angels and band boys
I was going to post about this on Twitter, but there are a few RL people who follow me there that I felt I just couldn't burden with this. That, and I figured they wouldn't be able to keep up and I didn't want to sound like I was spouting nonsense.
I thought I was through with the whole "mind broken and reformed by fanfic" experience, the whole "story by amateur writer enables reader to see thorugh time," the hands-shaking-after-reading / can't walk or speak / Stendhal's syndrome inspired by fannish writing thing. I figured my previous experience with that was a one-off with wax_jism 's Nightswimming, sort of a beginner's mistake because it was only the second story I'd read in the genre. I thought it happened to me just because I didn't know what was going on and was inexperienced and caught off-guard.
Tonight I read An Inexplicable Occurence of Angels [all 4 parts under this tag] by Stele3 on IJ. And now, I just, like, don't know what to do with myself. The writing was so tender and sparse, and the story. The story! It was masterful! One particularly skillful bit was the overlay of real and not real, how real pieces of bandom canon, like Frank's tattoos, get used in a story to mean something different, and yet the created meaning is so organic and natural and realistic that you secretly start to believe that Frank Iero may truly be an angel, proof positive of the fact that MCR is in fact on a mission from God.
But it's not just the solidly competent writing or the weaving of the story--it's the alchemy between the created story and the canon of the band. It's how I experience the band as meaning something and the author (whether intentionally or not, and it's probably a different experience for each reader who brings their own sets of meanings to the work) builds on that meaning with their story--in this case, that something in the MCR experience saves lives. And the result is something bigger, amplified, more powerful than either work could achieve on its own.
Someone this weekend at the Quaker conference was talking about remix culture. It was utterly unexpected: when asked about my internet involvement, I foolishly mentioned fandom and he mentioned Henry Jenkins and I was like: o_O "You know about fandom?" And he busted out with the remix culture stuff from his theoretical readings (I don't think he's actually a fan). But I think I'm starting to get it--the power and meaning of remix culture. The story packs a double punch when it draws on something shared. That's not a big statement, but I don't think I could have said it before tonight. We remix not simply to rework old meaning but to create more meaning, more than was there before.
I need a better icon for when I talk about this stuff. Spinal Tap does not cut it. I am not playing games or smirking about the phenomenon of bandom anymore the way I was when I made that icon.
Shortly, I will consider creating a bandom filter so that those of you not into this particular drug will not have to listen to my heart breaking like this every time I read a new story or hear a new song that I think is neat.
I thought I was through with the whole "mind broken and reformed by fanfic" experience, the whole "story by amateur writer enables reader to see thorugh time," the hands-shaking-after-reading / can't walk or speak / Stendhal's syndrome inspired by fannish writing thing. I figured my previous experience with that was a one-off with wax_jism 's Nightswimming, sort of a beginner's mistake because it was only the second story I'd read in the genre. I thought it happened to me just because I didn't know what was going on and was inexperienced and caught off-guard.
Tonight I read An Inexplicable Occurence of Angels [all 4 parts under this tag] by Stele3 on IJ. And now, I just, like, don't know what to do with myself. The writing was so tender and sparse, and the story. The story! It was masterful! One particularly skillful bit was the overlay of real and not real, how real pieces of bandom canon, like Frank's tattoos, get used in a story to mean something different, and yet the created meaning is so organic and natural and realistic that you secretly start to believe that Frank Iero may truly be an angel, proof positive of the fact that MCR is in fact on a mission from God.
But it's not just the solidly competent writing or the weaving of the story--it's the alchemy between the created story and the canon of the band. It's how I experience the band as meaning something and the author (whether intentionally or not, and it's probably a different experience for each reader who brings their own sets of meanings to the work) builds on that meaning with their story--in this case, that something in the MCR experience saves lives. And the result is something bigger, amplified, more powerful than either work could achieve on its own.
Someone this weekend at the Quaker conference was talking about remix culture. It was utterly unexpected: when asked about my internet involvement, I foolishly mentioned fandom and he mentioned Henry Jenkins and I was like: o_O "You know about fandom?" And he busted out with the remix culture stuff from his theoretical readings (I don't think he's actually a fan). But I think I'm starting to get it--the power and meaning of remix culture. The story packs a double punch when it draws on something shared. That's not a big statement, but I don't think I could have said it before tonight. We remix not simply to rework old meaning but to create more meaning, more than was there before.
I need a better icon for when I talk about this stuff. Spinal Tap does not cut it. I am not playing games or smirking about the phenomenon of bandom anymore the way I was when I made that icon.
Shortly, I will consider creating a bandom filter so that those of you not into this particular drug will not have to listen to my heart breaking like this every time I read a new story or hear a new song that I think is neat.