Snark and snark, what is snark?
Well, it’s that time of year, when the sub-freezing temperatures cause the original Bell-era (not Ma, Alexander Graham) phone lines to contract and my surfing is intermittent at best. Luckily for me, I checked fandom wank before the line gave out, so I have something brief to blog. I have some longer topics outstanding - Internet Types and a few children’s fantasies I read over Thanksgiving - but it’s late and I’m in the mood for snark.
Today’s most notable wank entry was about anti-wank sentiment, and the most notable anti-wank was by Joan the English Chick. Joan the English Chick is, if she’ll excuse the expression, a BNF from Buffy fandom - more specificially, she’s the woman responsible for the last few seasons of Buffy Transcripts. Her LJ entry argues the deleterious effects of “snark for snark’s sake” upon fandom.
Let me make this perfectly clear (for you S’s out there) - my position is that snark is the essence of fandom, and more specificially, of fanfiction. Snark is far and away the main appeal of fandom to me; snark is the main inspiration of my fic. There is no way to snark - snark is the way.
I get the feeling that Joan doesn’t define snark the way I do. I equate snark with sarcasm. Sarcasm ranges from bitter complaints to caustic remarks to gentle gibes to simple irony. Sarcasm is not just a vice, it’s a language - the language of fandom. Joan says:
The temptation to say something snarky and witty, and thus entertaining, but devoid of actual content, is apparently too much for a lot of people to resist.
I’m not in fandom to have deep discussions about, Kahless help us, the tragedies of Janeway’s non-canonical past or the thematic commonality between Star Trek: Voyager and the Odyssey. I am here to entertain. I read other people’s fic in order to be entertained. I won’t use the h-word, but none of us can claim we’re in fandom to save the seals or feed the hungry. Is my fic devoid of content because it’s entertaining? No. Neither is snark devoid of content because it’s entertaining. Wit amuses because it has content - you cannot be witty without a topic, without saying something that strikes home.
Of course, you can go the long way around to content, and have extended, serious discussions about Justin Tighe (ugh) or Odysseus. I’d rather make my points more briefly and entertainingly. I don’t have the time for infinite LJ discussions of the eternal topics. Similarly, when writing or reading fanfic, I prefer something said briefly and ironically over long novels of deadly serious angst or equally sober romance. Irony is my favorite theme, though I’ll settle for a good tragedy (which is, by the way, not the same thing as angst).
The interplay between fanfic and canon is, to me, always a snarky one. Where slash writers look for the essential slashiness of the show, I look for the fundamental snarkiness. I write about Janeway’s abandoned lizard babies coming back to haunt her, about the joy of being Borg, about a Mirror Mirror universe in which the canon universe is the evil one. I’m in it for the irony.
It’s entirely possible that the difference between Joan and yours truly is a wider difference between Trek fandom and Buffy fandom. Compare, for instance, Joan’s Buffy transcripts, which are, literally, transcripts with some stage directions, to Jim Wright’s Voyager transcripts, which are extended snarks with some semi-accurate dialogue included. I’m indebted to Joan for Buffy reference material, but Jim has brought me hours of entertainment. If I were stuck on a desert island with only one set of transcripts, I’d take Delta Blues.
Buffy is a show with, arguably, themes - the quality is relatively high for television, with or without pity. I can imagine Joan having intelligent discussions about Buffy. Trek, on the other hand, is very bad science fiction, with a long history of marginal production values and bad acting. Themes are not what spring to mind after Yet Another Time Travel Episode™. Whenever someone seriously complains about a current Trek series (as opposed to snarking about it), I have to ask, “Have you seen TOS?” Can Scott Bakula hold a candle to William Shatner when it comes to bad acting? Can Enterprise out-TOS TOS with execrable scripts? Can I watch with a straight face? No.
I have years of fond Trek snarking behind me, and, Paramount willing, years more to come. I wouldn’t trade a single snark for a treatise on the sociocultural implications of Benjamin Sisko qua Emissary - unless, of course, it were meant snarkily. If that means I’ve gotten “too deeply into the snark/wank mindset,” I don’t blame fandom wank. I blame Spock’s Brain.
December 4th, 2002 at 5:23 pm
Oy! I disagree with you about Trek not being a themes show. I’ve been blogging in my LJ about TNG the past two days, and it’s all about the themes, baby. Which begs the question, are we talking about the same show?
December 4th, 2002 at 6:12 pm
You know, I think you’re both right. Trek has themes, but they rarely ever seem intentional — even when interviews with TPTB reveal that they were planned all along.
Look at Voyager, a show which set itself up as having very limited arcs. Despite the fact that I know TPTB disliked most elaborate forms of continuity, themes or arc-concepts, I still see season 5 as Janeway’s descent. It started with her depression in “Night”. Contrary to canon, I don’t see her as having fully recovered from that until the catharsis of “Equinox 2″. The fact that said catharsis involved basically torturing a Starfleet officer only makes Janeway’s darkness more interesting to me.
(Interesting enough that I basically gave up on the show shortly after she returned to her perky norm.)
That’s a theme, but I don’t believe it was there by plan or intention.
December 4th, 2002 at 8:37 pm
I was thinking of TOS and VOY, but themes still don’t leap to mind when I think of TNG. Stolen TOS plots, bad acting, and unsympathetic characters, maybe, but not themes.
A cool sci-fi concept is not in and of itself a theme - so Q’s trial of humanity was more of an idea tossed out there for the fans to expand in their own minds (a typical approach in sci-fi) than the sort of underlying thread of feeling that makes a literary theme. I can’t think of anything in TNG that compares to, say, Spike draped over a cross for foreshadowing (see MustangSally) or the Glory arc for continuity. DS9 may have had themes, but I agree with Liz that the rest of Trek has them unintentionally, if at all.
December 4th, 2002 at 11:11 pm
How about just the basic theme of embracing diversity, both in terms of species and cultures? Or if you want to be more specific, individuality versus the Borg collective (aka wanting-everybody-to-be-like-us)? Data trying to figure out what it means to be human? And I thought VOY had this whole thing about the Prime Directive?
Admittedly, I haven’t seen every single episode of these shows (that’s why I bought a full set of TNG and am watching them now), but I seem to recall that these issues did keep recurring. Which, to me, reads as intentional.
December 5th, 2002 at 10:00 pm
Everyone talks about Trek diversity and IDIC, but I can’t think of any good thematic use it was put to, besides the half-black/half-white dudes of TOS.
There’s certainly theme potential in Spock/Data/Odo/EMH/Seven/T’Pol discovering their fundamental humanity, but it was more often a plot device beaten to death than a theme developed over the course of a series. The Borg were also overdone, making them both less of an intentional theme than a weekly writing cop-out.
Or I’m just pessimistic that way.