Et in Italia reprise, from Pros-land

[justacat]

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

Comments

Et in Italia Denial

[executrix]

Sounds to me like a remix in the offing..and I can easily imagine them honestly believing that What Happens in Italy Stays in Italy and not being able to stay apart--and their relationship being a good but not perfect thing.

We talk together, as old friends do
And tell each other what we've been through,
That love is rare,
Life is strange.
Nothing lasts.
People change. (Cryer & Ford, from "I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road")

Re: Et in Italia Denial

[justacat]

I can easily imagine them honestly believing that What Happens in Italy Stays in Italy and not being able to stay apart

Yes, this seems to be the prevailing view of those who don't read the ending as final: that they might honestly believe this is the end, but they'll never be able to stay apart, having done what they've done. I want to believe that, too - but I really can't, not unless it's spelled out more clearly for me.

A remix would be great, or a sequel, but it'd be hard to live up to Sebastian's writing standard. And I'd be just fine with their relationship being a good-but-not-perfect thing: my happy-ending fetish doesn't require perfection for satisfaction!

(Wonderful quote, too - thanks for that.)

Re: Et in Italia Denial

[executrix]

They'll Always Have Italy..they didn't have it, they lost it, and then they got it back.

I occasionally get angst bunnies but my preferred ending when I write is "and they got some of what they wanted and some of it worked and some of it didn't" because if someone tries to sell me "their wonderful relationship solved all their problems" I start looking around for concealed violet eyes and salvific hairpins.

[gwyn_r]

Go to the Fall Girl pub. It will cheer you up to sit in the same corner as Bodie and Doyle did. At least, it cheered me the hell up when I did it

[justacat]

People are just wired differently -- whereas you hit a brick wall with an ending like that, if given a good enough foundation, I go right over the bricks and start imaging all kinds of fixes to the conflict of the ending that happen after the "The End" appears.

Oh, that's exactly what I meant - I'm just not wired the way you are, can't do what you do, can't find any way over that wall, which is part of the reason why my tolerance for the dark stuff is so low. I never read a story or see an ep or something and think about how I could fix it, or where I could take it - it's like my mind just stops at the end

[gwyn_r]

No, no, no! YOu must go to the Fall Girl pub right away. It's a tonic. It's located in Edwardes Sq. Kensington. It was called the Scarsdale Arms when Professional Insight was done; but I seem to remember it being called something different when I was there. Keep in mind, though, that I haven't been back for about 7 years. (Gah. Long overdue, I guess.)

Get off at the High St. Kensington tube station (at least, I think this is the safest bet) and go to your left along Kensington High St. past Earls Court. YOu'll find a tiny little street on your left called Edwardes Sq, running along one of those private gated park type thingies. It's a little bit down the street, on the left. I hope it's still there. It's a lovely pub. I had a pleasant afternoon whiling away some time there after a really bad experience with a friend, it made up for all the nastiness.

[justacat]

Couldn't do it this trip, sadly - but I will remember this for when I go back, which will be in October, and I will hunt it down. I can imagine that an afternoon in that environment would make up for all sorts of things .... Thanks :-)

(Nice icon, too *g*)

[nakeisha]

So eloquent as always, Jess.

I'm with you insofar as I do not like the ending to this story, in fact, I'd go further: I don't like the story.

For me it's not Sebastian at her best, it's Sebastian at her 'I've been convinced that to grow as a writer I have to write darker stories with unhappy endings'. For me Sebastian was at her best in her earlier stuff, when her characterisation convinced me, was very close to being spot on, when they were in love and still men, when they were together at the end. But once she moved across into the 'dark side' when she had Bodie beating Doyle until he was sick (okay not this story, but it's the same kind of thing), when she had them doing one another under a bridge on Christmas Day and just walking off and then when she wrote this story and others like it, the Sebastian wonder had gone. Many people worship at her feet in respect of her later stories and this one in particular is an icon - apparently. I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

But ... well, I've said before, and I continue to believe

[justacat]

Well, when I said Sebastian at her best, I was referring more to her writing rather than to the content - technically her writing is beautiful here, to me at least; liquid and gorgeous and evocative and more layered and sophisticated than her earlier stuff. I differ from you in that I do like the story - but for the ending. Though then again, if I say the ending ruins the story for me, does that really make any sense

[nakeisha]

Well, when I said Sebastian at her best, I was referring more to her writing rather than to the content - technically her writing is beautiful here, to me at least; liquid and gorgeous and evocative and more layered and sophisticated than her earlier stuff.

This is another one of those 'can a 'well-written' story ever be a bad story', and 'can a poorly written story every be a good story', kind of thing. And also, the 'is a story I like the same as a good story. To me the answers are: Yes. Yes. No. If I don't like a story for whatever reason, then IMO it's not a good story, no matter how technically perfect, or wonderfully written it is. So whilst I can appreciate Sebastian's use of words and language in this story, to me she is far from her best. In fact to some extent I feel she's gone over-technical and lost some of her beauty with words. But that's just my opinion of course.

After all, we're talking about made-up characters from a TV show - it's not real life to begin with. If B and D can do those outrageous things, the

[justacat]

Hmmm. I try very hard when I write about stories to define what I mean by "bad." "Bad" is a word that is used often without the user explaining whether she means that the story was "badly written" - a piece of crap, the person needs to go back to school, she has no idea of grammar or plot or story construction - or that the user didn't like it. And to me these *aren't* the same - I'm not quite prepared to say that a story I like is the same as a good story, or that a story I dislike is the same as a bad story

[justacat]

I'd love to hear more about your views on this, especially in light of some of the comments down below, that suggest that it's our failure to appreciate context, rather than authorial failure, that accounts for the ending not "hanging together at the end" - that Sebastian did her work, if only we had eyes to see it.

I've given that some thought, and I still don't agree, still feel that there needed to be some more solid, convincing foundation for the ending, particularly in light of the fact that these guys are - she herself sets them up as - *not* conformists, not very concerned about what people think about them, pretty in-your-face, not really men who succumb easily to societal pressure, one would think. You said it right: I felt jerked around, which accounts for my anger - jerked around and let down, and resentful, not for having invested the time, but because the ending didn't fulfill the promise of the beginning, and the middle.

(And maybe we should get together and watch Pros sometime soon??)

[recycledmedia]

Butting in here... I'm not a writer (do my writing in vids), so I can't comment on the writing side

[justacat]

I need to believe that somewhere, even if it's only fiction, there is a near-perfect love - where two people are willing to fight for each other against the world if need be.

Yes, exactly - I need to believe this. Perhaps it's odd, in light of laurashapiro's comment down below, but reading happy-ending fic doesn't make me feel bitter or disappointed with my own life for not living up. I don't really expect happily-ever-after for myself - but I need to believe it's out there somewhere, even if only in fiction, in fantasy. I don't know if it makes me a hopeless romantic or a wimp or someone who can't handle reality, but it's the way I am.

And I'm not a writer either - or even a vidder - but I am a reader, and I know when writing works for me and when it feels like the author has failed to achieve her goal. In fact, it seems to me that in some ways readers are more qualified to comment on the writing side

[recycledmedia]

abelladonna makes all my icons. This is one of my favorites. *g*

[justacat]

Is it from Pros, do you know??