Epicly epic ramble
Dec. 5th, 2011 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldvermilion87NB: I know I do not see eye to eye with everyone on my f-list on every topic. In this essay I both mention and affirm traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality. However, that isn't the point of the essay, and people who disagree with me on this particular may still agree with the essay's point as a whole.
Thanks. :-)
I’ve been told about the danger of reading romances and becoming obsessed with Rom Coms more times that I can count. They raise your expectations of romance – make you think it’s always just around the corner. They make you think that romance is all sunshine and roses, and make you forget that sometimes it’s really hard – that happily ever after isn’t really that easy. I’m sure the people who told me that were right. But my experience has been very different.
For whatever reason, I didn’t become really interested in boys until two years ago, around when I turned 22. That was when I had my first, full-on, hormonally-influenced crush. Yes, I’d thought about the idea of love, and crushes, and marriage, but honestly, I had more of a visceral emotional attachment to Sam Gamgee than to any boy I had decided to “like” previously. And this has been reflected in my literary tastes as well. Sure, I have always gotten teary when Meg Ryan sees Tom Hanks’s dog at the end of You’ve Got Mail, and the conclusion to Jane Eyre puts a smile on my face, but what I love are the stories of male friendship. It’s always been true. Sam and Frodo were at the center of my original obsession. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson still have my attention. Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn are probably the reason I love Our Mutual Friend as much as I do. Alan Breck and David Balfour, Dr. Sawyer and Leonard Lowe, Dr. Treves and John Merrick, William Pitt the Younger and William Wilberforce, Hamlet and Horatio, Jonathan and David… honestly, I could go on forever.
Now, I think that friendship is a wonderful gift from God. I think it has led to acts of nobility and sacrifice. I think it is, to quote C.S. Lewis, “one of those things that give value to survival.” It is beautiful.
But I have wondered for years now, if there isn’t as much danger, at least for some of us, in reading stories about friendship as there is in reading romance.
The way I got to this wondering is as follows.
When I was young and innocent to the ways of the web, I was on the computer searching for promo pictures from The Fellowship of the Ring. My favorite book was being made into a movie, and I wanted as many sneak peek snapshots as possible, from which to create (really ugly… I can see that now. :-P ) wallpapers. I stumbled onto a story. It was a story about Sam and Frodo. But not by Tolkien. WOW! I started reading. It was WONDERFUL! I used to make up stories about Sam and Frodo in my own head and now here they were before me! I read and read…
I started a story that expanded on “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit” – a favorite chapter of mine. YAY! Sam was expanding on his line about “I love him… he’s like that somehow.” Then Sam wakes Frodo. Then they eat. Then they… start to make out!?!?!? NOOOOOOO!
And I had stumbled on my first ever example of slash fan fiction. I remember that feeling. I was absolutely disgusted. They were taking my favorite story ever and making it dirty and commonplace. I literally felt sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
But, now I knew what slash meant. And I knew what to avoid.
Why was I avoiding it, though? Well, for one thing, I believe homosexuality is wrong, so I didn’t want to read about it. For another, I believe reading about explicit sex between people of any gender is wrong, so I didn’t want to go there. But ultimately, I didn’t want to read it because I thought a deep relationship was being cheapened. A tale of selflessness inspired by love was being turned into a tale of lust. There was so much to the relationship of Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings – so many factors that went to make them who they were, and I thought it was being reduced to an animal passion. That was why I hated it.
So, I avoided slash.
Instead I read fluffy stories about teenage Frodo and baby Sam. I read story upon story centering on more tender moments on the quest, where the two starving hobbits huddle together for warmth, and they smile despite their pain because they have each other, and that’s what matters, really. I read LOADS of hurt/comfort. It was wonderful, that feeling of relief and warmth in my belly when Sam would smooth Frodo’s hair from his forehead and Frodo would smile weakly up at him, knowing that with his Sam he was safe (until the next time some fangirl condemned him to unutterable misery.)
I wasted more of my life than I care to recall reading story upon repetitive story of angst, misery, and finally, fluffy joy.
I did this in more than one fandom as well. I spent at least a month one summer in the Harry Potter fandom. And (though this was a bit later on, and there were other factors that mitigated it significantly) I read plenty of Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek fiction of a similar kind.
And then one fine day it occurred to me, that in some ways, what I was reading had the same downfall as the slash I was reading – a vibrant, complex friendship was being reduced to some physical feelings. No, Sam and Frodo (Spock and Kirk, Holmes and Watson, etc.) were not snogging or getting it on. But what were they doing? They were… snuggling… holding hands… smiling weakly… making professions of attachment… And what was the effect on me, the reader? A warm feeling in the pit of my belly. I was not inspired to be a better friend. I was not moved to noble sacrifice. I was not thinking about virtue, and beauty, and truth, and love. In fact, I wasn’t really thinking at all, because usually I was moving on to the next angsty hurty comforty fluffy fanfiction fix.
And I started to wonder, what was I doing to myself by wallowing in this focused obsession with friendship? Was it perhaps stunting my own growth as a human being in the same way that wallowing in porn might? I was titillating my emotions with no useful outlet in the name of reading about friendship.
I think that it was doing the same thing to me that one too many Meg Ryan flicks might do to some other girls – I was creating empty, absurd ideas of true friendship in my mind. I was raising expectations for real friend relationships to ridiculously pie in the sky heights.
In fact, I started to think that I was not only just as silly as the girls who got obsessed with overdone romance – I wasn’t even doing any better than the slashers.
Perhaps that is a bit harsh, but I’m saying it about myself, and I’m sticking to it.
But this is where I get to my point. Because there is a large contingent in fandom (we’re a minority, but we’re not a few) that doesn’t like slash fiction. According to my less-than-scientific observation it’s about 75% on principle and 25% on taste.
It’s for that 75% who, like me, avoid slash on principle that I have rambled this ramble. What is it about slash that you take issue with? Is it purely the fact that there are homosexual relationships, or is it something more? And what purpose does it serve to write reams of hurt/comfort, to gap-fill with fluff, to wallow in angst? I’m not saying there can’t be one, just because I didn’t find it, but I really am curious.
Maybe I make too much of fanfiction itself. This is a place where people can let loose their surging emotions and display them for the world to critique without any repercussions… a place for catharsis not as revealing as a public personal journal, but catharsis just the same. Maybe I’m making it into a place where people should be striving for excellence, and that just isn’t what it is. I know I want to be excellent in everything. I know that even though I can waste time like no other I honestly don’t want to waste it. I want this to be a forum for truly worthwhile reading, writing, and thinking. Maybe that’s just not the nature of the beast?
Or maybe I am looking at my own mistakes, and reading them onto other people? Perhaps I only read for the fuzzy warm feelings, but more h/c writers are looking for something deeper… and are finding it? I tend to think I’m not that unique, and that if my ideas are in any way correct, there are others who love friendship and non-slash angst, fluff, and hurt/comfort fan fiction who would do well to consider it.
My personal response to this issue has been to write the best fiction I can. I want to avoid too many tropes. I want to write human relationships as they are, and as they could be, not as I dreamt them to be at 15. I want to exercise my technical writing muscles. I don’t think I have the life experience to write truly “original” fiction, but I am trying to make the most of my fanfiction. And on the reading side of things, I’m trying to avoid the EPIC FRIENDSHIP FOR THE WIN type fics, and too much h/c and fluff.
Now, I know I just rambled on for a loooooooooong time… more time, perhaps, than my teeny tiny point deserved. But I am honestly interested in responses. I’ve been thinking about this for years, but I’m afraid my brain is full of little Socratic yes-men…
So how about some other voices?
Thanks. :-)
Friendship Fic
I’ve been told about the danger of reading romances and becoming obsessed with Rom Coms more times that I can count. They raise your expectations of romance – make you think it’s always just around the corner. They make you think that romance is all sunshine and roses, and make you forget that sometimes it’s really hard – that happily ever after isn’t really that easy. I’m sure the people who told me that were right. But my experience has been very different.
For whatever reason, I didn’t become really interested in boys until two years ago, around when I turned 22. That was when I had my first, full-on, hormonally-influenced crush. Yes, I’d thought about the idea of love, and crushes, and marriage, but honestly, I had more of a visceral emotional attachment to Sam Gamgee than to any boy I had decided to “like” previously. And this has been reflected in my literary tastes as well. Sure, I have always gotten teary when Meg Ryan sees Tom Hanks’s dog at the end of You’ve Got Mail, and the conclusion to Jane Eyre puts a smile on my face, but what I love are the stories of male friendship. It’s always been true. Sam and Frodo were at the center of my original obsession. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson still have my attention. Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn are probably the reason I love Our Mutual Friend as much as I do. Alan Breck and David Balfour, Dr. Sawyer and Leonard Lowe, Dr. Treves and John Merrick, William Pitt the Younger and William Wilberforce, Hamlet and Horatio, Jonathan and David… honestly, I could go on forever.
Now, I think that friendship is a wonderful gift from God. I think it has led to acts of nobility and sacrifice. I think it is, to quote C.S. Lewis, “one of those things that give value to survival.” It is beautiful.
But I have wondered for years now, if there isn’t as much danger, at least for some of us, in reading stories about friendship as there is in reading romance.
The way I got to this wondering is as follows.
When I was young and innocent to the ways of the web, I was on the computer searching for promo pictures from The Fellowship of the Ring. My favorite book was being made into a movie, and I wanted as many sneak peek snapshots as possible, from which to create (really ugly… I can see that now. :-P ) wallpapers. I stumbled onto a story. It was a story about Sam and Frodo. But not by Tolkien. WOW! I started reading. It was WONDERFUL! I used to make up stories about Sam and Frodo in my own head and now here they were before me! I read and read…
I started a story that expanded on “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit” – a favorite chapter of mine. YAY! Sam was expanding on his line about “I love him… he’s like that somehow.” Then Sam wakes Frodo. Then they eat. Then they… start to make out!?!?!? NOOOOOOO!
And I had stumbled on my first ever example of slash fan fiction. I remember that feeling. I was absolutely disgusted. They were taking my favorite story ever and making it dirty and commonplace. I literally felt sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
But, now I knew what slash meant. And I knew what to avoid.
Why was I avoiding it, though? Well, for one thing, I believe homosexuality is wrong, so I didn’t want to read about it. For another, I believe reading about explicit sex between people of any gender is wrong, so I didn’t want to go there. But ultimately, I didn’t want to read it because I thought a deep relationship was being cheapened. A tale of selflessness inspired by love was being turned into a tale of lust. There was so much to the relationship of Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings – so many factors that went to make them who they were, and I thought it was being reduced to an animal passion. That was why I hated it.
So, I avoided slash.
Instead I read fluffy stories about teenage Frodo and baby Sam. I read story upon story centering on more tender moments on the quest, where the two starving hobbits huddle together for warmth, and they smile despite their pain because they have each other, and that’s what matters, really. I read LOADS of hurt/comfort. It was wonderful, that feeling of relief and warmth in my belly when Sam would smooth Frodo’s hair from his forehead and Frodo would smile weakly up at him, knowing that with his Sam he was safe (until the next time some fangirl condemned him to unutterable misery.)
I wasted more of my life than I care to recall reading story upon repetitive story of angst, misery, and finally, fluffy joy.
I did this in more than one fandom as well. I spent at least a month one summer in the Harry Potter fandom. And (though this was a bit later on, and there were other factors that mitigated it significantly) I read plenty of Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek fiction of a similar kind.
And then one fine day it occurred to me, that in some ways, what I was reading had the same downfall as the slash I was reading – a vibrant, complex friendship was being reduced to some physical feelings. No, Sam and Frodo (Spock and Kirk, Holmes and Watson, etc.) were not snogging or getting it on. But what were they doing? They were… snuggling… holding hands… smiling weakly… making professions of attachment… And what was the effect on me, the reader? A warm feeling in the pit of my belly. I was not inspired to be a better friend. I was not moved to noble sacrifice. I was not thinking about virtue, and beauty, and truth, and love. In fact, I wasn’t really thinking at all, because usually I was moving on to the next angsty hurty comforty fluffy fanfiction fix.
And I started to wonder, what was I doing to myself by wallowing in this focused obsession with friendship? Was it perhaps stunting my own growth as a human being in the same way that wallowing in porn might? I was titillating my emotions with no useful outlet in the name of reading about friendship.
I think that it was doing the same thing to me that one too many Meg Ryan flicks might do to some other girls – I was creating empty, absurd ideas of true friendship in my mind. I was raising expectations for real friend relationships to ridiculously pie in the sky heights.
In fact, I started to think that I was not only just as silly as the girls who got obsessed with overdone romance – I wasn’t even doing any better than the slashers.
Perhaps that is a bit harsh, but I’m saying it about myself, and I’m sticking to it.
But this is where I get to my point. Because there is a large contingent in fandom (we’re a minority, but we’re not a few) that doesn’t like slash fiction. According to my less-than-scientific observation it’s about 75% on principle and 25% on taste.
It’s for that 75% who, like me, avoid slash on principle that I have rambled this ramble. What is it about slash that you take issue with? Is it purely the fact that there are homosexual relationships, or is it something more? And what purpose does it serve to write reams of hurt/comfort, to gap-fill with fluff, to wallow in angst? I’m not saying there can’t be one, just because I didn’t find it, but I really am curious.
Maybe I make too much of fanfiction itself. This is a place where people can let loose their surging emotions and display them for the world to critique without any repercussions… a place for catharsis not as revealing as a public personal journal, but catharsis just the same. Maybe I’m making it into a place where people should be striving for excellence, and that just isn’t what it is. I know I want to be excellent in everything. I know that even though I can waste time like no other I honestly don’t want to waste it. I want this to be a forum for truly worthwhile reading, writing, and thinking. Maybe that’s just not the nature of the beast?
Or maybe I am looking at my own mistakes, and reading them onto other people? Perhaps I only read for the fuzzy warm feelings, but more h/c writers are looking for something deeper… and are finding it? I tend to think I’m not that unique, and that if my ideas are in any way correct, there are others who love friendship and non-slash angst, fluff, and hurt/comfort fan fiction who would do well to consider it.
My personal response to this issue has been to write the best fiction I can. I want to avoid too many tropes. I want to write human relationships as they are, and as they could be, not as I dreamt them to be at 15. I want to exercise my technical writing muscles. I don’t think I have the life experience to write truly “original” fiction, but I am trying to make the most of my fanfiction. And on the reading side of things, I’m trying to avoid the EPIC FRIENDSHIP FOR THE WIN type fics, and too much h/c and fluff.
Now, I know I just rambled on for a loooooooooong time… more time, perhaps, than my teeny tiny point deserved. But I am honestly interested in responses. I’ve been thinking about this for years, but I’m afraid my brain is full of little Socratic yes-men…
So how about some other voices?