#divergent spectrum remix

[fatehbaz]

Judith Becker describes a “habitus of listening” in Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing. This listening habitus is seemingly natural, i.e., we listen in a particular way without thinking or reflecting on it. Yet Becker believes that most humans [...] can come to experience and understand divergent expressive sounds at some level. [...] Becker settles on the idea that both sides of the nature/culture divide are necessary for understanding how humans attune themselves to differing listening practices. Transcending this Western dichotomy when listening to the nonhuman would certainly allow for a much wider spectrum of relationality to exist.

Whales are not human but they are mammals. They live underwater but they are sentient and grieve. They are both like us and not like us.

One year before the pressing of Songs of the Humpback Whale, humans landed on the moon for the first time and the extraterrestrial became attainable. The LP similarly transported its audience to the depths of the ocean, another kind of extraterrestrial space. In that era, education regarding the health of the environment and entanglements with nonhuman species collided with fantasies of “new” worlds that highlighted the limitations of planet earth, while simultaneously universalizing humankind. [...] The 1970 album was quickly adopted by New Age and hippie cultures, and by experimental musicians and activists alike. As if anticipating the album, artist and composer Alvin Lucier first performed his Vespers in 1968, an open-score artwork in which performers hold pulse oscillators called Sondols to explore the architecture of a room through echolocation; the listener is blindfolded and encouraged to think like a whale. [...]

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Songs of the Humpback Whale wasn’t the album one would play at a club, a birthday, or a social gathering. It was best suited to headphones, an experience that interiorizes the sounds and creates an illusion of closeness. One could listen to the whales in the solitude of the home, experiencing a sense of intimacy. The original fieldwork required to record these tracks in the open ocean was now domesticated and even personalized through the many samples and remixes the album inspired. Popular musicians like Kate Bush, Judy Collins, and Pete Seeger contributed to framing the sounds as musical commodities.

The production, circulation, and popularization of these sounds might be compared to Victorian popularizations of aquariums. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, once unknowable species came to be understood via meaning-making technology like microphones, spectrographs, photography, and the aquarium tank. Just as the aquarium brought the ocean into domestic space for amateur scientists and entertainment alike, so too did this record. [...]

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This notion extended into the twentieth century. While Payne intended for listening to relationally bring the human closer to the whale, one consequence was that listening was more apt to externalize the whale as some alien being that could transport the listener far away from quotidian labor and everyday realities. [...] Nature field recordings have done much to perpetuate the idea of nature as external to humanity, something to be captured, explored, and categorized.

The first sound recording was of Thomas Edison singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in 1877. Although the song refers to an animal (and its possession by the girl), it wasn’t until 1889 that the first animal recording was made. A young Ludwig Koch is credited with having recorded a bird on a wax cylinder, which could be played back on an Edison phonograph. At the turn of the nineteenth century, representations of animals once considered wild could easily be domesticated and studied through the popularization of such technology. In fact, the language used around sound itself - “captured,” “channel,” “wave” - has much to do with Western epistemologies of colonial exploration, control, and domination. [...]

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If we are to meet whales [...] and practice being good companions, ontological and physical partitions that thrust human qualities onto whales need to be overturned. [...] Even if humans wanted to, we could never listen exactly like a whale. Despite Alvin Lucier’s invitation, humans cannot echolocate under water because sound bends when it travels through the voluminous ocean. Human ears are unlike whale ears, or any nonhuman ear for that matter. Humans do not know with certainty how whales listen or what it feels like to be a whale. We can gauge their reactions to our voices, our machines, and our avatars, but we don’t know what they think about them. Listening to whales is then only possible through our own partial positions [...].

So much of what we know about nonhuman animals in the West is due to long encounters of biocapitalist control through domination, domestication, and taxonomy. [...] 

And yet, many non-Western listening practices have carefully attended to the sounds of nonhuman animals through a perspective of multinaturalism that privileges a concept of nature understood as a multiplicity of relations and meanings.

Ana M. Ochoa Gautier’s book Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia challenges the written historical record of sounds by settler colonialists, like those of Alexander von Humboldt. Their early impressions of local animal sounds and human voices became central to the ontologies and epistemologies of the acoustic in Latin America that still exist today. Dylan Robinson’s book Hungry Listening has also greatly contributed to decolonizing the titular “hungry listening,” a settler-colonial listening positionality that works to perceptually reform or eradicate Indigenous ontologies by imposing a way of listening oriented toward Western categorizations.

Western dichotomies like nature/culture and human/animal should be understood within the longue durée of colonialism and modernity, but they have not always been separated and can be undone again.

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All text above by: Alaina Claire Feldman. “Minor Listening, Major Influence: Revisiting Songs of the Humpback Whale.” e-flux Journal Issue #118. May 2021. At: e-flux dot com slash journal/118/394434/minor-listening-major-influence-revisiting-songs-of-the-humpback-whale/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[twh-news]

How Loki Shapeshifted From Nordic Folklore to a Marvel Icon

by Sara Durn

There are more than 800 years between the stories of Viking god Loki first being written down and his arrival (in the superb Tom Hiddleston) in the Marvel cinematic universe in 2011’s Thor. The new Disney+ series Loki, set to be released on June 9, is primed to explore more antics of Thor’s trickster brother as he attempts to fix the timeline he helped break in Avengers: Endgame. Among his many talents, Loki has cheated death a few times in the MCU, but that amounts to child’s play for this god.

In Norse mythology, Loki causes just as much confusion as his Marvel iteration. Though there aren’t any stories of him outwitting death, there are plenty of myths where he shapeshifts, swaps genders, or tricks gods into killing other gods. In the Marvel universe, he’s quite prone to allegiance swapping. Let’s dig into this troublemaker’s journey.

What is Loki’s origin?

The legends surrounding the Norse god are first documented in writing around the 13th century, primarily in Iceland. There are two versions of these legends that enter the historical record around the same time—the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. The Poetic Edda is an anonymous collection of Old Norse poems that are mainly pulled from an Icelandic medieval manuscript known as the Codex Regius (some of the poems date back to 800 CE). The Prose Edda is an Old Norse textbook for composing poetry that was written by a single author, Snorri Sturluson, a colorful Icelandic historian, scholar, and lawspeaker.

“Within the myths, you can see Loki moving from being just mischievous to being absolutely evil. If you think of him as only being mischievous, he’s actually a creative force and often ends up getting the gods much of their magical possessions, like Thor’s Hammer, through his cunning.”

“Pretty much everything we know about Loki came from Snorri Sturluson,” Viking scholar Nancy Marie Brown, author of Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths, told io9. Brown says this was very appropriate given that “Snorri was quite a trickster figure himself.” While calling him the “Homer of the North,” Brown also acknowledges that Snorri spent a lifetime “double-crossing friends and family… scheming and plotting, blustering and fleeing”— a life that eventually led to his unheroic demise in a nightshirt where his (supposed) final words were “don’t strike!” In both Eddas, Loki is always portrayed as a cunning trickster. In the Prose Edda, Snorri describes Loki as “pleasing and handsome in appearance, evil in character, very capricious in behavior. He possessed to a greater degree than other [gods] the kind of learning that is called cunning.”

Besides appearances, Loki is always getting the gods into trouble and then cleverly extricating them from the mess he’s made. He fathers the Midgard Serpent destined to bring about Ragnarök, the end of the world in Norse mythology. He convinces the blind god Hodr to kill the beautiful and favored god Baldur. He kidnaps the goddess Idun to save his own hide from a furious giant. The mythological character is constantly switching sides—sometimes supporting the gods and sometimes their enemies, the giants. In the MCU, Loki is both hero and villain—in The Avengers he opened a wormhole in New York City releasing alien monsters and in Thor: Ragnarok he helped Thor save the Asgardians from Hela’s wrath.

Thorwald’s Cross, a fragmented runestone depicting Odin being consumed. Image: Public Domain

Loki might have begun as a Norse god of fire—fitting considering how fire can be both “helpful and destructive,” said Brown. Fire can both burn down your house and cook you dinner. It’s tricky that way—like Loki. As Brown puts it, “You can see his two sides there [reflected in fire].” Brown also explains that there was likely a transformation in Loki over the centuries. “Within the myths, you can see Loki moving from being just mischievous to being absolutely evil. If you think of him as only being mischievous, he’s actually a creative force and often ends up getting the gods much of their magical possessions, like Thor’s Hammer, through his cunning.” Again, it’s just like Marvel’s Loki, who sometimes helps the other gods out, like when he teamed up with Thor to escape the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok.

What is Loki’s relationship with the Devil?

In the long, slow conversion of the Vikings to Christianity that took place between the 9th and 12th centuries, Loki became a parallel to the Christian Devil. The creative, positive elements of him fell away leaving only the god favored by the Father (Odin/God) before getting cast out. (It does sound a bit like Lucifer, right?) Christianity paints a world that is far more black and white, good vs. evil than the Norse pagan religion—here’s little room for a grey, ambiguous figure like Loki. As Brown puts it, “The Christian religion insists that you’re either with us or against us. Whereas in what we understand of the pagan Viking religion, there were a lot of shades of grey. There was a spectrum on which you could move back and forth. You weren’t all one thing or all the other. You weren’t all female or all male. You weren’t all good or all evil. It was more human.”

Loki always moved fluidly between those two polarities—helping Thor in one story, causing an overthrow of the gods in another. In one tale, Loki shapeshifts into a mare, becoming the mother of Odin’s great 8-legged horse, Sleipnir. In another, he fathers the wolf Fenrir. The Church couldn’t really handle all that grey area Loki liked to inhabit, and so it eventually cast him as the devil himself. “[Monks] had to sort the gods into saints and devils, and Loki by being sexually ambiguous and also morally ambiguous falls into the devil [category],” explained Brown. Though Marvel’s Loki certainly channels a bit of the devil at times, we’ve luckily yet to see him become both mother and father to world-ending, multi-legged monsters in the Marvel Universe. But, there’s still time, especially with the new Disney+ series hitting the small screen.

When was Loki’s Revival?

After the Viking conversion, the Norse myths started to fade, and Loki with them—until the 1600s, when medieval manuscripts like those containing the Prose and Poetic Edda began to be translated. “The reason [these myths] became popular was because of nationalism,” Brown told us. “In the mid to late 1800s, there was the idea that what distinguished one nation from another was its cultural heritage.” This spurred Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm—known to many simply as the Brothers Grimm—to go “collect the stories of the local people to prove that Germany was a nation, not a collection of states. You had the same thing happening in Ireland to prove that they were different from the English and you have the same thing happening in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.” This eventually gave rise to the Nazis appropriating Norse myths in their twisted pursuit of alleging Aryan supremacy.

Following the Civil War, the United States also looked to the Middle Ages to redefine the country’s fractured identity. As Chris Bishop, author of Medievalist Comics and the American Century, explained to io9, “[the Middle Ages] offered an aesthetic that was individualistic (think: the knight errant, Robin Hood, etc.), given to interpretations of exceptionalism (Camelot, the once and future king), venerable (where old equalled established and respectable), and (unlike Classicism) Christian.” The Middle Ages, or more accurately the remixing of the Middle Ages known in academia as “medievalisms,” appealed to many Americans obsessed with ideas of American exceptionalism and singularity in the 19th century. Eventually the U.S.’s obsession with the Middle Ages made its way into comic books starting with Prince Valiant in 1937, a comic strip created by Hal Foster set in and around the legends of King Arthur. Other medievalist comics followed eventually leading to the inclusion of Norse gods like Loki, Thor, and Odin.

First appearance of Loki in the 1949 Venus comics. Image: Wikicommons

When was Marvel Comics’ Loki introduced?

While Loki first appeared in the 1949 comic book Venus styled after (you guessed it) the devil, the modern-age Loki didn’t hit the comic book scene until co-writers and brothers Stan Lee and Larry Lieber adapted him in 1962’s Journey into Mystery #85. It’s in that issue where Loki “becomes Thor’s enemy/ally/brother/adopted brother/etc,” said Bishop. The mischievous personality of the Norse god remains largely the same in the Loki of the comic books and films and even retains the ability to swap genders at times.

In the comics, Loki is raised as Thor’s brother in Asgard—somewhere the Marvel stories diverge from the Norse mythology. It’s Loki and Odin who are sworn brothers in the Norse myths, not Loki and Thor. As Brown explains, “Loki and Odin are blood brothers, which means they are even closer than real brothers.” In the Viking world, two people who swore a blood oath to one another formed a bond that went beyond kin, and so went the Norse Loki and Odin’s relationship. As Bishop points out, the Loki/Thor dynamic of the comics and movies is a “classic, formulaic archetype.” Thor is the “big, hunky, handsome (but slightly dumb) hero” and Loki is “his slight, quirky but super-smart frenemy. Loki is the dark, misunderstood, vulnerable shadow that audiences can relate to, reach out to, care for. Thor is that dumb jock who everyone looked up to at school, but Loki was that cool, quiet kid who went on to found a tech-empire.”

Why is Loki called a Trickster?

What does remain consistent with Loki is that he always plays the trickster. He is the manifestation of psychologist Carl Jung’s archetype: The trickster disrupts the individual and/or society causing either growth or destruction. Social scientist Helena Bassil-Morozow points out that when it comes to Loki, “despite the fact that the narrative details between the medieval Loki stories and their contemporary versions vary, the main idea remains the same—the trickster mercilessly attacks those in power and nearly causes the end of the world.” Both in the Norse myths and in Marvel, the world needs saving from Loki. He acts as the catalyst for a whole lot of upheaval—upheaval that in the Norse myths causes Ragnarök.

Loki “functions as a locus of salvation (literally, a prodigal son).” Loki just might be a savior. He’s someone audiences can look at and think “if Loki can be redeemed, so too might I.”

Perhaps that’s where the two narratives differ the most. In the Norse tales, the end of the world at Ragnarök is inevitable. Odin and Thor will die. Everything will change. Vikings lived with the knowledge that their world would end. In the MCU, we don’t know how the story ends, plus Ragnarök took place already and yet the Asgardians live on. There’s still hope that Loki will prove to be good and that the other superheroes will save the world from whatever mayhem he’s caused, or so we can hope in the upcoming Disney+ series. As Bishop puts it, Loki “functions as a locus of salvation (literally, a prodigal son).” Loki just might be a savior. He’s someone audiences can look at and think “if Loki can be redeemed, so too might I,” explains Bishop.

While the Vikings’ Loki caused the end of the world, today’s Loki might just save it. Or maybe not. And, perhaps that’s the fun of the trickster—you never quite know what they’ll get up to.

[lambourngb]

If you are still doing this, to make it through (with hearts and wrists intact)

combining the wip ask with WIP Wednesday ! Alright, so there’s two remix challenges going on right now, but I didn’t sign up for either of them because I have enormous anxiety about deadlines and I’m also kind of a control freak about my work. I do love the concept, so I decided to remix my own work.

to make it through (with hearts and wrists intact) is a remix of Last Years Wishes. It is completely the fault of @haloud who mused aloud about what if Jesse got to use the shed on Michael. You guys remember what I did to the shed in LYW right? Yeah. Poor Michael. So while Alex is waiting at the Airstream, talking to agents Ross and Rollins, this is how Michael’s day is going....

[warnings: canon divergent within 1x13, mention of Michael’s feelings for Maria, but nothing happens past the discovery of Rosa’s body in the cave ]

“Old man, you are calling me on my day off,” Michael yelled into the receiver of his cell phone speaker over the rushing sound of air after picking up the call. 

The windows were down because his AC in his truck went on the frizz again sometime during when Max had stolen-borrowed it to drive Liz home from Texas, leaving him behind to share a long awkward ride with Maria in her classic Chevy. Awkward because he had been buzzing from the encounter in the desert. He hadn’t slept with anyone in weeks, not since Alex, and that had been a ridiculous attempt for him to pine in celibacy considering just how little the other man had missed him. Some things end in a whimper.

Texas had been about hope, about maybe finding someone who was connected to him on a species level. He hadn’t realized how deeply Max’s enthusiasm had sunk into him until the fraud had been revealed and disappointment had set in. Between Alex’s brusque brush off and realizing they really were alone on this planet, Michael hadn’t thought he could feel even lower with the weight of Isobel’s salvation fully on his shoulders (and Liz’s). Then shining like a bright star in the night sky, he had found Maria. 

She had effectively chased away the touch starved ghouls that had haunted his skin that night, he could still barely believe they had dropped right to the rocky ground and scratchy blanket to fuck. It was the type of raw passion he had with- no, in that particular moment he hadn’t thought about Alex but afterwards? He couldn’t avoid the connection the next morning, particularly when she had sworn him to secrecy, and then had reinforced it when she had fully kicked him out in the cold after he had returned her repaired necklace. 

It was unfortunate for her that he was already wired to enjoy a push-pull hot-cold dynamic.

Ten years of Alex Manes meant Michael had learned to read past a blustering denial to see the real truth. She really liked him, she just didn’t want to admit it, and good god, if that wasn’t a déjà vu moment for Michael, he didn’t know what was. Maybe it was stupid to believe it would work out any better with her than it had with Alex, but with Noah dead, his m- his reason for building his ship gone, what did it hurt to try again?

His healed hand curled around the grip on the steering wheel with a shiver of disorientation at the new flexibility, but he pushed it down to concentrate on that meager bubble of hope of what was ahead for him. Maria. Normalcy. When he had offered to leave her alone at the gala, she had refused to take him up on it. That's the problem, I never do. 

It had felt good to hear that, that he was wanted, even as he heard the conflict in her voice over what she desired versus what she thought she deserved to have. That was also painfully familiar to Michael as well.

Caulfield had seeped into his skin, three layers deep in the worst type of burn. That brief moment of his mother, wrapping around his mind with her love and sorrow and hope, and then she was gone. The screaming, that he had heard from outside the chain link fence, suddenly disappeared as the explosion moved outward in a shockwave. For a few minutes he had stood on solid ground in that prison, for the first time since a sweet boy had returned his kiss at seventeen under a galaxy of plastic foam planets, and then it was over. His mother was gone, and in her stead, he had Alex telling him that -

Michael forcefully pushed that thought away and returned his attention back to the cranky drawl of Walt Sanders, “I know kid, but I’m already out with the wrecker in the other ass-end direction, so I need you to go help this cry baby who can’t change a flat. Help me make some money, so I can afford to keep your ass employed.” 

“Fine, tell me the location, but this is holiday pay, not overtime.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sanders muttered, before rattling off the mile marker and the highway. “It’s a Lincoln sedan, black. Probably some old geezer out on a drive to church who ran into trouble.”

“You calling someone else a geezer is funny to me, I hope you know that,” Michael replied, hitting his turn signal to make a left to pick up the state road. It wasn’t as if he had a planned time to see Maria, the lunch hour and official opening of the bar was still an hour away. A little delay that made him some extra cash was doable. 

“Shut the hell up kid, and get going,” Sanders griped good-naturedly, before hanging up on Michael. 

The sun was bright overhead, the storm from the night before having washed the land and sky clean of clouds. Across the pavement ahead, the heat and the brightness, cast a mirage of dark shimmering water that creeped just out of reach as he drove toward his new destination. His mind ticked over the set of priorities ahead, to make a little money with a tire change, then to drop in on Maria to make his case, and finally, he knew he needed to swing by Isobel’s to check on her in the aftermath of Noah’s betrayal. Somewhere in all of that, he knew he would need to make it home to see Alex for that promised talk, but there was plenty of time for that because Alex rarely came by during the day to see him.

“I’m still fighting his battles, not mine.”

Michael flexed his hands on the steering wheel again and pushed down the heaviness in his heart that accompanied thinking about Alex. Ten long years of waiting and wanting him. If Michael cared to count up all of the trips to Roswell that Alex had made on leave, the two weeks together after the class reunion that frankly felt like a hallucination to Michael, all of those hours spent together would add up to a month. A month that stretched out over ten years, 520 weeks, or 3,650 days.

Counting the distance to the nearest star was in light years, but when it came to counting the distance between the stash of wedding rings he had purchased for Alex over the years and what he had been actually allowed to have with Alex, well, that was a calculation beyond the redshift spectrum. It would take energy to transverse that distance one more time, and Michael had nothing left inside to fuel that journey. He couldn’t afford to be lost in the black again, not with Isobel in free-fall from Noah’s years of manipulations, not with the prospect of telling Liz they had found Rosa’s body on the horizon. It was just too hard to believe that this time, with Alex calling him family, with Alex throwing back the closest declaration to love that he had ever made, actually meant he was ready to move toward Michael and work to cut the distance between them on his own.

It was better to head forward in a new direction, than to look back like Max had said. Besides, every other time he had failed to be enough of a reason to help Alex bridge his own chasm between what he wanted and what he had allowed himself to have. What could have changed? Caulfield had just cemented the complications for them both. 

A dark shadow in the distance, parked just off the road caught Michael’s attention. He glanced down at the odometer to mark the mileage and started to ease up on the gas. That must be the motorist Sanders had fielded a call from earlier, he realized. The ‘old geezer’ in the black Lincoln with a flat tire. He glanced in the rearview mirror to check for traffic but the road behind him was devoid of other vehicles. 

Michael hit the turn signal and hazard lights on his truck, turning briefly to the side to check that he had some spare water bottles for the customer and his toolbox within reach and then turned onto the shoulder of the highway. Mentally he was already five steps ahead of himself as he stepped out of the truck to approach the car, thinking about the size of socket to fit over the lug nuts for the Lincoln’s wheels, whether his torque wrench was even in his box, or if he would have to camouflage his telekinetic efforts to change out the tire, that it took a moment to realize the tires on the Lincoln were whole and unharmed on the driver’s side.

Puzzled, Michael slowed his approach, and started toward the passenger side of the car. The windows were rolled up and dark, the tint was straddling the threshold of legal for New Mexico. There was still no sign of defect in the tires, he noticed as he was halfway around the passenger fender. Faulty tire gauge, he mused before he noticed the engine was rumbling almost inaudibly. Fucking hybrid, which meant whatever issue it had been definitely beyond the parts available at Sanders.

It was a little odd that the driver hadn’t stepped out to greet Michael, but not terribly unusual when it came to elderly customers who seemed to have a healthy paranoia about everyone they encountered. Still, Michael pasted a smile on his face and tapped on the window. 

The automatic window slipped downward in an expensive whisper, but it wasn’t a helpless old man on his way to church at the wheel. 

Jesse Manes smiled at Michael flashing his teeth, “Surprise.” Before Michael could do more than step backward, Jesse lifted a large gun-shaped object and fired. Yellow particulate matter exploded into the air, enveloping Michael completely. Pulling his arm to his mouth to attempt to block the pollen, did little good as he felt the sedating effects almost immediately.

He coughed into the open air, scrambling back toward his truck on weak legs as he tried to clear his lungs of the fast-acting poison. Behind him, he heard the car door open, and the crunch of boots on the loose gravel from the road’s shoulder as Jesse approached him. Though his powers were gone and his strength was waning fast, Michael had never backed down from a fight in life.

Certainly, not a fight for his life.

Swinging with all of his might, he hurled his heavy toolbox at Jesse blindly. There was a thump and a curse, but the footsteps kept coming. Animal-like terror set in as Michael crawled now on his knees toward the cab of his truck. He had to move, he had to live, he wasn’t going to die here on the side of the damn road- Suddenly a black boot came down on his hand, pinning him place and lighting up a fierce agony of pain in its wake.

“I like the fight, Guerin, I do,” Jesse remarked with a quiet menace. “Shall I make this hand match your other-” 

It was on the tip of Michael’s tongue to point out the obvious, but then Jesse saw it for himself. His left hand, healed and pristine, clutching at the hot blacktop surface. 

“I see.” He barked out a laugh that chilled Michael. “I knew it. I knew you weren’t the only one in Roswell. I thought about killing you right here you know, but now, you might finally serve a purpose in your useless life. You thought you could use my son in your perverted schemes? Well now it’s your turn to be bait.” 

Michael’s vision was already fading into blindness with the pollen taking hold, but he managed to spit out between numb lips, “Go fuck yourself.”

“Not today. You’re the one who is fucked.” A hand grabbed a tight hold of Michael’s hair, wrenching him backward, and then it was merciful darkness. 

*** 

[sbooksbowm]

Affirmational vs. Transformational Fandom: Some Definitions

I realized during a wonderful conversation last night that I never defined some of the terms that I throw around in my weekly wrap-up posts. In reading and writing about fanfiction, I’ve encountered a vocabulary that makes talking about fic and what we do much easier; and in chatting with other people in fandom, I find that this vocab makes explicit what a lot of us know implicitly (just as fic often makes explicit the subtexts we read implicitly in our source texts...gosh I do love a good parallel). 

The terms I use most often without clarification are affirmational and transformational fandom. I often say affirmative and transformative, I don’t know the grammatical difference between the suffixes, and I think they’re interchangeable. obsession_inc wrote a fascinating essay in 2009 distinguishing the two terms. I highly recommend it - it’s a quick read and more in-depth than my definitions below. 

As I understand it, affirmational fandom is interested in the text-as-written, author-as-authority approach, where fans are concerned with what the author dictates about the material. Fans are interested in acquiring all of the knowledge of the known canon universe, and their sources are whatever comes from the established authority, whether that’s an author, showrunner, editor, etc. obsession characterizes this fandom as predominantly male. 

Transformational fandom is interested in the text-as-potential, as the base for interventions, alterations, disruptions, and outright changes to the text. Fans are less concerned with the what the author dictates about the material or rejects the author completely, whether out of disappointment or distrust. Fans are interested in maintaining the integrity of the universe and do not trust the author/showrunner/producer to adhere to the agreed-upon rules. obsession defines this behavior as ‘as a female-dominated community and fanworks-oriented form of fandom’ (Fanlore)

obsession also makes distinctions on where these kinds of fans tend to congregate and how they present themselves (real names vs pseudonyms), etc.

Is there a spectrum? Yes. I think there are works that are self-consciously transformational, that completely upend canon (fix-it fics, hardcore AUs, characterization remixes, crossovers, etc.). There are works that are more along the lines of filling in gaps left by the author, in the form of missing moments that could slot into canon but may tweak things here or there or build a fleet of original characters that diverge from known canon. There are works that toil within the known universe, although personally, if you are writing fic, even fic that sticks to Known Details Only, you are transforming the original work. 

If I missed anything, let me know! 

[noizecode-blog]

Bassnectar – Colorstorm [OFFICIAL] Download Bassnectar - Colorstorm Here! --- Free download: Taken from 'Bassnectar - Divergent Spectrum Remixes' EP, featuring remixes from Bassnectar, Steve Aoki, The Glitch Mob, Beats Antique, ill.Gates and Terravita

[hyperbolicpurple]

Dear Alternate Songs writer,

letter under the cut

Some things I’m into:

angst and/or conflict (a little or a lot) with a happy, resolved, or ambiguously hopeful/open ending

hurt/comfort

grief/mourning, and the moving on from it, ~grieving together~

five times/things format (with any number)

relationship tropes (fake relationship, undercover as a couple, forced to share a bed, trapped together, forced to work together, marriage of convenience, etc; these are all my catnip)

epistolary? maybe? if you want to

I’m not really into and don’t want to see:

canon or previous love interests made out to be villains (except Sansa’s obviously)

lots of focus on smut or any particular kink scenario/act unless I request it (some smut is fine)

pure 100% curtainfic fluff

unremitting tragedy with 0 hope at the end

the first exchange of “I love yous” as romantic climax (I really enjoy reading about love being expressed in other ways)

soulmates or any other whiff of romantic destiny/fate

background ships I did not request

death of any character I’ve requested

Jon as a dirty talker. plz. this is not at all for me.

Asha Greyjoy/Jon Snow (ASOIAF) Medium: Fanfiction

General: Asha seems like Jon’s type, a bit similar to Ygritte, and I think she would have fun with him. Asha is pretty in tune with her desires, while Jon is pretty inhibited–that might be a nice dynamic to play with. For this ship I would be fine with something more smut-/kink-focused if you’re into that (I’m thinking femdom--maybe something from my Smut Swap letter?).

Amusement Park Something older/run down/backwater/boondocks preferred to Disneyworld or Six Flags. IDK, there’s just something fun about this environment. Asha as a woman who works there, Jon’s family visiting for the summer, or maybe he’s the new employee she trains (or “trains”)? Or I really liked The Way, Way Back (except for the outstandingly sexist bits) so something similar in feel would be cool.

Post-Apocalypse I can only imagine how awesome Asha would be in a crisis. Maybe a post-apocalyptic road trip? Or I love reading about how people survive, build communities, make to on a day-to-day basis after the apocalypse. Post-apocalyptic curtainfic, you might say.

Steampunk Maybe Asha as captain of an airship. An outlaw maybe--airship pirate? Maybe Jon as law enforcement, or disgraced former law enforcement looking for a purpose. Or maybe Jon is on some kind of mission (whatever it is) and needs her services (or stows away). Or any other scenario you can think of!

Summer Camp I could definitely see counselor Asha/camper Jon, or both of them as counselors.

Wild West Asha as outlaw, Jon as law enforcement? (Or disgraced former law enforcement, looking for a purpose?)

Always a Different Gender Way into girlJon (Joanna? Jonquil? Jo for short?). Just way, way into it. I’d prefer Asha not be flipped. I’m interested in what Jo(n) might have done rather than go to the Wall (married off, perhaps, or a late fostering? - my assumption is that Cat would still push Jo(n) out). Perhaps somehow Jo(n) ends up as Asha’s salt wife?

Lyanna Stark Lived I imagine she would have to go into hiding. Perhaps she was secretly spirited away to hang out with the Mormonts? Or maybe Essos? Whatever you can imagine here would be fine. I’d just love for Jon to have some kind of relationship with his mother. How he meets Asha is up to you!

Jon Snow/Sansa Stark (GOT) Medium: Fanfiction

General: Season 6 made me really interested in this ship. I like the way they both have their moments of cynicism and disillusionment but also inspire each other toward action and hope. For non-canon settings, I have a strong preference for both characters to be adults and have had previous relationship experience (their canon love interests being mentioned as part of their pasts is A-OK). I’m into trust issues if you like that, or if they’re 100% ride-or-die for each other that’s fine too. Wherever you want to put this on the incest spectrum is fine with me.

Cyberpunk Space Opera Steampunk

One of the things I'd really like to see (in general) is a "remix" or adaptation of the canon, or just of particular canon events (whatever’s interesting to you), in different settings like these. Obviously I'm not asking for the whole thing! Just a glimpse or two, maybe, or however much you feel inspired to write. How similar to the canon it is, or how much it diverges because of the setting, is totally up to you. Feel free to have that all be background and write something "post-canon" (or post-remixed canon, I guess) set in this world. I’d just really love to read anything in Space Westeros, Steampunk Westeros, or Cyberpunk Westeros.

Amusement Park Something older/run down/backwater/boondocks preferred to Disneyworld or Six Flags. IDK, there’s just something fun about this environment. Jon as the guy who works there, Sansa’s family visiting for the summer? Or I really liked The Way, Way Back (except for the outstandingly sexist bits) so something similar in feel would be cool.

Graduate School Get your nerd on if you like! I’d love to read about what you think each character would be interested in/suited for and what they get out of it. For example, Sansa as a student of literature or history would be interesting given how she interacts with songs and legends in canon.

Single Parent(s) Meet when their kids have a conflict? Or at a school event?

Summer Camp Prefer them as counselors if that works for you. Butting heads over how to solve a problem/conflict, maybe?

Female Preference Primogeniture It makes sense because it’s much harder to doubt someone’s matrilineal parentage, isn’t it? Well, obviously, if this was a real tradition in Westeros going back many generations, everyone would be in all different places and the ruling families would look very different ... Feel free to completely ignore all that and just pop us into the present day with no explanation! LOL. Anyway, I’d be very interested to see how Sansa’s story would be different if she was the official heir to Winterfell - maybe Robb went south to marry future queen Myrcella instead, leaving her in the North? Or she might go south to be one of Myrcella’s ladies for a bit and find a husband? Perhaps the revelation of Jon as Lyanna’s kid threatens her position? Or take it in any other direction you would like.

Role Reversal I’ve read a few stories where Sansa is the bastard and Jon the trueborn, and I just. can’t. get. enough. It really complicates Sansa’s relationship with her femininity as well as her relationship with Arya, so I’d love to see those things explored if you’re into it. (I can imagine Septa Mordane being all “even your baseborn sister can do it better,” which would suck so much for the both of them.) It’s harder with Jon, because so much of his identity is wrapped up in being a bastard--maybe a second son/younger twin, the “spare,” trying to prove himself? (Feel free to change up their hair/eye colors a bit to make this AU work.)

Always a Different Gender Way into girlJon (Joanna? Jonquil? Jo for short?). Just way, way into it. You can flip Sansa too, if you want, or not; either is fine. I’d be terribly interested in hearing about how this might change (or not change) their dynamic as children and what Jo(n) might have done rather than go to the Wall (married off, perhaps, or a late fostering? - my assumption is that Cat would still push Jo(n) out).

Lyanna Stark Lived I imagine she would have to go into hiding. Perhaps she was secretly spirited away to hang out with the Mormonts? Or maybe Essos? Whatever you can imagine here would be fine. I’d just love for Jon to have some kind of relationship with his mother. How he meets Sansa is up to you!

Theon Greyjoy/Jon Snow (ASOIAF) Medium: Fanfiction

General: My first strong feelings for this ship came after reading cleromancy’s Dog Days and Summer Snows, which really highlighted for me how they have what’s really the same problem (how much they don’t belong/how much people ignore them), but go about dealing with it in different ways (Jon caring so much and trying to prove himself but also melting into the shadows, Theon electing not to care about anything and taking up as much attention as possible). & the triangle they make with Robb (as rival friends/brothers), I like that too. Strong preference for pre-Ramsay Theon whether in canon or modern AU. A “frienemies with benefits” kind of situation would make a good dynamic, too.

Amusement Park Something older/run down/backwater/boondocks preferred to Disneyworld or Six Flags. IDK, there’s just something fun about this environment. Jon as the guy who works there, Theon visiting for the summer (with his family or the Starks)? Or I really liked The Way, Way Back (except for the outstandingly sexist bits) so something similar in feel would be cool.

Dotcom/Startup I can only imagine what wildly different work ethics, approaches, and visions they have, lol. Workplace drama? FORCED to work together/collaborate? :DDD

Library Maybe Jon as the librarian, with Theon always staying late and alternately trying to annoy Jon/get his attention.

Summer Camp Again, a really awesome way to highlight their differences. Would be happy with them as campers or counselors for this one. (I do love picturing Theon as a camp counselor, lol. He totally sneaks alcohol into camp. Best/shittiest camp counselor ever, y/y?)

Tattoo Parlor Kinda thinking of Jon as the tattoo artist, and Theon keeps coming in for more tattoos and insists on Jon? Again, that “annoying Jon but at the same time trying to get his attention” dynamic would be aces.

Character(s) Took the Black Thinking of Theon here, maybe taking up Rodrik’s offer? I can only imagine Jon’s contempt and the conflict that would ensue. (Theon baiting Jon about sticking to the Wall while Robb was crowned/died would be A+.)

[governodesi]

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