Good readers, bad readers, and fanfiction

May 09, 2010 06:06

This Sunday's BVC blog takes some thoughts I had last year, and carries them on a step.

fanfiction, behavior, reader expectation, bvc

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sollersuk May 9 2010, 13:18:38 UTC
What it reminds me of is the music situation. It's been shown that there are two different types of music that trigger activity in two different parts of the brain: the emotional type, and the intellectual exercise type, which often appeals to the same sort of person who enjoys doing crosswords. I say "often" because my music preferences are more visceral, both in classical music and... I'm trying to think of a catch-all term for stuff from Bob Dylan to the Manic Street Preachers, and I can never really get into Bach or chamber music, and I love crosswords, in any language that I can handle ( ... )

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sartorias May 9 2010, 13:45:18 UTC
It's so true that we can't be sure that any given reader understands "identification with character" in exactly the same way.

This is why I linked to coneycat's post--I thought she described the types of identification really well with regard to The Diary of Anne Frank.

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Music might be a better analogy than you know-- carbonelle May 10 2010, 02:28:15 UTC
I'll double check with my friend, who's peforming the lead in Copeland's "Tender Land" later this month (1 ( ... )

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Re: Music might be a better analogy than you know-- osprey_archer May 10 2010, 02:43:02 UTC
Why is taking personal identification as a stopping point for the reading experience necessarily bad? It's insufficient if a reader wants to write critically or have serious discussions about books, but some people don't want to do that. As long as they don't insist that their gut reaction is just as logical, valid, and worthy of consideration as someone else's carefully considered critique, I don't think that's a problem.

...actually, looking at your next paragraph about music listeners who just want to respond emotionally, I think we mostly agree.

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Re: Music might be a better analogy than you know-- sartorias May 10 2010, 03:01:08 UTC
Yep.

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