But it’s fairly easy to see much of the DCU as closer to *fandom* than anything.
Yes, definitely! Which of course, was the main point of your original post. But I just went off digressing all over the details instead, because...errr, I dunno. Because I'm lame? Because all I had to say about your main premise was just a big fat "I agree, and what a cool observation!" Which would have been sort of boring. And I felt like talking.
[the auteur thing]
I wonder if this is why so much is made of the *Jossverse*, rather than as the Buffy-verse or similar.
I think it may well be. It often strikes me that it's characteristic of fandom to try to maintain the belief that the fictive universe is internally logical and coherent...no many how many indications there may be to the contrary. Fans like to come up with in-world explanations for things, no matter how obvious it may be that the real reason for them was an actor's contract dispute, or an authorial screw-up, or an editing error, or whatever. Fans are all about the retcon -- and hey, there's yet another way in which the DCU shows its true colours as fanon!
Anyway, I think it's much easier to maintain that delusion belief in a coherent fictive universe if you have an auteur you can point to as the source of the Almighty Overriding Vision (TM). Even in HP fandom, which really does have an auteur, the fans still tend to exaggerate the extent to which Rowling "has it all planned out," insisting that every tiny little detail of the canon must have great intentional significance, for example, even in the face of overwhelming evidence - indeed, even direct authorial admission - to the contrary.
So yeah, I do think that the emphasis on Whedon's role in the "Jossverse" fandoms is probably symptomatic of a larger trend.
Of course, you DCU folks have transcended all of that. :-)
Of all the HP AU communities out there which frighten me, this is not one of them.
*laughs*
Oh, indeed. A "let's just quietly do our own little AU thing off in this corner here and leave other people to do their own things in peace" community? In the Harry Potter fandom?
My. Well. That would be a refreshing change, wouldn't it?
And when that person in charge has no real auteurial claim, things get bloody.
Well, yeah. Basically, you're looking at a situation in which it feels like there's this one fanfic author who has been inexplicably elevated to a position of power over all of the other fans, and whose actions while in this temporary postion of power are first to engage in egregious character rape, and then to defend his actions by posting what amounts to a really arrogant and oblivious "ha ha, I'm glad I upset you, you losers!" gloat on a public forum.
I mean, I don't even follow the DCU, and reading that exchange still made me feel a little bit frustrated and frothy. I can only imagine how I might have responded if it had involved characters with whom I had any form of emotional investment.
Ah, well. With luck, it will just get ret-conned out of existence completely eventually, and then it will just be like a baaaaad dreeeeam. A bit like that singing frog, actually. Which used to give me nightmares as a child, I'll have you know!
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Date: 2005-09-15 04:14 pm (UTC)Yes, definitely! Which of course, was the main point of your original post. But I just went off digressing all over the details instead, because...errr, I dunno. Because I'm lame? Because all I had to say about your main premise was just a big fat "I agree, and what a cool observation!" Which would have been sort of boring. And I felt like talking.
[the auteur thing]
I wonder if this is why so much is made of the *Jossverse*, rather than as the Buffy-verse or similar.
I think it may well be. It often strikes me that it's characteristic of fandom to try to maintain the belief that the fictive universe is internally logical and coherent...no many how many indications there may be to the contrary. Fans like to come up with in-world explanations for things, no matter how obvious it may be that the real reason for them was an actor's contract dispute, or an authorial screw-up, or an editing error, or whatever. Fans are all about the retcon -- and hey, there's yet another way in which the DCU shows its true colours as fanon!
Anyway, I think it's much easier to maintain that
delusionbelief in a coherent fictive universe if you have an auteur you can point to as the source of the Almighty Overriding Vision (TM). Even in HP fandom, which really does have an auteur, the fans still tend to exaggerate the extent to which Rowling "has it all planned out," insisting that every tiny little detail of the canon must have great intentional significance, for example, even in the face of overwhelming evidence - indeed, even direct authorial admission - to the contrary.So yeah, I do think that the emphasis on Whedon's role in the "Jossverse" fandoms is probably symptomatic of a larger trend.
Of course, you DCU folks have transcended all of that. :-)
Of all the HP AU communities out there which frighten me, this is not one of them.
*laughs*
Oh, indeed. A "let's just quietly do our own little AU thing off in this corner here and leave other people to do their own things in peace" community? In the Harry Potter fandom?
My. Well. That would be a refreshing change, wouldn't it?
And when that person in charge has no real auteurial claim, things get bloody.
Well, yeah. Basically, you're looking at a situation in which it feels like there's this one fanfic author who has been inexplicably elevated to a position of power over all of the other fans, and whose actions while in this temporary postion of power are first to engage in egregious character rape, and then to defend his actions by posting what amounts to a really arrogant and oblivious "ha ha, I'm glad I upset you, you losers!" gloat on a public forum.
I mean, I don't even follow the DCU, and reading that exchange still made me feel a little bit frustrated and frothy. I can only imagine how I might have responded if it had involved characters with whom I had any form of emotional investment.
Ah, well. With luck, it will just get ret-conned out of existence completely eventually, and then it will just be like a baaaaad dreeeeam. A bit like that singing frog, actually. Which used to give me nightmares as a child, I'll have you know!