huh. squee range.

Okay, so finally I sat down to sort through my bookmarks to read discussion on cesperanza's new fic--because I have done my homework. (Really. I mean, not all! But you know, some random amount.) So I deserve a reward. And chocolate milk.

Except--um. Is anyone discussing it *not* a member of academia or just really conversant with the themes of that? This is odd--but this is the first time in fandom I've felt my sheer lack of a degree in anything this strongly, because I am seriously *not able to follow* or really get into any discussion I've seen so far. But mostly, I just don't get what's being discussed. Okay, it's more the 'why' of what is being talked about. But it's also the feeling that I'm reading something in German but in this case, even throwing it through the translators isn't helping, as I have no translators and seriously. What are you people talking about?

It's very--I don't know. I wish for squee, but no place is squeeing on a level of "oh my god this is so awesome remember the part with the chair room" but mostly on the "did you notice the dissertation and footnotes of the x, y, z, it reminds me of that time back when I was teaching Very Horrifically Difficult Literature..." I am on a different squee range.

Er. That's kind of an exaggeration, but mostly not, because I'm serious, ,I am seeing in otherwise accessible ljs this entire--I don't know. It's like I'm missing some huge chunk of context. I keep having to fight down the urge to ask "WHY ARE WE DISCUSSING FOOTNOTE FORMAT" or something, because oh my God.

If I ask for an explanation of the squee range, is that going to show just dreadfully my terribly non-high-literature-inclinations so much that all will lose respect for me or something? I'm seriously kind of dazed by how inaccessible I'm finding a lot of these conversations.

Help? I'm kind of moving from dazed to the 'frustrated and annoyed' place and that can only end in staring resentfully at my laptop and eating way too much haagen-daz.

ETA: I now have people doing threads of squee and non-academic meta discussion. I have found nirvana. Yay!

Comments

[j00j.livejournal.com]

Ideally (although certainly not always in fact), in fandom there's room to approach texts from different perspectives. So yeah, bring on the request for explanations. And dude, there should totally be squee about the plot of the story as well as OMG BIBLIOGRAPHY LOVE. Of course, I say this as someone with a BA from a school where I was definitely exposed to this sort of historical discourse, I'm currently in a masters program, and I've spent most of my life surrounded by academics... So I've got the cultural capital (1) to understand the discussion. At the same time, I sort of get where you're coming from, since I made a decision NOT to seek that kind of academic career, because I didn't want to spend my life making the kinds of arguments the historians in "Written By The Victors" are making. There comes a point where I just don't CARE anymore about academic wankery (2) and footnotes and deconstruction. Though that's a part of what made this story fun for me, I think... Ultimately the story's about our characters, and what they actually did, and why they actually did it. And then we watch the historians fumble around trying to interpret it, and you can see them all going "I wish I could've seen it all" and "I wish we could know what happened for sure," and they CAN'T. But we, the readers can.

I don't know if that was at all constructive or helpful. But it's some of what I've been thinking about with this story.

(1) OMG social science jargon. Think financial capital, except it's knowledge, skills, education, and so forth that I've got due to my family background and such.
(2) oh yeah, do academics have wank. there should be an academic version of fandom_wank. If there isn't already. Is there?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

The thing is? I don't know what to ask. The poem's the example that really stood out, but even in the omgsoawesome, I kept getting hit by the feeling I was not squeeing in the same range, that the focus wasn't on the story itself but its metatextual background. which is cool! Just very, very excluding. (for me. Not for other people. Other people? Have a blast.)

Though okay, the meta addition of historical argument helps. Outside of actual history itself, that's very much not my thing (totally personal), so my experience of it is deeply limited.