architect

I dreamed a really lovely church last night. I dreamed it so detailed it took me half an hour after I woke up for it to occur to me it might not exist in the waking world. But now I can't recall ever having seen the place.

It was made of flint, ( Read more... )

Identity Porn

Melannen started a discussion on Identity Porn, contributed to at Petra's journal.
I had some thoughts but they're really long so I'll write them here.
It is, as ever, possible everyone is talking about something slightly different using the same words.
I've been running through cases in my head trying to figure is-or-isn't.

To start with my own characters ( Read more... )

Identity porn is easiest to explain in the DCU ( Read more... )

Canon identity porn: Torchwood. Most clearly Ianto in Fragments. ( Read more... )

Same in Highlander ( Read more... )

Is playing yourself at a different age the same layered identity thing? (thinking of me acting like high school me, arrgh arrgh aieeeee!) Dick Grayson playing Robin, yes very yes. Playing that for someone that was there be a different game than playing it for someone who never met them. Meeting a legend, a person you have in your head, and finding out who the are(n't) is a big zing. But if they'd never heard of them it's not so zingy, they would have to construct a new-old persona as they go. Hmmm, still interesting. Revealing, though maybe in the same way as an old chrysalis.

Actually being reverted to that age or interacting via time travel or whatever, not the same zing. Must be conscious choice and layered self involved.

Changes to body, like being aged up or changed sex, only intersect if there's a persona to go with it. If getting aged up leads a Robin to play Batman then there's identity Stuff going on there. If someone's just stuck in a different body acting the same then it's not.

Body swaps where someone acts like the inhabited body, something complex could be going on there, but it's not identity porn the same way.



All these ways to play with identity, the different selves in the same moment and the different identities across time, they call into question some basic constructions. Like 'self' and 'identity'. What do they actually mean? If you've got one continuous self with a basic core that can't be touched, something normal and natural and complete, you can't really get these identity stories. In order to get to the identity porn you have to seperate out different aspects of self. Mind and body? Mind and mind. And clothes and actions and ways of speaking. Identity, not just gender but every aspect of self, as performance. Identity as a constant negotiation, as a creation.

And I think to get to the identity porn the multi masked one has to be conscious of that. Has to know how they've built and rebuilt themselves, and be deliberately playing with that. And probably has to be doing it to get a particular kind of interaction going with someone else, one that crosses the streams on how they usually are.


At least that's my best guesses.
... my other definition is 'everything involving Robins', or possibly written by Te.





Buffyverse: ( Read more... )

Stargate: ( Read more... )

that maybe undermines my theory that that personas both have to be real to the target audience. Except we the reader are the target audience, and we understand. Ah, yes, theory blown, because the audience in the story doesn't have to understand when the persona shifts for us to get a zing out of it.

I still think it's twisty zingier if the story person knows. And knows why the streams don't cross usually. And there's some kind of consequences hanging on it, personal or security or safety. ( Read more... )

There's pieces of themselves that can only fully be expressed in one persona. They can't fully integrate all the pieces, can't make one complete layer out of all their selves that can still be fully every seperate part of them. But the trying to is the interesting zingy hot fascinating fun part. They learn how to be more themselves by being less of themselves at a time?

Or the Vorkosigan thing: ( Read more... )

Is tricky. You'd think it would be easy to define porn, but not even. And identity porn even less so.


... though I do realise I have pretty much just defined it as 'things I like. a lot. pretty much all of them.'
:eyeroll: