remote viewing

Have laid aside Invitation to a Beheading indefinitely. Picked up Pnin, which is taking me over a week to read because I am a lameass. I took a stab at my own project over the weekend, and am establishing a rough outline day by day. Added a lamp to my library, too -- the novel and its womb gestating simultaneously.

Been watching a lot of X-Files. Some series lend themselves particularly well to the fanfiction impulse, especially series which present their characters as revolving around a single, core obsession or trait.

This trait becomes the central focus of 'important' episodes but is almost never absent from any given episode, even when it plays an ancillary role. Its deployment resonates with each episode's theme and with the series's larger theme -- but almost always returns to a neutral, beginning, undeveloped position by the next episode.

Scully, for instance, has her skepticism increasingly challenged over the course of the series but she is always "the skeptic." Mulder makes increasingly bold references to Scully's physical attractiveness, and the series implies his sexual appeal to and appetite for other women, but the sexual relationship of the two main characters is perpetually pending.

This 'development sans development' is a key feature of television series, comic books, manga, etc.: forms that lend themselves, intentionally, to fan participation, i.e. fanfiction. The series does not consummate the development of these characters, forcing/encouraging the fans to do it themselves. These thematic tensions are therefore 'remotely consummated' as a form of wish fulfillment -- fulfilling the wishes and fantasies which fiction itself has inspired in us, e.g. the perfect romance.