Well, this has been anticlimactic

Just as I embarked on my third draft journey, I received the feedback from my writers’ group that I had so craved. While it has been overwhelmingly positive, the things that got picked on surprised me, and to my surprise, stung me quite a bit. I don’t want to go into them at this point, since I haven’t even mustered the courage to finish reading all of it. I know that intentions matter little when writing inclusive fiction—just because you don’t realize you’re furthering a negative stereotype or trope doesn’t mean you shouldn’t correct it when it happens. Still. I feel a little picked on, which I know is something I need to get past.

I found myself reacting to some of the feedback with, “But... I feel like that’s true to the genre,” which made me realize that I’m actually not all that well-versed in the hard-boiled detective genre (previously mis-identified [by me] as noir, which is a whoopsie made by the film industry, check it out if you’re interested) despite reading many contemporary examples of same. As they say, you can’t break the rules until you know them.

I picked up a couple of academic-style books about the Hardboiled genre, Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them by John T. Irwin and Hardboiled and High Heeled by Linda Mizejewski. So far, I’m about 82% of the way through UtToDiBT (that’s a fun acronym), and it’s really opened my eyes to what’s “important” about the genre. The tropes are fun, but they aren’t what makes it literary. It’s surprised me on many levels: one, how close I came to a lot of the marks without having been aware of them. Two, the fact that there are a lot of different ways to write correctly within this genre. Three, the best things about literature are present in the best Hardboiled and/or Noir novels.

Discovering this stuff has really raised the bar for me. I’m simultaneously invigorated and goddamned terrified. I have seriously considered straight giving up. I have reminded my writers’ group that wunderkinds are bullshit, but it seems like the inventers of the genre all wrote literary-level novels on their very first try. I have a hard time imagining juggling all those balls, to be totally honest. But, if I think through the process, I have realize that either, they actually got very lucky without realizing it (which actually is a thing that happens), or they had this in mind as they wrote, and possibly shoehorned some things in which might have felt very unnatural to them at the time in order to get that level of literary value. Dashiell Hammett may have had a notecard that said: “Theme: contrast the repetitive with the extraordinary with the singular” and then another notecard that said “parable: Flitcraft? Features: flying shrapnel, breaking machinery” and looked back at these notecards as he crafted the dialogue—certainly a final-draft problem. The Maltese Falcon didn’t spring forth from his forehead, fully formed. It was designed, and he took as much time writing it as it took to get it as close to right as he could. (And, to be fair, it wasn’t his first work in the genre.) Hammett, Chandler, Cain and other authors within the genre were all striving throughout their careers to master their craft—more than just telling stories, they were telling the Human Story, even if those who fancied themselves authorities in the world of literature considered detective novels to be pulp fiction.

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

I was reading UtToDiBT earlier and was suddenly overcome with the urge to fill out some notecards before I forgot all the brilliant things that had just occurred to me. So, instead of being OCD and forcing myself to keep reading, I went and got my notecards. I filled out six notecards with two character’s starting and ending points and the events that trigger the changes. I am happy that I did this. Now I’m done and am going to go back to reading. I’ll notecard again if the mood strikes me. If not, I’ll roll right into HaHH. After that, I’m going to be reading at least The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. And then I’ll feel at least a little more secure in asserting that something that may be considered a “bad” thing to do falls within my genre.

I may even feel empowered to do it differently.

Questions

I’m going to write this post, partially against my better judgement. I’m going to write it knowing that I’m coming from a position of ignorance, and I’m writing it in hopes that I can learn something. Not because I have anything to impart upon you, or because I have some great insight. Please know that I don’t mean to offend or show off my deep stupidity. Sometimes that happens whether I want to or not.

Here is the premise of my inquiry. The foundation upon which it is built. I am made psychically uncomfortable by fiction, particularly fanfiction (though other fictions can fall into this trap too, if they fulfill the parameters), written by straight girls or women, that puts two straight (or sexuality-irrelevant) male characters into a sexual relationship with each other.

It feels exploitative to me, and I don’t at all understand the appeal of writing these relationships. I’ve formed different theories about why so many girls seem to be writing gay erotic fiction, and none of them seem to hold up under scrutiny. But the common theme of these works that makes them feel exploitative is the miasma of “kawaiiiiiiii!!!!!” that seems to accompany them.

A fic I’ve read most recently that seems less exploitative than most others I’ve read specifically regards Sherlock and Watson from the BBC series (A River Without Banks). It’s extremely well-written and laudable in many ways, but I do think that it is a bit exploitative if only because it lingers so long on the sexual relationship that grows between the two. In most respects, the story is not at all erotic: Sherlock has to go back in time to alter the time stream to save the world. Not your typical porno opener. Having graphic sex scenes dominate multiple chapters diminishes the message and the weight of the story, in my opinion.

But, by and large, ARWoB treats the relationship with a level of seriousness and respect that elevates it above the sorts of stories that I’ve seen that can cause me such angst. I pointed a finger at ARWoB because I think it’s good, and people should read it if they want to. I’m not going to point fingers at the stories I consider to be bad. But I will give specific AU examples.

On deviantArt, depending on where you look, you see a lot of slash art for pretty much any video game, movie, show, or other IP you’re interested in. In my specific case, I really like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. But the shipping between Phoenix and Edgeworth became so ubiquitous that I had to unfollow the group I belonged to.

For the most part, the art wasn’t gross, or graphic. It was usually really sweet, actually. It’s just that, throughout all of it, I definitely had the sense that they were being objectified for the pleasure of the artist. Their relationship was “so cute.” Like a little bunny rabbit or kitten. A thing to be marveled over, then put away.

I remember, back in high school, it seemed like anyone (usually girls) who would exclaim so much over a straight couple would do so primarily because they were insane jealous of one of the parties involved: i.e., she really wanted to be that girl. My point is, when it’s a straight couple, almost no one is running around, making art, and squealing about how cute they are. Because straight couples are real couples, and we know that that bitch is cray and that asshole’s just gonna do the same thing to her that he did to Jessica. But the shipping that happens in badly-written fanfics seems to believe that, once they realize how meant for each other they are, nothing will ever be wrong again.

A lot of these poorly-written fics also change the characters once the relationship begins, to be more affectionate or demonstrative or expressive or even jealous or insecure (in a cute way, of course!). I feel like that shows a lack of understanding of the people they’re attempting to portray; not just the specific characters, but the entire demographic of gay men. It’s bizarre, because I feel that straight girls (and women? Not sure) have idealized gay male relationships the way straight boys and men have idealized women’s bodies—possibly for different purposes, possibly not, I don’t know.

Anyway, I think maybe I did inject my own prejudices a little, whoops. Can anyone shed some light on why this seems to be a thing? Or does anyone care to shoot me in the face with an arrow? Or possibly debunk my premise? I definitely might just be making broad generalizations and simply need more exposure. Thanks!

Word count: 46,407 (땇)

Zombies and the right to survive

A few years ago, with such titles as 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead, the Zombie genre came back into vogue. Then, we started seeing movies, TV shows, and even video games starting to deal with Life After the Zombie Apocalypse, like Land of the Dead, AMC’s The Walking Dead and The Last Of Us for the Playstation 3. Now, of course post-apocalyptic works aren’t new, and I think the issue I’m going to address first began with the genre, but it’s something that has interested me as I’ve observed these more contemporary theories at what that sort of world would be like.

Namely: the longer a person survives in a hellish landscape such as the zombie apocalypse, the more likely they are to be reviled by other survivors (who, ironically, must have survived just as long). I’ll use The Walking Dead here because it’s the one I’m most familiar with, but I’ll also address The Last of Us later on.

***WARNING: TWD SEASON 5 SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED.***

In this most recent season The Walking Dead, Rick and company find a housing development that built a very well-engineered wall back in the early days, and have been fending for themselves admirably since the beginning. They were staying below the radar, neither advertising their presence nor allowing others to come and join them. However, for some reason that is far from clear, they decide that they want to start letting other people in. Their “recruiter” follows Rick and company for a while, then offers them the opportunity to “audition” for membership in their group.

When Rick and the group enter the community, they have a hard time adjusting. Their behaviors, which they learned through trial and error, based on the needs of their nomadic lifestyle, don’t apply. They find themselves either relieved or repulsed by the fact that these people have few worries beyond those of pre-apocalypse suburbanites. Michonne wants the group to integrate, Carol seems to look at them as nothing more than a cache of supplies to take from, and Rick thinks he’s going to have to hammer them into his mold in order for everyone to survive.

In the meantime, the members of the community that Rick & Co have joined welcome them without reservation, by and large, until their personalities and ideologies start clashing. Right off the bat, Glen makes enemies with the leader’s son (who later ends up dead by no fault of Glen’s). Rick gets a crush on a woman whose husband beats her. Sasha hates everyone and wants to make sure everyone knows it—she is suffering from PTSD. So, the residents of Alexandria start to think of the newcomers as bad eggs.

It’s a recurring theme in the interactions between Rick & Co and anyone else. From the evil ones, you hear “Yeah, we’re bad, but at least we admit we’re bad—you all still think you’re the good guys!” From the rest, there is a shying away if not a verbal proclamation that Rick and his group are too bad. All of the “good” groups they meet have this feeling of newness, like they just logged on to the zombie apocalypse within the last month or so and boy howdy, things started getting hard when they ran out of toilet paper. It feels a bit disingenuous to me, that so many people would be so scandalized by the fact that Rick’s group has had to kill people to survive. It’s always perceived as their failing; there doesn’t seem to be any benefit of the doubt. Doesn’t matter if they were gonna eatcha, you can’t go around killing people. I myself have met nothing but hippies and eaten nothing but rainbows and bacon since this whole thing started. Can’t you be more like me?

***TWD SPOILERS ARE OVER. YOU MAY RETURN IF YOU WISH.***
***WARNING: LAST OF US SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED.***

In The Last of Us, you’re escorting a girl who holds the key to the cure of zombie-ism to the rebel movement who is resisting the martial law that was put into place at the beginning of the outbreak and has not let up (twenty years later). You kill zombies, but almost just as often you kill people. In the style of video games, you don’t really have a choice about that: dudes are shooting at you, you shoot back, the game progresses. But the further you go, the more you run into people who’ve “heard tell of the psychopath traveling with the little girl,” just as if you were seeking out people to kill rather than attempting to pass peacefully through an area. TLoU is interesting, though, because it’s a game, and one of the things that makes games different from movies is the idea that maybe you have a choice in how things go. And in TLoU, you really don’t. To a large extent, you can’t even choose to kill as few people as possible; the encounter doesn’t end until every last opponent is dead. In the very end, you don’t get to choose how to handle the “choice” that’s presented to you. It feels very weird, because it really does feel like you have a choice—if you didn’t, why didn’t they just make it a cinema? It feels like Joel is in charge and just lets you think you’re driving. But whatever, that’s tangential to my point.

***TLOU SPOILERS OVER. COME BACK!***

My point is this: the longer someone survives after the apocalypse begins, it seems the less the rest of the human race believes that s/he deserves it. “The things you have done to survive make you an unsavory character,” seems to be the message. Individuals who view their own actions as being less deplorable than the ones the others have perpetrated feel entitled to judge. But I guess that’s why their group only very rarely, if ever, grows: individuals or other groups hold up their rap sheet next to the protagonist’s and find them to be similar.

That sorta brings up the right to survive, to me. Are we all entitled to do what we have to to survive? A game outside of the genre of zombie post-apocalypse is This War of Mine. (I have not played it, but only heard of it through James Recommends.) In this game, you play a civilian living in a city under seige. You have to make decisions about what you do to survive. You have a group, and you have to figure out how to keep everyone alive. You keep your shelter up, and you scavenge for food. This frequently means you have to choose between taking your supplies from others in this city, or not having enough food for everyone to live. So, you make judgement calls. Will this person you’re stealing from live without those supplies you’re taking? Would they live even if they had the supplies? Do you help a survivor in danger, or do you take advantage of the distraction to take the supplies? What right does a person have to survive?

I don’t even begin to know the answer to that question, to be honest. But it’s a fun brain worm. What do you think?

Word count: 40,808 (齨)

My (only) beef with Supernatural

I’ve been watching Supernatural with my friends. I have very few complaints with the show: the dialogue is natural and believable for the most part, the acting is great, and the plots are fully fleshed out with a minimum of hand-waving. I admired the show in the early seasons because they bravely killed off characters for permanents. at this point, in the 6th season, they6th Season Spoilers! Click at your own risk! can’t seem tat I’m complaining; Cas and Bobby are way cooler than Sam and Dean. It feels like the writers know it, too...) But I do have one major problem with the show, and I honestly don’t know if it’s bad writing or if it’s just portraying an outlook I can’t sympathize with.

At the beginning of the show, Sam is an idealistic kid: sort of a “modern man” who is in touch with his feelings, capable in the execution of his comparatively normal life, and lets people in. Through a series of events, Sam comes (back) to the realization that the world is an ugly, cruel place and it will hurt you whenever it can. He loses the bright shininess that characterized him at first, hardening him, making him cautious in his trust and affections. This is all understandable, and is not the problem I have. Sam’s arc is one I can get behind.

The problem I have is that Dean basically hasn’t changed in any measurable way since the beginning of the show. He has every reason to: he has had horrific things happen to him. But he’ll spend an incidental episode here or there coming to terms with them, or “acknowledging” the effects they’ve had on him, but when it’s not directly in the forefront of the episode’s plot, it doesn’t seem to impact his character development.

He internalizes his character development, which is theoretically fine, but thus far, it’s development in name only. It doesn’t affect the way he deals with the problems that arise, it doesn’t change his biases or ingrained (mis)conceptions. He’ll spend a few episodes drinking in every scene, and Sam will make a comment, and then something will make him decide it’s a bad idea, so he’ll stop. But that’s just back to baseline Dean. It has undone one of the only ways in which his character has actually developed in the course of the story.

I realize that many of my feels here are unverifiable and unquantifiable, but the one way in which I feel the writing falls far short of its potential is this: each brother goes through his personal conflicts, and refuses to share his struggles with the other. He won’t talk about it. When asked, he’s always “fine.” Every. Goddamn. Time. They’ll spend time talking about how they need to talk about what they’re going through, how that’s what they’re there for, how they can’t make it alone. Then, the next episode, they’re both “fine” again. It’s infuriating.

I could understand it if they tried talking and it was a terrible idea. I could get why they would shy away from sharing. But the fact of the matter is, when they manage to drag words out of each other, it always ends up better for it. Why on earth do they need to be convinced and re-convinced and re-convinced every time they have something they’re going through?

My theory is that the writers are thinking to themselves, “Sam and Dean are Man’s Men. They don’t have ‘feelings,’ them’s for Ladies. They can handle it themselves.” But it keeps recurring as a “thing”: they can’t handle it themselves, everyone around them thinks they shouldn’t try to handle it themselves, and handling it collaboratively is always better. They’re not computers; they can learn—and in a well-written story, they would learn. They both know better.

I’ve learned from this, though. It’s important to remember that characters change and grow, in their habits, words, conceptions, etc; they don’t just experience things. Eliminating one inter-personal problem doesn’t eliminate all problems: if Sam and Dean talked about their feelings more, maybe they would spend some time being too involved in each other’s personal lives, and have to deal with that. Having the same problems over and over again... it just isn’t interesting. (It’s also the definition of madness.) The longer it goes on, the less sympathetic they seem to the audience. The more the audience gets interested in the secondary characters. The more the audience rolls their eyes whenever the characters are having a problem—any problem, not just interpersonal, because we know how the solving process will go. It develops from frustrating to irritating to cliché and boring. And “boring” is definitely the sort of thing that writers and shows want to avoid.