(very) brief meta point

[lotesse]

Tangentially jumping off of a topic on narrative friendship at fangs, fur, & fey -

It's a mistake, I think, to see all fannish involvement with a text as somehow indicative of what fen want that text to be. Ficcing a pairing doesn't mean you want them together in canon - although it can mean that, of course - so much as it means that you see an interesting possible story in their hooking up. Fanwriting is spidery. Unlike prowriting, it doesn't per se drive toward a goal narrative.

This is negative capability with a vengeance - no irritable grasping, just flinging webs of possible, divergent stories. Ideally unprivileged? Like some sort of pornographic quantum event, where everything is everywhere at once until we look straight at it, and becomes so once again after we look away.

Comments

[ladymordecai.livejournal.com]

I'm right on with your first paragraph--maybe it's because the fandoms I'm most present in are heavy in AU fic and contradictory canon, but I've never ever seen fanfic as anything other than a sort of literary exploration, a "What if things were different?" Sometimes it's, "What if canon as we know it now goes this way in the future?" sometimes it's, "This is what this offscreen/panel/page scene might have looked like" and then sometimes it's, "What if all the main characters were vampires?" All manners of approaching fanfic are equally valid, and sometimes (often?) are done precisely because a ficwriter wants to take the text somewhere it can never and perhaps should never go in canon.

As for your second paragraph . . .

This is negative capability with a vengeance - no irritable grasping, just flinging webs of possible, divergent stories. Ideally unprivileged? Like some sort of pornographic quantum event, where everything is everywhere at once until we look straight at it, and becomes so once again after we look away.

Either you've lost me (which is possible, as I am not as versed in litcrit as you) or I disagree. I really feel like I'm misinterpreting "negative capability"--I read "negative" as "bad" and while in context that feels wrong, it also kinda chimes with the rest of your paragraph. My absolute favorite thing about fanfic is just that, the limitless possibility that exists.

I think I need that paragraph explained because I feel very flaily and lost.

[lotesse]

mmmn, no, not bad. Negative Capability is a Keats thing, the quality he says allows for great art - lemme dig up the quote - "several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

So what I'm getting at is total multiplicity, free from any irritable grasping after "the real story". Make sense?

(Errata: I actually heard about Neg.Cap. as a kid, because Philip Pullman is all about it - that Keats bit is directly quoted in Golden Compass, which is cool.)

[ladymordecai.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I get it. I think I dislike the term more than the concept--but Keats and I had a falling out some years ago, so that's not anybody's fault.

And--yes! Agree. The concept of "the real story" confuses me anyway, I have too much grounding in things like fairy tales and comics. And hey, criminology! Ask seventeen people what they saw happen and you'll get seventeen answers. People are diverse and contain multitudes.

[lotesse]

I don't love the term myself, but I do adore his explanation of it - irritable grasping! - so they're his words that I use.

Cool point on criminology - this deconstuction stuff always goes further than I think it will.