When fanfic gives you weird feelings
Jan. 2nd, 2019 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseHappy New Year, dreamwidth! I have no particular resolution to post here more often or anything like that but I read a fanfic yesterday that I want to talk about, and after embarking on a very long thread telling a friend about it I thought I'd write it up because that seemed like fun.
So! Yesterday I read this fic that I really enjoyed, Take from me by ymorton. Ymorton writes fic that I would often classify as having an unhappy resolution or being what I would describe as fanfic countercultural - my friend asked me on twitter whether I meant by this "performatively political" and I don't. Some fanfic writers seem to me to deliberately or unconsciously write against fandom tropes, whether that's people writing fic where Dean tops in SPN fandom in 2006, or this endnote on [one of my favourite] Inception stories, or soulmate AUs where the OTP aren't soulmates, or anything in the trope inversion tag, or something as conscious and deliberate and careful as the way Take Clothes Off As Directed responds to General and Dr Sheppard. In discussions previously I have got the general impression that some people's enjoyment of this stuff is affected by whether they think the author is just coincidentally divinely inspired to do something totally different to what a fandom generally does or whether they think the author is Deliberately and Meanly Lecturing Fandom About What They're Wrong About. Me, I don't care. I almost always love these stories and the stories they're responding to. I really like this kind of fannish dialogue and I like a varied read. Also, I like a bit of an unhappy ending sometimes. Not always! Just sometimes.
Anyway, so ymorton writes this kind of story sometimes. For example, here's Dweller on the threshold. Dweller on the threshold is about two characters who are one of the big pairings in the fandom, F and L. (I'm doing initials because this is a small RPF fandom and this story is locked to the AO3. I encourage people to not share it outside fandom.) In real life (yuck, but this is the foundation for canon in an RPF fandom, after all) F is married to a woman and L is in a long-term relationship with a man, and F and L have been friends for some time. In DOTT, set about 10 years into the future, F leaves his IRL wife and comes out. Parts of this are unusual for fanfic - thank god, we often don't have IRL partners involved in divorce fic any more - but otherwise this might be a not-unusual premise, and what I would typically expect to see from this kind of premise is F rebuilding his life and ultimately finding happiness in a relationship with L, who is the other prominent character in the story and who, I think the story is clear, F has strong, complicated, romantic feelings for. But that doesn't happen. Instead, in this story F and L don't get together. Actually, the story is about them basically rebuilding a bit of their friendship after it's basically cratered in the wake of F's divorce and the emotional pressure that put on their friendship. F isn't with anyone at the end of the story and is pretty bloody miserable to be honest, while L's marriage (to a man not his IRL partner, but uh, I think an unflattering but obvious expy!) is also a bit shaky. So, it's painful! But also F and L are beginning to rebuild their friendship and the story is quite honest, I think, about what people coming out much later in their adult life might experience.
So now we come to Take from me. This story features two characters who are also a common pairing, V and L - same L from the first story and V, who is also IRL married to a woman. This fic is 20k long and about 15k of it is about V & L about 10 years ago buddybanging in a period where this fic is 20k long and about 15k of it is about T & L about 10 years ago buddybanging in a period where V has a huuuuuge amount of angst (engagement breakup, bereavement, stressful job). V is theoretically heterosexual but they're having actually quite tender sex even as V is a bit a dick because he is not well managed emotionally. and to be fair L is not in PERFECT emotional shape either.
So this is a CLASSIC set-up for a pining story where L is in love with V and vice versa but V doesn't realise it because of Presumed Heterosexuality. In the expected story, L moves away because he is in love with V and needs space bc he thinks V is heterosexual, and 10 years later V moves to where L lives and everyone's more emotionally mature and adult and has processed their own bisexuality and talks about their feelings and they get together. I have read 20 stories with this exact plot in this fandom and I have loved them all, because I am a cliche.
This story does not end like that.
This story ends with them both fairly drunk the night of V's bachelor party before his wedding to his IRL wife, talking extremely briefly about hooking up. L asks V if V ever told his soon-to-be wife about it, V says no, L looks pained, the end.
After I read this story I left a comment talking about how painful the story/the ending was but then I haven't been able to stop reinterrogating that. This story ends with these men IN THE SAME POSITION THEY ARE IN IRL, and while I'm not in a position to say whether either of these people are truly happy, they are both wealthy, making money from talking shit on a podcast twice a week, and in apparently happy relationships. I would not call that an unhappy ending, you know? But the story made me feel as if this ending was devastating. So now I'm full-on interrogating myself. Why is this story unhappy to me?
Do I think this is an unhappy ending because this story is conveying an idea that in this story V is bisexual but unable to come to terms with that and that lack of ability to accept himself fully is tragic to me?
Or because, again in this story, V's lack of acceptance of his sexuality makes L feel like V and L's history is somehow invalidated, like V's inability to treat their sexual and emotional relationship as a real thing is damaging to L, and ultimately to L and V's friendship?
OR do I think this story is unhappy because I have been PROGRAMMED BY FANFIC to think that a story where the juggernaut pairing doesn't get together is inherently unhappy?
My twitter friend had a really insightful comment that I think mainly, but not completely, resolves this for me. She said that in fanfiction, and in other types of fiction, and even in real life, there is an expectation that strong emotional experiences have to result in something or achieve some resolution. We have an expectation that emotional experiences form part of a narrative. They don't necessarily have to resolve in any particular way, but we do expect a resolution from them. We narrativise those experiences with the believe that our pain and suffering won't be in vain.
I think this is especially true of fanfiction, because I think for a lot of people fanfiction is an important source of narratives about certain kinds of emotional experiences - coming out narratives, tender relationships with friends, and undefined relationships with strong sexual components. In fanfiction coming out is almost always ultimately positive and provides positive resolution for many relationships. Close friendships are preserved when sexual components are added, emotional experiences strengthen relationships and lead to happiness, and casual sex with strong emotional components tends to lead to permanent relationships.
And this fic turns all that on its head, really. Casual but emotional sex didn't lead V to come out to himself, the strength of the emotional connection doesn't move both these characters into a relationship or even into happy singledom, and because in this story everyone's a bit too fucked up to actually talk about anything, there isn't even the negative resolution of a big break-up fight. Instead the characters go on being vaguely unhappy. And that is Real and also real painful.
So, I guess, that feeling is why this story felt like it had an unhappy ending even though I'm not sure it actually did. But it's a good story and you should read it :)
So! Yesterday I read this fic that I really enjoyed, Take from me by ymorton. Ymorton writes fic that I would often classify as having an unhappy resolution or being what I would describe as fanfic countercultural - my friend asked me on twitter whether I meant by this "performatively political" and I don't. Some fanfic writers seem to me to deliberately or unconsciously write against fandom tropes, whether that's people writing fic where Dean tops in SPN fandom in 2006, or this endnote on [one of my favourite] Inception stories, or soulmate AUs where the OTP aren't soulmates, or anything in the trope inversion tag, or something as conscious and deliberate and careful as the way Take Clothes Off As Directed responds to General and Dr Sheppard. In discussions previously I have got the general impression that some people's enjoyment of this stuff is affected by whether they think the author is just coincidentally divinely inspired to do something totally different to what a fandom generally does or whether they think the author is Deliberately and Meanly Lecturing Fandom About What They're Wrong About. Me, I don't care. I almost always love these stories and the stories they're responding to. I really like this kind of fannish dialogue and I like a varied read. Also, I like a bit of an unhappy ending sometimes. Not always! Just sometimes.
Anyway, so ymorton writes this kind of story sometimes. For example, here's Dweller on the threshold. Dweller on the threshold is about two characters who are one of the big pairings in the fandom, F and L. (I'm doing initials because this is a small RPF fandom and this story is locked to the AO3. I encourage people to not share it outside fandom.) In real life (yuck, but this is the foundation for canon in an RPF fandom, after all) F is married to a woman and L is in a long-term relationship with a man, and F and L have been friends for some time. In DOTT, set about 10 years into the future, F leaves his IRL wife and comes out. Parts of this are unusual for fanfic - thank god, we often don't have IRL partners involved in divorce fic any more - but otherwise this might be a not-unusual premise, and what I would typically expect to see from this kind of premise is F rebuilding his life and ultimately finding happiness in a relationship with L, who is the other prominent character in the story and who, I think the story is clear, F has strong, complicated, romantic feelings for. But that doesn't happen. Instead, in this story F and L don't get together. Actually, the story is about them basically rebuilding a bit of their friendship after it's basically cratered in the wake of F's divorce and the emotional pressure that put on their friendship. F isn't with anyone at the end of the story and is pretty bloody miserable to be honest, while L's marriage (to a man not his IRL partner, but uh, I think an unflattering but obvious expy!) is also a bit shaky. So, it's painful! But also F and L are beginning to rebuild their friendship and the story is quite honest, I think, about what people coming out much later in their adult life might experience.
So now we come to Take from me. This story features two characters who are also a common pairing, V and L - same L from the first story and V, who is also IRL married to a woman. This fic is 20k long and about 15k of it is about V & L about 10 years ago buddybanging in a period where this fic is 20k long and about 15k of it is about T & L about 10 years ago buddybanging in a period where V has a huuuuuge amount of angst (engagement breakup, bereavement, stressful job). V is theoretically heterosexual but they're having actually quite tender sex even as V is a bit a dick because he is not well managed emotionally. and to be fair L is not in PERFECT emotional shape either.
So this is a CLASSIC set-up for a pining story where L is in love with V and vice versa but V doesn't realise it because of Presumed Heterosexuality. In the expected story, L moves away because he is in love with V and needs space bc he thinks V is heterosexual, and 10 years later V moves to where L lives and everyone's more emotionally mature and adult and has processed their own bisexuality and talks about their feelings and they get together. I have read 20 stories with this exact plot in this fandom and I have loved them all, because I am a cliche.
This story does not end like that.
This story ends with them both fairly drunk the night of V's bachelor party before his wedding to his IRL wife, talking extremely briefly about hooking up. L asks V if V ever told his soon-to-be wife about it, V says no, L looks pained, the end.
After I read this story I left a comment talking about how painful the story/the ending was but then I haven't been able to stop reinterrogating that. This story ends with these men IN THE SAME POSITION THEY ARE IN IRL, and while I'm not in a position to say whether either of these people are truly happy, they are both wealthy, making money from talking shit on a podcast twice a week, and in apparently happy relationships. I would not call that an unhappy ending, you know? But the story made me feel as if this ending was devastating. So now I'm full-on interrogating myself. Why is this story unhappy to me?
Do I think this is an unhappy ending because this story is conveying an idea that in this story V is bisexual but unable to come to terms with that and that lack of ability to accept himself fully is tragic to me?
Or because, again in this story, V's lack of acceptance of his sexuality makes L feel like V and L's history is somehow invalidated, like V's inability to treat their sexual and emotional relationship as a real thing is damaging to L, and ultimately to L and V's friendship?
OR do I think this story is unhappy because I have been PROGRAMMED BY FANFIC to think that a story where the juggernaut pairing doesn't get together is inherently unhappy?
My twitter friend had a really insightful comment that I think mainly, but not completely, resolves this for me. She said that in fanfiction, and in other types of fiction, and even in real life, there is an expectation that strong emotional experiences have to result in something or achieve some resolution. We have an expectation that emotional experiences form part of a narrative. They don't necessarily have to resolve in any particular way, but we do expect a resolution from them. We narrativise those experiences with the believe that our pain and suffering won't be in vain.
I think this is especially true of fanfiction, because I think for a lot of people fanfiction is an important source of narratives about certain kinds of emotional experiences - coming out narratives, tender relationships with friends, and undefined relationships with strong sexual components. In fanfiction coming out is almost always ultimately positive and provides positive resolution for many relationships. Close friendships are preserved when sexual components are added, emotional experiences strengthen relationships and lead to happiness, and casual sex with strong emotional components tends to lead to permanent relationships.
And this fic turns all that on its head, really. Casual but emotional sex didn't lead V to come out to himself, the strength of the emotional connection doesn't move both these characters into a relationship or even into happy singledom, and because in this story everyone's a bit too fucked up to actually talk about anything, there isn't even the negative resolution of a big break-up fight. Instead the characters go on being vaguely unhappy. And that is Real and also real painful.
So, I guess, that feeling is why this story felt like it had an unhappy ending even though I'm not sure it actually did. But it's a good story and you should read it :)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 09:24 pm (UTC)Yes, absolutely.
The End of the Road was more like "Here is my mathematically robust proof about why Fraser and RayK can never be happy together." It totally broke me, and took me a while to talk myself out of.