10kposts Film Club: The Matrix Resurrections ft. Sophie (Part 1)
Added 2022-02-04 09:01:07 +0000 UTCWe're going back to where it all started....back to the Matrix!
We're once again joined by the podcast oracle, Sophie (@sophie_frm_mars) to talk about the new Matrix movie, in which Neo and Trinity find themselves in a new Matrix - a Matrix *within* a Matrix, where everything has bisexual lighting, Neo is sad and drinks a lot of tiny coffees. We talk about why this was a reluctantly made sequel for Lana Wachowski, the efforts to produce something new within an economy fuelled on nostalgia, and, of course, why all the funko pop guys are, once again, mad online.
For more Sophie on Twitch, Youtube and Podcasts, follow her here: http://linktr.ee/SophieFromMars
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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_OnEarth).
Comments
as an older and wiser? person, I can safely say that I have seen cynical fanfiction now as people increasingly try to monetize it or turn it into original fic ala 50 Shades
Twi
2022-05-15 03:15:41 +0000 UTCSo I agree that it’s a good point that love isn’t the only possible motivator, but I remain convinced that regardless of whether it’s out of love or spite there is still an inherent sincerity to the act of making fanfiction. And not in a “no true Scotsman” kind of way, but that if there is cynicism it transforms the result into something that is categorically different. This is getting into the weeds of definitions and my definitions may be different to yours, but cynical cash grab sequels and reboots don’t “feel” like fanfiction in the way say Cursed Child does in the case of Harry Potter or Matrix 4 does in this case. That’s actually why I made the comment I did. Because Matrix 4, for good or ill *does* feel like fanfiction, but precisely because it feels like Lana Wachowski sincerely engaging with the text of the originals. Whereas if she’d made some mindless schlock and cynically slapped some Matrix characters into it I don’t know that we’d be having this discussion because I don’t think it would have occurred to you to use the fanfic description. Does that make sense?
Jamie Moffatt
2022-02-08 10:49:28 +0000 UTCThat's interesting, and not something I'd thought of, but of course makes sense.
Ten Thousand Posts
2022-02-08 10:26:45 +0000 UTC> sorry, sorry, but this is a lot like posting So you're saying that a fanfic episode is possible? --- I don't want to pile on to the matter of love and fanfiction, but the first thing I thought about with regards to that point was the fact that I've written fanfics for almost the opposite reason - as a form of spite. I doubt that I'm the only trans person who grew up reading Harry Potter fanfiction who has written trans-inclusive Harry Potter fanfiction as a mix of revenge and exorcism in the face of the fact that its author insists on constantly ensuring TERF assholes have new reasons to verbally abuse us on Twitter. I suppose there's a case to be made that spite in the face of perceived betrayal by a thing you love is a very normal response, but it certainly isn't love that motivates that kind of writing. At its best, such a piece is an attempt to deprive Rowling of some of her power over the text.
Violet
2022-02-08 05:51:15 +0000 UTCHi Jamie, Phoebe here - happy to clarify what I meant by it. In the first instance, I would say that any piece of culture that has an accompanying culture of creative participation that has built up around it; ie, if there is a corpus of adjustments, additions and interpretations that are either not explicit in the original text or have taken on a life of their own beyond the author's original intent, even if the author themselves claims that this was their intent all along, then I think there is a reasonable case for saying the author is involved in making fan fiction of their own work, if only through the act of adding to something that is already self contained. The difference between an author and a fan in this instance is that an addition by an author is routinely deemed to be now part of the self contained work, but that's not always the case; Rowling is a good example of someone who is part of the fan fiction community for their own work (although again, as author she has larger authority over it, but not necessarily total). I'm afraid I don't agree that fix it fic is *necessarily* a sign of love for the work, and find it more suggestive of those who see texts as products that they own and that they are entitled to adjust in order to align more with their preferences and vision for it. It is always possible to create your own work, after all (the quality is something of a moot point, plenty of people write for fun and nothing else), although I don't dispute that fic is one way for fans to engage with the work they enjoy. If it is posited as the only real way, and that you cannot love something sincerely unless it is exactly 'right' by your metric, then that is where I think you run into trouble, because that is where it stops being sincere engagement with the text even in its flaws. Would you, for instance, be as sympathetic to the intentions and sincerity of a fic writer who 'fixed it' to make a non white character white, or to de-queer another? I suspect not (and your distaste for that would be completely reasonable!), but if the argument is that it fan fiction is only motivated by sincere engagement and love, then you would have to be equally sympathetic to it. I have been thinking a bit about the distinction between response work and fan fiction, which I imagine there's an argument that it is the same, only one is sneered and one is taken seriously, but I think there is more to it than that, and I suspect that it is precisely the lack of both emotional involvement in response literature that allows for cool observation of the text and not attempts to make everything as close as possible to the contents of the writer's journal. With regards to cynicism - I think that as soon as money is involved there is the capacity for cynicism, and especially if you are making use of, as you say, a free and laboured-over body of work in order to generate more cash for yourself. Participating in any kind of fan fiction, even if it is of your own work, is to be simultaneously writer and reader (sorry, sorry, but this is a lot like posting), and if there is the opportunity to sell it then it inevitably collapses along the same logic lines as any culture does under consumer capitalism. It comes down to the question, if you make it, will they buy it: a monetised piece of fan fiction is built on both the assumption of the willingness of the buyers and cheerful making use of the work of the community that you have made yourself part of. I think in the case of the final Matrix, the cynicism is everyone's involved, but the journal-adjacent margin notes are what makes it fan fiction,
Ten Thousand Posts
2022-02-07 08:57:10 +0000 UTCA proper hacker doesn't need to carry their switchblade and their infected usb-drive in different hands, they just have a switchblade with a built-in usb-drive and use the other hand to flop all over a keyboard before saying something about mainframes and SHA-16 or ROT-3 or something. Editing in an additional note here: Game-developers exist in a perpetual liminal state between "slowly coming to the realization that they really should have just gotten a job where they didn't work twice as many hours for 20% less salary" and "subject of death threats for nerfing someone's favorite character/gun/skill" and there're few things quite as irritating as being accused of thinking you're a rockstar when you associate public attention with verbal abuse and evacuating your office because some salty nerd sent a fake pipe-bomb to it. Like anyone working in a creative field in the modern world, the most important lesson to learn is to either never read the comments or to only do so from the position of complete ego death.
Violet
2022-02-06 02:37:12 +0000 UTCI’m very interested by Phoebe’s description of it as “a cynical piece of fanfiction” because leaving aside the idea of whether a creator can even be said to make fanfiction of their own work, to me the act of writing fanfiction is inherently an uncynical exercise. Fanfiction is either a pure expression of the fact you have so much love for a thing you will put in impressive amounts of (almost always free) labour to make sure there’s more of it, or in the case of “fix it fic” an incredibly sincere engagement with a work’s flaws (or often both). That sincerity is often why it exists at the extremes of the spectrum of quality. Either surprisingly good or absolute dog crap and rarely in between. (A lot of parallels here with the Matrix sequels.) I’d love to hear more from Phoebe on that point.
Jamie Moffatt
2022-02-04 12:42:41 +0000 UTCbased and filmspilled
August1612
2022-02-04 09:51:48 +0000 UTC
