fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #704 ]

[ SECRET POST #704 ]

⌈ Secret Post #704 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

101.

[The World Ends with You]

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102.

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103.

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104.

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105.

[Detective Conan, Kyou Kara Maou, Hana Yori Dango, Lovely Complex]

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106.

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107.

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108. [removed]

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109.

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110.

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111.

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112.

[House]

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113.

[Rookies]

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114.

[Pokemon/Digimon]

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115.

[tinman (dg/glitch); she & him]

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116. [not fandom]

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117.

[Torchwood, Jack/Ianto]

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118.

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119.

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120.

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121.

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122. [repeat]

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123.

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124.

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125. [removed]

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126.

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127.

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128.

[Satisfied?]

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129.

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130.

[Chelsey Lately]

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131.

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132.

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133.

[Queer as Folk]

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134.

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135.

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136.

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137.

[Sleeping Beauty]

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138.

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139.

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140.

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141.

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142.

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143.

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144.

[Mighty Boosh]

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145.

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146.

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147.

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148.

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149.

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150.

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151.

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152.

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153.

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154.

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155.

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156.

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157.

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158.

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159.

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160.

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161.

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162.

[Golden Sun]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 10 pages, 240 secrets from Secret Submission Post #101.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 3 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 4 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - take it to comments ], [ 1 - doing it wrong ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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108. And then everyone stood up and applauded, amirite?

161. LOL psychoanalyzing fictional characters.

Some of us are more interested in the psychology (and biological drives, in the case of non-humans) that fictional characters would logically have based on the stresses of the lives that they lead within their fictional culture and history, than we are in whether or not fictional characters are good "role models" or "positive images". And pretty much every awful internet argument I have ever been in has had to do with the fact that the political people either LOL at the worldbuilding, Watsonian approach or deride it as being immoral because we don't care who's playing the characters or who's watching them or what "message" they send, only whether they make sense in their context.

And I can't be the only one who's really sick of this. Analysing the psychology and personality or likely (nonhuman) biological drives of a fictional character is no more inherently LOL than wasting hours and hours and hours analysing fiction for its political messages and content or its ability to model "healthy relationships" to people who, if they are old enough to have relationships, are old enough to find the self-help shelf in the bookstore and to recognise that certain writers are not found there.

Either it's all LOL, because omg, what you could be doing with all that time, or none of it's LOL.

Edited 2008-12-09 23:05 (UTC)

Love, relax. No one's accusing you of anything here.

Do what you like, I happen to think it's kind of an exercise in futility, but that's my personal opinion.

I just...gah. I love that kind of shit. I want to start a comm for it with like, no realworld politics allowed :) but we'd have to lock it, and that's what upsets me, and you can't tell me we wouldn't have to. Aside from the shitty spelling I LOVED that secret.

Edited 2008-12-09 23:19 (UTC)

..I would totally be up for creating a community like that. But only if it were all-fandom. Offers?

Y SO SRS KIRI

LOL, IRK? Imagine someone using theory to help them analyze a text! That would be so ridiculo- OH WAIT.

The object of psychoanalytic literary criticism, at its very simplest, can be the psychoanalysis of the author or of a particularly interesting character.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_literary_criticism)

Dude, relax. I understand the usefulness and the reasoning behind literary criticism. I just think psychoanalyzing the characters themselves is pretty heartily fanwank (especially if you're using it to rationalize your desire for incestuous porn), and if you can't admit that, then...

Well, I can't help you.

I'm just saying it's not like analysing the psychology of fictional characters is completely unheard of in the realm of literary criticism. I wasn't so much aiming for a tone of 'irritated' as I was 'snarky', but I may have missed the mark a little; internet communication, tone of voice, blah blah blah.

On a more personal level: I don't see analysing the psychology of fictional characters as a justification of porn, so much as I see it as fun in and of itself. I'm quite happy to pick apart Dean Winchester's psyche completely ignoring the question of whether or not he might sleep with his brother. Long rambling discussions about what effect his nigh-parental responsibility as a child might have had on the development of his low self esteem? YES PLZ. Wincestuous analysis just combines my shipping with my love of analysis. Just like ship fic combines my shipping with my love of fiction, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying gen fic too.

I am perfectly happy to rationalise my desire for incestuous porn with the fact that, at least in this particular case, it's hot. (Although if someone thought my desire to read incestuous porn required more justification than that and wanted to challenge me on it, I would be quite happy to have a long thinky discussion with them on where our opinions differ. That would presumably be a case of them questioning either my psychological health or my ethical system, and ethics and psychology are both subjects I enjoy analysing. :D)

Going into the serious, thinky, non-snarky thing, it's just-- the characters have agency as individual "people" so to speak, but they have agency in conjunction with and complicated by the fact that they are fictional. They have a complicated relationship as go-between for the writing, as mediated by the actors, with the audience. Not to mention there are multiple authors who write in tandom and seperately, which complicates Sam and Dean-as-characters even more depending on who is doing the writing on any particular episode.

So straight psychoanalysis that you'd do on a normal person has to be taken with a grain of salt because of all that.

(Which is entirely aside from the fact that psychoanalysis on someone you've never met or talked to is a bad idea.)

In other words, LOL psychoanalyzing a fictional character.

Well it's true that the many writers, and the fact that they communicate the characters through the actors, mean that there are so many contributors that what the viewers end up with is most likely going to be self contradictory, but I don't think that necessarily makes analysis from within context of the text pointless.

Obviously, as viewers, we have to see the characters as psychologically possible as part of our suspension of disbelief, and that is pretty much done by subconscious/intuitive analysis of the character from within the context of the text. Psychological analysis of characters is just a much more active, thorough form of what all readers do anyway. To say 'examining the text as if it were a real situation is pointless' is to call most of what people do while consuming fiction pointless. Pretending it's real (temporarily, within its own context), is the point.

You could say that examining the text as if it were real beyond just 'reading the story' will make the facade of psychological realism crumble, and the pointless part of analysing the psyche of a fictional character is the fact that you are likely to find unrealistic contradictions that will undermine your suspension of disbelief. I don't really find that that level of analysis does always undermine my suspension of disbelief though. I guess it is likely to get fanwank-y at that point, in as much as you will be pondering in-text solutions for mysteries that have obvious out-of-text causes, but for me a certain level of fanwank is kind of... part of the fun of fandom?

I am pretty sure I wouldn't find Supernatural (or whatever my primary fandom is at any given time) nearly as fun if I didn't try to see the characters as having whole, detailed personalties/psychologies. Obviously fictional worlds are constructed in the mind of the reader and, as a fan, what I most enjoy is making that world as detailed as I can. That can take the form of adding certain pieces of fanfiction to my 'personal canon', or spending time speculating about the psychology of the characters, or constructing theories about how that world functions based on what I know of it, or comparing other people's interpretations of the characters to mine to see if I think my interpretation could be improved upon, or any number of other things. I will edit how I see that world as we get new canon information which may contradict my current theories, I may even disregard (small) elements of canon if they don't fit with 'exactly what tone of voice I think Sam would use to say that', or whatever, but that's kind of what being in a fandom is for me.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't get why psychoanalysing characters is necessarily any more LOL pointless! than writing fanfiction, or making fanart, or anything else fans do for fun.

New anon here...
I think psychoanalyzing characters is probably very common among people who write (or should be if it's not.) A writer can't create fully-developed, believable characters if they don't understand what makes people tick, so a lot of these people who are into character analysis are writers, myself included. Plus, it's just plain interesting. I've been fascinated, my entire life, by the things people do and why they do them.

especially if you're using it to rationalize your desire for incestuous porn

I agree with the OP's secret 100%, but I don't even particularly like Wincest. I have no objections to it and I'm certainly not offended by it, but I much, much prefer J2 RPS.

LOL psychoanalyzing fictional characters.

This is pretty much what I do every day in college, being an English major and all... I'll get paid for it one day! :D

:D Well, hey if you're getting paid for it!

I just tend to think that that sort of meta analysis tends to need some more grounding in understanding that the characters are fiction and guided by authorial intention and cultural/social interaction.

Sorry, that was me. :/ Forgot to log in.

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[ SECRET POST #704 ]

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