Fanfic inspired venting
I have finally practically moved house. I just have some bits and bobs left. But more of that later, now I want to vent.
Do you guys ever find a fanfic that you find interesting and gripping, yet contains things that profoundly disturb you? You keep on reading because you want to see how it turns out, all the while feeling deeply uncomfortable?
I had that with the brilliant Klaine fanfic All the other ghosts and its sequel. I remember talking to a fellow fan about it and them telling me it was all in my head and I was reading it wrong.
Anyway now I'm binging on Criminal Minds fanfics while travelling. There are not that many on AO3 and seeing as I only read some Reid pairings and gen stuff I have almost worked my way through them all.
So, there is this author that writes quite a bit of Reid/OFC. Most of her stuff I passed over because the summaries weren't my cup of tea. Plus I am a shallow prejudiced person who judges people from their usernames.
However I did read a couple of her long fics that had summaries that intrigued me. They proved well written and long with interesting stories. The first one I read was a case fic with a generous amount of Reid!romance. I was rather uncomfortable with several characteristics of the OFC, but she was an original character and probably a semi-self-insert. Namely she was supposed to be very intelligent and doing a PhD, but everything about the way she was described and the subject she was working screamed old-fashioned gloryfing of women as home-makers. Now there is nothing wrong with being a home-maker and a housewife. I wish modern wages were better so that more women who genuinely want to be stay at home mothers but can't, could. But I don't like the insinuation that that is the utmost and best purpose of woman and that we all just need a man to take care of all the "difficult" matters of life. All choices are equally valid and any insinuation that a woman who chooses to work instead of having children or who's husband stays at home is any less makes me mad.
Now, not having learnt, I am reading another of her stories. It is really original and gripping and well thought out with a very rich and complex story. It's a kind of Criminal Minds/ Stargate crossover. Reid and JJ get taken to another planet and infected with an alien disease while the rest if the BAU works with a secret government department that discovered a wormhole between the planets to get them back. Great stuff!
But! OMG, but! This disease creates alpha/beta/omega dynamics amongst the infected. Or actually amplifies those characteristics that already exist in the people. A/B/O stories are always very iffy territory as they often squick me and some times get very close to my triggers. (My biggest trigger is mental entrapment, loss of free will, brainwashing, imperio). Problem number one is the way she describes betas as "normal and nothing special". What the hell! No, no, no! How can the average person who constitutes the backbone of a society be dismissed as "nothing special"?
Secondly she makes Reid an alpha and JJ an omega. The thing I love about Reid is that he is emphatically not an alpha male and doesn't care about all the alpha posturing. He is himself and is perfectly happy with it (when he's not worried he's developing schizophrenia). And in what world is JJ an omega?
I would rant more but don't know how many of you watch Criminal Minds.