thought we'd get to see forever
Sep. 7th, 2004 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aruanVery merry (belated) birthday salutes to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
digital_diva. Thanks for all you do, hon. Hope it's a good one.
Fannish news, and then something not-so-different:
- the San Francisco Examiner has gotten in on the kiss comment
- Justin and Cam are allegedly shopping for a Miami pad, according to In Touch
- Britters' 55-hour ex-hubby was photographed making out with a transsexual at a Miami club
- JC looked downright delicious, excluding the woefully increasingly unbecoming shag on his head, at Last Chance Summer Dance
- Lance has been partying it up in the Hamptons and sending hapless bartenders on midnight runs for Red Bull. God only knows why, as the stuff is neck-and-neck with straight-up green Bacardi for Most Foul Stuff Ever
- He also got himself photographed with his puppies again, which I fall for all over again every.single.time
- And Monsieur Fatone has decided to make it official with Kelly come this Thursday. Mazel tov and may there be many pictures of happy boybanders
- TPTB are letting both Rupert Grint and Dan Radcliffe have lots of good, shaggy hair for the next movie. Mah heart! It is all a-quiver with the Wrong Emotions
Okay, so there was this essay I spent most of my extended weekend working on, a 2,000+word spiel on popslash fandom and how it's different in dynamics from the rest of *NSYNC fandom and why LiveJournal is the perfect medium for it and how new fans coming into it are tending to be younger and how that's great in some ways but not really because they have a tendency to treat it like the media they came from, i.e. chat rooms, message boards, mailing lists, and LiveJournal is personal and not ephemeral and popslash is generally an older population than their target demographic and these new fans come assert themselves into this new, different community like they automatically belong, oftentimes trivially, limit the depth and breadth of discussion, and write fic that's immature, unresearched, and without the attention to characterization as opposed to outright projection necessary to write good fiction.
I mean, fandom has changed, as all things inevitably do. Stones erode, civilizations rise and fall, fandoms go through waves of popularity and dry spells, gaining new fans (new both to the fandom or fandom in general) and losing ones that loved it when it was underground. Lamenting about it will only give us virtual wrinkles and a thread on whatever incarnation of Fandom Wank is around that day. But there's a reason why if you liked a marginalized pairing/specific kink in a fandom and you went questing for fic, chances were good that what little you'd find would be as good as gold in the sieve, because only people who would write it well were doing it, because they didn't write for shock factor, they didn't write for an isn't-that-silly one-off - they wrote because they believed in it and no one else was giving them what they wanted. I think that while that's still the case to a certain extent with slash, many are attempting things that need much more knowledge of craft and character than they've taken the time and made the effort to learn.
It's especially hard to keep the popslash faction of *NSYNC fandom's morale up, being as dependant on intra-group dynamics as it is, harmonious or otherwise. As far as the popular press is concerned, it's like they've regressed back to before No Strings Attached and the boys are a bunch of overchoreographed, talentless hacks all over again with the exception of boy-wonder Timberlake. And before anyone jumps all over me, I'm not denying Justin's talent, just begrudging everyone who's put the accomplishments of the group and its other members in his shadow or debt or general obscurity. We can argue to what extent the press has an agenda but probably agree that to some extent it's about promoting Justin's career, because it's not just in our interest if he's in the spotlight, but in the interest of their livelihood as well, and forgetting just another boyband's chart success and a few Grammy nominations is a lot more palatable than saying his roots, still considered less than respectable because of its close ties to teenage girls, who everyone knows have no taste, had merit, too.
And aren't I the big hypocrite in that they're the same faction I'm picking on here. Difference being, I'm not begrudging them the legitimacy of their affections, just their participation in something out of most of their leagues. Which, ironically, is what they said about Justin, too. Really, who's to say the Next Big Thing won't come from one of the vets but one of the new kids on the block? Not I. All I'd like to see is a little respect for the methods that have served a thousand fandoms well enough so far.
And there, that's my unpopular fannish opinion rant in a lot less space.
Well, I'm bitching, so you know things couldn't have gone too badly with the hurricane down here. We never lost power, ate wonderful delivered Chinese food last night, and classes for today have been scrapped given the sorry state of our previously immaculately landscaped campus.
Listened to a very surreal mix of music last night, the kind that makes you question if you're still who and where you think you are. Hope you enjoy this excerpt. It's the one that resonated most strongly, possibly because I was missing Paris something fierce. From one of the many soundtracks from Buddha Bar, which is as close to paradise as I've ever experienced with both feet still on the ground. Right Click/Save As, please.
Pink Martini - La Soledad
digital_diva. Thanks for all you do, hon. Hope it's a good one.Fannish news, and then something not-so-different:
- the San Francisco Examiner has gotten in on the kiss comment
- Justin and Cam are allegedly shopping for a Miami pad, according to In Touch
- Britters' 55-hour ex-hubby was photographed making out with a transsexual at a Miami club
- JC looked downright delicious, excluding the woefully increasingly unbecoming shag on his head, at Last Chance Summer Dance
- Lance has been partying it up in the Hamptons and sending hapless bartenders on midnight runs for Red Bull. God only knows why, as the stuff is neck-and-neck with straight-up green Bacardi for Most Foul Stuff Ever
- He also got himself photographed with his puppies again, which I fall for all over again every.single.time
- And Monsieur Fatone has decided to make it official with Kelly come this Thursday. Mazel tov and may there be many pictures of happy boybanders
- TPTB are letting both Rupert Grint and Dan Radcliffe have lots of good, shaggy hair for the next movie. Mah heart! It is all a-quiver with the Wrong Emotions
Okay, so there was this essay I spent most of my extended weekend working on, a 2,000+word spiel on popslash fandom and how it's different in dynamics from the rest of *NSYNC fandom and why LiveJournal is the perfect medium for it and how new fans coming into it are tending to be younger and how that's great in some ways but not really because they have a tendency to treat it like the media they came from, i.e. chat rooms, message boards, mailing lists, and LiveJournal is personal and not ephemeral and popslash is generally an older population than their target demographic and these new fans come assert themselves into this new, different community like they automatically belong, oftentimes trivially, limit the depth and breadth of discussion, and write fic that's immature, unresearched, and without the attention to characterization as opposed to outright projection necessary to write good fiction.
I mean, fandom has changed, as all things inevitably do. Stones erode, civilizations rise and fall, fandoms go through waves of popularity and dry spells, gaining new fans (new both to the fandom or fandom in general) and losing ones that loved it when it was underground. Lamenting about it will only give us virtual wrinkles and a thread on whatever incarnation of Fandom Wank is around that day. But there's a reason why if you liked a marginalized pairing/specific kink in a fandom and you went questing for fic, chances were good that what little you'd find would be as good as gold in the sieve, because only people who would write it well were doing it, because they didn't write for shock factor, they didn't write for an isn't-that-silly one-off - they wrote because they believed in it and no one else was giving them what they wanted. I think that while that's still the case to a certain extent with slash, many are attempting things that need much more knowledge of craft and character than they've taken the time and made the effort to learn.
It's especially hard to keep the popslash faction of *NSYNC fandom's morale up, being as dependant on intra-group dynamics as it is, harmonious or otherwise. As far as the popular press is concerned, it's like they've regressed back to before No Strings Attached and the boys are a bunch of overchoreographed, talentless hacks all over again with the exception of boy-wonder Timberlake. And before anyone jumps all over me, I'm not denying Justin's talent, just begrudging everyone who's put the accomplishments of the group and its other members in his shadow or debt or general obscurity. We can argue to what extent the press has an agenda but probably agree that to some extent it's about promoting Justin's career, because it's not just in our interest if he's in the spotlight, but in the interest of their livelihood as well, and forgetting just another boyband's chart success and a few Grammy nominations is a lot more palatable than saying his roots, still considered less than respectable because of its close ties to teenage girls, who everyone knows have no taste, had merit, too.
And aren't I the big hypocrite in that they're the same faction I'm picking on here. Difference being, I'm not begrudging them the legitimacy of their affections, just their participation in something out of most of their leagues. Which, ironically, is what they said about Justin, too. Really, who's to say the Next Big Thing won't come from one of the vets but one of the new kids on the block? Not I. All I'd like to see is a little respect for the methods that have served a thousand fandoms well enough so far.
And there, that's my unpopular fannish opinion rant in a lot less space.
Well, I'm bitching, so you know things couldn't have gone too badly with the hurricane down here. We never lost power, ate wonderful delivered Chinese food last night, and classes for today have been scrapped given the sorry state of our previously immaculately landscaped campus.
Listened to a very surreal mix of music last night, the kind that makes you question if you're still who and where you think you are. Hope you enjoy this excerpt. It's the one that resonated most strongly, possibly because I was missing Paris something fierce. From one of the many soundtracks from Buddha Bar, which is as close to paradise as I've ever experienced with both feet still on the ground. Right Click/Save As, please.
Pink Martini - La Soledad
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 01:41 pm (UTC)Have I by the way ever mentioned how much I adore your rants? ;)
I may not comment much but your eloquence always leaves me speechless. *g*
no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 04:06 pm (UTC)Aaw. And now I'm just goopy. Thanks again, hon, and hope it's a great year coming.
no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 04:00 pm (UTC)many are attempting things that need much more knowledge of craft and character than they've taken the time and made the effort to learn.
Hallelujah, girlfriend.
no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 04:15 pm (UTC)I really can't put it more succinctly than that. They're just not ready to give the subject the proper treatment, yet do it anyway just because they can string words together and think the boys look pretty together. Which is the same reason why any of the rest of the writers in popslash do it, but I'd contest that there's definitely more to doing it well, a lot of which younger writers haven't taken the time to acquaint themselves with (the least of which being the mechanics). Also, they're not teenage girls. They're mostly grown men. And when the two collide, more often than not I walk away with a headache.
no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 04:27 pm (UTC)The thing that gets me about these stories is that they're so badly written, I find myself wondering if English was the writer's first language and praying that it wasn't. I think some of it is that hiatus fans are trying their hands at writing and some of them just don't know the depth of the relationships these guys have because they haven't seen it. And I'm not trying to say all hiatus writers are like that because some of them just get it and some of them do the research (and have fun watching hours and hours of footage while they're at it) but some only know that Justin put out and album and JC put out and album and then they went and got the *NSYNC CDs but they don't know all that went into them. And that's all well and good but some of us are used to a higher standard than that.
no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 9th, 2004 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: September 7th, 2004 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 12:17 am (UTC)And yes, much happiness to Joey. And if there are pictures of him standing at the altar with Lance by his side, so help me god but I will absolutely die of the squee.
no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 01:44 am (UTC)yes and I've seen the pictures. Maybe he was way drunk and it was dark in the place.
http://p201.ezboard.com/fkhopfrm8.showMessage?topicID=63.topic
no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: September 8th, 2004 11:14 pm (UTC)