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O Captain, My Captain (Janeway)
I'm on a serious fic bender and I don't want out. It happened a couple times before - BSG (the smoldering hot steady) and Alex/Olivia SVU fic (the compulsive insane fling). I have read many many many other fandoms on a semi-consistent basis. I still read quite a bit, usually at AO3 or via Femslash Today.
But right now? this is that Thing where I just burn through fic fast and furious and it just crashes over me. I have to read every one even if I know it won't be exactly what I'm seeking just because every alt timeline that fic creates is like another layer in the quantum world of that pairing or more broadly, the femslash dimension of that fandom. It's that pleasure that comes from disrupting and obsessing and celebrating and contextualizing the "universal canon timeline" of surface text.
When the bender is good, like BSG, details MATTER. I read indiscriminately, but I get frustrated with poorly executed fic. And when it is well-executed, it is sublime; it challenges my perceptions and reveals added depths to the characters I love.
When the bender is oh-so-wrong, like A/O, diversity MATTERS. I want it ALL - even the fucking song fic (for serious). Bad characterizations do not make weak fic - just psychotropic fic. Every story feels intoxicating, precisely because it fulfills or denies my personal taste.
So now I can't stop reading Voyager. Ideally, that should read "couldn't" - I couldn't stop reading Voyager - but I know better than to trust my resolve to stop reading and start writing.
To contextualize my fannish engagement (with bonus! digression):
When Julie and I moved in together 2.5 years ago, we each chose a show we loved that the other had not seen to watch together. I chose Xena; she chose Voyager. Voyager was her first fandom, however, I had never been active in Xena fandom.
These shows have been ideal choices to carry us through the lean years of tv since BSG and TSCC went off air. And even with our contemporary engagements, such as Once Upon a Time, Doctor Who, and Downton Abbey, Xena and Voyager are our two true steadies of femslashy goodness. The gendering of both shows (not the exact gendering of the characters, mind you) feels like the stability of soft butchness*, like Applejack (mlp), or Rachel Maddow, certainly dynamic, but always dependable.
*I do NOT mean to infer that these qualities are uncharacteristic, let alone incongruous with other genderings. Rather, this is a positive characteristic that for me is associated with soft butch gendering and these two shows.. and this pony and this pundit.
Their steadiness is a feature I'm inclined to attribute to the structure of the shows themselves: episodic with seasonal arcs, each episode featuring a plotty A arc (80-100%) that is contextualized by a character B arc (20-0%), a strong inciting incident or premise that drives the entire series forward from start to finish, and characters who will never die. It's the inherent pleasure of repetition, of exploring difference within sameness (GAY GAY GAY); and that modality of repetition is an essential quality of television.
It's presence in Voyager and Xena, though unremarkable in the long history of television, feels remarkable because of its absence or mutation within the current tv screenscape. Contemporary shows with an episodic structure are almost certainly procedurals, and usually feature B or C storylines that are isolated from the A story. If the premise is simple, it will be some (exotic) form of "they solve crimes." If the premise is more complex, it's probably a medical soap. Everything else, episodic or not, is a fucking endless mystery or question requiring more attention than my level of trust allows.
I think after BSG 4.5* this is a particularly winsome quality: the ability to watch without fear of losing what makes the show yours.
* or whatever your fannish relationship that made it hard to trust! Fringe fans, welcome to this horrible club.
Right, so the FIC:
At first I just integrated reading Voyager and Xena fic as it came up within my usual AO3 reading habits. But there wasn't enough! More than that, it only answered my curiosities about fanons on an individual level, not a communal one.
Following this spiral to its logical conclusion - I am now reading fic via WaybackMachine. At first, I was only reading live links, and the bender seemed to trend more towards my Oh-so-bad style of consume-all-the-fic! But within the live archive links are dead links to well-reviewed fic, and so the slippery slope...
I would like to now note that since this is timed perfectly with WaybackMachine transferring half of their servers, nearly every story I read must be unearthed through multiple attempts at finding a Wayback date on a live server. FOR SERIOUS.
And maybe this is what now defines this bender more than anything: the anthropological/genealogical dimension.
Just as the structures of Xena and Voyager are not unique, but are also no longer contemporary, similarly, how we perform fandom has evolved since then. This is fandom pre-YouTube and pre-LiveJournal-adoption. It's the era of epic manips and WebRings! Listserves and MessageBoards! Everyone has their email posted as a way to comment or connect. Sometimes they even host Mailing Lists so new fic is delivered to your inbox. New content is highlighted in bold text or with "updated!" and dates. Use of Comic Sans sans irony! AUs are called Uberfic!
And most notably, there are large blocks of text preceding fic defensively warning:
and
Of course, most of this information is not new to me (I was in XF fandom off and on... no romo!). Though, it did take me forever to figure out that yes, Subtext Fic is another way of saying HERE THAR BE GAYNESS, rather than their relationship is confined to subtext. And certainly, every fannish modality has simply evolved with improved infrastructure, not disappeared.
What is striking to me now is the representation of connectedness between fans and the obvious intimacy shared, hosted on public sites. The type of content that we place behind friends locks is clearly exchanged via email or listserve, but even so, the relationships between these fans is so visible within their recs, fic notes, or beta thanks. And all of this occurs without a unifying platform, their sites individually floating in the interwebs, loosely tethered through these individual acknowledgements or recs masterlists...and of course the ultimate form of recs, the Golden O Awards (Voyager) and the Swollen Bud Awards (Xena).
Time-traveling through the internets has revealed this added pleasure - not just immersion within someone else's fanon, but immersion within their fandom, their way of performing fandom. And these differences in fannish infrastructure clearly influence the choices being made in how one writes fic, its goal and its audience. As fandom evolves with newer social networking sites, like Tumblr, it is easy to feel a projected threat looming over what has been built in DW/LJ cultures. How we perform fandom in these spaces is more visible with contrast.
And so, aside from my discovery of all the fics I have to write, or don't (recs to follow!), what I am taking away from this bender is far more rewarding than I anticipated: it's a renewed sense of purpose in this space and an intense desire to nurture my fannish network, all of you, my flist.
But right now? this is that Thing where I just burn through fic fast and furious and it just crashes over me. I have to read every one even if I know it won't be exactly what I'm seeking just because every alt timeline that fic creates is like another layer in the quantum world of that pairing or more broadly, the femslash dimension of that fandom. It's that pleasure that comes from disrupting and obsessing and celebrating and contextualizing the "universal canon timeline" of surface text.
When the bender is good, like BSG, details MATTER. I read indiscriminately, but I get frustrated with poorly executed fic. And when it is well-executed, it is sublime; it challenges my perceptions and reveals added depths to the characters I love.
When the bender is oh-so-wrong, like A/O, diversity MATTERS. I want it ALL - even the fucking song fic (for serious). Bad characterizations do not make weak fic - just psychotropic fic. Every story feels intoxicating, precisely because it fulfills or denies my personal taste.
So now I can't stop reading Voyager. Ideally, that should read "couldn't" - I couldn't stop reading Voyager - but I know better than to trust my resolve to stop reading and start writing.
To contextualize my fannish engagement (with bonus! digression):
When Julie and I moved in together 2.5 years ago, we each chose a show we loved that the other had not seen to watch together. I chose Xena; she chose Voyager. Voyager was her first fandom, however, I had never been active in Xena fandom.
These shows have been ideal choices to carry us through the lean years of tv since BSG and TSCC went off air. And even with our contemporary engagements, such as Once Upon a Time, Doctor Who, and Downton Abbey, Xena and Voyager are our two true steadies of femslashy goodness. The gendering of both shows (not the exact gendering of the characters, mind you) feels like the stability of soft butchness*, like Applejack (mlp), or Rachel Maddow, certainly dynamic, but always dependable.
*I do NOT mean to infer that these qualities are uncharacteristic, let alone incongruous with other genderings. Rather, this is a positive characteristic that for me is associated with soft butch gendering and these two shows.. and this pony and this pundit.
Their steadiness is a feature I'm inclined to attribute to the structure of the shows themselves: episodic with seasonal arcs, each episode featuring a plotty A arc (80-100%) that is contextualized by a character B arc (20-0%), a strong inciting incident or premise that drives the entire series forward from start to finish, and characters who will never die. It's the inherent pleasure of repetition, of exploring difference within sameness (GAY GAY GAY); and that modality of repetition is an essential quality of television.
It's presence in Voyager and Xena, though unremarkable in the long history of television, feels remarkable because of its absence or mutation within the current tv screenscape. Contemporary shows with an episodic structure are almost certainly procedurals, and usually feature B or C storylines that are isolated from the A story. If the premise is simple, it will be some (exotic) form of "they solve crimes." If the premise is more complex, it's probably a medical soap. Everything else, episodic or not, is a fucking endless mystery or question requiring more attention than my level of trust allows.
I think after BSG 4.5* this is a particularly winsome quality: the ability to watch without fear of losing what makes the show yours.
* or whatever your fannish relationship that made it hard to trust! Fringe fans, welcome to this horrible club.
Right, so the FIC:
At first I just integrated reading Voyager and Xena fic as it came up within my usual AO3 reading habits. But there wasn't enough! More than that, it only answered my curiosities about fanons on an individual level, not a communal one.
Following this spiral to its logical conclusion - I am now reading fic via WaybackMachine. At first, I was only reading live links, and the bender seemed to trend more towards my Oh-so-bad style of consume-all-the-fic! But within the live archive links are dead links to well-reviewed fic, and so the slippery slope...
I would like to now note that since this is timed perfectly with WaybackMachine transferring half of their servers, nearly every story I read must be unearthed through multiple attempts at finding a Wayback date on a live server. FOR SERIOUS.
And maybe this is what now defines this bender more than anything: the anthropological/genealogical dimension.
Just as the structures of Xena and Voyager are not unique, but are also no longer contemporary, similarly, how we perform fandom has evolved since then. This is fandom pre-YouTube and pre-LiveJournal-adoption. It's the era of epic manips and WebRings! Listserves and MessageBoards! Everyone has their email posted as a way to comment or connect. Sometimes they even host Mailing Lists so new fic is delivered to your inbox. New content is highlighted in bold text or with "updated!" and dates. Use of Comic Sans sans irony! AUs are called Uberfic!
And most notably, there are large blocks of text preceding fic defensively warning:
"These stories, for the most part, deal with same gender romantic relationships and varied sexual situations between women. It is categorized as slash fic in the Star Trek fandom, but I prefer the much gentler and more attractive 'alt fic' term as derived from the Xenaverse. Some stories are sexually explicit and are detailed on occasion, requiring the age of consent in your respective area, so read them at your own risk."
and
"This story is an original work of fiction set in the pre-existing universe of Star Trek: Voyager. As such, many of the characters and references used within belong solely to Paramount Pictures. I have borrowed them for the purpose of creating this scenario and promise to return them unscathed, and smiling, as soon as I am done. No gain, monetary or otherwise, is expected from their use and no copyright infringement is intended or should be inferred."
Of course, most of this information is not new to me (I was in XF fandom off and on... no romo!). Though, it did take me forever to figure out that yes, Subtext Fic is another way of saying HERE THAR BE GAYNESS, rather than their relationship is confined to subtext. And certainly, every fannish modality has simply evolved with improved infrastructure, not disappeared.
What is striking to me now is the representation of connectedness between fans and the obvious intimacy shared, hosted on public sites. The type of content that we place behind friends locks is clearly exchanged via email or listserve, but even so, the relationships between these fans is so visible within their recs, fic notes, or beta thanks. And all of this occurs without a unifying platform, their sites individually floating in the interwebs, loosely tethered through these individual acknowledgements or recs masterlists...and of course the ultimate form of recs, the Golden O Awards (Voyager) and the Swollen Bud Awards (Xena).
Time-traveling through the internets has revealed this added pleasure - not just immersion within someone else's fanon, but immersion within their fandom, their way of performing fandom. And these differences in fannish infrastructure clearly influence the choices being made in how one writes fic, its goal and its audience. As fandom evolves with newer social networking sites, like Tumblr, it is easy to feel a projected threat looming over what has been built in DW/LJ cultures. How we perform fandom in these spaces is more visible with contrast.
And so, aside from my discovery of all the fics I have to write, or don't (recs to follow!), what I am taking away from this bender is far more rewarding than I anticipated: it's a renewed sense of purpose in this space and an intense desire to nurture my fannish network, all of you, my flist.
this might be out of left field, but here are my Many Feelings!
It's presence in Voyager and Xena, though unremarkable in the long history of television, feels remarkable because of its absence or mutation within the current tv screenscape. Contemporary shows with an episodic structure are almost certainly procedurals, and usually feature B or C storylines that are isolated from the A story. If the premise is simple, it will be some (exotic) form of "they solve crimes." If the premise is more complex, it's probably a medical soap. Everything else, episodic or not, is a fucking endless mystery or question requiring more attention than my level of trust allows.
This seems pretty spot-on to me, if only because I often can't get into these kinds of shows with episodic structures and there are so many now working off the same formulas. I think there are some things that fall in a middle ground, but they're probably British and short, more like self-contained mini-series rather than US seasons of TV. I think what's also missing is characters who are not some kind of cop/investigator figure with this unquestionably heroic bent. Now everything that's not about solving crimes has to be morally gray, and that is so often a Lead Dude Struggling With This Current World. And I'm not actually sure I'm complaining about this per se, but it does lead to a lot more unpredictability and makes it really difficult to trust shows. Especially since it's almost always the ladies who are more expendable and malleable to the plot, and thus more in danger of character assassination/stereotype/plot device choices. Because Patty Hewes is the only real female lead I can think of in this new post-Sopranos kind of morally gray show, and maybe that's why I like it/trust it so much, even when it does some things I am not the biggest fan of.
I also feel like everything has gotten INCREDIBLY retrogressive in terms of romance, but that could just be my bitterness and own preferences talking. But now at least half of every female lead's story is who the love interest is, or when they're going to hook up with the obvious love interest, like we won't care enough about her or be interested enough unless she is validated by a dude. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's the case with characters like Janeway and Xena, even when they did have love interests.
Long story short, I do want the things that require investment in the long arc and the long characterizations, but they are almost never the things with awesomely independent ladies and so they do not make me fannish. So I'm just casually, not very fannishly, watching things now, or continuing to watch things that are doing it all wrong, like Fringe, because there is literally nothing else to replace it in my interests. People keep trying to sell me GOT on these terms, and it's dire enough that occasionally I think about trying it again, knowing all along that that way lies heartbreak, or at the very least, very, very compromised standards.
Anyway, the real point was I'm kind of jealous of your renewed sense of purpose. I agree wholeheartedly with this: As fandom evolves with newer social networking sites, like Tumblr, it is easy to feel a projected threat looming over what has been built in DW/LJ cultures. How we perform fandom in these spaces is more visible with contrast.
And yet I've got nothing to do about it. Make vids for the dead shows that did things better for decreasing numbers of people, I guess? I can't remember the last time I even read a fic, or found one I wanted to read, or what it would even have been for.
Left field and Feelings are MY FAVORITES / I want to hug this comment
OMGS YES THIS! And I will complain about it! It's as though sociopathy or detachment became the definition of interesting. At first, I was ok with anti-hero dominance because I felt like it challenged the audience to expand their sense of empathy, but more often, the show pov is so consistently in-line with the character's, bad behavior is romanticized, playing into every tired American cliche of the outlaw/rebel. (And the only straight-up heroes that exist must be manpainy). It's as though no one can be earnestly heroic AND challenge social order, because this individualism on steroids is an all or nothing game of accepting society or rejecting it whole-cloth.
….and now for a mess of thoughts re: Patty + Damages….
I think this is partly why Patty Hewes and Damages work so well in this tvscape: she is the anti-hero working outside and within the system, not to meet individualistic goals but to ensure the realization of the goals of society. This isn't fully thought out yet, but I think she also reveals how this contemporary anti-hero is highly gendered as both male-individualist and negative/inversion. Her adoption of this role/methodology is simultaneously a compromise to play within the rules of society and take a role, but also a consolation because as a woman she can never fully embody the hero, who is both patriarch and status-quo positive, designed to defend social order -- a social order which is fundamentally flawed (and, as a reformer, often her target of attack). The frequent presumptions of Patty as driven by narcissism are definitive of the contemporary iteration of anti-hero, but Damages is always careful to undercut this assumption by revisiting the social-justice values that actually drive her.
You totally hit on something here too: almost always the ladies who are more expendable and malleable to the plot SO TRUE. I feel like lady death is used more in shows with anti-heroes to further highlight the dangers of being anything other than lawful-good. aka - patriarchy protects women.
I also feel like everything has gotten INCREDIBLY retrogressive in terms of romance…at least half of every female lead's story is who the love interest is, or when they're going to hook up with the obvious love interest, like we won't care enough about her or be interested enough unless she is validated by a dude YES. This really didn't occur to me with my girlslash goggles on, but now I wonder if this is a reactionary corollary to the increased representation of lgbt characters and relationships. Janeway and Xena are excellent examples of female leads whose stories are not organized around romantic relationships with dudes, however, both characters DO have significant sub/text with other female characters (though not exclusive to female characters, their ust with dudes is not qualitatively equivalent either). The differences in how these shows handled fandom's recognition of this subtext is instructive for what I now think is a causal relationship of increased lgbt visibility and increased heterosexual romantic/sexual content.
Xena embraced the question of Xena/Gabrielle as canon, playing with it explicitly in self-reflexive episodes, and pushing subtext to its breaking point of canon-text, but never shutting down the Xena-Gabby bff crowd entirely. The inherent premise of the show does make it difficult to dismiss X/G, as they are life partners, romantic or not, but how they pursue subtext is notable.
Voyager is quite a bit more complicated. Structurally, the writers have to contend with Voyager being an ensemble show, but really it's a Janeway issue. Voyager is fucking HI-LARIOUS in its awkwardness around Janeway's sexuality, which is really symptomatic of their larger awkwardness about OMFGS A WOMAN CAPTAIN. I will spare you the paragraphs of backstory I want to dig into as to the ridiculousness of how they avoid dealing with Janeway's sexuality in earnest, but the primary mechanism is a fiance back home (who we never see) who serves as both evidence of her heterosexuality and reason for her lack of romantic relationships.
Related to the writers awkwardness with a woman in power, they are wildly inconsistent with Janeway's characterization and she is somehow both the iron lady AND the outrageous flirt (which I have to tell you, is really hot… and now that I think about it, also one of the core reasons she is the early Laura Roslin prototype). Janeway has subtext with everyone but her relationships with her crew are consistent with their rank… until Seven of Nine (S4). Janeway takes personal interest in Seven of Nine and "the development of her humanity," privileging Seven above everyone else to a point of crazy crazy subtext. Somewhere in S4 Janeway gets a Dear Jane letter from the invisible fiance, and in S6, after two and a half seasons of insane subtext with Seven (that continues) Janeway suddenly goes totally OOC and supposedly falls in love with a hologram (photonic dildo) she programs.
Uhhh so the tl;dr is that Xena was like, let's maintain textual openness and not privilege one reading over another by engaging with the question rather than explicitly answering it. Voyager was like, oh gods, this Janeway/Seven ship is getting crazy, let's introduce a new non-existent heterosexual love interest, but this time one who can serve as better rebuttal.
My point is just there has always been investment in the heterosexuality of characters and in some ways, I think assumed heterosexuality or heterosexuality as default is what allowed shows to ignore the romantic lives of their characters in favor of more challenging character arcs for female characters. I don't think it's just the increase in lgbt character visibility, but also that gay subtext is now more visible to people who are not personally interested or invested in it, making it something that writers feel has to be addressed or managed. I know this only really addresses the quantitative aspect of making sure every female character has a male love interest and there's more to these culture-wars issues, but I think this might be a factor?
I'm just casually, not very fannishly, watching things now
It really is a dire scene if you have any interest in gen or women. Once Upon a Time is really great, but admittedly, the fannish pleasure is primarily libidinal. (hey, remember Friday Night Lights and the West Wing? good times).
People keep trying to sell me GOT on these terms
Resist! I am increasingly convinced, GOT is the next logical step in the anti-hero arc, only one where everyone is an anti-hero and it's an epic story of societal collapse as happy ending. A reading that does nothing to change its appeal.
I really sympathize with the lack of fannish options and larger fannish community. It feels like everything is in flux at the same time. Part of my fannish make-peace-with-it is not engaging with things that have a more active fandom but I find less interesting or more troubling. Xena and Voyager DO require me to go back in time and I am privileged to have an in-house fandom buddy for both of these shows, but mostly what is making fandom work for me again is deciding that limited outside interest is ok so long as I don't have to constantly fight the text itself to get what I need out of it. I know it's not how everyone would prioritize fannish engagement, but it seems to have quelled my rage.
I wish I had more helpful things to say. *snuggles*
um NURSE JACKIE IS BACK. PRAISE BABY!NURSE.