Thoughts on Writing (might be uncomfortable, so)
A couple weeks from now (November 22, 2010, to be precise), I'll be celebrating my second year in Marvel fandom. Up to February 2010, I'd have said, cap_ironman fandom, but something happened.
In February of this year, I pretty much started having questions about writing Steve Rogers/Tony Stark. Like, if I weren't careful, I'd be writing the same thing again and again, and to be honest, it seemed a bit hypocritical for me wanting to read stories with poc and women taking a centre role, and yet not writing these things myself, and yet, I didn't want to write 'the other' just for the sake of writing; I had to like the characters very much for them to rent space in my head. To be honest with you, writing is a hobby that takes time away from other things. For instance, me wrapping my head around knitting lace (don't ask), or even just sleeping.
When I write, the time is taken up with research, plotting, self editing (because I hate asking people to edit, I feel as if I'm wasting their time, and get tangled into thoughts of quid pro quo. For a time, the characters live in my head. In order to get my emotions on the page, I do have to open myself to feel what they feel, as a result, there have been times when I've had to take a break from a piece of work, and go and walk until the dark mood goes away.
In addition to all those things, I stumbled into a rut: comfortable, true, a middling level writer in a small fandom, and the assurance of if I posted, I got some sort of feedback, even more so; but the Ultimates verse was going all a bit Pete Tong, Marvel's Heroic Age had yet to come about, and I was restless. At the time, it boiled down to either me writing something else, or leaving fandom and writing as a whole. Sensing that I might have been lost to lace knitting, fairisle and jumper finishing forever,
valtyr recommended me to
comment_fic. There were lonely prompts, she said, in archives. People threw them out there, not necessarily expecting them to be answered, so no pressure, which suited me to the ground.
You see, I tend to work really well to a brief, "Character X, Y, specific situation". If left to my own devices to write my own stories, I'll pretty much write about two people in a room, trading ripostes and laughing at their own wit for pages, doing my terrible impression of Oscar Wilde. However, if I have to write to other people's needs, I'll go out and read the characters, try and get to know them. In addition, with the comment fic limit being around six hundred words, it was a chance of curtailing myself to just rabbit on, because I knew that the story needed to end now.
Yeah, so, cruising around comment_fic, and in cruising, I discover Young Avengers prompts. I liked the comic well enough, I pretty bought bought the trades about eighteen months before because of the pretty art (shallow, I know). It didn't hurt that I encountered teens when I first started out teaching, so I think I knew enough about teenagers to make a decent fist of fic - when everything is SO IMPORTANT OMG, and yet, they were childish enough to laugh at their own bodily excretions (teenage boys? Can be disgusting). They could be bullies, and yet, be pretty noble in their own way, but Providence, so young. So yeah, okay, I could do Young Avengers. I found that most of the Teddy/Billy prompts were filled, and Kate Bishop as a girl got her prompts filled, but 'ello, 'ello, 'ello? Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley ones were left out on their tod. Ryuutchi (the original poster) would put forth a lot of prompts, most of 'em cute, a few touching, and quite bold, but no takers.
I do remember admiring the poster's faith, because some of these prompts were going on a year old, and sometimes, faith isn't necessarily praying for the mountain to be moved, or world peace; it's pretty much just throwing a wish into a wind, in the hope that it gets answered. I do know that in the scheme of things fanfic isn't the most pressing thing in the world, but it's nice when someone writes a prompt for you, because it means at that particular time, their focus is on your wish, on your prompt. They've taken time out of their day to write something for you, and in a world where time is money, and precious, and supposedly dictated by doing a lot of things for other people because your livelihood depends on it, for someone to write something for you, just because at that point in their life, they thought and sweated buckets just to write for you? That's aces.
Long story short, I started answering the Kate/Eli prompts, and by getting into the prompts, I discovered, that I liked the pairing. In another happy coincidence (as much as it doesn't seem so when I'm wrestling with a prompt or two), I have the space to think and brood about relationships, their intricacies, and how absolutely finite they are.
In certain ways, I like Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley a lot more than I do Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, because their particular experiences/existence are just a bit more complicated and they haven't turned eighteen as yet. Kate Bishop is a rich girl, and yet, because of her gender, she's pretty vulnerable in the way that is particular to females; her traumas, as much as they've shaped her, they don't define her. Kate is protective, smart and tough, but yet soft in the ways that matter. For Eli, oh, Eli. After what was done to his grandfather, he pretty much puts on a costume and becomes a hero, in a society that undermines his existence everyday. By lowered expectations, poverty skewed to race and blue collar jobs, poor schools (getting into a magnet school is a BFD). Eli knows things and yet, he's tangled with drug use, and he's angry and stroppy.
Oh, and because this pairing can't interesting enough, they are an interracial couple.
Oy.
I've long suspected the reason why people don't write Kate/Eli much might be the IR aspect of it, and for a lot of reasons, I don't blame them. I have been in IR relationships myself (although the situation is reversed, also, I'm nothing like Eli in the ways that matter, so, I'm not writing myself into being, y'all.), and at times, I find certain lumps of it frustrating, and I was never clued up like Eli was at his age 1. No lie, half of the time, when I look at him with Kate Bishop, I see danger ahead. I want to be like his grandma, and sit him down over biscuits and lashings of tea so I can whisper words of wisdom in his shell like.
I want to say, "Beware, Eli," but not in the ways of Jill Scott (as much as I sympathise with some of the points in the article), but in the ways of caring for a character that you don't want to see him get his heart broken. In that you fall for a young woman, who has privilege in areas you don't, and there's a far line between accepting things as 'just is' versus what you want to agitate. Or, there's a time when you're a poc in a relationship with a white person, and something happens that rocks your divine being in a bad way, and it's all just intellectual curiosity to them.
Someone might call you a name, or you're stranded at a family gathering and everyone is talking about their genealogy from the Normandy Conquest, or the Domesday book (or I guess, in American speak, from Ellis island or The Mayflower) and they ask, "Have you ever thought about tracing your family tree?" and your past is mixed up with slavery, lost peoples, or indentured labour, people whom history never had any truck with in the first place. The meal pretty much now sawdust in your mouth, and you're torn between rage and utter face palm. At best, your partner might sympathise, but just won't 'get it' in the instinctive way that you do, and at the time, emotions are just pummelling you at all angles and you can't breathe, can't think, and it's all instinct to curl in on yourself until you stop raging to form words.
I wonder, if I'm at the age of where I am, and I still am caught off guard by this, how would a seventeen year old feel?
Then, for Kate, yeah, she has privilege of money and wealth and her race, but then she has her traumas. She's lost her mum, and in a terrible way, she lost herself. Not in the way of Tyler Swift and connecting self to hymen, no, but in the way that a horrific assault can break you, scatter your confidence and world view about, and when you gather the pieces, you can remake yourself, but you won't be the same. You hope that you're better, so much better, but never the same. Kate has had to be tough, because she'd lose the rest of herself if she wasn't - and probably when she looks at Eli, there's the suspicion that he loves her like one does a poem. As in, the abstract quality of it, the thrill with ideas that the pretty lines espouse. But would he feel the same if he knew - everything? Sometimes, there are questions you don't want to know the answer to, because in order to ask, you have to give too much of yourself away2.
Oh, there are feelings there, the broad, bold swath of them, because at sixteen/seventeen, nuance doesn't play into it. They can't parse emotions like adults can, and teenage/young adult relationships are not forever. They can't be, nor should they be, because sometimes, people don't change as quickly as you need them to, and you can't be all things to each other forever. Which is why I can understand the Kate/Tommy/Eli love triangle the comics have going on there, and can't blame Kate for it. She's learnt to protect herself, in the ways that matter, and pledges to protect others, because in a lot of ways, it's easier.
Then, because ryuutchi is a cruel muse, she throws gender inversion into her prompts as well. What if Eli were a young woman of colour? Or Kate (now Kyle) a victim of a violent sexual assault trauma. How would that impact on their relationship? I pretty much gave it the old college try here, but I'm still thinking about it. I might go back, with clearer eyes. Oh, and there are other stories, like Eli as a Princess, and Kate as his knight, and I'm having the issues whirl like a dervish through my head, and as of yet, there's no definitive story, just a thought3.
There's a theory, which escapes my mind right now, that says, once two things brush against each other, they can never be the same. Strangely, writing about stroppy teens has changed my focus in writing, and probably my interactions with fandom as well to a point. After I started writing Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley, I started looking for more relationships apart from Steve/Tony to write about. Ultimate Sam Wilson, Rikki Barnes/Sofia Corazon, and although I might not even get a look in (even from the prompters themselves, LOL), it's okay, because at least I'm not in danger of writing the same story, anymore, and I have the space to write what makes me flinch, or forces me to wonder 'what if'.
The stage- when I go this way - is a lot smaller, the lights a helluva lot dimmer, and I grow mole like, getting accustomed to the darker spaces, rather like the press of tunnels, because the space is a bit of a squeeze in some areas when writing 'the other' and very unpopular, but that's cool too. Doing this reminds me why I picked up knitting in the first place. It's solitary, it's me working with a pattern (but with words, and canon instead of yarn), and making that isn't mine in terms of characters and their trademarks, no, but mine in terms of interpretation and emotion, and sometimes, that has to be enough4.
1 Although I knew my history - from the indigenous people of the Caribbean, all the way to Marcus Garvey, Hailie Selassi, grew up on Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and celebrated Nelson Mandela's freedom when he got relased- because as a post colonial society, the thrust of the education was this: Although the governments know that they're preparing a lot of people for flight (i.e. migration), they were still going to give them the best education they could afford (paraphrased from The White Paper of Education MOE : 1998, Jamaica), I didn't really appreciate the breath and strength of it until years later.
2 I make an attempt to answer the question here. Like everything else, fanfiction is not perspective as much as say, personal interpretation.
3 Seriously, it's just a thought. If it were art, this would be a sketch of a study instead of a complete work. My efforts are here.
4: Ironies, am currently pinch hitting in a cap_im big bang, what am I like?
In February of this year, I pretty much started having questions about writing Steve Rogers/Tony Stark. Like, if I weren't careful, I'd be writing the same thing again and again, and to be honest, it seemed a bit hypocritical for me wanting to read stories with poc and women taking a centre role, and yet not writing these things myself, and yet, I didn't want to write 'the other' just for the sake of writing; I had to like the characters very much for them to rent space in my head. To be honest with you, writing is a hobby that takes time away from other things. For instance, me wrapping my head around knitting lace (don't ask), or even just sleeping.
When I write, the time is taken up with research, plotting, self editing (because I hate asking people to edit, I feel as if I'm wasting their time, and get tangled into thoughts of quid pro quo. For a time, the characters live in my head. In order to get my emotions on the page, I do have to open myself to feel what they feel, as a result, there have been times when I've had to take a break from a piece of work, and go and walk until the dark mood goes away.
In addition to all those things, I stumbled into a rut: comfortable, true, a middling level writer in a small fandom, and the assurance of if I posted, I got some sort of feedback, even more so; but the Ultimates verse was going all a bit Pete Tong, Marvel's Heroic Age had yet to come about, and I was restless. At the time, it boiled down to either me writing something else, or leaving fandom and writing as a whole. Sensing that I might have been lost to lace knitting, fairisle and jumper finishing forever,
valtyr recommended me to
comment_fic. There were lonely prompts, she said, in archives. People threw them out there, not necessarily expecting them to be answered, so no pressure, which suited me to the ground.
You see, I tend to work really well to a brief, "Character X, Y, specific situation". If left to my own devices to write my own stories, I'll pretty much write about two people in a room, trading ripostes and laughing at their own wit for pages, doing my terrible impression of Oscar Wilde. However, if I have to write to other people's needs, I'll go out and read the characters, try and get to know them. In addition, with the comment fic limit being around six hundred words, it was a chance of curtailing myself to just rabbit on, because I knew that the story needed to end now.
Yeah, so, cruising around comment_fic, and in cruising, I discover Young Avengers prompts. I liked the comic well enough, I pretty bought bought the trades about eighteen months before because of the pretty art (shallow, I know). It didn't hurt that I encountered teens when I first started out teaching, so I think I knew enough about teenagers to make a decent fist of fic - when everything is SO IMPORTANT OMG, and yet, they were childish enough to laugh at their own bodily excretions (teenage boys? Can be disgusting). They could be bullies, and yet, be pretty noble in their own way, but Providence, so young. So yeah, okay, I could do Young Avengers. I found that most of the Teddy/Billy prompts were filled, and Kate Bishop as a girl got her prompts filled, but 'ello, 'ello, 'ello? Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley ones were left out on their tod. Ryuutchi (the original poster) would put forth a lot of prompts, most of 'em cute, a few touching, and quite bold, but no takers.
I do remember admiring the poster's faith, because some of these prompts were going on a year old, and sometimes, faith isn't necessarily praying for the mountain to be moved, or world peace; it's pretty much just throwing a wish into a wind, in the hope that it gets answered. I do know that in the scheme of things fanfic isn't the most pressing thing in the world, but it's nice when someone writes a prompt for you, because it means at that particular time, their focus is on your wish, on your prompt. They've taken time out of their day to write something for you, and in a world where time is money, and precious, and supposedly dictated by doing a lot of things for other people because your livelihood depends on it, for someone to write something for you, just because at that point in their life, they thought and sweated buckets just to write for you? That's aces.
Long story short, I started answering the Kate/Eli prompts, and by getting into the prompts, I discovered, that I liked the pairing. In another happy coincidence (as much as it doesn't seem so when I'm wrestling with a prompt or two), I have the space to think and brood about relationships, their intricacies, and how absolutely finite they are.
In certain ways, I like Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley a lot more than I do Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, because their particular experiences/existence are just a bit more complicated and they haven't turned eighteen as yet. Kate Bishop is a rich girl, and yet, because of her gender, she's pretty vulnerable in the way that is particular to females; her traumas, as much as they've shaped her, they don't define her. Kate is protective, smart and tough, but yet soft in the ways that matter. For Eli, oh, Eli. After what was done to his grandfather, he pretty much puts on a costume and becomes a hero, in a society that undermines his existence everyday. By lowered expectations, poverty skewed to race and blue collar jobs, poor schools (getting into a magnet school is a BFD). Eli knows things and yet, he's tangled with drug use, and he's angry and stroppy.
Oh, and because this pairing can't interesting enough, they are an interracial couple.
Oy.
I've long suspected the reason why people don't write Kate/Eli much might be the IR aspect of it, and for a lot of reasons, I don't blame them. I have been in IR relationships myself (although the situation is reversed, also, I'm nothing like Eli in the ways that matter, so, I'm not writing myself into being, y'all.), and at times, I find certain lumps of it frustrating, and I was never clued up like Eli was at his age 1. No lie, half of the time, when I look at him with Kate Bishop, I see danger ahead. I want to be like his grandma, and sit him down over biscuits and lashings of tea so I can whisper words of wisdom in his shell like.
I want to say, "Beware, Eli," but not in the ways of Jill Scott (as much as I sympathise with some of the points in the article), but in the ways of caring for a character that you don't want to see him get his heart broken. In that you fall for a young woman, who has privilege in areas you don't, and there's a far line between accepting things as 'just is' versus what you want to agitate. Or, there's a time when you're a poc in a relationship with a white person, and something happens that rocks your divine being in a bad way, and it's all just intellectual curiosity to them.
Someone might call you a name, or you're stranded at a family gathering and everyone is talking about their genealogy from the Normandy Conquest, or the Domesday book (or I guess, in American speak, from Ellis island or The Mayflower) and they ask, "Have you ever thought about tracing your family tree?" and your past is mixed up with slavery, lost peoples, or indentured labour, people whom history never had any truck with in the first place. The meal pretty much now sawdust in your mouth, and you're torn between rage and utter face palm. At best, your partner might sympathise, but just won't 'get it' in the instinctive way that you do, and at the time, emotions are just pummelling you at all angles and you can't breathe, can't think, and it's all instinct to curl in on yourself until you stop raging to form words.
I wonder, if I'm at the age of where I am, and I still am caught off guard by this, how would a seventeen year old feel?
Then, for Kate, yeah, she has privilege of money and wealth and her race, but then she has her traumas. She's lost her mum, and in a terrible way, she lost herself. Not in the way of Tyler Swift and connecting self to hymen, no, but in the way that a horrific assault can break you, scatter your confidence and world view about, and when you gather the pieces, you can remake yourself, but you won't be the same. You hope that you're better, so much better, but never the same. Kate has had to be tough, because she'd lose the rest of herself if she wasn't - and probably when she looks at Eli, there's the suspicion that he loves her like one does a poem. As in, the abstract quality of it, the thrill with ideas that the pretty lines espouse. But would he feel the same if he knew - everything? Sometimes, there are questions you don't want to know the answer to, because in order to ask, you have to give too much of yourself away2.
Oh, there are feelings there, the broad, bold swath of them, because at sixteen/seventeen, nuance doesn't play into it. They can't parse emotions like adults can, and teenage/young adult relationships are not forever. They can't be, nor should they be, because sometimes, people don't change as quickly as you need them to, and you can't be all things to each other forever. Which is why I can understand the Kate/Tommy/Eli love triangle the comics have going on there, and can't blame Kate for it. She's learnt to protect herself, in the ways that matter, and pledges to protect others, because in a lot of ways, it's easier.
Then, because ryuutchi is a cruel muse, she throws gender inversion into her prompts as well. What if Eli were a young woman of colour? Or Kate (now Kyle) a victim of a violent sexual assault trauma. How would that impact on their relationship? I pretty much gave it the old college try here, but I'm still thinking about it. I might go back, with clearer eyes. Oh, and there are other stories, like Eli as a Princess, and Kate as his knight, and I'm having the issues whirl like a dervish through my head, and as of yet, there's no definitive story, just a thought3.
There's a theory, which escapes my mind right now, that says, once two things brush against each other, they can never be the same. Strangely, writing about stroppy teens has changed my focus in writing, and probably my interactions with fandom as well to a point. After I started writing Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley, I started looking for more relationships apart from Steve/Tony to write about. Ultimate Sam Wilson, Rikki Barnes/Sofia Corazon, and although I might not even get a look in (even from the prompters themselves, LOL), it's okay, because at least I'm not in danger of writing the same story, anymore, and I have the space to write what makes me flinch, or forces me to wonder 'what if'.
The stage- when I go this way - is a lot smaller, the lights a helluva lot dimmer, and I grow mole like, getting accustomed to the darker spaces, rather like the press of tunnels, because the space is a bit of a squeeze in some areas when writing 'the other' and very unpopular, but that's cool too. Doing this reminds me why I picked up knitting in the first place. It's solitary, it's me working with a pattern (but with words, and canon instead of yarn), and making that isn't mine in terms of characters and their trademarks, no, but mine in terms of interpretation and emotion, and sometimes, that has to be enough4.
1 Although I knew my history - from the indigenous people of the Caribbean, all the way to Marcus Garvey, Hailie Selassi, grew up on Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and celebrated Nelson Mandela's freedom when he got relased- because as a post colonial society, the thrust of the education was this: Although the governments know that they're preparing a lot of people for flight (i.e. migration), they were still going to give them the best education they could afford (paraphrased from The White Paper of Education MOE : 1998, Jamaica), I didn't really appreciate the breath and strength of it until years later.
2 I make an attempt to answer the question here. Like everything else, fanfiction is not perspective as much as say, personal interpretation.
3 Seriously, it's just a thought. If it were art, this would be a sketch of a study instead of a complete work. My efforts are here.
4: Ironies, am currently pinch hitting in a cap_im big bang, what am I like?