Dysfunctional Narratives, Moralizing, and the Fix Fic: How We Order The Disappointing · 12:49am Sep 3rd, 2020
Photo by Public Domain Pictures from Pexels
It is a seldom-made observation that the act of narration is hardly as cohesive as it would want us to believe. Were one to disengage from the act and look at the parts as they are, surely the marvel of language and storytelling would present itself as an unlikely miracle. Words are themselves meaningless, but somehow it is the speaker and listener—to use oral storytelling as the example—that provide the necessary context to form everything else that words create.
Wittgenstein put it another way, I believe, asking rhetorically: “What is a pineapple?”
By far, to write anything is to attempt an understanding of things that don’t have inherent meaning. If we use storytelling as our general example, we can see how this is the case. In stories we have things like characters and plot and setting, but what is a character; what is a plot; what is a setting? Certainly, many works of literature have attempted to understand each on a fundamental level, but it is hard to determine anything exact. Is a character a person? Yes; but by what factors? And what makes a character somehow less real than a person, that they should appear in a work of fiction?
The same question might as well show up in autobiographies and in histories, to some extent. It is, in my view, a question about what it means to understand. That is certainly an abstract matter to consider, and therefore a highly difficult one to wrap your head around.
Narratives function by blending these abstract mysteries together in a concoction crafted out of the very recesses of chaos and imagination. Words are no longer just words in a narrative, and the words that make up a character and a plot fall into the same heightened category. Similarly, the base definition of a character falls apart, transcends past its earthly limitations, and achieves a new meaning—that of whatever role the narrative sees fit to assign it. When we read and/or listen, then, we supplant our understanding of the individual definitions of any of the one components of a story, with the definitions that the story newly provides. In this way, we understand the narrative; we comprehend it; and in most cases, unconsciously, we enjoy it.
But what about when we fail to understand the story? Not just as readers, but as writers? How does that happen, and what are the consequences?
Obligatory pony pic. Credits to NireFuster on derpibooru.
In his essay called “Dysfunctional Narratives: or: ‘Mistakes Were Made’”, Charles Baxter notes the confusing fallout in American society following the Watergate Scandal. The political subterfuge and implications of a greater conspiracy operating behind the scene created a history of unknowns that left the American public scrambling for answers, or more specifically, a source to blame. But moreover, it was the creation of a political climate of deniability, Baxter posits, that furthered the idea of muddled narratives in real life. Connecting the dense fog found in the fallout of Watergate to the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran, Baxter sums up several decades’ worth of shadowy governmental operations with the somewhat morbidly humorous passive phrase, “Mistakes were made.”
This idea of deniability fuels Baxter’s understanding of what makes a narrative fall apart. In the historical sense, dysfunctionality stems from a lack of coherent reason and rhyme to a series of events. This lack of such things originates from a single action on the part of those who walk the halls of history: failure to take responsibility. As Baxter puts it, “you can reconstruct a story if someone says, ‘I made a mistake,’… You can’t reconstruct a story—you can’t even know what the story is—if everyone is saying, ‘Mistakes were made.’”
Narrative dysfunction, which Baxter cites the poet C. K. Williams defining roughly as the process by which we lose track of the story of ourselves, is therefore the natural extension of this phenomenon. Humans love to order things, and the way we do is, quite commonly, to set things in a linear order. A, B, C, and D are all events, but we sleep better knowing that A was the start of it all, and it caused B to happen, which caused C, which caused D. Causality is the comfort of the human mind.
And causality serves an even stricter purpose in narrative storytelling. The standard form of a plot is that A happens to a character, which results in character making B choice, which results in C happening, and so forth until the resolution is reached. We can call this something else to more closely attribute it to the role of characters: consequential storytelling.
As the saying goes, actions have consequences, and so, when a character acts, there must be some consequence to that action. Drama is arguably built off of the idea that these consequences are “unintended” or “unforeseen,” and character growth—the idea of a character going on a journey, even—is tied directly to what actions are necessitated by what consequences occur. As characters, to serve the story, must make choices, those choices mean something only when consequences follow.
By this reasoning, narrative dysfunction could stem from when those choices mean very little, or when next to no consequences occur for the characters. The story falls flat when nothing changes, when no event A leads to event B. We struggle to re-orient our minds to stories that miss this vital piece, unused to the idea that linear consequence (in a loose sense) is of no importance. We scratch our heads, bang our gavels, bemoan the work and the author; we say we don’t follow; we say they have lost us.
Baxter diagnoses this: “One of the signs of a dysfunctional narrative is that we cannot leave it behind it, and we cannot put it to rest, because it does not, finally, give us the explanation we need to enclose it.” The result, he also says, is a deep sense of sorrow and rage, as though the person who is forced to experience this illogical progression is utterly offended by its very presence.
There are a few possible reasons for this. Baxter says that it might have to do with how young authors create characters: how they fill them up with so much hope and life, that the idea of subjecting them to the consequences of their own humanity (whether or not they are human) is deeply troubling. Yet Baxter doesn’t determine that authors are the ones solely responsible, noting that “It’s difficult for fictional characters to acknowledge their mistakes, because then they become definitive: They are that person who did that thing.” The only people aware of what they’ve done, in a serious sense, are the readers, and readers have no say on the process of a story as they do on its reception.
Funnily enough, that statement suggests a desperate reader-base; of an audience so unfit for a new kind of storytelling that they’ll diminish the value of any story that seeks to break away from the norm. We can turn to the Surrealist poets, writers, and artists as examples of this particular aesthetic protest, or perhaps to the Dadaism movement, which suggests the meaning of art is that there is no meaning. Really, what we call a logical narrative is just one particular kind of interpretation of what we consider the “events,” and while on the surface we assume that consequential writing is the best kind of writing, it is instead much stiffer.
Plenty of writers have tried to break from this restraint, to arguable success, but Baxter points out the general hesitancy of the literary world to accept the unexpected. In addition, he points to the fact that the fault lies in the natural hesitancy on the part of both readers and writers. In the former’s case, it’s the hesitancy to take in anything new; but in the latter, it’s the unconscious hesitancy that comes with trying something new.
Consider: you want to write a new kind of story that is without the same kinds of structures as found in others. Maybe it’s a second-person back-and-forth between two narrators who don’t interact with one another, but do, somehow, interact with the reader. Is this entirely feasible? The adage, “Execution is key,” scoffs at the question, but one shouldn’t dismiss it. This would be a very difficult kind of story to write, let alone one to read. The reader would have to somehow ignore the base need to order a story to make sense in order to… well, make sense of the story.
Baxter doesn’t say that an aspiring writer should want to go this route, but he does point out that those who do try to do something new risk falling onto old crutches. In particular, he describes how the writer of a spiritual story may, knowing that they risk alienating their readership if they do not clearly explain their spiritual views (in a matter conducive to storytelling, of course), compensate by going down the route of moralizing. Chekov may have hastened away from this, but Tolstoy most definitely went this route, as plenty of his stories pound the reader with what he means to say and what he says to mean. Baxter points out that more readers may enjoy this latter process not because Tolstoy is the better writer, but because he has done the dirty work for the reader: “When people can’t make any narrative sense of their own feelings, readers start to ask writers to tell them what they are supposed to feel.”
Storytelling becomes therapeutic. It’s the way by which the reader better understands themselves. But not many people like to think critically about who they are, and so when a story presents itself as a solution to the problem of “me,” more power to it.
I don’t think Baxter means to diminish the role of having a cathartic experience when it comes to reading stories. I think instead he’s pointing out that the hasty writer will endeavor down this easy route, and will do so in a predictable and sloppy way. Tolstoy could get away with it because he was very good at getting into the intimate thoughts and sensations of his characters, even those who were little more than soapboxes. He could contrast the philosophical musings with the entertainment of a drama, in a way that almost seems like magic. The writer who is not aware of how to balance moralizing with moral writing will suffer being called “overly preachy”; their presence in the story will be sorely observed; they will not be welcome in their own work, by the readers whom they are trying to please.
Order, then; that seems to be the root of Baxter’s argument. Order, or lack thereof, creates dysfunctional narratives, both in the writer’s mind as they conceptualize and draft their stories, and in the reader’s as they attempt to correlate the events told. In the end, the story must make sense somehow, and if it doesn’t, then it will be criticized.
Baxter’s argument breakdown is an adequate one, but it doesn’t go so far as to anticipate what follows after such dysfunctional storytelling. What is the response to it? My answer: fix fics.
Zuckergelee on deviantart. Twilight ships these two and I know it.
TVTropes has a delightfully sardonic way of defining the tropes that come its way, and Fix Fics are no exception:
“Sometimes the fans think that The Powers That Be screwed it. Maybe they've wasted the storyline, or they went for the obvious when a better solution should have been favoured. Maybe they didn't focus on a certain character enough. Maybe they've paired the wrong couple together, or they don't even understand who the true hero of the story should be. Or, even worse, they've killed/derailed the best/most important character, or given the story an ending that is unsatisfying for whatever reason.”
It goes on:
Whatever the reason, some fans are dissatisfied and they won't be content to complain about it. They're going to address it, in a fanfic. In short, an AU with an agenda, rather than as an intellectual exercise.”
It is likely that we’ve all come across something to this effect. Let me sketch a hypothetical scenario: A viewer of a show or cartoon watches an episode that completely derails their enjoyment. Flabbergasted, they take to forums to complain, or blogs, or any other outlet. When this doesn’t assuage their massive disappointment, they choose instead to the word processor, and, two weeks and many doses of pure caffeine later, they’ve created an X number of words multi-chapter story explaining in no implicit terms why canon is garbage, why Plot Point Y is wrong, and why the episode in question should have followed this specific structure.
That’s a bit hyperbolic, but then again, so is the idea of a fix fic. It’s an extreme response to an outward medium. That said, it’s also extremely common, especially among some of the more die-hard fans who may have been following a show or story from its very conception.
In a surprising twist, however, fix fics are almost universally marred, cast out like lepers. Those who take fanfiction seriously (and many should, because it’s just another form of writing that can be done well) will tell you that you should never try to write a fix fic, not necessarily because it’s bad writing, but because it holds the potential for bad writing.
I return to Baxter and his point about writers being pulled towards moralizing. Fix fics carry the same temptation, with the writer throwing aside the nuances of narrative in favor of generating space and attention for their specific point of view. I note that this is, of course, a generalization, but it’s a pattern that holds a bit too closely to fix fics for my liking.
In my view, fix fics, if not written with the same caution that begets other conscious writing endeavors, will suffer from the same criticisms that the author may lob against the show that incurred a fix fic in the first place. For instance, if a criticism is that a certain character acted out of character, a fix fic risks subjecting that character to a one-note, “proper” characterization. A flat character who behaves “canonically” is still flat, after all. The same can be said about plot points: if a show “jumps the shark,” that’s one thing, but if a fix fic attempts to “fix” this by generating its own ludicrous explanation or alternative to those events, then is that not committing the same sin?
I want to draw another corollary and argue that fix fics themselves are also dysfunctional narratives. Recall what Baxter says: “One of the signs of a dysfunctional narrative is that we cannot leave it behind it, and we cannot put it to rest, because it does not, finally, give us the explanation we need to enclose it.” A fix fic certainly exemplifies this: it is the manifestation of a reader’s inability to let a needling point of criticism alone. One may say that this can’t be the case, as, having been written, a fix fic does put things to rest, but I’m not quite so sure. Is anything ever really put to rest if argued in a blatantly overt way? Do not fix fic carry the implication that if someone likes what has been “fixed,” they are wrong, and then the issue continues all over again?
I don’t mean to disavow the validity of being displeased with a story’s direction. In fact, when I was browsing the TVTropes page for Fix Fics, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a number of authors, including Asimov and Tolkien, could be considered as reputable creators of fix fics themselves. Essays that satirize society might fall under the same category, if stretched enough.
It seems that fix fics are a natural progression of our need to order information in a way that is pleasing to our senses, and is therefore a natural extension of what Baxter describes in his essay. They are the consequence of experiencing a story without consequence, desired or not.
Dotoriii on deviantart. I think I have a soft spot for Luna and books.
Clarity is the goal of any storyteller, so when clarity fails to form, the story suffers as a result. History, I suppose, is much the same way, especially history is simply an attempt to make life clear and meaningful. We don’t all have our “mistakes were made” passive moments of deniability, nor do we all take offense at the direction of something we’re interested in, but there are moments in our lives where the dysfunctional becomes commonplace: where chaos is the new norm.
Neither Baxter and I think that we ought to be complacent in that. Even if life is a rather messy endeavor, we still hold the ability to make choices. Those choices will, of course, have consequences, and we do not have the luxury of being able to write a fix fic of our own experiences without criticism.
But perhaps that is all right. Perhaps a little bit of dysfunctional narration is what gives us a deeper perspective into the story of our life.
Uh, I have no idea if it's my problem or yours, but I've read this like three times but I can't still don't quite understand what you're trying to say here
So what I've gathered is that stories are often bad or "dysfunctional" when story events and character actions fail to show meaning, and that fix fics are a flawed attempt to fix those sometimes perceived errors? But I don't really see how these fix fics would be considered "dysfunctional" in the same way as the original story?
I'm 100% sure I'm missing most of the points you're making here. Guess I'm not as smart as I thought, haha
5347652
No worries! Truthfully, the whole idea of a "dysfunctional narrative" is confusing enough on its own, and Baxter doesn't do the best job of explaining it.
My view is that stories are dysfunctional in two ways: when the actions taken in the story fail to have consequences, and when there is no clear party to "blame" or take responsibility for those actions and consequences. Baxter claims that regardless of which way occurs, the end result is a displeased reader, who looks at the story for some manner of "order" or "cleanliness."
Taken generally, I view dysfunctional narratives as narratives that don't make sense in a conventional, "human" way - that is, A causes B causes C - causality and consequential action, and all that.
Though, I'm not sure if Baxter is saying that stories that don't have any sort of consequence are "bad" as much as he's probably saying they're "different," and if done well, they can be considered good stories. Stories about a place, for instance, can be very good, if not traditionally "good" in the same sense.
As "fix fics" seems to be a direct response to a show or story's disappointing narrative, I wanted to point out that they can suffer from the same kinds of dysfunctional narration that they claim to try and, well, "fix." As Baxter points out, we stumble upon dysfunctional narratives if we're unable to leave it behind. In part of his essay that I didn't quote, he brought up the mystique behind JFK's assassination and how, even today, it pervades cultural and historical eras. It's a real-life "dysfunctional narrative" because we don't really know who to blame (Oswald, CIA, Cuba, Johnson) for it. We can try, but that often leads to a disappointing feeling, as though let down by the actual events.
That's probably why there are a lot of conspiracies about it, in any case.
Fix fics operate in a similar way, if we take into account a general view of why they're written. They're written because a reader is disappointed, but why are they disappointed? Usually that's because the story fails in some way - whether through poor characterization, plotting, or just execution in general - but all of this can be grouped together as the story failing to administer its "internal logic" in a way that makes sense to the reader.
Readers like things to make sense, to have an order to them, and when narratives appear to be without that, disappointment pervades. Fix fics are just one of the many kinds of responses we might see to that kind of disappointment.
I hope that cleared at least some things up; I'm aware this isn't exactly an easy literary topic to wrap one's head around. I've had this essay on the backburner for a few weeks because I was struggling to orient my thoughts in a way that wasn't, well, dysfunctional, but even then, Baxter didn't make this easy.
5347684
So, actions without reactions, or reactions without actions (or actors, I guess in this case) make a story dysfunctional, because it's "unresolved" in the reader's mind, so to speak? I suppose that makes enough sense. And... you're drawing a comparison between real-life dysfunctional narratives and people's attempts to rationalise and dramatise them, with disappointingly written stories and fix fics, if I'm reading right? So fix fics are like conspiracy theories, in a way?
But how are conspiracy theories and fix fics dysfunctional in the same way that the original narratives are? I can see them being like, a symptom of dysfunctional narratives, but if a fix fic is written well and resolves whatever was making the original narrative dysfunctional, wouldn't it be uh, not-dysfunctional?
And if it's like someone else could think that the original narrative was satisfactory -- or they liked what was fixed, I guess, in your words -- then shouldn't it be more like "every story is a dysfunctional narrative to someone"?
5348251
These would, actually, be the natural conclusion to this kind of thinking. As it turns out, narratives are just weird, and what is dysfunctional to some could be wholly functional to others.
I said in the beginning that the act of storytelling is a unique phenomenon, an attempt at making sense of things that happen. How we make sense of things determines how we understand what we now call "narrative," I think. The conventional story is just a series of "happenings" that happen to have a direct cause at some point, be that a person or a single choice, usually both, so Baxter and myself say that dysfunctional stories are ones that don't fit this mold.
To move out of fanfiction briefly: some of Borges's work of fiction, especially his short stories, could be considered "dysfunctional," in that they are not stories of causality, but stories of places and things without plot or responsibility. Italo Calvino's work, in its surreal rejection of narrative conventions, follows the same suit.
Back to fanfiction, Cold in Gardez's "Lost Cities" fits in the same category, even if subtext is taken into account.
I actually wrote this essay to help myself better understand Baxter's point of view, and that led me adding onto it with my perspective on fix fics. But I failed to mention that fix fics can be done well. If they are done so, then we approach a criticism with labeling things "dysfunctional": things can be written without causality in mind. Things can "just happen," as it were.
On the whole, I was speaking more to what the premise behind a fix fic entails - that of dysfunctional narration. Whether or not a fix fic "fixes" the problem isn't the concern, because fix fics themselves are, as you said, a symptom of a source being dysfunctional. And, because they latch onto that source, fix fics are also dysfunctional, at least by the definition that Baxter uses.
Alright, these are the stuff I don't get. How does a fix fic being done well lead to a criticism of the idea of dysfunctional stories being bad? And how is a fix fic inherently dysfunctional, following the action without reaction/reaction without action definition? Or was there another definition I missed?
Actually, the idea of dysfunctional and functional stories seems quite similar to another classification of stories as having Archplots or Antiplots, with the Archplot being the traditional story structure and the Antiplot being... well, everything else, really. Just thought it was an interesting parallel, though I'm not entirely sure where this classification came from
5348408
I admit that this is getting into a nebulous territory of definition and classification, which makes explaining this view all the more difficult, but I appreciate you bearing with me here.
So, a fix fic is, at heart, a story, right? Granted, it's a story in response to a flaw, and is its own kind of genre, but it's still a story. That means that it can succeed as any other story - that is, it can "be written well." That is its ultimate function, I suppose, as is the function of other stories and genres. It can accomplish this, if work is put into it.
That said, in my view, the premise behind a fix fic - being a nagging response to a dysfunctional narrative - is a resulting symptom of that same dysfunctional narrative. The execution of its function, in this sense, is entirely separate from its premise, because what a fix fic does is different from what it is.
Baxter... is weird, in that he really provides several "definitions" and "classifications" of what might be a dysfunctional narrative, using both the ideas of there not being "responsibility for actions" in a story, and of there being "an inability to let go of the narrative." Fix fics seem to address the first - they question why characters don't respond in a certain way, or aren't "responsible" for consequences, or why events unfold as they do - but also represent the second - their existence is based on an inability to let the dysfunctional narrative alone.
Consider that fix fics, when written, also might not have been written in the first place. Whatever qualms someone might have with, in this case, the pony show, could easily have just been brushed aside, or, perhaps, commented on and then moved past. The fact, however, that writers choose to write fix fics - to address these issues in the form of a narrative themselves - would indicate, at least to me, some level of dysfunction (again, by the definition{s} that Baxter provide{s}).
Does that make any tangible sense? I don't know. On a whole, I'm never sure if fix fics can truly work, or I hasten to generalize that fix fics are more commonly done poorly and are dysfunctional for other reasons than the ones Baxter points out. The problem with calling something dysfunctional is that in twenty or thirty years, it won't be considered that - we are always rediscovering what works in literature, usually by going back over what doesn't, and one has to admit that narratives that are dysfunctional are fascinating experiments in the way stories are told.
5349045
Well that makes a little more sense! I thought there was just that one definition, so the jump from regular dysfunctional narratives (as in the "no responsibility for actions" narrative) to casting all fix fics as dysfunctional really made no sense to me at all
Though I have to wonder why he'd give the same name to two (in my mind) very different things. Just seems like confusion waiting to happen. Unless I'm misunderstanding again
But it seems like he's calling two things dysfunctional: narratives that are by themselves dysfunctional, and narratives that people create to make sense of those. Just seems silly and circular to me 
Anyways thanks for entertaining my comments, haha, I guess it turned out to be something of a semantics discussion in the end
And yeah, labeling things as dysfunctional is...
Actually it seems like Baxter's definitions of dysfunction aren't super dependant on cultural expectations and such, so 30 year old stories might still be dysfunctional, in the same tone of "it's avant garde" or "it's kinda a weird story"