Are you suggesting there are no characterizations of Scully that you don’t like? No characterizations of Mulder that just don’t do it for you? I think past fanfic discussions would contradict that.
It's almost as though you all have such a fixed notion of Scully, for your own psychological/aesthetic purposes, that you've put her into a complicated cage. […] We have all quoted "extreme possibilities" endlessly but you give our characters specific backstories that almost function like straitjackets.
In saying this, you are disapproving of everyone else’s Mulders and Scullys. Apparently your opinion is the only one that is fair to the characters, and you propose to fully embrace any and all characterizations. Yet you don’t embrace ours? How does that work?
My appreciation of a character is not unconditional. If I changed Dana Scully around enough, she could be anyone. More relevantly, if I changed any character around enough, they would stop being themselves. And that’s true for ever character, in the eyes of every fan there is. Call it a fanonical invariant.
You say that you feel our opinions regarding the nature of Scully’s character are “very reductive”. But I don’t see the point in caring about anything if you don’t want to actually understand what it is you’re caring about. Now I know XF fanon fairly well. I’ve read a lot of fanfic and I generally remember what I read well enough. I know that fanon Scully - our Scully, the one we all share, the akashic Scully if you will *g* – is vast and amorphous and she has as many facets as have ever been dreamed up. But my Scully is not so very amorphous, in fact she’s quite shapely, though still with a bit of healthy leeway.
If I only got pleasure out of reading about my Scully, I would not be here and I would never have been here because 99 out of 100 stories would bore me or annoy me. But if I wasn’t interested in understanding my Scully more fully and completely, I also wouldn’t be here. So your accusation (it was one) that I’m somehow enslaving the character(s) is equally as baffling as your proposal that I ought not to have opinions about characterization lest I cripple creativity and repress enjoyment.
Frankly, the very thing that makes discussing fanfic so uniquely fun and stimulating is that within a particular fandom, every fic can be compared and contrasted in so many ways. Unlike original fiction, in which what’s there on the page is everything, with fanfiction what’s there on the page is like one mirror in a huge hall of mirrors, at the center of which is canon. Not formulating opinions about characterization would be like looking at the page and saying, this is all there is, it does not reflect anything at all.
no subject
Are you suggesting there are no characterizations of Scully that you don’t like? No characterizations of Mulder that just don’t do it for you? I think past fanfic discussions would contradict that.
It's almost as though you all have such a fixed notion of Scully, for your own psychological/aesthetic purposes, that you've put her into a complicated cage. […] We have all quoted "extreme possibilities" endlessly but you give our characters specific backstories that almost function like straitjackets.
In saying this, you are disapproving of everyone else’s Mulders and Scullys. Apparently your opinion is the only one that is fair to the characters, and you propose to fully embrace any and all characterizations. Yet you don’t embrace ours? How does that work?
My appreciation of a character is not unconditional. If I changed Dana Scully around enough, she could be anyone. More relevantly, if I changed any character around enough, they would stop being themselves. And that’s true for ever character, in the eyes of every fan there is. Call it a fanonical invariant.
You say that you feel our opinions regarding the nature of Scully’s character are “very reductive”. But I don’t see the point in caring about anything if you don’t want to actually understand what it is you’re caring about. Now I know XF fanon fairly well. I’ve read a lot of fanfic and I generally remember what I read well enough. I know that fanon Scully - our Scully, the one we all share, the akashic Scully if you will *g* – is vast and amorphous and she has as many facets as have ever been dreamed up. But my Scully is not so very amorphous, in fact she’s quite shapely, though still with a bit of healthy leeway.
If I only got pleasure out of reading about my Scully, I would not be here and I would never have been here because 99 out of 100 stories would bore me or annoy me. But if I wasn’t interested in understanding my Scully more fully and completely, I also wouldn’t be here. So your accusation (it was one) that I’m somehow enslaving the character(s) is equally as baffling as your proposal that I ought not to have opinions about characterization lest I cripple creativity and repress enjoyment.
Frankly, the very thing that makes discussing fanfic so uniquely fun and stimulating is that within a particular fandom, every fic can be compared and contrasted in so many ways. Unlike original fiction, in which what’s there on the page is everything, with fanfiction what’s there on the page is like one mirror in a huge hall of mirrors, at the center of which is canon. Not formulating opinions about characterization would be like looking at the page and saying, this is all there is, it does not reflect anything at all.