I wonder if theoretically one could be embarrassment squicked by someone's embarrassment squick?
I continue to be fascinated by the differences between my and 
sophia_sol's embarrassment* squicks. The other day we were at the apartment of a mutual friend, Elizabeth, and the television was on. An episode of How I Met Your Mother was on, and we weren't even really watching it very closely, but suddenly I became aware that Robin was about to do something that I was convinced was going to end in her mortification. I was up and on my feet and a split second later I skidded around the corner into the kitchen, much to the surprise of my housemate Matthew and his girlfriend Anne.** I'd just barely begun to sheepishly explain what had precipitated my hasty departure from the living room when a distressed squawk rang out from the other side of the wall, and a split second later Sophia stumbled in through the kitchen’s other door, looking every bit as sheepish as I felt.
This is fascinating to me, because it's pretty rare for Sophia and I to freak at the same time like that.
I remember once she linked me what she thought was an adorable little youtube clip of Daniel Radcliff singing Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" to the audience of some talk show. It almost killed me trying to watch it. Because - he was being incredibly nerdy! In front of an audience! And oh God what if they didn’t like him or they thought he was being stupid or aaaaaaaaaaah.... It happens to me IRL, too - I can hardly bear to watch Sophia recite poetry to an audience, even though she's never embarrassed to do it, and is pretty much universally acclaimed as being a freaking awesome reciter of poetry. But - but - but what if people don’t like it! What if they’re mean to her! She would be so embarrassed! And cue the squicked-out flailing. On the other hand, I'm not triggered by text at all, whereas Sophia can easily be squicked by fanfic. For me, this is true to the point where the best strategy I've found for coping with embarrassing moments that I just can't get past is to go find a copy of the script and just read the offending scene.
Sophia has a theory that her squick is linked, at least in part, into whether the person or character in question knows what they're getting into, (I believe the phrase she used was "Non-con embarrassment is an issue!") and also into the tension of the situation. Knowing how how the situation ends can provide her with a lot of relief. We were sitting together watching Buffy the other day, and I was startled to discover that Sophia had to exercise the entirely of her self control not to flee the room during the infamous dialogue between Xander and Larry. That scene had never bothered me at all! I really wanted Larry's revelation to come as a surprise to her, but she couldn't watch it without knowing how it was going to end. Conversations like this one, where characters talk at cross purposes, seem to trigger her worse than anything else. But as the HIMYM scenario demonstrates, they're not the only trigger; rather, they just seem to be the worst subset within the larger category of "people being in embarrassing situations."
I'm also fascinated by the seeming genetic component of this whole thing. Consider: one of the only other people I know IRL who suffers from an embarrassment squick is my mother. I remember an incident from my childhood when I had to flee the room during the movie "Jack", and my Dad was reduced to incredulous laughter. Eventually he revealed to me that when he and my Mum had been watching it earlier, she'd gone running out during the exact same scene. Sometimes when Mum and I are watching movies together, a scene will trigger only one of us, but we're triggered by the same scenes too frequently for me to dismiss it as coincidence, particularly as my mother and I agree on virtually nothing else when it comes to TV/movies. (Among other disagreements, she doesn't like sci-fi. Which is practically blasphemy so far as I'm concerned.) Sophia's father also has an embarrassment squick, but she hasn't talked with him about it much and her family is much less of a TV-watching family than mine, so she can't be sure if they're both triggered by the same situations.
I have no conclusions to provide here, nor any particular insights - I'm just sort of fascinated by this whole thing. Anyone else on my flist/rlight have a squick like this? Is yours like mine, or like Sophia’s, or different altogether?
And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to trying to psych myself up to unpause the episode of "Sanctuary" I've had sitting on my screen for three hours now. (24 minutes into "Wingman", if anyone is curious. ARGH NO HENRY DON'T DO IT!) Have I mentioned that this whole embarrassment squick thing does, on occasion, suck?
*Did you know that I'm incapable of spelling the word "embarrassed" without the help of a spell-checker? Neither did I, until I tried to write this post.
*I think I already gave Anne a pseudonymous name in an earlier post, and possibly Matthew too, but I can't remember and I'm far too lazy to go read back and figure out what they were.
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
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sophia_sol's embarrassment* squicks. The other day we were at the apartment of a mutual friend, Elizabeth, and the television was on. An episode of How I Met Your Mother was on, and we weren't even really watching it very closely, but suddenly I became aware that Robin was about to do something that I was convinced was going to end in her mortification. I was up and on my feet and a split second later I skidded around the corner into the kitchen, much to the surprise of my housemate Matthew and his girlfriend Anne.** I'd just barely begun to sheepishly explain what had precipitated my hasty departure from the living room when a distressed squawk rang out from the other side of the wall, and a split second later Sophia stumbled in through the kitchen’s other door, looking every bit as sheepish as I felt.
This is fascinating to me, because it's pretty rare for Sophia and I to freak at the same time like that.
I remember once she linked me what she thought was an adorable little youtube clip of Daniel Radcliff singing Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" to the audience of some talk show. It almost killed me trying to watch it. Because - he was being incredibly nerdy! In front of an audience! And oh God what if they didn’t like him or they thought he was being stupid or aaaaaaaaaaah.... It happens to me IRL, too - I can hardly bear to watch Sophia recite poetry to an audience, even though she's never embarrassed to do it, and is pretty much universally acclaimed as being a freaking awesome reciter of poetry. But - but - but what if people don’t like it! What if they’re mean to her! She would be so embarrassed! And cue the squicked-out flailing. On the other hand, I'm not triggered by text at all, whereas Sophia can easily be squicked by fanfic. For me, this is true to the point where the best strategy I've found for coping with embarrassing moments that I just can't get past is to go find a copy of the script and just read the offending scene.
Sophia has a theory that her squick is linked, at least in part, into whether the person or character in question knows what they're getting into, (I believe the phrase she used was "Non-con embarrassment is an issue!") and also into the tension of the situation. Knowing how how the situation ends can provide her with a lot of relief. We were sitting together watching Buffy the other day, and I was startled to discover that Sophia had to exercise the entirely of her self control not to flee the room during the infamous dialogue between Xander and Larry. That scene had never bothered me at all! I really wanted Larry's revelation to come as a surprise to her, but she couldn't watch it without knowing how it was going to end. Conversations like this one, where characters talk at cross purposes, seem to trigger her worse than anything else. But as the HIMYM scenario demonstrates, they're not the only trigger; rather, they just seem to be the worst subset within the larger category of "people being in embarrassing situations."
I'm also fascinated by the seeming genetic component of this whole thing. Consider: one of the only other people I know IRL who suffers from an embarrassment squick is my mother. I remember an incident from my childhood when I had to flee the room during the movie "Jack", and my Dad was reduced to incredulous laughter. Eventually he revealed to me that when he and my Mum had been watching it earlier, she'd gone running out during the exact same scene. Sometimes when Mum and I are watching movies together, a scene will trigger only one of us, but we're triggered by the same scenes too frequently for me to dismiss it as coincidence, particularly as my mother and I agree on virtually nothing else when it comes to TV/movies. (Among other disagreements, she doesn't like sci-fi. Which is practically blasphemy so far as I'm concerned.) Sophia's father also has an embarrassment squick, but she hasn't talked with him about it much and her family is much less of a TV-watching family than mine, so she can't be sure if they're both triggered by the same situations.
I have no conclusions to provide here, nor any particular insights - I'm just sort of fascinated by this whole thing. Anyone else on my flist/rlight have a squick like this? Is yours like mine, or like Sophia’s, or different altogether?
And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to trying to psych myself up to unpause the episode of "Sanctuary" I've had sitting on my screen for three hours now. (24 minutes into "Wingman", if anyone is curious. ARGH NO HENRY DON'T DO IT!) Have I mentioned that this whole embarrassment squick thing does, on occasion, suck?
*Did you know that I'm incapable of spelling the word "embarrassed" without the help of a spell-checker? Neither did I, until I tried to write this post.
*I think I already gave Anne a pseudonymous name in an earlier post, and possibly Matthew too, but I can't remember and I'm far too lazy to go read back and figure out what they were.
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments on original post