Playing Alex, or Soapboxing S. Meyer (Now Edited)
In the spirit of non-linear discourse,
Warning: Spoilers for Maria V. Snyder's Poison Study and sequels.
Four years ago I was a participant in the Telluride Association Summer Program --incidentally the same program where I am now serving as residential adviser. I was just seventeen and only a week before I'd finished my first serious roleplaying campaign. I was in alt, not least because I'd managed to keep a journal of events from my character's perspective during the course of the campaign. That document was about sixty-two thousand words long. I felt like a real writer.
While at the program, I shared what I'd written with another participant, also a wordsmith. Alex was blunt in her assessment of what I'd written: I believe she called it unmitigated crap. I know she told me that I was --or ought to be-- a better writer than that sample revealed me. I was devastated.
Insert a montage of me earnestly working to improve my writing: four years of self-reflection, of nervous efforts toward publication, of two a.m. fiction binges and irresponsible Cheetos-eating. Four years also of paying attention to the markets from which my writing has emerged: fantasy and romance, predominately.
There's an interesting phenomenon that I see come to fruition over those four years, one that has its roots (perhaps) in Patricia C. Wrede's excellent Dragons quartet, with central romance and irreverent approach to fairytale tropes. [Note: Wrede is herself just a representative of this earlier movement --not a scapegoat or harbinger.] A sort of amalgam-genre develops, a genre in which a central romantic relationship between a male and female lead is explicitly placed against a fantasy backdrop. That backdrop exerts little influence on the outcome, morals, or language of the romance as it develops; it is there mostly to render the proceedings more exotic. This last criterion is very important to me because I believe it is Fantasy and Science Fiction's particular advantage to be able to comment on fraught subjects without directly invoking our conditioned biases. A great work of Fantasy is distinguished by its ability to liaise between the bedrock prejudices conditioned into us, and those hopes we possess which are less concrete, but more compelling to what is human in us. Further, reading Fantasy conditions the reader --as few other genres can-- to a malleability of expectation, a resilient relationship with one's setting, whether that setting is written or experienced.
With these views set out, I think it's easier to understand why I'm concerned about the recent explosion of paranormal romance, and particularly about works like Stephanie Meyer's Twilight et. al. In these books the fantastic elements are merely trappings; there is no sense of uncommon wonder at the world, no distortion of the lens. I dislike Luna Publishing intensely, and for this reason: I have yet to read a book under that imprint that does anything to challenge or enhance my view of the world --or even of what a relationship between a man and a woman might be. Does this mean that these books cannot or should not be enjoyed by readers? Not at all! (I'd be the last to argue that.) But what I want is some recognition from the author, from the publisher, from the fans, that these books present a vision incomplete, and that readers are not meant to try to pattern their lives after the models set therein.
I think I respond so intensely to this debate because who I am has been powerfully shaped by what I have read. Sybel, of McKillip's Forgotten Beasts of Eld will always be my role-model. So, too, McKinley's Aerin and Harry, her Deerskin and Sunshine. I could say the same of any of the resourceful and poised heroines whose adventures I have followed, since I picked up the Ladies of Mandryign in fourth grade, and gave up on the girls I encountered in "children's classics" as unrepresentative of the kind of woman I wanted to become.
As a reader of romance and fantasy --the two genres most often belittled as offering little to enhance their readers' character and understanding of the world-- I have no bones to pick with the idea of light reading, of reading for pleasure. But I do take umbrage as a writer, and as a reader, with poor production quality and with the thoughtless misuse of genre. The irony here is that I find myself in Alex's position of four years ago, insisting on standards and perhaps missing the virtues of the works I attack. Then again, I'm not sure promulgating a social program is a virtue.
Here we arrive at the question of sex, and specifically the question of abstinence. Leaving Meyer for a moment, I want to talk about another entry into the YA paranormal romance genre, a Luna title: Maria V. Synder's Poison Study and its sequel, Magic Study.
Synder's setting is a totalitarian environment where personal freedoms are at a minimum; her protagonist, imprisoned at the outset of the book, is offered an opportunity to better her station by serving as the taste-tester for the country's ruler. It is not a position in which she is expected to survive for long, and she very nearly doesn't. But between palace skulduggery and near-death experiences, Our Heroine also starts a relationship with her immediate superior --the Poisons-Master, the chap responsible for eliminating the ruler's enemies in subtle and expedient fashions. To say I was delighted is really an understatement; I was positively gleeful. But Snyder's rendition of sex ruined the novel for me. As a romance reader I'm inured to a certain amount of awful euphemisms, anxious tittering, and you-said-what facepalms. Sex is an awkward matter to write about, and its hard to distinguish between titillating and terrible as you write. But Snyder resorted to the "purple fainting cloud" convention: her sex-scene was characterized by music of souls and near-fainting and --I shit you not-- purple clouds and floating.
In my view, part of the virtue of romance novels is that a well-written romance novel actually comments upon the sexual act; it's informative, but not didactic. It teaches sexual techniques, positions and options; it reinforces that women can enjoy the experience, that there's no shame in pleasure; that the act ought to be mutual and voluntary; and above all that sex is something special, undertaken as a reflection of a deep emotional connection. Purple clouds do absolutely nothing to accomplish any of the above. They send an opposite message, in fact: the experience stays taboo and shameful. It's coy writing, and it makes me think very little of the writer. A fade-to-black is a deliberate choice --I respect writers who recognize they just don't want to go there, and so very consciously don't. But resorting to gross euphemisms annihilates a writer's credibility, in my eyes. If you cannot deal maturely with the material you approach, then you shouldn't approach at that time or in that way.
Wading back into the question of Meyer, then, and her support for abstinence. This becomes a hot-button subject for me when I begin to worry that her readers will take Bella for a model as I once took Sybel; when, moreover, I see -isms and -ists being tossed around by detractors and advocates alike. I dislike the way Meyer, and Meyer's interpreters, have made Edward's (already problematic) insistence on abstinence a part of the book's virtues rather than a matter to be discussed, the author's intent interpreted. For me, having studied too many Medieval romances, I cannot help but look at Edward's privileging of Bella's virginity as one more of the many recent iterations of holy triumvirate of western womanhood: virgin, whore, or mother. This is particularly exacerbated by my interpretation of the juxtaposition of True Love and Abstinence --and particularly Meyer's making Edward the unwilling partner, acting on the social stigma. There is the very unpleasant implication that it is not love unless it is chaste until marriage --that somehow, relationships that do not embrace these ideals are less authentic. Or, perhaps more corrosively, that a man who respects his significant other will insist on these standards, these values. The issue is so much more complex.
I hate to leave on a lingering bitter note, but my work needs my attention. More, perhaps, later.
Warning: Spoilers for Maria V. Snyder's Poison Study and sequels.
Four years ago I was a participant in the Telluride Association Summer Program --incidentally the same program where I am now serving as residential adviser. I was just seventeen and only a week before I'd finished my first serious roleplaying campaign. I was in alt, not least because I'd managed to keep a journal of events from my character's perspective during the course of the campaign. That document was about sixty-two thousand words long. I felt like a real writer.
While at the program, I shared what I'd written with another participant, also a wordsmith. Alex was blunt in her assessment of what I'd written: I believe she called it unmitigated crap. I know she told me that I was --or ought to be-- a better writer than that sample revealed me. I was devastated.
Insert a montage of me earnestly working to improve my writing: four years of self-reflection, of nervous efforts toward publication, of two a.m. fiction binges and irresponsible Cheetos-eating. Four years also of paying attention to the markets from which my writing has emerged: fantasy and romance, predominately.
There's an interesting phenomenon that I see come to fruition over those four years, one that has its roots (perhaps) in Patricia C. Wrede's excellent Dragons quartet, with central romance and irreverent approach to fairytale tropes. [Note: Wrede is herself just a representative of this earlier movement --not a scapegoat or harbinger.] A sort of amalgam-genre develops, a genre in which a central romantic relationship between a male and female lead is explicitly placed against a fantasy backdrop. That backdrop exerts little influence on the outcome, morals, or language of the romance as it develops; it is there mostly to render the proceedings more exotic. This last criterion is very important to me because I believe it is Fantasy and Science Fiction's particular advantage to be able to comment on fraught subjects without directly invoking our conditioned biases. A great work of Fantasy is distinguished by its ability to liaise between the bedrock prejudices conditioned into us, and those hopes we possess which are less concrete, but more compelling to what is human in us. Further, reading Fantasy conditions the reader --as few other genres can-- to a malleability of expectation, a resilient relationship with one's setting, whether that setting is written or experienced.
With these views set out, I think it's easier to understand why I'm concerned about the recent explosion of paranormal romance, and particularly about works like Stephanie Meyer's Twilight et. al. In these books the fantastic elements are merely trappings; there is no sense of uncommon wonder at the world, no distortion of the lens. I dislike Luna Publishing intensely, and for this reason: I have yet to read a book under that imprint that does anything to challenge or enhance my view of the world --or even of what a relationship between a man and a woman might be. Does this mean that these books cannot or should not be enjoyed by readers? Not at all! (I'd be the last to argue that.) But what I want is some recognition from the author, from the publisher, from the fans, that these books present a vision incomplete, and that readers are not meant to try to pattern their lives after the models set therein.
I think I respond so intensely to this debate because who I am has been powerfully shaped by what I have read. Sybel, of McKillip's Forgotten Beasts of Eld will always be my role-model. So, too, McKinley's Aerin and Harry, her Deerskin and Sunshine. I could say the same of any of the resourceful and poised heroines whose adventures I have followed, since I picked up the Ladies of Mandryign in fourth grade, and gave up on the girls I encountered in "children's classics" as unrepresentative of the kind of woman I wanted to become.
As a reader of romance and fantasy --the two genres most often belittled as offering little to enhance their readers' character and understanding of the world-- I have no bones to pick with the idea of light reading, of reading for pleasure. But I do take umbrage as a writer, and as a reader, with poor production quality and with the thoughtless misuse of genre. The irony here is that I find myself in Alex's position of four years ago, insisting on standards and perhaps missing the virtues of the works I attack. Then again, I'm not sure promulgating a social program is a virtue.
Here we arrive at the question of sex, and specifically the question of abstinence. Leaving Meyer for a moment, I want to talk about another entry into the YA paranormal romance genre, a Luna title: Maria V. Synder's Poison Study and its sequel, Magic Study.
Synder's setting is a totalitarian environment where personal freedoms are at a minimum; her protagonist, imprisoned at the outset of the book, is offered an opportunity to better her station by serving as the taste-tester for the country's ruler. It is not a position in which she is expected to survive for long, and she very nearly doesn't. But between palace skulduggery and near-death experiences, Our Heroine also starts a relationship with her immediate superior --the Poisons-Master, the chap responsible for eliminating the ruler's enemies in subtle and expedient fashions. To say I was delighted is really an understatement; I was positively gleeful. But Snyder's rendition of sex ruined the novel for me. As a romance reader I'm inured to a certain amount of awful euphemisms, anxious tittering, and you-said-what facepalms. Sex is an awkward matter to write about, and its hard to distinguish between titillating and terrible as you write. But Snyder resorted to the "purple fainting cloud" convention: her sex-scene was characterized by music of souls and near-fainting and --I shit you not-- purple clouds and floating.
In my view, part of the virtue of romance novels is that a well-written romance novel actually comments upon the sexual act; it's informative, but not didactic. It teaches sexual techniques, positions and options; it reinforces that women can enjoy the experience, that there's no shame in pleasure; that the act ought to be mutual and voluntary; and above all that sex is something special, undertaken as a reflection of a deep emotional connection. Purple clouds do absolutely nothing to accomplish any of the above. They send an opposite message, in fact: the experience stays taboo and shameful. It's coy writing, and it makes me think very little of the writer. A fade-to-black is a deliberate choice --I respect writers who recognize they just don't want to go there, and so very consciously don't. But resorting to gross euphemisms annihilates a writer's credibility, in my eyes. If you cannot deal maturely with the material you approach, then you shouldn't approach at that time or in that way.
Wading back into the question of Meyer, then, and her support for abstinence. This becomes a hot-button subject for me when I begin to worry that her readers will take Bella for a model as I once took Sybel; when, moreover, I see -isms and -ists being tossed around by detractors and advocates alike. I dislike the way Meyer, and Meyer's interpreters, have made Edward's (already problematic) insistence on abstinence a part of the book's virtues rather than a matter to be discussed, the author's intent interpreted. For me, having studied too many Medieval romances, I cannot help but look at Edward's privileging of Bella's virginity as one more of the many recent iterations of holy triumvirate of western womanhood: virgin, whore, or mother. This is particularly exacerbated by my interpretation of the juxtaposition of True Love and Abstinence --and particularly Meyer's making Edward the unwilling partner, acting on the social stigma. There is the very unpleasant implication that it is not love unless it is chaste until marriage --that somehow, relationships that do not embrace these ideals are less authentic. Or, perhaps more corrosively, that a man who respects his significant other will insist on these standards, these values. The issue is so much more complex.
I hate to leave on a lingering bitter note, but my work needs my attention. More, perhaps, later.