Just did some flist cleaning! Feel obliged to reiterate that it's nothing personal, just getting rid of defunct and/or rarely-updated journals. As well as the usual moving-on of fandoms and so forth. Catch youse around in the ether regardless, no doubt!

ETA: er, the no hard feelings applies also if you feel like cleaning my journal off your flist too, but as always my fandom posts are public if you want to stick around and watch the sporadic crazy.

Baudrillard died. Granted, he was a pretty old codger.

That silly anecdote of him cracking the window a little and sniffing at the Rocky Mountains still makes me giggle. "Ah, nature. The last bastion of the Real."

Okay, here's the story.

Some time last year I purchased fandomwiki.com, with the thought of creating a place within which fans could meta about their own experience and theories and understanding of fandom. Not as in, a collection of meta pieces, but as in a fandom encyclopedia that reflected (and legitimised!) the subjectivity of fan experience and theorising.

I registered, set up, and started work on it myself (with some help from anatsuno and a couple other people, I think!). I was keen on developing a pseudo-methodology, wanted to sort out with myself and establish the kind of atmosphere/practice for contributing that would foster the kind of all-accepting/subjective knowledge base (and common history!) that I'd envisaged.

As things tend to happen, other things took over my time (namely, the thesis!), and then I was pointed in the direction of FanHistory.com. Which is, essentially, a fandom wiki. Which seemed to make my yet un-developed fandomwiki.com somewhat defunct.

But anyway. I decided to not waste the space I'd already bought and instead just lock down the fandomwiki.com domain for my own personal use. I made a post about it here, letting anyone who'd been aware of it know, and a few people kind of stuck their hands up and said, hey. Fanhistory.com *isn't* the most reliable, multi-authored encyclopedia you had in mind.

So. Now that I have more time again, talk to me. cathexys & ithiliana, I'm looking at you specifically, here. But the rest of you as well *g*

Would it be viable for me to re-activate fandomwiki.com? I'm thinking that at least in the development stage, those of you who are aca-fen would be the best candidates to build up a ... culture of knowledge, the type of atmosphere we're (or well, *i'm*) looking for.

Or, oh wise and seasoned aca-fen - what are your thoughts on this whole thing? I'm totally willing to take your guidance on this, if you have ideas you think are viable for this.

I have the domain, I have the space, and the technical know-how to manage it all... Talk to me!

I heart Henry Jenkins. I was lukewarm even as I was writing the thesis, but Convergence Culture gives me a big happy. And also this last blog post:

Thompson is in the process of putting her finishing touches on a forthcoming book about Peter Jackson and the making of the Lord of the Rings trilogy called The Frodo Franchise. I was lucky enough to read an early draft of the book and found it an absolute treasure. Thompson had access to pretty much every key contributor to the LOTR films: she turns out to be a very engaging storyteller but also is able to put what happened into a much larger context of shifts in the contemporary film industry -- including some very good writing about the ways Jackson courted the fans of the original Tolkien novels and the forms of fan cultural production which have grown up around the franchise.

... I will be doing an interview with Thompson about the book once it is released in 2007. But she is already updating her account, using the blog to share some great insights into the announcement the other week that they will indeed be producing a film based on The Hobbit and that Peter Jackson is currently considering whether to direct it.

(My emphasis.) Whole post here.


Brief Hiro stuff at the end of that post.

Mary is watching BSG, so I'm using this icon. HEART.

Grr. I am SO SICK of the derision of popular culture that goes on in mainstream media (ironically enough) and society in Australia. More specifically, the dismissal of it as a valid field within which to base critical theory.

Every time I mention to someone outside of my field of interest that I’m studying – gasp! - television, their response is frequently one of scorn. Someone even questioned whether it was possible for “TV theory” to exist at all!

To which my response was: dude. It has such a huge influence on our lives, and you’re saying it’s not worth the time of day?

There is this tenaciously clinging assumption in Australian society that ‘real’ culture, the only culture that holds any value, is this classical (and at times, arthouse) European culture. There are huge literature, art history and history departments; people still kind of blink puzzledly at me when I say I’m majoring in “Media Theory”, or to dumb it down further – “Cinema studies”.

Popular culture is, of course, linked inextricably with American culture, as this article demonstrates:

For $25m cash, unis say: kick me
( Read more... )


The tone of which irritates the crap out of me again. The thought of a United States Study Centre at my university sends me into fits of delirious delight. The bulk of politically correct society in Australia may have little respect for George Bush, but the absolute conflation of American culture with American government is a big mistake to make. Just because our Prime Minister like to kiss the US President’s butt doesn’t mean that media texts produced by American artists (or whatever you’d like to call the creators of contemporary texts) should be dismissed and derided.

I agree that the volume of American culture in comparison to texts produced from other places (including our own country) is problematic. But I still say that regardless of ill will toward Administration or desire for more diversity, popular culture has a huge, huge influence on our lives.

I say, acknowledging that and working to be active within it and take our own interpretations of it is a more appropriate – if not necessary – course of action to take instead of covering our metaphorical ears and eyes against the nuclear blast and continuing to reminisce on the ‘good ole days’ of the Italian Renaissance, fer frick’s sake.

Not that there’s anything wrong with studying the Italian Renaissance, hell no. But claiming that that field of study is a more valid one than the field that concerns the material we consume on a daily basis is seriously screwed up.


This message brought to you by the fact that Star Wars creator George Lucas announced today that his private foundation will give his alma mater, the University of Southern California (USC), $US175 million ($A233.35 million) to endow and rebuild its School of Cinematic Arts in what amounts to the largest donation in USC history.

Meanwhile, my school is being closed down and dissolved into the wider “Arts” (or humanities) faculty, namely the English department. Bye-bye, school dedicated to both practical and theoretical creative arts disciplines.

I think it's one of the potential drawbacks of slash that its very existence to an extent denies the possibility of homoerotic subtext in gen stories.

And yeah, okay, I know all you SPN readers out there will be "wtf! in gen stories they sleep in the same bed and give each other baths ALL THE TIME!" but, okay - frequently I also notice stories posted with notes like "subtexty wincest" or "pre-slash" or "you can read this as slash if you want" or "hints of slash".

In other words. SUBTEXT. Slash's existence potentially excises homoerotic subtext from non-slash stories: because as soon as there's subtext, frequently authors feel they have to re-classify. Which means a whole lot of things, most on the side of the audience reception to the story.

More than a few of the gen stories I really, really love - in this fandom and other fandoms - have strong subtext. That is just subtext. Juicy, homoerotic subtext. Which is satisfying in its own right; something completely other than slash. If I'm looking for slash to read, I won't be satisfied by something that's just subtext. And if I'm reading a gen story about a same-sex partnership, I'd be disappointed - even unsatisfied - if it was strikingly lacking in subtext.

Interestingly problematic division there, I reckon.

Interesting in terms of SPN specifically too; the text itself has such a strong subtext and text of emotional and physical intimacy; a queer reading of it is quite easy. It's fascinating watching people classify their stories as slash or non-slash when they re-create or even emphasise just a little the intimacy that occurs on the show itself.

The academic book I'm reading on Star Wars fandom just referenced maygra.

I fucking love fandom so hard. It just takes the occassional prodding to remind me just why and how much.

Well, I've been back into reading lots of theory on pornography this week. As I'm doing this with a mind to writing on fandom, I'm constantly applying the things I'm reading to my fandom experience.

And well, in my fandom experience, it seems as if the iconography or tropes that crop up in NC-17 slash stories aren't straight across the board. Or rather, there are varieties of flavours for different fandoms, certain images crop up more often than others.

So, here's a poll. I've lj-cut it because of the not work-safe language used. That said, ( NC-17 slash afficionados, click here and take my poll! (so to speak) )

Please, PLEASE feel free to comment away! DISCUSS. Go.

PS. feel free to pimp this around if you're interested too.

If you are someone "who has created or maintained a web based archive of fanfiction regardless of size, audience or subject material" - including but not restricted to a livejournal, a website with your fic on it, someone else's fic website you maintain, or an archive with multiple authors (be it automated or manual or selective or ANYTHING) - take this short questionnaire to help megolas out with her dissertation research.

gwan! you know you want to.

eta - okay, try now.

Alright, Sam's arc in Supernatural as a subverted Oedipal (Freudian rather than mythical) narrative:

First, here's the Oedipal complex's basic structure: boy desires mother, has murderous/jealous thoughts toward father-as-competition. Boy sees mother's lack of penis, deduces from this a castration carried out by the father. Fear/threat of castration overwhelms the desire for the mother; boy submits to the law of the father, giving up the mother with the promise that he'll grow to fill his father's shoes, so to speak, and find a replacement mother (ie. female mate) in future.

So, how does that fit with Sam? [I should note here that I'm looking at this in terms of a metaphoric text with a character representing ideas; I'm not trying to psychoanalyse 'Sam-the-person'.]

( Read more... )

And now some thoughts on why I've been preoccupied with thoughts of genderfucked!Sam Winchester all day.

Last night I read the latest genderfuckery fic SPN fandom has come up with, and though I was a bit unimpressed by all the 'ew! periods!' stuff at the start, it really came into its own by the end of it. But dude, aside from the awesome denouement in that story, why am i still thinking about it? and why are the majority of my SPN thoughts about girl!Sam and Dean now?

Well yeah, part of it is that the girl!Sam in that fic was constructed as really freaking hot, and there is that thing with me where I like, you know, like girls and stuff, but still. Dude. I love the slash, so what is it?

And I think part of it is, like, well I was thinking about this lately, and how my attraction to different types and genders of people fluctuates depending on what my hormones a doing; and how sometimes I find the idea of men repulsive and just want to curl up with a completely familiar little lady; but then other times I feel like I crave something kind of exotic - like, I'm too familiar with the female body, how can I find something pleasurable and exciting when I know all of its foibles and it's with me all the time? It's times like this when it's indulging in new and different things are what does it for me, and the female body ain't necessarily it.

(And I think this is where a lot of my enjoyment of slash comes from - enjoying that difference, but from a safe distance.)

So okay, where does girl!Sam fit in this? well girl!Sam is kind of best of both worlds, I think. Not a boy with bits I'm not quite sure what to do with, but on the flipside of that coin, he's an instantly created woman. a new woman. i.e. a body that isn't ordinary/mundane/unexciting because it hasn't been around since, like, forever, and therefore it's exotic.

And I also think I find it so pleasurable because of my enjoyment of characters in texts I love - to be quite honest, there are very, very few female characters out there that I actually like at all, that I can actually enjoy on a meta level. Sure, there are the Buffyesque 'strong' female characters, but they still feel like they're constructed to shallowly - even if they're not being oppressed, women in texts are so often constructed as just that - constructs. figureheads or tokens of an idea. male characters are the only ones who really own their own characters, the ones that I can really fall for because I'm getting-to-know-them and love them as people, as opposed to ideas, you know? Even if they're just fulfilling a plot arc (like Sam so obviously is), but that excites me too (more, even) because that's what really gets me going - active participants within a text; ones not pawns on the chess board but individual monopoly pieces jumping around on the black-and-white tiles.

So anyway, girl!Sam is still Sam, still active-male-character, but, like, a girl. a hot girl. MY BUTTONS, THEY ARE ALL OFFICIALLY PUSHED.

So anyway, go read that fic. 'sgood.

So this month's edition of Attitude has the article on slash in it for which I was interviewed. If you're in the UK, pick it up and have a look! I haven't read the final version of the piece yet, I'm waiting for them to send me a copy (but, um, could I put out tentative feelers for someone in UK to pick me up a copy to send over to Aus? I prompted the journalist about it at the start of the month, but still haven't got anything in the mail).

In other news, one of my firefly songvids got nominated for a strawberry/blue sun fandom award! Thankyou, to whoever put that one down! I am rather fond of it myself, but also a little self-conscious, as I know the quality of the file is rather patchy, as the original source was... it's no where near as shiny and polished as most of the high-quality stuff out there. so, thankyou.

i am very tired after a big day at work. my herbal tea is just ready to be poured, imma watch another ep of spn and munch on some carob.

eta: omg, thankyou alchemilla_ for the valentine's rose!