Still mulling this over. I suspect the short version is that seven post-grad years in literary studies plus twenty years in fandom have made it so the only meta I'm interested in anymore is work that focuses solely on opening new interpretive possibilities, as opposed to proving the author the Most Correct or Most Moral. The best examples I can think of are the old Ship Manifesto essays for non-canon ships that the manifesto authors had accepted weren't going to happen. It's not necessarily real, but look at how fun it is to read the text this way! That's where the magic happens. I'm not really wired for ships that have no canon basis, but I can usually see what a fan gets out of it, at least.
Same goes for Word of God. I don't have to dissect every single piece of it to make sure my understanding of canon is correct and cohesive (though my brain usually goes there anyway because I'm a cataloger by nature), but what are the new possibilities we can put into fanworks because of, say, a new interview? Since there's YOI talk up-thread, a recent-ish example of what I don't want was the idea that "The prequel movie will finally put everyone on the same page about the characters' pasts." No. Boring. Unblocking just for the pleasure of hitting block again. The movie is going to give a million new unanswered questions to play with, and we'll still be free to ignore any bits that don't serve our fun in any given context. I'm still probably going to get obsessive about "Okay, but if this real skater for sure exists in the YOI-verse, what does that mean for Worlds 2010?" but that is my kind of fun, and I'm never going to force it on anybody else.
Crap, this was supposed to be the short version. I guess it still counts as short-ish. (I! Missed! This! Real comment threads are the best.)
But the main thing I got from that article is that I could have written every word of it, from the gleeful affirmation I found in "The Case for R/S" to the uncontrollable sobbing over Sirius to the slow realization that JKR had no idea what this army of queer teens and 20-somethings had actually seen in her text... and she didn't care to hear about it. My experience had the twist that I was actually quite interested in Remus/Tonks too. That is, until it actually happened and was a pile of emotionally manipulative horrors instead of the awkward bi duo being bi and awkward together (which I still seek out in nostalgia fic binges because their What Might Have Been makes me almost as happy as Wolfstar itself does). I was very lonely at that stage in my life, and reading this makes me wish I could reach back in time to tell 16-year-old me that over fifteen years later she would find her experience was shared identically with other 16-ish-year-olds across the world. It was hard to understand that at the time because, ahem, many of us were lying about our ages to be in fandom c. 2003.
no subject
Same goes for Word of God. I don't have to dissect every single piece of it to make sure my understanding of canon is correct and cohesive (though my brain usually goes there anyway because I'm a cataloger by nature), but what are the new possibilities we can put into fanworks because of, say, a new interview? Since there's YOI talk up-thread, a recent-ish example of what I don't want was the idea that "The prequel movie will finally put everyone on the same page about the characters' pasts." No. Boring. Unblocking just for the pleasure of hitting block again. The movie is going to give a million new unanswered questions to play with, and we'll still be free to ignore any bits that don't serve our fun in any given context. I'm still probably going to get obsessive about "Okay, but if this real skater for sure exists in the YOI-verse, what does that mean for Worlds 2010?" but that is my kind of fun, and I'm never going to force it on anybody else.
Crap, this was supposed to be the short version. I guess it still counts as short-ish. (I! Missed! This! Real comment threads are the best.)
But the main thing I got from that article is that I could have written every word of it, from the gleeful affirmation I found in "The Case for R/S" to the uncontrollable sobbing over Sirius to the slow realization that JKR had no idea what this army of queer teens and 20-somethings had actually seen in her text... and she didn't care to hear about it. My experience had the twist that I was actually quite interested in Remus/Tonks too. That is, until it actually happened and was a pile of emotionally manipulative horrors instead of the awkward bi duo being bi and awkward together (which I still seek out in nostalgia fic binges because their What Might Have Been makes me almost as happy as Wolfstar itself does). I was very lonely at that stage in my life, and reading this makes me wish I could reach back in time to tell 16-year-old me that over fifteen years later she would find her experience was shared identically with other 16-ish-year-olds across the world. It was hard to understand that at the time because, ahem, many of us were lying about our ages to be in fandom c. 2003.