The Pleasure of Identification

[alixtii]

Some people on my flist have been passing around the Prince Caspian trailer and talking about the Narnia books in general. The topics are old chestnuts--discomfort with the Christian allegory, issues with the (lack of) purity of the adaptation--but it's been making me think about how much I enjoyed a movie I haven't really even thought about for about a year. How I still have the "Anna Popplewell is a Vampire Slayer" Will/Anna RPF fic started but unfinished on the harddrive of my desktop.

Also, I've been re-reading this post by cesperanza, on (among other things) identification and over-identification in fanfic, and especially chan fic:

My point is just that I think things are more complicated than theyseem when it comes to representation and identification. [. . .] I think that the whole process of writingfiction--giving a character interiority, backstory, emotional depth andpoint of view--is pretty much the opposite of objectificaton,however much we ooh and ahh over boys: it's personifying,characterizing, three-dimensionalizing, complicating.

Lots of good discussion in the comments, too.

In all, it's reminded me of my complication relationship with Susan Pevensie. You see, Anna was sixteen when the first movie came out, which is a bit young for me. But this didn't stop me from recognizing her as exactly the type of girl I would have been attracted to when I was, say, eighteen (William Mosley's age when the movie came out).

So Peter/Susan and Will/Anna ping me powerfully: I didn't kiss a young woman for the first time until I was 21, so reading and writing these pairings is (was? I haven't even thought about them in ages) in many ways an attempt to rewrite my own childhood, to put in the romance which was sorely lacking. (And keep in mind the way many of us in fandom, myself most certainly included, use sex as a metaphor for emotional intimacy!) So the fact is that I become incredibly invested in a pairing between two characters I don't even find myself, as the almost-twenty-four-years-old Alixtii O'Krul, particularly attractive; I nonetheless derive intense pleasure from imagining them in a romantic/sexual relationship. They're hot together--and I'm not even sure what I mean by that, but it's the terminology fandom has given to me to express myself.

Some of you might remember me trying to turn to the notion of "fictional desire."

So, in conclusion . . . when I was on YouTube looking for the Prince Caspian trailer, I looked for vid recs. Under the cut is the only one I found that I can rec with only one caveat (that it's black and white for no reason I can see).

Stay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl-f_DPcSqw

Comments

[ladyvivien.livejournal.com]

oh, this was such perfect timing! I discovered William/Anna and Peter/Susan last night (or rather, read my first fics out of curiosity, I knew about the pairings) and just fell in love. And I would do anything to get a glimpse o the Anna-as-slayer fic ;)

Any good fic recs?

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

OMG, there's so many bad fics, or at least there were when I was following the newsletters.

I was compiling recs, but really, what I was reccing was pretty much just everything on this page.

I wouldn't even know where to look for good Peter/Susan anymore; I don't remember anything in particular.

This is really a fandom I haven't even thought about for so, so long.

And I would do anything to get a glimpse o the Anna-as-slayer fic

And I want to write it. William becomes her Watcher (and Anna has to knock sense into him when he doesn't notice her because he's distracted by Dawn), and Georgie gets kidnapped and I can't decide if I want to vamp Skandar or not.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

The first link on the earliest post is bad, and it's one of my favorite stories, so let me point out that it can be found here: http://rozfics.livejournal.com/12681.html.