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the pleasures of recognition
Jan. 18th, 2007 12:34 pmThere was a post a little while ago on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom about fanfic and wish-fulfillment and the things we keep in our basements. Somewhere in the comments to that post was a thread about fanfic and originality; it's not really worth looking up, marked as it was by bone-headed ignorance, but it did start me thinking about originality as an aesthetic preference, and then about its opposite. It occurs to me that a lot of people who read fanfic probably have an aesthetic preference for familiarity. I know I do.
I love a good plot twist: the moment when the story shifts right before my eyes, into something utterly unfamiliar, is a moment of pure narrative joy. But I also love the moment of recognition, the realization that I know this character, that all along I've been on familiar territory. That, of course, is a desire fanfic feeds really well, although it's never exactly a surprise.
For me at least, the pleasure of recognition is rooted in the way it confirms the "reality" of the fictional world. It provides evidence that the final page of the book or the end of the episode isn't the end of the story: that the characters continue to live their lives even when we aren't looking. It's a special pleasure when it occurs outside the sphere of fanfiction, such a special pleasure that I think it qualifies as a kink. ( cut for discussion of Alan Furst, Guy Kay and Reginald Hill, which may include minor spoilers for recent works )
metafandom about fanfic and wish-fulfillment and the things we keep in our basements. Somewhere in the comments to that post was a thread about fanfic and originality; it's not really worth looking up, marked as it was by bone-headed ignorance, but it did start me thinking about originality as an aesthetic preference, and then about its opposite. It occurs to me that a lot of people who read fanfic probably have an aesthetic preference for familiarity. I know I do.I love a good plot twist: the moment when the story shifts right before my eyes, into something utterly unfamiliar, is a moment of pure narrative joy. But I also love the moment of recognition, the realization that I know this character, that all along I've been on familiar territory. That, of course, is a desire fanfic feeds really well, although it's never exactly a surprise.
For me at least, the pleasure of recognition is rooted in the way it confirms the "reality" of the fictional world. It provides evidence that the final page of the book or the end of the episode isn't the end of the story: that the characters continue to live their lives even when we aren't looking. It's a special pleasure when it occurs outside the sphere of fanfiction, such a special pleasure that I think it qualifies as a kink. ( cut for discussion of Alan Furst, Guy Kay and Reginald Hill, which may include minor spoilers for recent works )
