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I'm okay, you're overidentifying
Mar. 10th, 2003 12:22 pmGood weekend. Lazy yet busy weekend, if there can be such a thing. Saw Lewis Black (excellent, as could be expected) and went to other events around town.
My PSA for the morning is that they are absolutely right when they tell you to eat breakfast before you try exercising. Good to know. Ahem.
In other news, I'm yet again in a meta place with regards to my favorite fandom. I've been enjoying everyone's various discussions of Buffy and Angel and the characters therein.
I'm noticing, though, an interesting trend and I'm wondering what to make of it.
Basically, I've noticed that it's not uncommon for people to not just over-identify with some of the Buffyverse characters, but I'd say hyper identify. Like over-identifying with a character would be, for example, having a keen sympathy for Willow because she just lost a loved one, you recently lost a loved one, and therefore you don't do well in conversations about Willow moving on because you haven't moved on yet so when anyone brings up the concept of Willow getting a new girlfriend you snap their heads off and not because your desire to slap Kennedy on general princple only slightly outweighs your desire to just, really, have her off the show.
So that's over-identifying. And I'm not saying it's good or bad, it just is. At least for the purposes of what I'm talking about now.
No, I'm talking about hyper identifying. Wherein it's not just taking something the show has given you (like Willow losing Tara) and reacting to it strongly, but rather taking the tiniest thing from the show and not only reacting to it strongly but interpreting it based on your personal reaction whether or not that's what the show intended.
To keep using Willow as an example, as I say it's one thing to identify with her losing Tara. However it would be something else to insist that all of her actions since season 4 have been guided by the obvious homophobia of her friends and family and her fear that Xander will gay bash her one day and leave her for dead in an alleyway as he so CLEARLY wants to do because, well it's just obvious, right? And it's just sheer coincidence that the person posting this theory is themselves gay who got gay bashed by their best friend.
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Where identifying with the characters goes beyond sympathy for fellow-feeling to this way of seeing the characters that takes only a small bit of canon, if that, and puts this entire backstory to it that's just not there, and typically this backstory comes from the person's own life.
And I'm wondering - why this fandom? Is it just that this is the fandom I'm the most active in, or is there more to it? Do Buffy and Angel just push the right buttons, even if it's totally inadvertently? Something else? What?
Bleh. Probably not the best way of putting this but I've got to scoot for work now so there we are. If I can be more coherent later I'll try.
My PSA for the morning is that they are absolutely right when they tell you to eat breakfast before you try exercising. Good to know. Ahem.
In other news, I'm yet again in a meta place with regards to my favorite fandom. I've been enjoying everyone's various discussions of Buffy and Angel and the characters therein.
I'm noticing, though, an interesting trend and I'm wondering what to make of it.
Basically, I've noticed that it's not uncommon for people to not just over-identify with some of the Buffyverse characters, but I'd say hyper identify. Like over-identifying with a character would be, for example, having a keen sympathy for Willow because she just lost a loved one, you recently lost a loved one, and therefore you don't do well in conversations about Willow moving on because you haven't moved on yet so when anyone brings up the concept of Willow getting a new girlfriend you snap their heads off and not because your desire to slap Kennedy on general princple only slightly outweighs your desire to just, really, have her off the show.
So that's over-identifying. And I'm not saying it's good or bad, it just is. At least for the purposes of what I'm talking about now.
No, I'm talking about hyper identifying. Wherein it's not just taking something the show has given you (like Willow losing Tara) and reacting to it strongly, but rather taking the tiniest thing from the show and not only reacting to it strongly but interpreting it based on your personal reaction whether or not that's what the show intended.
To keep using Willow as an example, as I say it's one thing to identify with her losing Tara. However it would be something else to insist that all of her actions since season 4 have been guided by the obvious homophobia of her friends and family and her fear that Xander will gay bash her one day and leave her for dead in an alleyway as he so CLEARLY wants to do because, well it's just obvious, right? And it's just sheer coincidence that the person posting this theory is themselves gay who got gay bashed by their best friend.
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Where identifying with the characters goes beyond sympathy for fellow-feeling to this way of seeing the characters that takes only a small bit of canon, if that, and puts this entire backstory to it that's just not there, and typically this backstory comes from the person's own life.
And I'm wondering - why this fandom? Is it just that this is the fandom I'm the most active in, or is there more to it? Do Buffy and Angel just push the right buttons, even if it's totally inadvertently? Something else? What?
Bleh. Probably not the best way of putting this but I've got to scoot for work now so there we are. If I can be more coherent later I'll try.
