A few days ago, a mutual of mine on Tumblr asked a pretty interesting question: “why do people get uncomfortable with political fanfic?” She went on to point out that “A lot of you love to boast that you love the dirtiest, nastiest smut ever, why can’t you handle someone writing ‘fascism is bad’?”
It reminded me of the time a book marketer told me The Casefile of Jay Moriarty was too political for queer romance readers, and too gay for political thriller readers. As if those two categories were completely mutually exclusive.
Fanfiction and romance fiction have a lot in common, and not just because fanfic tends to have a lot of sex and romance in it. Both are capable of being really really good — like, “permanently alters your brain chemistry, haunts you for the rest of your life” good — but are largely viewed as inherently frivolous. Both mediums are often read, written, and published by people who don’t particularly give a shit (much to the frustration of readers, writers, and publishers who do).
And so, very often, a reader going into a fanfic or romance novel will be doing so with the expectation that these works are low-effort; that the experience they’re about to have won’t make them think or feel anything complicated. When that assumption turns out to be untrue — when the work demands effort on the part of the reader — they respond negatively. It’s the literary equivalent of a pillow princess suddenly being asked to top.
However, just because I understand this viewpoint doesn’t mean I have to respect it. Fuck your comfort, I’m trying to do something interesting out here. To quote Bruce Sterling, “You can get a hell of a lot done in a popular medium just by knocking it off with the bullshit.”
Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You
On this episode of I Will Fight You, my co-hosts and I once again review three Romeo & Juliet adaptations at once: Romeo & Juliet (2013), Pizza My Heart, and The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. We will keep doing this every year. You cannot stop us.
Serializing Now: “A Reckoning in Whitehall”
“A Reckoning in Whitehall” is now serializing on the Casefile of Jay Moriarty website. The first chapter is available now, and subsequent chapters will be posted weekly on Mondays.
This Week’s Links
hammajang luck – entering the cozy sff uncanny valley
There is a likeability crisis in much contemporary queer sff. Authors are unwilling to make their characters look bad, and it compromises the integrity of the story. I don’t think this is the result of individual authors’ incompetence. The state of the publishing industry and the social media ecosystem around genre fiction has refigured the reader as, primarily, a customer, and the customer is always right.
Wuthering Heights review – Emerald Fennell’s astonishingly bad adaptation is like a limp Mills & Boon
As a sadomasochistic provocation – another of the film’s stated intents – it’s equally limp. A hanged man with an erection drives a village into a Bacchanalian frenzy. A woman wears a dog collar and barks. But these scenes aren’t provocative when they’re so expressly played as a joke, mostly with a fetishistic view of class that categorises poor people as sexual deviants and rich people as clueless prudes.
Trans Youth Suicides Skyrocketed In UK After Care Drawdown; Government Covers It Up
The Appleby Report only examined patients of [the Gender Identity Development Service]. But in the aftermath of the Bell v Tavistock ruling, wait times for GIDS appointments skyrocketed, now sitting at an estimated average of 25 years.
Here’s some more from that Bruce Sterling speech:
I don’t think you can last by meeting the contemporary public taste, the taste from the last quarterly report. I don’t think you can last by following demographics and carefully meeting expectations. I don’t know many works of art that last that are condescending. I don’t know many works of art that last that are deliberately stupid. … Don’t aim to be civilized. Don’t hope that straight people will keep you on as some kind of pet. To hell with them; they put you here. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird and don’t do it halfway, put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Have the artistic courage to recognize your own significance in culture!
-K
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