(no subject)

[dreamwitch]

I am a horrible lazy no-good person. Ugh, finals week, uuuuugh. It really wouldn't be so bad, except I should've done transcription of a bunch of voice-recorded interviews weeks ago and put it off, and guess what, it takes FOREVER and I think I'm even slower 'cause I'm always listening to things 4-5 times to get it super-perfect/correct and I can't help it. What concerns me here is that it's like, representative (in theory) of anything that wouldn't come 'naturally' straight out of my head, like your average English paper does: this can only be done by sweating it out, and guess what, it's the thing that might've cost me this quarter, easy as pie. I'm not too thrilled with my performance re: the transcription issue. I mean, what performance? Though I already handed in the paper, I only wrote it based on maybe 8% of the whole of transcription I was supposed to do. :/ So now I've got two more nights to finish the other 92% and I've a headache and want to sleep. :/ Sigh.

Even more hilarious is the idea of 'self evaluations' that are supposed to be super-positive about yourself. I mean, um. How am I supposed to do *that*. :/


As usual, though, when it's exactly the wrong time, I've experienced a rebirth in my fannish self, thanks to discordiana (...who ships K/B), hehe. Nu!Kirk/nu!Spock epics (recs if you have any?), pls, with a side-order of annoyance and discord. ♥. But really I can't *blame* anything on that. It just was... convenient. Also, I've realized breaks are absolutely the *wrong* thing for me. I mean, small 3-4 day/long weekend breaks? Yeah. Week-long breaks just before the final push of the whole quarter? Just long enough to get me out of the groove of actually working. Not cool.


I've also realized bookshop was right when I was complaining madly about HP and how much I hated fandom & wanted to leave (hahaha IT WAS 2005 AHAHAHAHAAHHA). Even more hilariously, I know I've been saying that since '04, maybe even '03. Anyway, Aja said that basically fandom's the one who won't leave me even if I stop talking to everyone, basically, 'cause it's a pov/method, and it's truuuue. It's funny 'cause I basically hate 'fandom' 45-75% the time, but I definitely absolutely love it 25% of the time.

We were talking in class earlier about how academic lit study never really addresses emotional response, and how people, y'know, actually relate to literature. No duh. We were also talking about how different and deeply enriched one's understanding of any text becomes upon discussion in a community of readers vs one's own solitary perception upon reading, and no matter how a class tries to emulate such a community through discussion, the bottom line is that we can never be fandom, where people are there because they want to engage, they're invested, and they genuinely have something to contribute-- it matters to them already, or they wouldn't be there. In class, so many people are just taking up space, or don't care/connect to the some of the work at all. For a person who loves discussing literature (like myself) and is most comfortable, in the end, on the emotional-response level first and analytical meta second (like myself), while an English class may be fun and challenging, fandom is my absolute ideal environment, except when it's not, y'know, haha, since there's the rabid anti-meta faction, and then in the meta faction there's the rabid anti-canon faction, and rarely do the twain ever meet, etc.

At many points in the class, I was thinking about how this or that related to fandom and/or was relevant, and it sucked to not be able to share that with fandom. A lot of times people complained about something (in the current state of social interaction with texts/media) that fandom 'fixes' or answers, when they thought there was only entropy & decline. Basically, I think fandom is in fact one of the most fascinating and encouraging and positive aspects of the glut of brainless monstrosity that is modern pop culture. I used to think it only made sense to 'outgrow' fandom at one point, but you know what, it would be really sad if I did. It really would be.

Comments

[cellia.livejournal.com]

The hypermasculine authoritarian one is just a bully who I want to punch in the face, and anti-heroes try to subvert all that by being pretentious.

Love this take on it!

I can't tell if you're talking about nuKirk or (real)Kirk.

But I do agree that, behind all the more immature teenage power/wish-fulfillment/fantasy aspects of the original 60s tv show, there is a more "adult" sensibility at work imho.

I think this is almost more a symptom of the era than anything else. Looking at all tv shows and movies from then vs now. More recently there's something about youth culture and.. I guess immaturity and sexy sleekness that seems to have replaced a more adult worldview. I feel it really shows in the Star Trek nu!movie vs old!tv show. haha I sound like an old lady (back in the day...)

The old tv show, however cheesy, also tended to have real SF writers write for it. They cared about ideas and SF. The new movie has no new ideas. There is no SF soul in it. It barely even bothers to uphold the *1960s* groundbreaking ideas. Ugh. (Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie, but it was slick, flashy fun... so lame and empty-hearted and empty-minded as Trek.)

Shatner's acting made the series. Spock is necessary as well, but Shatner creates this lynchpin for everything to turn on.

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

I forgot to say I also want to punch the pretentious ones in the face, as well. I don't put new Kirk in that class though (I don't consider him pretentious and I don't want to punch him in the face) though what's interesting is that people's reaction to him is the same characters in that class generally get. This is why I said he's only like that in fanfic. I think people project themselves on him so they can be an angsty rebel who's theoretically a badass but is essentially superneedy and gets a lot of attention from their love interest of choice. It's a weird mix of female and male wish fulfillment.

I was talking about old Kirk in the comments above.

I'm not sure if it's a "back in my day" thing or a response to the globalized capitalist way of producing entertainment. Ooooh. What I mean isn't that we've regressed, but that we're dealing with a new set of problems that cause of a lot of populism that is but isn't the same brand as before.

Obv good stories are being written and there's always been standardization in entertainment, but a lot of the emotional content is so commodified now, and a lot of the so called thematic exploration seems lip-service to give a pretense of adulthood to things that are little more than button-pushing. Also, the exploration is commodified as well. Oh, daddy issues. Oh, he was a hero and the son feels inadequate. Deep.

Ok, so I thought the new movie was better than that, often clever in the way it dealt with relationships and characterization (ie, for example Uhura and Spock weren't boringly going through the sexy moves) but yeah something's been lost in term of vision and, I dunno, patience and curiosity? It really freaks me out how *fast* movies have to be now in order to sell, for example.

It's what rubbed me the wrong way in a lot of JJ Abram's interviews, how he went on about courting the emotional response because whose emotional response are we talking about? And how much of it is due to being the formula that's recogized by most people? And isn't so much of the intellectualism they cut what actually allowed the series to explore new things, new perspectives, different kinds of people?

I don't consider this the only thing going on with current story-telling but it's something that factors in. And also I just used you to vomit a lot of thoughts about bad art that are only marginally related to Star Trek. Sorry :(

It's odd how everyone is SPOCK SPOCK SPOCK. Or is it just hardcore fans? Some sort of nerd affinity? I like him, but I prefer Kirk.

[godspoodle.livejournal.com]

It's odd how everyone is SPOCK SPOCK SPOCK. Or is it just hardcore fans? Some sort of nerd affinity?

Haha, since I'm (I guess) well-qualified to answer... except not with nu!Spock, and not really with 'fandom response' in the internet fandom sense, I guess... but I can't help it, I love analyzing 'why do people feel X' type stuff.

My first feeling, my first feeling is that *maybe* it's nerd affinity, but that's not the 'hardcore fan' reason? I think. I think in general you always get the biggest response to the more distant/cool/self-controlled/mysterious+sexy character. I mean, merely saying 'nerd affinity' is deceptive in that sense, because if you're a character that's nerdy in the 'wrong way', you won't get the same kind of fans.

First of all, with TOS, even though Jim drives the show, Spock is like, in many ways the symbol of Trek to people. The whole 'live long and prosper', 'Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations' thing, him being 'our' alien like ET, sort of, except not cutesy. He's a very aspirational character, but I think, in a different way than Jim-- I mean, Jim is more of an adventure/mythic story type: he's a true hero. He's not that unusual, merely a great character for what he is. Spock, on the other hand, is pretty unusual in that he's an unashamedly cerebral character who's not just 'the sidekick' or 'the brain' (Hermione, say) or an evil bitter plotter (Snape) or the lame/weirdo nerd (Luna). He's well-rounded enough that his extreme talents are purely useful and admired-- and he can kick ass when he has to and no one really questions or looks down on his abilities. There's the Vulcan prejudice things sometimes, but his actual character is never a true hindrance. He's very unique and unusual in that sense; even the true 'nerdy heroes' of literature like Sherlock Holmes are quite poisoned by their use of intellect/neuroses. Spock's logic is not a neurosis at all. I mean, full stop, it never functions that way. That is *extremely* aspirational and in many ways symbolic of some main themes of the series. I mean, sort of a mascot, really. In some ways even if you're a fan of TOS!Kirk, say, you'd be a fan of Spock to some degree automatically, just 'cause it's such a huge part of Jim to be Spock's biggest fan; it's sort of similar to how most big Harry fans are big Weasley fans, I think. It works vice versa, but less so (you can be a fan of Spock without being a huge Jim fan) because Spock isn't *as* obviously hung up on Jim (or emotional, obviously).

I think there's a lot of people who're non-logical/non-nerdy who just sort of look up to him and think he's awesome. Lots of people criticize Jim 'cause he's hot-headed and popular with the ladies (which some people unreasonably resent), whereas there's no such barrier to popularity with Spock-- he's non-threatening, without being so omg-perfect he's annoying. I honestly think he's probably one of the most well-conceived and ground-breaking, fictional iconic characters of the 20th century; Jim too, but Jim is different-- you almost need to be more of a fan of Trek to be a fan of Jim, whereas Spock *is* Star Trek to people who're not even fans, so it's the opposite of 'just hardcore fans'. He's to the Star Trek universe & franchise what Mickey Mouse is to Disney, really.