Et in Italia reprise, from Pros-land
I am in the Land of Pros - London, of course. I've been offline for the past few days, because I was in Milton Keynes at Nattercon - a NBP (nothin' but Pros *g*) weekend, and it was beyond wonderful (more about the con next post, but right now I'm fighting post-con blues and want to write about something else). I've been here since Thursday morning; Thursday night mandragora1 set up a fabulous fannish evening for me - we ate, drank, and talked about erections. What more could one ask?? And another tonight, before I head for home tomorrow morning....
Pursuant to my self-imposed goal of Proudly Embracing My Obsessions, I have to reveal that I'm in that mindset - which some of you out there *must* be familiar with, right? - in which My Fandom (I'll let you guess which one that might be) is a continuous humming presence near the top of my mind - everything is reminding me of Pros; scenes from stories and eps constantly flicker through my thoughts; it all feels so close.
And on that note, I haven't been able to get Sebastian's story Et in Italia Ego (this is a pdf file) out of my head since since paris7am posted about it here last week ....
I've said much of this before, in my own posts and in comments (I figure it's okay to crib from myself *g*), but for me this is important stuff - goes to the essence of why I'm a fan, why I'm a slasher - and I feel the need to keep trying to work it all out, even if I repeat myself.
I'd skimmed through Et in Italia back when I was in the midst of the Circuit Archive overhaul; I assign ratings and some warnings to the stories in the archive, so I have to at least skim through all of them to see if they are NC-17, if there's death, what the pairing is, etc. etc. I skimmed Et in Italia enough to know that the ending wasn't happy. By this point I doubt it's a surprise to anyone who reads my posts that happy endings are pretty important to me, so I left it at that and never intended to read the story again.
But then Paris posted about it. I love her story posts, because they don't make any pretense at being lit crit - they are beautifully, unashamedly, unapologetically passionate: here are some things I love about this story, this is what it made me feel, here, read this, see the beauty of it. She's posted before about Pros stories that I love - one that comes to mind is her post about a story called Chances, by Angelfish Archivist, which I rec'ed on crack_van. I adore that story and agreed wholeheartedly with everything Paris said about it.
Et in Italia, though, is much tougher for me. The thing is, in many ways this is a perfect story, and particularly, a stunningly, exquisitely gorgeous love story. It's Sebastian at her finest: the writing is liquidly beautiful, the characterizations are just about perfect, she captures the remarkable bond between B and D so amazingly well; their relationship is endearing and incredibly moving and passionate and deep and real in every way, from the day-to-day snark and humor to the amazing, amazing sex. It's got love and emotional intensity in spades, is so immensely touching, and yet it's never sappy or trite. Truly a masterpiece, a jewel of a story....
....but for the ending. This is a holiday story, Bodie and Doyle on a coach trip through Italy. They fall irrevocably, irredeemably in love - but as it turns out, this "perfect holiday moment" (to quote daraq) is to be just that, and nothing more than that: a one-time thing, a perfect moment in time that will (it appears) never be repeated and cannot be carried back into their "real" life in any way, shape, or form, other than as a memory. Paris and others pointed out various bits and pieces of the story that could be viewed as hints that the end of the holiday isn't the end of "them" - and that view of those bits may or may not be "right," but the fact remains that the author wrote the ending as if it were the ending, in a very flat-footed and really unambiguous way: the coach trip back home was "the longest journey they had ever made and with nothing for them at the end of it." The last line? "Thanks for everything, mate. It was nice while it lasted."
I mean ... punch me in the stomach, why don't you. To me there simply isn't a lot of hope to find in an ending like this. Oh, it's possible to argue that this is their view of it, this is what B and D are expecting to happen at the time, and they might well be wrong - that their actions, their feelings, speak louder than their conscious words or thoughts. But it's hard for me to buy that, because Sebastian generally doesn't write a typical "unreliable narrator"; her stories, this one included, are written with a more omniscient POV, and unreliable narrator generally requires more of a limited third person perspective. She, the writer, knows too much to make unreliable narrator really work.
So to me, this ending reads as simply ... hopeless. Not ambiguous, not ambivalent, not uncertain, but hopeless. Hopeless in the sense that their "fling," their "love affair," is over: that's it, done, finis, never again. Back to real life now, and having to live forever with the memory of this perfect moment, nothing else ever quite living up to it, knowing that nothing will ever be as good, but giving it up nonetheless, because ... because why? Because it would be too hard to make it work in "real life"? I'm not precisely sure why, actually, which is part of the problem for me: Sebastian didn't set up a reason compelling enough to make me understand, make me believe, that it had to be this way, that it would be so flat-footed, that they would give this up so readily and unquestioningly, as if there really were no other option.
One of the commenters to Paris's post said she likes stories that "show that it's more important to be who you are and follow your own path than to stay in a romantic relationship, if you can't do both at the same time." But this particular story contained no really convincing (to me) explanation for why they couldn't do both at the same time, why being "true to themselves" would require them to give up the romantic relationship, why for Bodie and Doyle "being who they are" meant they couldn't be together. Quite the contrary, in fact: it seemed so clear that "who they are" were people in love with each other, meant for each other, and that really being true to themselves would be staying together, while not doing so would be copping out, in a way, taking the easy path, the expected path - bowing to pressure. Because of course there were other options for them - there were gay couples even way back then (!), even with the laws and the job risk, even if they often had to live fairly closeted lives. But here, in this story ... they found this perfect thing, something they both clearly thought was perfect, really the "romance of the century" in Bodie's (meant to be mocking but all-too-true) words, and then they just ... threw it away, tossed it, gave up on it.
Of course I hate that because it's not a "happy ending" (about which more below) - but the reasons for my dissatisfaction go much deeper. Really it's a writing issue - like I said, it simply didn't feel to me like this ending followed naturally or inevitably from what went before; Sebastian didn't come close to convincing me why it needed to be this way, that it needed to be this way. There's an overwhelming sense throughout that this is a moment out of time, magical; that it can't survive in the real world, that the magic will be "revoked," that they can't take it with them - the sharp bittersweetness of this feeling, the sense that, in Paris's words, "it's a sad and beautiful world," is conveyed so strongly and so effectively that at first I never questioned it. I bought into the idea that of course it had to be this way, as much as I hate that.
But then I was explaining the story to a Pros friend who hadn't read it, and she asked me to explain why they couldn't be together, why it had to end, and I stuttered and fumbled, realizing ultimately that I didn't have much of an answer to give. Why? Because it would be impossible? That's what Bodie says, but that begs the question: why impossible. Because they might lose their jobs? Is that it? Because it's too hard to have a gay relationship, because society doesn't accept it, it would be too difficult for them?
That seemed to me to be what it boiled down to - and that's what I really can't get over, because at bottom, this just isn't the kind of behavior I want to see from these characters, not what I want to believe of them - not what I do believe of them. I don't want to believe they'd give up so readily on something that clearly mattered so much, don't want to believe that they'd be so swayed by external perceptions that they'd make no efforts whatsoever to be true to themselves, to each other. That they'd be so ... craven, really, because that's how it strikes me: craven and fearful and conformist behavior, and from men who aren't conformists, men who've never let what they are "supposed" to do govern them, who seem never to have been too concerned that they aren't part of the mainstream - men who, in Sebastian's own words, are outsiders already. In the end, even aside from my desire for stories to end happily, I want B and D to be the kind of people - I believe they are the kind of people - who would make the other choice.
Not, of course, that it'd be easy, that there should have been no dilemma, no question - it need not have been a "sappy" happy ending, a utopic happily-ever-after with no conflict, no uncertainty, no ambiguity - that's not what I'm looking for, necessarily. I mean, I do want my slash stories to have "happy endings" - but I should define my term; by that I mean that I want the characters to be together and the ending to be hopeful, permitting me to believe, suggesting if not saying, that they will remain that way, no matter how rough the road proves to be. I have more than just a passing interest in the fate of "my" pairing - in fact, my interest is probably neurotic and obsessive and a sign of an unbalanced mind, but whatever. The thought of their togetherness - and more than that, the elusive possibility of a bond that transcends normal, real-life limitations, a bond or connection that is "meant to be," that will in some indefinable sense live on - is comfort for me, a refuge, an escape and in an odd way a source of hope.... I want a sense, a hint, of two souls recognizing each other, of inevitability, of meant-to-be-togetherness.
Oh, now I sound like bad adolescent poetry - and as a general rule I don't want any of this stuff to be explicit in my fanfic, don't want them making declarations to each other about how it's meant to be, or how they've found their soulmates. Blech. But underneath it all, all the hard-guy stuff and the real-life stuff, I want the sense of it.
Am I a wimp for feeling this way? I know there is an attitude in various parts of fandom that "good" stories don't, can't have happy endings, that quality writing must have angst and "unpredictability," that a happy ending is boring and simplistic, the hallmark of an amateur, not a "real" writer, that endings must be "realistic" and real life doesn't have happy endings - the corollary being that readers who like them lack discernment, can't handle reality, or whatever.
But ... well, I've said before, and I continue to believe, that slash, fanfic, is not about "realism." No matter what fans say about wanting "realism," I believe there are very few of us who want totally, entirely, 100% realistic stories (whatever that means, anyway). But people's threshholds differ, as to how much and which kinds of "unreality" will throw them out of a story, as to when they're willing to suspend disbelief and when they're not. Sex that seems too "unrealistically" perfect won't read "true" to me - but then again, there are certain realities of sex that I don't want to read about, and I generally want my slashfic sex to be better than most real sex is - I want unusual, possibly unattainable sexual compatibility between the guys in my pairing
And the same when it comes to relationships: if indeed it is true that happy endings are unrealistic, that things are unlikely to work out, well then I don't want that much realism in my slash. This relates to my recent post about slash-as-fairytale, or folklore; the idea that fanfic has a goal beyond the literary, that the tropes and patterns serve a purpose, that we - or I, at least - look for, need, something from the stories beyond literary merit. Why is it that fairytales end "and they all lived happily ever after"? It's not realistic, after all... but it gives the intended audience something they want, something they need, and the tales are no less valuable or meritorious for that predictability. In fact, the predictability is essential to the form.
Fanfic generally isn't quite so ... idealized, I suppose; generally Bodie and Doyle aren't so obviously archetypes - they have real individual personality in addition to their arguable archetypicality; generally the "unrealism" isn't quite so obvious - we're not in an unidentifiable land long ago and far away, ignoring AUs for the moment (though on second thought, think about In the Public Interest, which takes place in some unidentified little town, Anytown, England; is that really so different?). Nonetheless, for me the general predictability of fanfic is a good thing. And as for the idea that "good writing" must be have the ending opposite the one most readers "want" - ie, a dark ending - well, if anything, I think it takes more skill to write within the "templates" of fanfic, to make fanfic "clichés" fresh and vital, to make a reader love a story despite knowing how it will end. I once read a post in which someone compared fanfic to a haiku - and the constraints make a good haiku pretty damn difficult to write. It's a lot easier not to be bound by form - and creating surprises within the predictability is a pretty difficult task.
Ucannily coincidentally, and apropos of this, I just checked my friends list for the first time in a few days - after having written most of this yesterday - and found this post by scatteredlogic (referenced on metafandom). Scatteredlogic wrote this:
it seems that it's become increasingly fashionable in some places to derisively dismiss any fic with a happy ending as inconsequential fluff. Apparently, to be worthwhile, a story must bleed despair, weep anguish, and leave your reader craving a Xanax because everybody knows that you can't be a serious artiste if you write fluff.
Which is precisely the attitude I'm referring to. In the comments, mariannelee wrote:
I think there is a misconception that because something is 'serious' it is more difficult to write, and therefore more valuable.... Death and unhappy endings are sad, and will make people cry, but they are not very challenging to write, are they? You make your reader care about your characters, which is a bit of a skill, but one of the simpler ones..., then you kill them, or someone they care about, or leave them brokenhearted.... happy endings that are believable and not sappy are just as much a challenge as the sad ones.
Which is what I was trying to say up above.
Anyway, I digress (and just for the record, I'm not suggesting that Sebastian shared this attitude, that that was the reason she wrote ambiguous endings - I have no idea if that's the case. And I'm certainly not suggesting that she didn't have enough skill to write a convincing, non-sappy happy ending!) The point is that for me, fanfic, slashfic, serves a purpose, and generally that purpose is served only with endings that bring the two characters together and offer some sort of hope for their future togetherness, permit me to believe that this is it for them, even if it's not perfect, even if there are no declarations or flowers or hearts or I-love-yous. I need to be able to retreat to the place inside me where B and D are always together, in each other’s arms, stepping in the way of bullets for one another, fucking one another’s brains out (which last concept I find endlessly comforting for some reason!); that is sacred for me. (As another commenter to scatteredlogic's post wrote, "I read to escape, not to take another helping of tough reality, thanks so much.")
And maybe I am a wimp, maybe I'm a fluff-loving escapist who can't deal with the harsh realities of life (to paraphrase shiv5468's (satirical!) comment in scatteredlogic's post: "But only Darkfic comes pre-packaged with an Attitude that says "oooh, I'm Deep and Meaningful and Starkly Realistic and if you don't like me it's just because you can't deal with the harsh realities of life, you fluff-loving escapist, you.") But I find that I have an extremely limited ability to cope with stories whose endings are inconsistent with that ... togetherness, that bond, the thought of which I turn to for comfort if not for sanity. Stories in which the characters aren't together at the end, when well executed, have the power really to bring me to my knees for days, fighting a constant dragging feeling of despondency and hopelessness, struggling to regain my equilibrium. Witness this - it's been more than a week since Paris's post about Et in Italia, and it still nags at me, I still feel the need to write this post (though the weekend immersed entirely in Pros stuff made it all feel less acute; there is comfort in numbers! *g*)
The thing is, I simply don't seem to have the capacity to make lemonade out of lemons. Left to my own, my thoughts have always turned toward despair, or at least toward fatalism and hopelessness. If something is not explicitly positive, if I'm left to interpret and choose a direction myself - well, I'm never going to assume the happy ending. And even if I did, I simply don't believe myself, can't give any credibility to the products of my own imagination. I've always been this way - I can't get rid of the constant awareness that my own ideas are made up, they're fiction, which is probably a big reason why I'm not a fiction writer myself. My own fantasy world, such as it is, has no legitimacy for me. I love fanfic so much because in fanfic someone else generally spells it all out for me, to a greater or lesser extent; I don't have to do the work myself, to try to put the hints together and then make the doomed-to-failure effort to believe my own inferences. I don't need every single thing spelled out in every story, but I do need the hope, at least, to be explicit. And I simply cannot find the hope in the ending to Et in Italia, no matter how much weight I try to put on the various bits that were pointed out as being hints of a happier ultimate resolution.
So where does that leave me with Et in Italia? Well, terribly terribly conflicted. It is, to quote various comments to Paris's post, brilliantly written with realistic characterizations and a fascinating plot; it has shimmering, heart-stopping, stomach-clenching emotional intensity; it's lyrical and gorgeous and beautifully written; it makes your heart ache in the most exquisite way (even before the ending, I mean). The sex scenes are so unutterably lovely; their reactions ring so true, are so sexy and them. It's such a perfect love story; oh how I want to love it.
And yet ... it just doesn't work for me. I think about the story and my mind soars into the ether - and then hits a brick wall and plummets to the ground. It's one thing to have an ending that is convincing but not the one I want, and depending on the circumstances I may be able to enjoy an ending that isn't so convincing but is the one I want - but I simply can't find a way to love a story with an ending that is neither convincing nor appealing to me. I just can't get around it, and I can't help but feel disappointed - even slightly (and irrationally, I know) angry at the author, for disappointing me, for coming so excruciatingly close to being perfect but (to my mind) falling short at the very last minute. Not to mention angry at B and D, for being such damn wimps!
What I really want is for someone (someone else, since as I said I can't believe myself) to make it work for me, to write the story, or at least tell me the story, of what happens next, of how it doesn't work out the way they think it will, of how they really can't let it go. Absent that, I suppose I need to let the story go, appreciate its beauty and its strengths (which are many) while accepting that I will never be able to fully reconcile or accept it, that I will never love it.
Ah, I'm not precisely sure where that exercise got me... although maybe it served as an exorcism of sorts! Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to wallow in the Pros obsession - and for those of you who care, next post will be all about Nattercon ....
Pursuant to my self-imposed goal of Proudly Embracing My Obsessions, I have to reveal that I'm in that mindset - which some of you out there *must* be familiar with, right? - in which My Fandom (I'll let you guess which one that might be) is a continuous humming presence near the top of my mind - everything is reminding me of Pros; scenes from stories and eps constantly flicker through my thoughts; it all feels so close.
And on that note, I haven't been able to get Sebastian's story Et in Italia Ego (this is a pdf file) out of my head since since paris7am posted about it here last week ....
I've said much of this before, in my own posts and in comments (I figure it's okay to crib from myself *g*), but for me this is important stuff - goes to the essence of why I'm a fan, why I'm a slasher - and I feel the need to keep trying to work it all out, even if I repeat myself.
I'd skimmed through Et in Italia back when I was in the midst of the Circuit Archive overhaul; I assign ratings and some warnings to the stories in the archive, so I have to at least skim through all of them to see if they are NC-17, if there's death, what the pairing is, etc. etc. I skimmed Et in Italia enough to know that the ending wasn't happy. By this point I doubt it's a surprise to anyone who reads my posts that happy endings are pretty important to me, so I left it at that and never intended to read the story again.
But then Paris posted about it. I love her story posts, because they don't make any pretense at being lit crit - they are beautifully, unashamedly, unapologetically passionate: here are some things I love about this story, this is what it made me feel, here, read this, see the beauty of it. She's posted before about Pros stories that I love - one that comes to mind is her post about a story called Chances, by Angelfish Archivist, which I rec'ed on crack_van. I adore that story and agreed wholeheartedly with everything Paris said about it.
Et in Italia, though, is much tougher for me. The thing is, in many ways this is a perfect story, and particularly, a stunningly, exquisitely gorgeous love story. It's Sebastian at her finest: the writing is liquidly beautiful, the characterizations are just about perfect, she captures the remarkable bond between B and D so amazingly well; their relationship is endearing and incredibly moving and passionate and deep and real in every way, from the day-to-day snark and humor to the amazing, amazing sex. It's got love and emotional intensity in spades, is so immensely touching, and yet it's never sappy or trite. Truly a masterpiece, a jewel of a story....
....but for the ending. This is a holiday story, Bodie and Doyle on a coach trip through Italy. They fall irrevocably, irredeemably in love - but as it turns out, this "perfect holiday moment" (to quote daraq) is to be just that, and nothing more than that: a one-time thing, a perfect moment in time that will (it appears) never be repeated and cannot be carried back into their "real" life in any way, shape, or form, other than as a memory. Paris and others pointed out various bits and pieces of the story that could be viewed as hints that the end of the holiday isn't the end of "them" - and that view of those bits may or may not be "right," but the fact remains that the author wrote the ending as if it were the ending, in a very flat-footed and really unambiguous way: the coach trip back home was "the longest journey they had ever made and with nothing for them at the end of it." The last line? "Thanks for everything, mate. It was nice while it lasted."
I mean ... punch me in the stomach, why don't you. To me there simply isn't a lot of hope to find in an ending like this. Oh, it's possible to argue that this is their view of it, this is what B and D are expecting to happen at the time, and they might well be wrong - that their actions, their feelings, speak louder than their conscious words or thoughts. But it's hard for me to buy that, because Sebastian generally doesn't write a typical "unreliable narrator"; her stories, this one included, are written with a more omniscient POV, and unreliable narrator generally requires more of a limited third person perspective. She, the writer, knows too much to make unreliable narrator really work.
So to me, this ending reads as simply ... hopeless. Not ambiguous, not ambivalent, not uncertain, but hopeless. Hopeless in the sense that their "fling," their "love affair," is over: that's it, done, finis, never again. Back to real life now, and having to live forever with the memory of this perfect moment, nothing else ever quite living up to it, knowing that nothing will ever be as good, but giving it up nonetheless, because ... because why? Because it would be too hard to make it work in "real life"? I'm not precisely sure why, actually, which is part of the problem for me: Sebastian didn't set up a reason compelling enough to make me understand, make me believe, that it had to be this way, that it would be so flat-footed, that they would give this up so readily and unquestioningly, as if there really were no other option.
One of the commenters to Paris's post said she likes stories that "show that it's more important to be who you are and follow your own path than to stay in a romantic relationship, if you can't do both at the same time." But this particular story contained no really convincing (to me) explanation for why they couldn't do both at the same time, why being "true to themselves" would require them to give up the romantic relationship, why for Bodie and Doyle "being who they are" meant they couldn't be together. Quite the contrary, in fact: it seemed so clear that "who they are" were people in love with each other, meant for each other, and that really being true to themselves would be staying together, while not doing so would be copping out, in a way, taking the easy path, the expected path - bowing to pressure. Because of course there were other options for them - there were gay couples even way back then (!), even with the laws and the job risk, even if they often had to live fairly closeted lives. But here, in this story ... they found this perfect thing, something they both clearly thought was perfect, really the "romance of the century" in Bodie's (meant to be mocking but all-too-true) words, and then they just ... threw it away, tossed it, gave up on it.
Of course I hate that because it's not a "happy ending" (about which more below) - but the reasons for my dissatisfaction go much deeper. Really it's a writing issue - like I said, it simply didn't feel to me like this ending followed naturally or inevitably from what went before; Sebastian didn't come close to convincing me why it needed to be this way, that it needed to be this way. There's an overwhelming sense throughout that this is a moment out of time, magical; that it can't survive in the real world, that the magic will be "revoked," that they can't take it with them - the sharp bittersweetness of this feeling, the sense that, in Paris's words, "it's a sad and beautiful world," is conveyed so strongly and so effectively that at first I never questioned it. I bought into the idea that of course it had to be this way, as much as I hate that.
But then I was explaining the story to a Pros friend who hadn't read it, and she asked me to explain why they couldn't be together, why it had to end, and I stuttered and fumbled, realizing ultimately that I didn't have much of an answer to give. Why? Because it would be impossible? That's what Bodie says, but that begs the question: why impossible. Because they might lose their jobs? Is that it? Because it's too hard to have a gay relationship, because society doesn't accept it, it would be too difficult for them?
That seemed to me to be what it boiled down to - and that's what I really can't get over, because at bottom, this just isn't the kind of behavior I want to see from these characters, not what I want to believe of them - not what I do believe of them. I don't want to believe they'd give up so readily on something that clearly mattered so much, don't want to believe that they'd be so swayed by external perceptions that they'd make no efforts whatsoever to be true to themselves, to each other. That they'd be so ... craven, really, because that's how it strikes me: craven and fearful and conformist behavior, and from men who aren't conformists, men who've never let what they are "supposed" to do govern them, who seem never to have been too concerned that they aren't part of the mainstream - men who, in Sebastian's own words, are outsiders already. In the end, even aside from my desire for stories to end happily, I want B and D to be the kind of people - I believe they are the kind of people - who would make the other choice.
Not, of course, that it'd be easy, that there should have been no dilemma, no question - it need not have been a "sappy" happy ending, a utopic happily-ever-after with no conflict, no uncertainty, no ambiguity - that's not what I'm looking for, necessarily. I mean, I do want my slash stories to have "happy endings" - but I should define my term; by that I mean that I want the characters to be together and the ending to be hopeful, permitting me to believe, suggesting if not saying, that they will remain that way, no matter how rough the road proves to be. I have more than just a passing interest in the fate of "my" pairing - in fact, my interest is probably neurotic and obsessive and a sign of an unbalanced mind, but whatever. The thought of their togetherness - and more than that, the elusive possibility of a bond that transcends normal, real-life limitations, a bond or connection that is "meant to be," that will in some indefinable sense live on - is comfort for me, a refuge, an escape and in an odd way a source of hope.... I want a sense, a hint, of two souls recognizing each other, of inevitability, of meant-to-be-togetherness.
Oh, now I sound like bad adolescent poetry - and as a general rule I don't want any of this stuff to be explicit in my fanfic, don't want them making declarations to each other about how it's meant to be, or how they've found their soulmates. Blech. But underneath it all, all the hard-guy stuff and the real-life stuff, I want the sense of it.
Am I a wimp for feeling this way? I know there is an attitude in various parts of fandom that "good" stories don't, can't have happy endings, that quality writing must have angst and "unpredictability," that a happy ending is boring and simplistic, the hallmark of an amateur, not a "real" writer, that endings must be "realistic" and real life doesn't have happy endings - the corollary being that readers who like them lack discernment, can't handle reality, or whatever.
But ... well, I've said before, and I continue to believe, that slash, fanfic, is not about "realism." No matter what fans say about wanting "realism," I believe there are very few of us who want totally, entirely, 100% realistic stories (whatever that means, anyway). But people's threshholds differ, as to how much and which kinds of "unreality" will throw them out of a story, as to when they're willing to suspend disbelief and when they're not. Sex that seems too "unrealistically" perfect won't read "true" to me - but then again, there are certain realities of sex that I don't want to read about, and I generally want my slashfic sex to be better than most real sex is - I want unusual, possibly unattainable sexual compatibility between the guys in my pairing
And the same when it comes to relationships: if indeed it is true that happy endings are unrealistic, that things are unlikely to work out, well then I don't want that much realism in my slash. This relates to my recent post about slash-as-fairytale, or folklore; the idea that fanfic has a goal beyond the literary, that the tropes and patterns serve a purpose, that we - or I, at least - look for, need, something from the stories beyond literary merit. Why is it that fairytales end "and they all lived happily ever after"? It's not realistic, after all... but it gives the intended audience something they want, something they need, and the tales are no less valuable or meritorious for that predictability. In fact, the predictability is essential to the form.
Fanfic generally isn't quite so ... idealized, I suppose; generally Bodie and Doyle aren't so obviously archetypes - they have real individual personality in addition to their arguable archetypicality; generally the "unrealism" isn't quite so obvious - we're not in an unidentifiable land long ago and far away, ignoring AUs for the moment (though on second thought, think about In the Public Interest, which takes place in some unidentified little town, Anytown, England; is that really so different?). Nonetheless, for me the general predictability of fanfic is a good thing. And as for the idea that "good writing" must be have the ending opposite the one most readers "want" - ie, a dark ending - well, if anything, I think it takes more skill to write within the "templates" of fanfic, to make fanfic "clichés" fresh and vital, to make a reader love a story despite knowing how it will end. I once read a post in which someone compared fanfic to a haiku - and the constraints make a good haiku pretty damn difficult to write. It's a lot easier not to be bound by form - and creating surprises within the predictability is a pretty difficult task.
Ucannily coincidentally, and apropos of this, I just checked my friends list for the first time in a few days - after having written most of this yesterday - and found this post by scatteredlogic (referenced on metafandom). Scatteredlogic wrote this:
it seems that it's become increasingly fashionable in some places to derisively dismiss any fic with a happy ending as inconsequential fluff. Apparently, to be worthwhile, a story must bleed despair, weep anguish, and leave your reader craving a Xanax because everybody knows that you can't be a serious artiste if you write fluff.
Which is precisely the attitude I'm referring to. In the comments, mariannelee wrote:
I think there is a misconception that because something is 'serious' it is more difficult to write, and therefore more valuable.... Death and unhappy endings are sad, and will make people cry, but they are not very challenging to write, are they? You make your reader care about your characters, which is a bit of a skill, but one of the simpler ones..., then you kill them, or someone they care about, or leave them brokenhearted.... happy endings that are believable and not sappy are just as much a challenge as the sad ones.
Which is what I was trying to say up above.
Anyway, I digress (and just for the record, I'm not suggesting that Sebastian shared this attitude, that that was the reason she wrote ambiguous endings - I have no idea if that's the case. And I'm certainly not suggesting that she didn't have enough skill to write a convincing, non-sappy happy ending!) The point is that for me, fanfic, slashfic, serves a purpose, and generally that purpose is served only with endings that bring the two characters together and offer some sort of hope for their future togetherness, permit me to believe that this is it for them, even if it's not perfect, even if there are no declarations or flowers or hearts or I-love-yous. I need to be able to retreat to the place inside me where B and D are always together, in each other’s arms, stepping in the way of bullets for one another, fucking one another’s brains out (which last concept I find endlessly comforting for some reason!); that is sacred for me. (As another commenter to scatteredlogic's post wrote, "I read to escape, not to take another helping of tough reality, thanks so much.")
And maybe I am a wimp, maybe I'm a fluff-loving escapist who can't deal with the harsh realities of life (to paraphrase shiv5468's (satirical!) comment in scatteredlogic's post: "But only Darkfic comes pre-packaged with an Attitude that says "oooh, I'm Deep and Meaningful and Starkly Realistic and if you don't like me it's just because you can't deal with the harsh realities of life, you fluff-loving escapist, you.") But I find that I have an extremely limited ability to cope with stories whose endings are inconsistent with that ... togetherness, that bond, the thought of which I turn to for comfort if not for sanity. Stories in which the characters aren't together at the end, when well executed, have the power really to bring me to my knees for days, fighting a constant dragging feeling of despondency and hopelessness, struggling to regain my equilibrium. Witness this - it's been more than a week since Paris's post about Et in Italia, and it still nags at me, I still feel the need to write this post (though the weekend immersed entirely in Pros stuff made it all feel less acute; there is comfort in numbers! *g*)
The thing is, I simply don't seem to have the capacity to make lemonade out of lemons. Left to my own, my thoughts have always turned toward despair, or at least toward fatalism and hopelessness. If something is not explicitly positive, if I'm left to interpret and choose a direction myself - well, I'm never going to assume the happy ending. And even if I did, I simply don't believe myself, can't give any credibility to the products of my own imagination. I've always been this way - I can't get rid of the constant awareness that my own ideas are made up, they're fiction, which is probably a big reason why I'm not a fiction writer myself. My own fantasy world, such as it is, has no legitimacy for me. I love fanfic so much because in fanfic someone else generally spells it all out for me, to a greater or lesser extent; I don't have to do the work myself, to try to put the hints together and then make the doomed-to-failure effort to believe my own inferences. I don't need every single thing spelled out in every story, but I do need the hope, at least, to be explicit. And I simply cannot find the hope in the ending to Et in Italia, no matter how much weight I try to put on the various bits that were pointed out as being hints of a happier ultimate resolution.
So where does that leave me with Et in Italia? Well, terribly terribly conflicted. It is, to quote various comments to Paris's post, brilliantly written with realistic characterizations and a fascinating plot; it has shimmering, heart-stopping, stomach-clenching emotional intensity; it's lyrical and gorgeous and beautifully written; it makes your heart ache in the most exquisite way (even before the ending, I mean). The sex scenes are so unutterably lovely; their reactions ring so true, are so sexy and them. It's such a perfect love story; oh how I want to love it.
And yet ... it just doesn't work for me. I think about the story and my mind soars into the ether - and then hits a brick wall and plummets to the ground. It's one thing to have an ending that is convincing but not the one I want, and depending on the circumstances I may be able to enjoy an ending that isn't so convincing but is the one I want - but I simply can't find a way to love a story with an ending that is neither convincing nor appealing to me. I just can't get around it, and I can't help but feel disappointed - even slightly (and irrationally, I know) angry at the author, for disappointing me, for coming so excruciatingly close to being perfect but (to my mind) falling short at the very last minute. Not to mention angry at B and D, for being such damn wimps!
What I really want is for someone (someone else, since as I said I can't believe myself) to make it work for me, to write the story, or at least tell me the story, of what happens next, of how it doesn't work out the way they think it will, of how they really can't let it go. Absent that, I suppose I need to let the story go, appreciate its beauty and its strengths (which are many) while accepting that I will never be able to fully reconcile or accept it, that I will never love it.
Ah, I'm not precisely sure where that exercise got me... although maybe it served as an exorcism of sorts! Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to wallow in the Pros obsession - and for those of you who care, next post will be all about Nattercon ....