me (no matter that I *totally* don't see it) to say "Well, yes, but I look at that kiss on the screen, and I see real passion and sexual chemistry there, and I can't escape the conviction that there *was* a romantic connection between them." If you'd said that, I wouldn't feel insulted or frustrated that you'd ignored all my careful mathematics. Instead, I would have wanted to hear your theory for explaining why those mathematics might *not* apply. How do you get around that argument? (And there are certainly ways of doing so -- I think it was Neil who pointed out that Inga might have lived on Earth most of her life and only come to stay with her father recently.) And if your explanation was particularly interesting, I would have enthusiastically given the standard FC response: write it!
Personally, I find that kind of speculation, of the opening up of canonical possibilities, to be *much* more interesting and fun than the kind of debate we were doing. The kind of analysis we were doing involves a certain amount of theoretical extrapolation from canon, true, but it seems to mainly consist of an attempt to find the simplest and most likely possible explanation for everything onscreen and declaring that the "canonical" explanation. Which is certainly worth doing, particularly if that's the sort of thing that interests you, but to me it *does* seem rather limited. I'm more interested in interacting *creatively* with the show, and with understanding how other fans interact creatively with the show, often in very different ways that I do. IMHO, then, there *is* no One True Way. Sure, some interpretations are closer to canon, and some seem to stretch it a bit. Some are less parsimonious than others. Some require a lot more creativity on the part of the viewer than others. But I would not say that some are more *right* than others, because that requires a blanket judgment that I'm totally unwilling to make.
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Betty Ragan -
Fiona Moore