Wednesday, May 15, 2002
Bunny with a gun
So there's lots of interesting talk going around in defense of sad (and downright) hopeless fiction these days, specifically in regards to Smallville fiction. Here's a bit of what Rosenho has to say about it:
And, in that company, pain is the great equalizer. Not only are you not alone, someone else understands. I don't think that kind of communion is possible with something wholly cheerful. Happy is ephemeral. You can't hold it, it means a hundred different things to a hundred different people, but pain is universal. It measures, and it makes real in a way happy never can. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't expand you; happy is the result of conquered pain. You have to hurt to grow, and if you're lucky, you'll be rewarded for it with a few moments' bliss.
This is not to say there is no value in comedy, or joy, or happy fiction. It's just different. Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone... I don't think it's true here. I'm sure someone smarter than me will figure out a way to prove I'm wrong. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the hurt, and the company.
I don't completely disagree, but I'm feeling the need to rage against the machine a little here. We were discussing Valentine's lovely "Arcadia" on one of the lists the other day, and someone brought up how she didn't feel as though having Clark and Lex settle down in Greece in their dotage was all that interesting, bearing in mind that she holds fictional characters to higher standards. My response was pretty much this:
Well, no, for us (me and the other woman nattering away), 'interesting' usually involves a body count, or at least a psychosis or two, but for Smallville, and specifically for Clark and Lex, my standards are just plain different. Ever since the scene in Hourglass with the wrecked Porsche where we first see Clark lying almost cheerfully to Lex and Lex's *heartwrendingly* affectless response... well, I've been a Te on a mission.
I need the happy. Need it. By hook, crook, or Apocalypse. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I don't care if I have to kill every other person on the planet, I want those boys to be *happy* together, and, to my view, I've written exactly one story where I felt I failed at that. ("The Red and the Black") Pretty much all of my future fic has been written from the standpoint that The Worst is Clark and Lex's estrangement, and The Goal their eventual reconciliation, and let's just see how much traditional human morality I can slaughter along the way.
I recognize that I have issues. I had a funny conversation with Jenn recently in which I boiled down my most serious relationships by matching my exes to their appropriate DSM IV diagnoses. I've been forced to accept that the kind of blind, all-consuming love by which I lived right up through much of 2000 was flat-out impossible. I made a choice. I wanted to live *in* the world, at least enough to feel like a human being. I wanted control of my unrealities, I wanted my madnesses to be just a little bit safer than was possible with the relationship that "Past Grief" was based on, or the relationship the _Strays_ series was based on.
I really wanted to stop dating my mother.
And yet, and yet... you know, I wonder if we ever truly grow out of first ideas/ideals of what True Romance means. Even if we eventually get the therapy required to stop dating people who do nothing short of drag our monstrousness into the light, there's still something sweet there. Something so damned... delicious. The Spike's poison cookie. The promise of... God, the very apotheosis of the Turkish Delight. And so poor Jenn gained her own personal Te-shaped gargoyle for the duration of the CreepyLexFic, claws digging into her shoulders, greedy voice hissing sibilant seduction into her ear... Heh.
I want a tattoo of a glyph that translates to 'Seduce Me,' something obscure enough that most people won't know what it means, but clear enough that someone, somewhere, just might.
One day, near the end, the ex who inspired "Past Grief" and so many others (and will doubtless continue to inspire me as long as I need to keep psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies in beer and skittles) told me something. She said: "You know why you're so dangerous, Daddy? (Yes, *she's* why I have that name.) It's because... See, there's this deep, dark wood full of monsters and snakes and demons and witches and shit, and cut right through it is a long clear road to salvation. You've got one foot on the pavement and one in the weeds, and none of us can figure out whether we want to pull you down with us or beg you to drag us up. Sometimes I wish I'd never met you."
::Te takes a moment to look forward to her next therapy appointment.::
Well, I took a break in writing this to watch Buffy and Smallville. Um... gulp? I don't know if I'm going to chat here, or in the lj -- I'll be adding a convenient link shortly -- or even if I can pick up the threads of my original argument, but...
HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
::Te takes a few moment to smoke and reflect on coolness.::
Okay, let me struggle back to my original point. And straggle. And muddle.
It occurs to me that quite a lot has to do with how one defines the happy ending. So I'm going to be mean and derail that conversation a bit, or try to do so. Because, well... it's all just a little *too* subjective, even for this particular topic of conversation. Sarah T. thinks "Immanence" is cheerful. The Spike has advised me that it will have me back out On The Ledge in a heartbeat. Just guess who I trust? On the other hand, Sarah and I agree on Lionel's Sekrit Woobiehood in ways that make most of our friends look at us funny. On the third hand, I'm pretty sure that, of the Te-stories Sarah enjoys the most, the titles read like those I consider my *masterworks* in terms of happiness.
Where the hell am I going?
I think I'm going to derail myself here, this isn't going anywhere.
Let me try to do a point-by-pointish thing. That might make it easier. Rosenho speaks of pain as the 'great equalizer.' Yeah, I can go there. However... I know I'm not the only one who has been to weddings and gotten embarassingly verklempt, or reveled in the simple joy of seeing one of a newborn's first smile's directed at you, or praised a God I didn't even *believe* in simply because the music, the sweet, sweet music, set my soul free. You get the idea. We all know about the negative effect of the mob instinct, the micro-zeitgeist that can strike in seconds and level death and destruction in horrifying ways.
And yet... and *yet*. I'll bet cash money that most of us can also think of ways when simple joy, when *happiness* has brought strangers, enemies, hell, even *family* together, just to experience the wonder of life's small and large miracles. Why don't we talk about them?
I could be snarky and uppity and get on about how Some People look down on the sweeter side of the arts as a matter of course. Have I been in fandoms where schmoop was a dirty word? Yes. But then, I've also -- and often -- expressed the opinion that, for some artists at least, schmoop *ought* to be a dirty word. Bad me. Once again, it all comes back to the number one rule of art, which is simply this:
Anything, absolutely *anything* can be art -- in the right artist's hands.
Back to Rosenho: Not to mention the fact that it doesn't expand you; happy is the result of conquered pain. You have to hurt to grow, and if you're lucky, you'll be rewarded for it with a few moments' bliss. Another 'yes, but' statement for me. I'm having a flashback to this weird student play some folks did at a theater festival I was part of at Williams. Something something Omelas. I'm pretty sure it was based on an actual sci-fi story, but all I can remember of the play was that it involved a perfect society, a Utopia in which all was bliss, all the time, Except For One Thing: The price for the place's happiness was that one child was born in suffering, and had to live in suffering forever. Oh, yeah, and they kept playing "The Girl From Ipanema" until I thought I was going to have to commit ritual suicide.
I was going somewhere with this, I swear...
Oh, yeah. The play was pretty damned incomprehensible, in that We're So Damned Avant Garde way (the play I was in? The assassination of Marat. I was the mother of Claudette ((Charlotte? Who remembers these things?)) Cordet. All Black cast. French Revolution cum slave times cum Ghetto Angst. Think Aunt Jemima. I cried a lot on stage. The soundtrack had a lot of Queen. I... look, we did a lot of drugs, okay?), but I seem to recall thinking that one of the points that they tried to make was that the only people in Omelas who knew true happiness were the ones in charge of the necessarily minimal care of the Suffering Child. Because, you know, they had all that guilt to deal with.
And yet, and yet. I just don't *buy* this 'momentary' bliss thing. I think a great disservice has been done to us as a culture, somewhere along the way. I think we've been taught to believe in the nobility of suffering, in the essential fleetingness of joy in a way that is just as subjective as the fact that I think Ray Vecchio is sexier than Ray Kowalski. Prepare thyself, children. I'm about to get flaky. Barring chemical necessities/degradations/imbalances, happiness is *there*. Attainable. More than that?
Contentment is available. The first lesson I learned from AA was that self-control was often highly illusory. The second most important lesson I learned from AA was to keep my memory green -- if only because there are few things more embarassing than tripping over the same crack in the sidewalk *twice*. The most important lesson I learned from AA? One day at a time. You all know that one. And you know what? Break it down.
One hour at a time.
One *minute* at a time.
One fucking *second* at a time, if that what it takes. To get more specific again... say your life is stressful. Your transmission's blown, your mother-in-law's due to call *again* in an hour, and you're having the worst hair day of your life. Possibly of your past several lives, if you believe in reincarnation. However... both your mechanic and your car dealership are closed until the next day, you have a full hour to start drinking or otherwise prepare yourself for the skanky bitchwhore's call, and you know what? Your hair is neither actively on fire nor detaching itself from your scalp. In other words, there's nothing you can do about any of it right this minute.
So why the fuck are you worrying?
Over the past several days, many people have expressed admiration for me in terms of the way I've dealt with the assorted Drama that is my particular soap opera. "I don't understand how you do it."
"Avoid, avoid, avoid."
*snerk* Well, that was the truth, really. Before AA. I had periodic core dumps whenever there was space and time, and otherwise I just didn't think about it. After AA and taking the whole 'one day at a time' thing to heart... well, you know, it's really pretty fucking zen when you think about it. Because the fact is? I can't do shit about my health most of the time. Not the migraines, not the bursitis, not my overeager pre-cancerous ovaries, not the fibromyalgia, not my personal neurochemical experiments in creative and relative sanity. Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. Dude, if one more doctor asks me how I feel about prayer...
*snickers*
So... I don't think about it. I cheerfully traipse down my path, weaving in and out of the woods, avoiding the pretty monsters (save to take snapshots to paste into my fiction), and you know what? For the most part I'm a pretty cheerful person. My God, I call this blog 'rage coalescence,' but I bet you wouldn't run out of fingers if you decided to count the number of rants in here that weren't about fannish foibles of various sorts. In other words? My hobby. The hobby that takes up the largest chunk of my life by *far*, but the hobby that pleases me immensely.
I can't express how much joy I get out of tossing words like 'fuckwit' around. There's a kind of repletion in vulgar cruelty... *sighs happily*
Get what I'm saying? Is that Bobby McFerrin in the background? Pay no attention to the bitter irony of the actual lyrics, friends, just whistle along. Because you know what? My lifestyle of avoiding stress save when absolutely necessary leaves me strong enough, refreshed enough to handle the stress quite well when it comes along.
There's no reason for happiness to be fleeting. To drag this back to fiction? I've given this some thought, and I think I'm nearly as demanding of angsty fic as I am of happyfic when it comes to plausibility. Even leaving aside the extremes of the continuum, with vivisection on one side (*koff*) and emotional-contentment-through-shared-chocolate on the other. When I come across a happyfic where the ending isn't earned? *yawn*
But when I come across an *angst* fic where I feel the ending isn't earned? *Argh*. I feel... manipulated. I hate being manipulated. I *loathe* being manipulated. Oh, how terribly sad, Wesley misunderstood Fred. Oh, the drama! Lex simply *must* refuse to hear Clark out. Fucking bite me. Okay, I recognize that I could very well be somewhat irrational about this, but... I don't think so. I mean, I want set-up. Every sentence must logically follow the sentence that comes before. Each event must follow... you get the idea. If you can't make me believe that things Have To Be This Way, that, even if they *can* be some other way, the way *you* present is just as logical -- if not more so -- than any of the other ways...
Then you're no better than those fucks at Disney who cue up the violins just as the big, dewy-eyed fluffy creature realizes its Daddy and/or Mommy just bit it. Listen, don't treat me like a five year old. Don't tell me how to feel. Don't *twist* my feelings, and I won't beat you over the head with anything big and spiked and rusty, 'kay? The conventional SV wisdom is that We All Know What's Going To Happen.
The conventional SV rebellion is that, since they've already changed so much, who's to say what else might not change?
Sadly, I'm not quite *that* optimistic, but... but.
Look, if you get an idea for a Clark and Lex are doomed story that you have to write? Write it. You just kinda want to write one? Go ahead. BUT. I will kick your ass up one side and down the other if you even *try* to tell me that I'm wasting my time for writing my brand of happy endings, just because of the conventional wisdom. And I will narrow my eyes at you very suspiciously indeed if you make noises about the essential commonality of pain without taking into account the equal commonality of pleasure.
We all remember Mufasa falling off the cliff, yeah... but we also all had a fuck of a hard time getting "Hakuna Matata" and "Circle of Life" out of our poor, abused brains.
I think it's long past time I came to some sort of conclusion here. *snerk* Or at least throw in a few more random thoughts...
During the commercial breaks tonight, I was trying to think if I had any other pairings that I was this *rabid* about. Mulder/Krycek? Yes and no. I mean, on the one hand, there was that psychotic mutual obsession thing that makes my heart sing, but on the other hand... it's hard to get past that whole "would you *stop* killing off my friends and family members?!" thing. So I wanted happy endings, and I worked to produce them, and I was saddened by, well, *sad* endings, but, well. Circle of Life. Heh.
Giles/Xander? Pshhht. Never enough good people writing it. Giles/Ethan? The tragedy was part of the sweetness, an *integral* part of the sweetness, to the point where I've written and enjoyed deliberately unhappy G/E fiction in a way that I suspect some people are writing and enjoying deliberately unhappy Clark/Lex. I'm thinking right now of the brief, inter-lj convo I had with Destina about "Chrysalis," which pretty much boiled down to:
Te: It didn't have to be that way!
Destina: Yes, it did!
Te: Well, true, but... WAAAAH! I want the boys in *love*!
Destina: This *is* love. True love, of the kind that takes no prisoners. (I'm paraphrasing. She was far more elegant.)
And, well, she was absolutely right. And I'm a hypocrite, because, by my own standards, there wasn't a damned thing wrong with that story. She set up a scenario in which the ending was only as bleak as it had to be. Dammit. *gnashes teeth*
*sighs unhappily*
*hides under Merry's desk*
Okay, so I'm sucking it up here. Sometimes? Art doesn't matter one whit. "Chrysalis" was fucking brilliant and I *loathed* it and I'll probably never read it again -- because it made me unhappy. When it comes to Clark and Lex? I am a big fluffy bunny with floppy ears and a puffball tail and am imbued with the sort of innate cuteness that drives perfectly healthy people into diabetic comas.
Hello, my name is Te, and I'm here to admit to you right now that, even if I love you, even if its brilliant, there's a good chance that I will not read your bleak and depressing futurefic.
I will also admit that a good deal of the reason behind this unreasonably long fanwank is that I'm hoping that your love for me *cocker spaniel eyes* will encourage you to put your painfics aside. *anime eyes*
No, shame and I aren't very well acquainted, why do you ask? And really, this is why I started on that tangent on the subjectivity of what counts as a happy ending. Because, you know, "Past Grief" has a happy ending to me. Except for how I know that the world is going to Hell at some point in that universe. Moreso than it already has. And, because I'm not *actually* a sociopath, I'm fully aware that the only reasons I find the above ending happy are 1) my aforementioned romance issues, and 2) the fact that I don't live in that world, and 3) blessed compartmentalization.
I guess I'm trying to head off accusations of hypocrisy -- other than the hypocrisy I'm actually admitting to. *g* My happy ain't yours, and all that. Blah blah ramble.
Wrap it up, Te!
I'm a bunny.
I do my best to make my hippity hop believable.
Implausible angst pisses me off more than implausible schmoop, though it's hardly ever for the reasons that had the TWoPers up in arms. A lot of my 'guilty pleasure' reading includes excessive amounts of rape and torture and incest and bears, oh my, after all. Nope. It's the doomed romance crap that pisses me off. So many problems can be solved by a few decent conversations. So few BSOs are so far gone in their grief and rage as to be incapable of *having* those conversations. I wind up convinced that the author just felt like sticking pins in the characters and me by extension.
Joy can be as communal or individual as despair, as endless or fleeting as the space between kisses.
Or:
*WHACK*
Ain't nobody gonna give us a happy ending for these guys *but* us. So... get to steppin'.
Music: The Mellow Mix
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