The 5 Things Meme and Related Thoughts

[alixtii]

Only wisdomeagle has asked for a Top 5 list so far, but if you want one don't hesitate to sign up here.

Things That Are Shiny
5. Dimes. (I like dimes because they're the smallest U.S. coin, but they're worth more than pennies or nickels. A handful of dimes is worth more than a handful of any other common coin.)
4. My name when sparkly.
3. The college ring I got "for Christmas" (there was a picture in my stocking) and will be waiting for me when I return to campus!
2. My flist.
1. Having a girlfriend.

I switched from the literal to figurative meanings of "shiny" about halfway through. Shiny?

I left a request for the top 5 Jossverse fics even she wouldn't write in wisdomeagle's journal, but she detected my evil plan:

This is clearly a trick question, because as soon as I start listing them I'll think, "Oooh, actually, if I set it then and changed that, maybe it could work!

But her ultimate answers (found here; scroll down a little) are food for thought, methinks. She says "no" to Summerscest, and I have to agree with her; while I'm not squicked by sibcest (far from it, God knows!), I just can't think of a way to make Buffy/Dawn work. They just don't have a relationship which is remotely sexualizable for me, no matter how much I would want to in principle. (And as to what principle that is exactly--well, I have meta planned on the subject, but I have a lot of meta planned and I haven't really written any since August.)

Her next "no" is "any threesome involving three guys and no girls" and again I'd agree with her, although again very possibly for different reasons. While I could see myself writing m/m if the right story idea came up, I still wouldn't write to excite. And while not all 3some fic is written to excite (kink versus literature mentalities, I still haven't excised that dichotomy!) a lot is, and the odds that I would randomly come up with an idea that, for purely story reasons, needed to be both m/m and a threesome--well, I would think they would be pretty low odds.

"Flat-out rape fic where the perp is not one of the Fanged Four or similarly soulless. Twisty semi-con, yes, rape, not so much." I'm interested in her qualifications here, because of course rape is squicky. The only straight-up on-stage noncon I've written has been with Dark!Willow in Divine Interventions because, logically, that is what she would do. (It wasn't fun to write, either, but I couldn't think of anyway to get out of it.) "Twisty semi-con" is more common in my ouvre, but still the perpetrators tend to the evil side (unsurprisingly): post-Illyria Fred, Illyria, ficlet!Amy (who is much more a power-hungry caricature than Watcher!verse Amy--see below for more on that subject.

She won't write anything where "Kaylee gets hurt without comfort." Ari adds that she feels "very strongly about this!" Kaylee is certainly the type of character who would inspire this type of feeling, although I think its less strong in me due to my position (I identify with Mal, Simon, and River more than Kaylee, whom I love but mainly see through my het male gaze). It's odd that there aren't really very many other characters who inspire that sort of feeling, thought. Perhaps Willow would have if BtVS had ended after its first eleven episodes and had been followed by a movie in which Willow got Xander even though he was more interested in Buffy (it's scary how well that maps, actually), but later-seasons Willow changed all that.

I abuse my favorite characters on a regular basis, after all. One of the major themes of the Watcher!verse is how Dawn's dark side allows her to be ideally suited to running the Council, after all. She's self-destructive and emotionally troubled. (Which is how I get away with her being a huge slut--see below.) Facing the Shadows--one of my favorite fics that I've written--was originally intended to be a Faith/Kennedy hurt/comfort, but I ended up spending over 3,000 words hurting Kennedy and giving her only a couple sentences' worth of comfort:

“Faith?” she asked. “Hold me?”

Faith found a clean spot on her forehead and kissed it, then wrapped an arm around Kennedy. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.”

And Kennedy smiled, and let unconsciousness take her as she lay in her lover's arms.

Ari's last "never write" is Zoe or Wash being unfaithful. I probably wouldn't write this either, but note that while Saffron and Dr. Mathias are both on my Firefly Character Index, Wash and Zoe aren't; I've never written fic with them in it. While I approve in principle of having a happily married couple on television, their relationship never engaged me all that much (which is probably why there aren't very many happily married couples on television, and even less in the Jossverse). So this is another case of my agreeing with Ari for completely different reasons.

But the sentiment of not letting anything break up a beloved canon pairing is one with which I can sympathize: I don't like letting anything short of death break up Willow/Kennedy and Willow/Tara. I had Willow/Kennedy break up after Kennedy cheated (or did she?) for my Buffy/Kennedy femslash_minis fic Into the Woods, but I don't think I would do it again. I need to put up a strong front to resist all those who would bash Willow/Kennedy.

In the Watcher!verse, Willow and Kennedy stay together (mostly) in domestic bliss for five years until Willow finally goes dark again and Kennedy has to kill her. Which actually poses a problem as Kennedy walks out on the relationship (thus the "mostly") after the Dark!Willow noncon in Divine Interventions--I still haven't quite figured out how I'm going to get them back together again, but it will involve Dawn having a one-night stand with Xander. (Watcher!verse Dawn is a slut, you know? By the time she marries Giles, she has already slept with at least Faith, Ethan, and Xander, and I'm sure the list will only get longer as I flesh out the universe more. During her marriage with Giles she sleeps with at least Giles, Faith, Kennedy, Beatrice, and Amy.)

Indeed, one of the reasons so many people die in the Watcher!verse is so that I'll have an excuse to switch around pairings without having to make people unfaithful.

All this thinking about characters and pairings is more or less continuing in the same vein from my last post in which I answered the "What characters/pairings can you write with your eyes closed" question. glossing asked "So would you say that your pairings are the same people across different stories?" and the question made me think and write about my writing process enough that it seems worth reposting here:

The Faith/Kennedy and Dawn/Giles dynamics are definitely the same people, since they're all set in the same universe (or else I've written a lot of unconnected stories in all of which Dawn has a niece name Madelyn) even if many of them were written to be read by themselves (since a lot are ficathon stories, although I think the femslash_minis people have gotten a grasp of my personal fanons). Those two pairings aren't pairings that I love for their own sake so much as pairings that made sense within the Watcher!verse (a lot of Dawn/Giles, for example, is set up by the Dawn/Ethan in Divine Interventions).

As for the miscellaneous stories, I think there might be slight differences in the way I characterize them. A lot of my ficlet!Amys are less three-dimensional than my Watcher!verse Amy, being power-hungry caricatures. The Eve that seduces the Scoobies in The Game isn't quite the same Eve that answers the 70 questions meme, because the first is an AU and the latter takes place in the Watcher!verse (don't ask me why). But the former Eve is somewhat OOC for Eve, so I would still think of it in terms as a "right" Eve and a "wrong" Eve, instead of several equally valid interpretations of the same character (as I might several different writers' Eves). ("The Game" was written for buffyverse1000, and I loosened my standards for OOC somewhat when writing that fic.) Despite living in drastically different universes, Watcher!verse Eve isn't all that different from the Eve who is working in a diner in Funeral; they still work from basically the same motivations, i.e. love for Lindsey, fear of the Senior Partners, fear of her own mortality, etc. I'm trying to do my best to simply pick up canon!Eve and drop her into these new situations with as little change as possible, while telling a story which reflects my values and the themes that I am interested in.

In general, I don't think my characterizations are drastically different even between unconnected fic. I try and get a "least hypothesis" of the character and motivation--what makes them tick in the closest possible world in which canon could be true--and only make changes if it serves the story (or my agenda) in some way. In my unconnected stories I have greater freedom to make such changes but don't utilize it indiscriminately.

Comments

Part Two

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

There's something more going on, and I can't help but think its related to why straight females in fandom often like to write from male perspectives (because we know there are interesting female characters). Can it simply be that I'm more interested in characters that I desire, and this interest leads to greater identification? And if that is it, there is something counterintuitive about it, isn't it? Do fanboys identify with Lara Croft more easily than Indiana Jones?

This makes my het problematic: Dawn is my viewpoint character in whose mind I feel comfortable (and how is that not an interesting way of putting it worth more analysis?), but Giles is the character desiring a woman and being desired by a woman. I think this is good reason not to expect hetsmut from me any time soon, at least not unless its with a male character with whom I do identify closely (like Wesley or Simon). (The way in which the politics of heterosexuality--a phrase I picked up from you--would infect the smut is another reason.)

And again, I see the same dynamic appearing in female-written het. nwhepcat and liz_marcs are known for their Faith/Xander, but they write it from Xander's perspective at least as often as from Faith's.

I don't know what my point in saying all this is except that there's some pretty interesting identity-construction going on when I write femslash, and I'm definitely constructing an avatar for myself as the Other for reasons I can only begin to articulate.

I really want to eventually meta "Why femslash?: The het male perspective" so I'm very grateful to get these thoughts down and share them with an interlocutor.