Fandom: Proving that Fundamentalism Doesn't Work

[twincityhacker]

I think we've all learned something important from the conversation here about whether Ianto is a Mary-Sue or not.

Firstly, we also learned that you should really agree on terms before you start arguing. Especially since the person who brought the conversation up karokegal was asking "Is Ianto Jones the Self-Insert of Rusty to shag Captain Jack/John Barrowman by character proxy?" not "Does Ianto have an Aura of Smooth that let's him get away with not getting shot over the Lisa incident, and shown to be so much smarter and more awesome than the rest of the team?"

Secondly, I managed to argue both sides of the discussion. Namely, that Ianto does not display the characteristics of a Mary-Sue, but that Rusty is probably shagging characters by proxy even though it's not likely to be Ianto that is avatar. Which is probably the answer that we can all agre to ( she said egotistically ).

Thirdly, that people may watch the same show with their eyes, their brain is putting together the show in different ways. I think fandom_me said it best in another: "We're all watching different shows, and that's okay." All those different points of view makes for a more interesting conversation, and even if you can't agree, you at least make your own arguments more sound.

Lastly and most importantly, that Fundamentalism doesn't work. If people can't agree on the petty differences of this, with the writer alive and us living in a very similar culture, how the hell are we supposed to agree to the One True Reading of texts which are thousands of years old, from culture's we can't really imagine living in today?

Comments

[aeshna_uk]

Happy to say that I managed to avoid that one altogether! Because yes, people do seem to watch different shows with very different characters in and terms of reference get garbled very quickly. And it does all boil down to an odd form of inbred fannish fundamentalism, where you get a lot of "but everyone loves Ianto!" in particular online communities but out in the real world I have friends (known through SF cons for two decades) who can barely remember his name and think he's a bit pointless.... :)

(for me: canon!Ianto is not a Mary-Sue - he's too bland and undefined and more than a bit wet with no noticable areas of brilliance beyond filing and making coffee (yuk!); I have no great expectation of him surviving s3. fanon!Ianto, meanwhile, is a Mary-Sue of quite utterly terrifying proportions - Rusty (who has only written one episode, after all) isn't at fault here, but a good 95% of fanwriters really, really are.... ;))

With you on the religion thing!