[rambling on about nothing as usual.]

[reenka]

You know, before I spent too long in fandom, I had squicks. Now I just have preferences and a whole lot of pet-peeves, where it's just that you'd have to work harder to please me if I've a peeve about it. Like, y'know, I remember in the good old days, where Kirk/Spock sex pretty much squicked me, even if I liked the idea of the pairing a lot; I couldn't get over my adolescent vision of them. I remember when Ron/Draco and Snape/Draco and even Harry/Hermione seemed Deeply Wrong... and now I just don't prefer them. I remember when H/D was the alpha and omega of my fannish universe and I had all these ideas about how it 'should' and 'shouldn't' be done (and okay, I still have those), but I've become quite lax about thumping my chest and hyperventilating, alas.

Anyway, I meant to talk about a specific comment in this Wincest squick post, but it also made me think a bit, 'cause yeah, the sheer prevalence of that reading of a show's canon bothers me a bit-- though that's my 'canon, bitches!' thing, not any anti-incest squick, exactly; actually, I don't think I've ever had a 'traditional' squick in the sense that it's based on my real-life beliefs (I mean, I tend to like characters in fiction I'd probably clobber in real life, for a start). Like, if it's well-written, anything challenging or transgressive can only make the story more interesting, as far as I'm concerned; for examples, look to the many instances of incest in classic literature and also some of the best genre lit of today (okay, mainly Song of Ice and Fire). I cannot imagine seriously reading something good and then stopping and going, 'but this is WRONG, HOW COULD THIS BE??! NOOOoooo'. If I really felt like that, I mean, I wouldn't have graduated from books for toddlers, because isn't there always something unpleasant and 'wrong' and unfair even in (good and/or classic) children's books?

    (Btw, this is where some of my friends woujd just say I'm not a critical enough reader, so I clearly suck. Hehe. Because yeah, while I was careful to say 'well-written' and 'good' stories, the truth is I also suspend a lot of judgment/personal issues/disbelief when reading stuff I just... like a lot for whatever reason. I wouldn't call it a 'kink'; like, I don't have a 'kink' for HP canon, y'know? Most of the time the only reason I'm critical is when I either really love something or really hate it, usually because of aesthetic/story-construction reasons. This mostly applies to stuff that's really bad. How do I explain it. It applies to purple-prosey fantasy books with ass-stupid names & the majority of post-OoTP fanfic I read, hahaha; it very rarely applies to content, in other words, and only to execution-- the big exception being OOCness in fic and stuff I find relentlessly bleak. Because I'm a huge romantic dork. But I try to keep that under control. :P So yeah, it's a personality issue, basically, and one I can't really do anything about, so nyah.)


In any case, I'm veeeery touchy about actually projecting slashiness on any canon... and in fact I can't think of any where I would do so with all honesty. There's liminal cases like Star Trek, The Sentinel and Gundam Wing, but I wouldn't go so far as to explain anything that happened with the characters through that lens. It's just subtext, take it or leave it.

Aaanyway. It's funny because I have the exact opposite reaction-- usually if something squicks me in text/theory, it squicks me less in a visual representation, because I'm more of an aesthete-- I always look at art as an 'art piece' first and a 'statement' second; in other words, I can easily disengage any moral/ethical/other biases and just enjoy the pretty because pretty is what matters with visual media to me. This is why I have no hard pairing preference with fanart, for instance, and why I tolerate and enjoy extreme cheesiness in fanvids of the sort that'd make me run screaming from a fic.
    Coincidentally, it's also why the 6A/LJ wank sticks in my craw like mad. It's really the art-critique aspect that drives me mad, the double-standard where fanfic is okay but fanart isn't-- fanart needs to be judged by outsiders who don't have the first clue what they're looking at. That just drives me mad. Visual art just... the idea of judging it in such pedestrian terms without even realizing that's what you're doing-- it makes my blood boil.

Regardless, I meant to just quote harriet_spy's comment:
    To be honest, there's no way you can take a dynamic that hinges even a little bit on transgressiveness, have ten thousand squeeing fangirls stampede over it, and have anything left but flatness.

I just thought that was really... very true. And it really applies to some of my favorite pairings (*cough!*) rather than just Wincest. It's not that I hate fluff... it's that I'm just so bored & frustrated by the sheer glut of narratives that make the transgressive and raw as acceptable and 'easy' as possible. Actually, the reason I wouldn't ship Wincest is probably because you can't reasonably expect it to be remotely healthy or resolvable in any positive way-- and I'm still a romantic. It's kinda figures that the incest is intinsically everyone's problem, but yeah. This definitely reminds of the sheer flatness I felt before I stopped reading H/D altogether; this sense that the pairing has become... completely predictable and 'easy' (in fandom, not in canon). I can't really think of a transgressive pairing that actually consistently captured its own problematic areas... which is why I'm really way too wary to read S/L, but oh well.

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I should've finished my sentence; I meant the portrayal 'always' tends to be clear that the horrifying stuff is pretty much disliked/disapproved of, depending on whether the author, I guess, accepts it's horrifying, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I wasn't saying they all do it 'wrong', nor that it doesn't matter. All I initially said was meant in the context of subject-matter itself (e.g., incest), though yeah, the people in the Wincest squick post seemed to be objecting partly to the 'fluffy' portrayal and partly to the 'too realistic' execution of the kiss manip in that vid so that they couldn't keep going with their denial or whatever. Umm... anyway I wasn't meaning to tackle how 'most writers' or most children's writers tackle difficult/wrong moral issues, if anything 'cause I haven't read that many children's books (aside from fairy-tales). ^^;; Young adult, yeah, but notsomuch children's books. In that sense, I'm not sure if HSM is 'children's lit' but I guess it is since it's mostly on the edge between childhood & adolescence/young adulthood. I'm not sure it's any writer's responsibility to show 'incest is wrong' or to take an obvious moral stand about any issue they write about... I mean, in this sense I think it should be up to the reader to decide how they feel; I hate having any moral judgment projected, whether it's 'right' or 'wrong' in my view, and this is actually a big part of why I couldn't stand Sorceror's Stone initially, besides just the bad writing. I mean, all that stuff about the Dursleys and normality... I actually hate normality as a concept but it still rubbed me the wrong way because it was all so transparently preachy. But anyway.

Haha, 'bad concept' is something that you can't quite... normally associate with aesthetics. I think it's funny your first assertion of 'I care about aesthetics' goes in the same direction your non-aesthetic critiques do :> Aesthetics are generally concerned with execution, not content/theme/concept. You can have aesthetically-driven concepts, definitely (romanticism, symbolism, impressionism), but that's different, kinda. We all naturally react to concept in somewhat of an aesthetic/subjective judgment sense, but overall I'd say any concept can be made aesthetically pleasing, as Sister M said (http://lunacy.livejournal.com/361244.html?thread=4651292#t4651292) (or at least, I think that's what she said). There are different/clashing aesthetic movements-- like my own sympathy towards tension/intensity/realism as a style, y'know, hard-boiled... though that's a mix of meta/beliefs about what's IC and 'believable' in regards to certain character dynamics and aesthetics. I think you can write a 'real' and honest H/D, for instance, in a lyrical or symbolic/abstract style... I think I did that once or twice, or tried to. Most people, instead, write it too concretely/banally yet with implicit projected fantasies of the characters... which sort of flips that around. Anyway, I guess it's complicated.

Of course I separate between ideals and their potentials & the way they're actually portrayed too; though I also play it safe & just don't read H/D anymore, so that makes it easier :> I do get influenced by the fics I read just naturally. It's not that it ever makes me disenchanted with the idea in theory, but my own execution of things is easily shifted depending on what I read both in fanon & canon, and that influence isn't easily counteracted. I think that sort of approaches a deeper difference in terms of how I relate to stories in general, I dunno. :-?

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

It always comes back to the responsibility debate, doesn't it. I don't think crticism of a book with a sleazy theme has to be equivalent to telling it to be "responsible" if anything because I associate so many rethorical connotations to that word beyond the literal. Though I remember people talking about race and saying that pop-culture had a responsibility because there's a link between art and culture that means they influence each other, and I agreed. But I always think when you call for "responsibility" (or even say: you're responsible no matter what you think, it just happens) you should have a strong argument and specific examples, otherwise it does feel you're riding on someone else's bandwagon and using it to means that aren't so pure.

I feel that incest kink is less dangerous because of context (women, subculture) than heteronormativity is. While we look at incest as something wrong but somehow embedded as an archetype in our psyche, the mainsteam enforces heternormativity, I mean, there is "norm" in the word for a reason.

That's true about aesthetical concepts, though I sort of want to go post-modern on it... but I'll just correct it to bad aesthetical execution if you want. Though while I'm not trained like you are, I really value aesthetics and get pissed when people don't understand, like in certain movies where there's such a passionate play with images and themes and elements from different movements, and then people say it's caustic and useless. Lol though I've gotta say, Roberta backs me up with saying that Se is the function that governs good taste. But she might be biased.

I'm less sure about my separation between idea and execution than I was when I posted, because I've been thinking about "cool" since I've realized how much communities use coolness, so in a way it's different because the way people use it make you see more things about an idea than you alone would, sometimes unpleasant... and sometimes you just want to tell them you're doing it wrong and reappropriate it.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well... I was thinking of your response to my H/D rapefic where it felt like you'd have actually wanted me to write it with a more responsible/realistic/etc mindset. Also it seems like more than half the people who make arguments based on the sleaziness or 'obsceneness' of something just want it to be more morally pure somehow even if they theoretically are anti-censorship. Maybe I'm just sensitive on this subject, but it's so easy to push just a little too hard and then it is an attempt at censorship. Ah. I agree insofar as there's always a responsibility no matter what you think in a situation where responsibility is warranted, but when it comes to the arts... if someone accepts a sleazy or immoral premise that means they were always in agreement in the first place, and if they use the book as an excuse, say, that's not the book's 'fault' so to speak.

I mean, well, I don't feel incest is dangerous at all in most ways (unless it involves abuse of power, but that's not intrinsic to incest per se), but this is a social taboo, so in some ways it's irrelevant in practical terms what the objective judgment of its threat is, anyway. Heteronormativity is the opposite of a social taboo; as you said, the 'norm' is there for a reason. I wouldn't say it's 'dangerous', mostly because the damage has been done already, long ago. Untangling the many different threads and beliefs and cultural attitudes that go into the tangled ball of 'heteronormativity' is a very long-term task, so I'm 'pick my battles' minded about it. If you started to, you could really criticize every third thing you see on those grounds, which seems not that useful. Anyway, I'd say heteronormativity is less actively 'dangerous' like a heart attack and more chronically bad for everyone's health like high cholesterol, if that makes sense.

Haha, I don't know why you think I'm 'trained'; I just took some art-history and literature classes and read some books here and there :> I don't doubt you do value aesthetics, though, 'cause you do clearly have your own aesthetic and are even a visual artist, so :)) I don't think Se is always directly related to taste-- I mean, as far as I can tell, it's more to do with perception than processing of that perception which is what develops 'taste'. Se is 'here and now' and physical/visual context rather than the more in-depth historic and meta undercurrents of 'taste'. But then my understanding of Se is limited. :P Still, I'd say in an artist Se serves direct representation rather than overall aesthetics/the metaphorical representation of ideas.

I did say that people naturally do react in a mixture of personal aesthetics and actual ideas, because these things are mixed in our minds. I have aesthetic reactions to words, images and concepts, but then I just have aesthetic reactions to everything. I was more thinking of the nature of aesthetics as a static definition.