Another country heard from... (was: Thoughts on exclusion and culture) LONG

[gwendolyngrace]

Hi, everyone.

It's Gwen, making a very rare guest appearance on an HPFGU list. My, 
this has been an interesting discussion, and I mean that in a very 
Chinese sense. The threads here on TBAY have been amusing, 
frustrating, gratifying, and difficult for me to read, mostly because 
I feel an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, because you see, I was an 
Elf during both the April, 2002 and the November, 2002 TBAYcles, as 
they came to be known on the Admin (MEG) list. Yes, for those of you 
who don't know or remember me, I'm not exactly an oldbie by Heidi's 
definition, but I'm also just a little bit proto-middler, to use her 
term. I joined the list in January, 2001, and became an Elf just 
about a year later, just before TBAY made its first major appearance 
as a factor on the list. To put things in perspective for you, I'm 
the person who coined the term "CARP." (I wish that my other term for 
TBAY had caught on, too, as I think it's more intuitive: Carpe 
Theorem.)

Anyway, after catching up to everything being discussed here, and 
deciding that old habits die too hard, I'm posting on the topic. 
Those of you who do know me, relax, I'm not going to kick anyone's 
ass. Though some of you may feel I'm airing somewhat old, dirty 
laundry, I promise, no HPFGU'ers will be harmed in the delivery of 
this post.

Okay, so on the subjects of TBAY, FILK, and similar things.

First off, those folks who are on the Admin Team (whatever the heck 
you call it now): the one thing I have to say about this is, please, 
don't consider the entire existence of TBAY completely moot. I 
understand that it is more status quo now than it was even a year 
ago, and I further acknowledge that you say you are not considering 
the ultimate fate of TBAY at this time. Fair enough. But I caution 
you: TBAY has survived heretofore, IMO, because certain individuals 
on the moderator team defended it desperately, and, equally IMO, 
other mods who had no opinion decided that it would be nicer to those 
moderators to keep TBAY than to excise it for the good of the list.

So when you asked here about TBAY, and within a few posts, people 
were asking why it should be allowed, please, remember that no 
decision needs to be final forever. If there's a compelling reason to 
revisit the question, please, don't be afraid to do so.

Because I think there are still compelling reasons, the same sorts of 
reasons I and a couple others tried to argue in April and November. 

Everyone else, understand that I, too, am a role-player from long 
ago. I too, am susceptible to the lure of a good bit of fun, and in-
and-of-itself, I don't have a problem with a little bit of cyber-
action – when it illustrates a point better than anything else.

But as a role-player and an author and a whole lot of other things, I 
ultimately agree with Richard (gulplum) and Saitaina, who both feel 
that TBAY is bad for the list. I agree with Stasia, who said (in 
message 115): "TBAY feels to me like it's performance theater; I'm 
watching theorists act out their theories. Sort of." And I agree with 
Dreadnaught (Shaun), who said (in message 109), "I feel quite 
uncomfortable with the idea of posting a non TBAY reply to a TBAY 
post - but it seems to me that TBAY posters have little problem with 
the idea of taking a thread that is being discussed in a 
straightforward fashion and TBAYing it."

Quite simply, TBAY is probably about 80% of why I don't post anymore. 
I honestly blame TBAY for much of the downward slide list quality has 
taken over the last 2 years – from the moment people started 
inserting themselves into the action, instead of remaining observers.

When I tried to explain the co-opting of threads into TBAY, and 
especially the evolution of TBAY from simple "extended metaphor" to 
long, protruded narratives that are almost by themselves fictive 
works, I said simply that "The posts are no longer *about* the 
theories; they are about how those theories are presented." Richard 
said (in message 156): "To put it very briefly, the metaphors of TBAY 
itself are beginning to take over from the metaphors of the theories 
being discussed." Thanks, Richard! That's what I was trying to say in 
a nutshell. It's not a question of ignoring form vs. function. But 
the debate around TBAY has never been that TBAY posts don't contain 
brilliance, or that TBAY posts are more or less "clever" than regular 
posts. The debate has been that because it is a specific *style* of 
posting, at a certain point, posts are measured and/or judged by how 
well they typify or exemplify that style.

I'll give you two examples, to see if I can illustrate what I'm 
talking about here. The first is poetry. Many forms of poetry, such 
as the rhyme royal, the sestina, the villanelle, and others, 
originated because poets got bored and wanted to challenge 
themselves. Fair enough, and certainly everyone deserves to push the 
envelope of one's art. So they came up with forms of poetry – meters, 
rhyme schemes, and so on – that were difficult to employ while still 
creating a poem that was meaningful and effective. Other poets rose 
to the challenge, and soon poem style X was all the rage. But 
eventually, use of that particular poetic style became more "about" 
how well a poet could work within it, or how far the poet could push 
it, than it was "about" writing a poem to make a point.

Example #2 comes from theatre. In theatre, we actors are very aware 
of a phenomenon known as "upstaging." Upstaging happens when someone 
or something on stage that isn't supposed to be the center of 
attention grabs the audience and distracts them from the real point 
of the scene, be it dialogue, action, or whatever. An example-within-
an-example is if there's a set piece onstage, like let's say a sofa, 
and the actors are constantly playing with or using or moving or 
interacting with the sofa. We'd say that it's no longer a play about 
a love story; it's a play about a sofa. Here's the real example, and 
it's an object lesson on upstaging. 

The story goes that once, the great actress Tallulah Bankhead was in 
a show with an ingénue who, with typical dramatic ego, felt she was a 
far better actress than Ms. Bankhead. In one off-stage battle, Ms. 
Bankhead was loudly heard to proclaim, "Honey, I could upstage you 
without even being on stage!" Sure enough, the next night, Ms. 
Bankhead had laid her trap. The scene arrived, where she and the 
young woman were on together. In the middle of the scene, Ms. 
Bankhead's character places her teacup and saucer on the table and 
leaves the room, whereupon the young actress continues the scene 
(whether with other actors or alone, I don't recall). Ms. Bankhead 
very deliberately placed her saucer so that it protruded from the 
edge of the table, where it was sure to crash as soon as anything 
touched it.

Ms. Bankhead was right: for the rest of the scene, no one paid the 
ingénue the slightest attention during her big moments. All eyes kept 
returning to the teacup and saucer. When would it fall? How would it 
fall? What would happen when it did?

What no one knew is that Ms. Bankhead had obtained double-sided 
adhesive from the stagehands before the performance, and she had 
fixed the saucer to the table, so it *wouldn't* fall. But for that 
night, in that place, she made her point. She upstaged the young 
actress without even being present.

To me, TBAY posts are not about the monologue. They are about the 
teacup. They are about the use of the form, and while they may be 
inspired by having something real to say, ultimately, the nugget of 
wisdom is subsumed by how `cleverly' one can conceal it within all 
the rest of the trappings. I have no problem with cleverness, but 
being clever for the sake of being clever is
well, it's smug.

Now, the question has come up here and before as to whether or not 
TBAY should be splintered to its own list. While a few people believe 
that it might flourish there on its own, where its devotees can spin 
their webs of theory to their hearts' content, most everyone – 
detractors and supporters alike – feel that to move TBAY would kill 
it.

You know what? I agree.

But here's why I agree. TBAY is a futile exercise. It's superfluous, 
because it's about the teacup, not the monologue. If it were only 
about the monologue, then I think it would have no trouble thriving 
anywhere. The TBAY proponents are right when they say TBAY needs the 
list. So why, if TBAY posts are not substantive enough to survive on 
their own, should the list tolerate them? Why should we indulge a 
small percentage of people who, frankly, are fascinated by the teacup 
and want to create more situations in which a teacup might or might 
not fall? Why not return the list to straight discussion, discussion 
that can still be creative and insightful and occasionally contain a 
metaphor, but which everyone can access?

David described the French/English metaphor (mine) in Message 202. On 
other sites, the rules of engagement are clearly defined: e.g., 
English is the official language of the list. If you can't post in 
English, sorry. Why should we allow two separate languages (Post, 
TBAY post) to exist on the list?

Okay, one more thing about this and then I'll move on. Shaun (I think 
it was Shaun) brought up the question of whether TBAY posts conform 
to the rules for posting to a greater or lesser extent than regular 
posts do. In answer, David discussed the painstaking process Elves 
had of digging through pending TBAY posts to see if they "made a 
canon point." I would like to point out that this rule, and the rules 
implemented to determine whether or not TBAY (or any other) posts 
were sufficiently canonical to be allowed, was IMO nothing more than 
another attempt to keep TBAY on the list, for those members of the 
then-Moderator/Administrative team who loved it beyond measure. And, 
FWIW, I don't think that rule was applied evenly, either, because 
right after it was implemented, Heidi asked if she could include a 
quote from Jason Isaacs, in which the actor made a canon comment, 
based on his reading of the books. She was told point-blank that such 
a post belonged on –Movie, not on the main list, because Isaacs is a 
movie actor (and therefore supposedly can't be trusted to understand 
or have anything of value to say about the books). Of course, that 
begs the question: Had the actor been Jim Dale or Stephen Fry, would 
the point have been allowed?

What am I saying here? I'm saying that TBAY was preserved because 
moderators on the mod team wanted it to stick around, and because 
they defended it maniacally, almost to the point of hysteria, when it 
was attacked. It seemed to me that the more logical our arguments 
against it became, in fact, the more emphatically those moderators 
insisted that TBAY was the be-all and end-all of posting. First it 
wasn't fictive; then it was, but it was okay because it didn't 
involve the actual characters and thus wasn't as confusing as fanfic. 
Then they acknowledged that it was confusing to anyone who didn't 
know what the acronyms meant, but here's an acronym database so now 
it's not confusing. Then they argued that it wasn't exclusive because 
anyone could TBAY, but they acknowledged that naturally, only the 
most talented posters would attempt it, and thus the quality was much 
higher than regular posts. Then suddenly well, okay, so maybe some 
people try to TBAY and don't know what they're doing, but really, 
it's more about content than format, right? Except that when it was 
pointed out that there *wasn't* a whole lot of content, then we were 
told it's just a style of posting, and people enjoy it, so why are 
some people so upset about it? And so on, ad infinitum.

Every possible objection we could raise, we raised. And lo, TBAY 
miraculously remained both welcoming and cliquish, both brilliant and 
lackluster, both entertaining and impenetrable, both narrative and 
analytical, both self-indulgent and innocuous. It's a year and a half 
later, and TBAY still has its cake and eats it, too.


I said I'd talk about FILK, so I'll talk about FILK briefly (well, 
more briefly than I did TBAY). I'm a freelance songwriter, including 
many filks, mostly for an organization called the SCA, along with a 
few other sci-fi con type songs. I have enough written and they're 
well-enough liked that I am working on putting together a CD of my 
songs for sale in that organization. I am an unembarrassed filk snob. 
Most HP filks make me break out in hives. That said, I have actually 
written four original songs, two of which are technically filk 
because the melodies were not mine, and Heidi forced me to help her 
with two filk songs while we were working on Nimbus – 2003. If I 
*ever* write another HP filk, she has standing orders to kill me 
where I stand.

You might think that all this is leading up to another diatribe on 
why filk shouldn't be allowed. Wrong. I detest HP filk because so 
much of it, forgive me Caius, absolutely stinks. It's the same reason 
that although I help run FictionAlley, I hardly ever read fanfic. 
Most people cannot write anything worth the cyberspace it's published 
in. There are rare exceptions, but really, truly, Sturgeon's law 
applies and then some. But Caius is absolutely right, as is Pippin, 
when they point out that many FILKs are inspired by conversation on 
the list – a crystallization of ideas put forward, as it were. And, 
having been struck by the evil filk fairy many, many times in my 
life, I can attest that it's very difficult either to predict what 
will trigger a filking episode, or to stop one once it starts. Gee, I 
make it sound like epilepsy or something. It really is – it's a 
disease. But it's not quite the blight on the list that I personally 
view TBAY to be, and for a number of reasons:

1. Unlike TBAY, a filk doesn't hijack threads. It may comment on 
what's happening, and in some cases, it may as I said boil the 
conversation down to a more refined grade of wisdom, but at most, a 
filk is a commentary on or summation of a position or theory, not a 
statement that would be extremely difficult to discuss without the 
context of the filk around it. Example: my original song for 
Hufflepuff comes to the conclusion: "You ask what's the point in a 
house of our kind? / Well, we run the world from beneath and behind." 
It's a succinct little couplet that summarises my belief that 
Hufflepuffs are not necessarily a "load of duffers" – after all, 
secretaries and janitors rule the world. But I could easily discuss 
that concept without filking it. It is much more difficult to parse 
out all the myriad pieces of a TBAY theory to make it accessible 
outside of its contextual environment. The creation of a FILK doesn't 
automatically present difficulty for anyone who doesn't read FILKS to 
go on discussing that topic.

2. I do believe that if it were spliced to its own list, FILK would 
thrive. The evidence of filk lists doing very well for themselves is 
all over the internet. There are entire websites, discussion groups, 
and all manner of other forums where filk is the center of 
discussion. In fact, in many ways, I think HP filk might do better on 
its own list, because people could discuss their filks with one 
another, improve their scansion based on suggestions from their 
peers, and spark each other's creativity in ways that are stifled due 
to the OT-ness of such discussion as it would be interpreted on the 
main list. But *because* I can readily see how filk is a legitimate 
and useful animal, I say it belongs in the HPFGU family. It wouldn't 
be too hard, for example, to say on the FILK list "Hey, over on main 
we've been talking about Snape's pensieve, and here's a little filk I 
wrote" or even "This was written in response to a discussion about 
why Dumbledore would ignore Harry's obvious post-traumatic stress in 
OoP," and have people understand the context. The point is, filk will 
not suffer from a lack of oxygen whether it's on its own list or 
continues on the main one.

3. A filk is, generally, a single commentary, not a running gag. 
Okay, people do write series of filks, and I think somewhere out 
there someone still plans – I shudder to think of it – HP: The 
Musical, where all the filks are strung together either to parallel 
the books or to illustrate some other progression of plot through 
filk (bleah!). But in general, one filk does not perpetuate more 
filks that comment on the first filk and build on it and extend it 
further and leave listies with the feeling that if they're going to 
understand the jokes in filk 357, they'd better read filks 1-356. 
Filks can stand alone.

4. I may be wrong, but I believe there are vastly more filks that 
reference the canon to a much greater degree than they reference the 
list itself. They are thus more universal and more universally 
understood than TBAY, because in order to understand or respond to 
TBAY, one *must* have a grasp of the players, as well as the rules of 
engagement. 

5. Filks, because of their nature as poetry, must be economical in 
their use of language. No one to my knowledge has tried to produce 
any epic HP poetry, rivaling the length of the Iliad or an Edda or 
Njal's Saga. Consequently, even if they do appear on the list, they 
don't take up the kind of bandwidth that TBAY habitually does.

6. Filking is canon. Dumbledore instructs everyone in the first book 
to pick a favourite tune to sing the Hogwarts school song. Hermione 
has never, to my knowledge, presented Harry and Ron with a syllogism 
by personifying herself vis-à-vis her theory.

Okay, that last one was silly. But I think you get the point.

Gwen