Three Day Weekends Are a Cruel Juest

[itsallovernow]

Whenever we get a three day weekend, it just makes the following week all that more exhausting. I'm just sayin'. For those of you who didn't get it off, take some comfort in that. (Not too much, because I'd be lying if I didn't say I loved me some three day weekend, even if it was full of obligation).

I continue to be allergic to the furnace, and when I called Sh. to tell her this and she asked why I didn't just get it cleaned, or vaccuum it out (neither of which makes sense to me logistically, although I realize that both or either are possible), I was forced to admit that the furnace and the tiny room/closet that houses it reminds me too much of the boiler room in The Shining and I feel better just leaving well enough alone. She loves me, did not laugh, and agreed that the closet (she lived her too, before I did) has bad juju. But I should still clean the furnace.

While I'm still two eps behind (technically three, but I saw 1x04 and not 1x03), I'm still so excited to see people talking about and loving The Sarah Connor Chronicles. A show with women! About women! And robots! And the future! And the apocolypse! What's not to love?

It reminded me, as many things do, of how important it is to have female role models. This thing happens when we talk about the way that we as fandom can disenfranchise women, the way we both expect more of female characters and also condemn them. The double standard we lay on them of having to fullfill all our own desires, and simultaneously never being good enough for our beloved, flawed male characters. It makes me angry, and yet I get it. Hell, I do it. I am not a huge fan of Sam Carter as written, but I'll stand behind Sam as a character despite the flaws because she is a woman in a man's world and she mostly rocks it. (Plus, truthfully? I find Jack and Daniel so hard to take that Sam tends to shine in comparison. It's just that I'm not a huge fan of blondes:) Or the military:)

I get a little angry when I put forth my "if there are no women" in the story hypothesis and get the "it's about the story not the gender" argument in return because the truth is that we as a society constantly strip women from the story. We as storytellers strip women from the story, and as viewers and readers, when we accept that, we're complicit. We allow mothers to be absent, lovers to only exist in context with the men in their lives, women to exist at the edges of the story and not at the heart.

I have this student, 16 or so, bright, funny and lacking in sort of interest in pushing herself forward. If there's no guarantee that she'll succeed, she doesn't even bother trying. And you know, it's not even a contest for her, not even a dilemma, not even... she doesn't even think about it? Language class too hard? Drop it. Science class too much work, drop it and get the easy A in summer school. And I finally lost it, told her that being afraid to fail, never pushing yourself was never, evern going to serve her well. She needs to see women out there, girls out there, who struggle and risk and succeed. She needs something or someone with a hand on her back and a boot to her ass telling her to have a little fucking faith in herself, to not accept the easy road, to not be proud of it.

We tell these stories, and we, in fandom, celebrate these stories of women, but we also deny them in equal measure everytime we write them out of the narrative. Everytime we say that it shouldn't be about gender, it should be about story because your story is tied intimately to who you are, the twists and turns of your DNA as much as your heart and mind.

I realize I'm not making a logical arguement connecting these things, but I... mostly I'm just thinking in my head that the "genderless" arguement doesn't work for me.

I've got other things to say about why it's disingenuous (this is not the word I mean. Well it is, but not in the context in which it's coming across. Maybe "fair" is what I mean. cofax7 called me on the word, and C is many fabulous things and never, ever disingenuous) to condemn fandom for its interest in sex and sexually driven stories, but that's a post for another day. We follow our biological imperitive, all the way down to our stories, and fic is largely about getting off - for some it's the emotional orgasm of plot or characterization or more time spent with those characters that make us swoony, but for the rest of us it's the actual getting off, the physical release, the breathlessness of fucking that happens in combination with a certain type of vulnerability. We know these characters, their wants and desires, we inhabit them in our heads and when they get some, in a way, we're getting some - and it's... easy. It's safe. It's satisfying. It's always fucking gratifying. And how often can you say that about real life sex?

ETA: It isn't that I don't get the desire to tell a story that is "story" driven, that's ultimate satisfaction is in the care and weave and weft of the characters and their journey. Nor do I think that's any less of an imperitive to writers in fandom, nor should it be. It's more that... the questions of WHY sex is so prevalent in fic seems to me fairly obvious, and not something we should be ashamed of. I love a good story. And I love a good story with good sex. And I don't read romance novels anymore because I'm rarely interested in the story of a romance unless it's got an extra... something that intrigues me (and honestly, I'm usually just turned off by the tropes, but the characters and their genres, and this... tonality that the women characters have even in newer books that makes them come across as... softer and I don't know, weaker, somehow than I want them to be. I'm actually kind of happy that "erotica" is now becoming more mainstream (although some of that still takes the same old silly tropes but uses "cock" instead of member, but I'd still rather read about a cock, I guess:) I guess I just want to do a little championing of the fucking in our fic. Which shouldn't be in opposition to "gen" fic. But should rest happily side by side, complementing it:) (I'm usually happy for the gratuitous sex scene, I must say. I don't understand readers who skim the sex scenes. I should, and I don't condemn them, but I just don't understand it.) However, as I do think that fic largely serves a different purpose for the reader (if not always for the writer) than regular books do, I do realize it's totally a case of YMMV and reading fic for what you want to get out if. Again, it's kind of like sex. You go into it saying, " I want to read X, Y, and Z", and when you get those things, you're generally pretty satisfied, and sometimes when LMNOP gets thrown in to, it's like your birthday and Christmas and the Feast of St. Vigius all rolled up into one:)

I get story porn. I get characterization porn. I get plot porn and casefile porn and emo porn. And mostly, really, really get porn porn:) (Also, please keep in mind the narrow, shallow pool of what and where I read - my primary fandoms either had stellar authors, sex in canon, or intensive recs list that kept me away from most of the crap. I know for a fact that art and sex can exist together, and maybe me being spoiled is what's got me defending fandoms interest in sex writing. And again, I'm not defending it against gen. I'm all for Gen. Just giving it a little of it's own.)

Comments

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Disingenuousness is not the right word, I think. Because I totally get the desire for story for the sake of story, not just as sexual release!!

I think I need to flesh out that whole idea more, because it's... I don't think it's weird that the bulk of people want some sex in their fic. Nor do I think it's weird to grow so weary of the sex for the sake of it that the real longing is for story.

[cofax7]

I don't think it's weird that the bulk of people want some sex in their fic.

Me neither. Many of my favorite novels have a romance in them. The longer and the more drawn-out and angsty, the better. *g* Sex is part of life. Stories reflect life and human pre-occupations, and that includes, necessarily, sex and romance.

Nor do I think it's weird to grow so weary of the sex for the sake of it that the real longing is for story.

Exactly. While sex is part of life, so is saving the world, remembering to pay the cable bill, and catching murderers.

That fans love sex is unsurprising: it's a primary human drive. But it's not more important, on a day-to-day level, than saving the world, catching a murderer, or even (sometimes) getting along with one's coworkers.

The constant privileging of sex in fanfiction over every other subject for storytelling, to me, both flattens the importance of sex as a tool for human connection and communication (I often skip the sex scenes because there are so many of them and so few actually say anything meaningful about the characters or their situation), and, IMO, can result in out-of-character behavior within the story. Because while love and sex are important, these are in fact people responsible for saving the world and catching murderers and taming wormholes and all that--and if they really spent as much time mooning about their love lives or fucking up against bulkheads as fanfic writers have them do-- well, the world would be a smoking cinder by now. *g*

I mean, it's not like our love-lives take place in a vacuum, either: we're always worrying about something else as well. Why can't we grant the characters that option, to be fully rounded human beings, answerable to more than just their genitals? (And I'm not arguing with YOU here, really: I'm arguing with ... some construct of fandom-at-large that doesn't really exist.)

I do my fair amount of smut-reading. But I tend to think of sex as just one dish on the table, like, oh, mashed potatoes. I can't survive on a diet of mashed potatoes (even though my ancestors did, hah!): I also need rare steak and vegetables and a nice glass of zinfandel. And pie for dessert.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

But I tend to think of sex as just one dish on the table, like, oh, mashed potatoes. I can't survive on a diet of mashed potatoes (even though my ancestors did, hah!): I also need rare steak and vegetables and a nice glass of zinfandel. And pie for dessert.

I totally agree with and buy that argument:) (I also think, truth be told, that my reading is limited in fandom and that influences my perspective in ways).

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Because while love and sex are important, these are in fact people responsible for saving the world and catching murderers and taming wormholes and all that--and if they really spent as much time mooning about their love lives or fucking up against bulkheads as fanfic writers have them do-- well, the world would be a smoking cinder by now. *g*

I think the difference, though, is between writers who want to tell stories depicting what life is like for particular fictional characters, and writers who want to tell stories that satisfy their innermost desires.

But we've had this conversation before.

-J