Ace Goggles and Other Things
Dec. 21st, 2010 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineIn my last post, I forgot to mention the entire reason I was thinking about things that make me happy: DADT was repealed, yay.
And by ‘yay,’ I meant ‘my country sucks slightly less today than it did yesterday.’
... Occasionally, talking about politics with other Americans feels like talking about fandom with other Austenfen. I’ll start to say ‘well, you know, they’ve tried it in Canada/Belgium/Argentina/etc--’ and inevitably get blank stares and/or WHAT IS THIS PLACE OF WHICH YOU SPEAK, AND WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT THEIR HEATHEN WAYS??
Only for civil rights instead of the merits of rec lists.
Also, on a largely unrelated note, I have no right whatsoever to object to arbitrarily ignoring/changing characters’ canon sexuality. Well, I do, but it’s massively hypocritical.
I recently posted many of my old Austen fics to AO3. Most of them had been written between 2004, when I discovered the fandom, and 2007, when I had a nice old-fashioned nervous breakdown. During those three years, I was at the height of my fannish activity. I also hadn’t yet identified as asexual. Of course, that was only because I didn’t know asexuality existed.
c. 2006:
I was one of the acest aces who’ve ever aced. But I was firmly convinced that I was just unromantic, broken, bitchy, repressed, or hormonally imbalanced, depending on the day.
Therefore, it made perfect sense to me that straight characters could be largely disinterested in romance and sex -- after all, if there were people way off on the ‘wildly passionate’ end of the heterosexual scale (and fandom had assured me this was so), it made sense for there to be people on the other end, my end, too.1
End result: these stories mostly star characters whose (oh so heterosexual) attractions register at about -20. Just like mine. But they weren’t gay, my reasoning went, so they had to be straight. (*cringe*)
Besides, most of them had that one person they were attracted to. They fell in love and got married and had fun sexy tiemz (which I had trouble even imagining them getting that much into – but of course they did, with some effort, behind the scenes) and all that jazz. Straightstraightstraight, like me. I just ... preferred to write about the other, more interesting parts of their lives. Yes.
c. 2010:
... Whoa.
Now, I’ve since come to terms with things. I’m very consciously asexual; even when I’m not actively thinking about it, my awareness of my asexuality never fully leaves my mind. (It’s sort of like being a girl, that way.) Everything I write – regardless of whether the characters are [meant to be] sexual or ace – is filtered through my perspective as an asexual.2
And I’m not sure I could deliberately write more blatant aces than the Faramir and Darcy of my old stories.
I never ran into much trouble with my cheerfully asexual Faramir, who was at most heteroromantic-for-Éowyn. But then, this is a character who canonically lumps pretty girls in with pretty flowers. Really. (Faramir, how much do I love thee? SO MUCH.)
Faramir was one thing. Darcy was – another.
And yes, I mean that Darcy. Darcy thememetic sex god, he of the brooding stares and wild passion and fandom-patented Loins o’ Lust. At first, I couldn’t articulate why fandom’s Darcy seemed so wrong to me. But I could write my version, and I took a perverse pleasure in defying all of the conventions that had grown up around Colin Firth him.
My Darcy’s sparse sexual experiences were uniformly awful; he ended up asking Elizabeth’s uncle for advice about the wedding night. Elizabeth initiated pretty much all sexual contact; Darcy was the ‘gatekeeper.’3
The stares -- well, they happened, but they were more confused than passionate. That’s why Charlotte (canonically!) mistook them for absent-mindedness. And he was so far from brooding on things that he wouldn’t think about them at all for months on end. (Poor Jane and Bingley.)
In fact, I wrote a fic all about his asexuality while still comfortably cocooned in my ‘I’m straight NO REALLY!’ bubble. It’s embarrassingly schmaltzy and I decided against posting it at AO3 for that reason, but it’s also rather amusing in retrospect.
These days, it’s not too hard to find stories about how very tragic it is for a sexual person to fall in love with an asexual. Somehow, even then, I’d lost patience with the constant narrative privileging of the sexual experience in that particular dynamic.4 So I wrote a version of that story where neither of the people involved were sexual. Instead, it’s the ~epic tragedy~ of a romantic asexual (Anne de Bourgh) falling in love with a largely aromantic asexual (Darcy)5.
I think I can safely say that Nor At Any Other6 is the only Anne/Darcy7 unrequited asexual romance in the history of forever.
In fact, even my long Darcy/OFC fic insists that neither he nor the OFC (another cousin) ever fall in love or are remotely attracted to each other. She’s heteroromantic, but not interested in him that way, he’s aromantic-except-for-Elizabeth, and they conceive their only child by thinking of England. That brief sex life is so traumatising that they mutually refuse to try for a boy.
(But he enjoys having sex with Elizabeth, once she persuades him into it, so he’s totally straight. Yes.)
While I got comments unrelated to Darcy’s blatant preference for cake8, they generally revolved around how ‘detached’ and ‘passionless’ he seemed, with the occasional ‘he must be seriously horny by now – hasn’t it been like seven years since he had sex? And that was really bad sex.’
My very wordy responses boiled down to ‘I don’t know what you mean’ with a side helping of ‘this is my interpretation of the canon character. Maybe you’re thinking of creepy stalker fanon!Darcy?’
I’ve now re-skimmed my other stuff. Oddly, I think my characters became less predominantly asexual over time – well, perhaps not that oddly. At some point, I figured out that if I wanted my versions of canonically sexual characters9 to be canon-compliant, they had to be sexual. Mine weren’t – I really couldn’t generalise my (non)experience of sexuality to sexual people, however weak their libidos.
So I tried to write sexual characters as actually sexual. I’ve even got notes to myself – ‘make more sexual.’ I still reframe presumably sexual characters as asexual (current note to self: resolve hatred of Luke-Leia twin twist AND Anakin/Padmé scenes by writing demisexual Anakin and sexual Padmé as purely platonic BFFs!) and I still write many many more asexual characters than I’ve ever known a sexual writer to do. Yet in a weird twist on how I’ve always conceived of repression, the less I’ve repressed my asexuality, the less it unconsciously bleeds into everything I do. Now, when I write characters as asexual, I’m doing it on purpose.
(Mostly.)
Nevertheless, it’s . . . I’ve still got industrial strength Ace Goggles. I’ll genuinely see a character as asexual (usually demi), only to find that the writer(s)/actor/rest of fandom are convinced that the character is actively recruiting for wild space orgies. It’s still jarring, especially when I can’t really avoid the fact that canon supports them much more.
Half of me feels like I’m obviously engaging in resistant reading when I do this, no matter how natural an interpretation it seems to me. Discontinuity-happy as I can be, I don’t always want my interpretations to require reading against the text. Especially not when it’s a text I don’t have any other objection to. With P&P, I don’t want to thumb my nose at the text. I love the text! In a happy uncomplicated way, completely unlike the love-hate I’ve got towards SW and HP.
But the other half wants to sign Darcy up for an ace manifesto at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
asexual_fandom yesterday (or at least Charlotte). The very idea – that reading a character as ace, without overwhelming evidence for it, is inherently resistant to any text – is pure heteronormative brainwashing.
I’m going to go beat my head against a brick wall now.
-----------------
1This is true. It was also epic rationalising, because none of these people were attracted in any direction at all. At most, they were attracted to one particular person.
2For the record: as far as sexual/romantic/aesthetic attraction goes, I’m ace/ace/bi with a preference for women. The only way I would ever again call myself straight is as some kind of bizarre joke.
3In one of the earliest stories, he recoils from their first kiss, rushing to explain to Elizabeth thattheir her chastity is deeply important to him. Because kissing leads to more kissing, which as we all know, leads straight to SEX. (As far as I recall, Elizabeth – too blatantly sexual for even my high-intensity Ace Goggles – reacted with mixed amusement, frustration, and occasional embarrassment.)
4Even though I didn’t know asexuality existed. I don’t know, I have universe-altering powers or something.
5In retrospect, that's still problematic from an aromantic perspective. Ack.
6cf Ch 31: Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his cousin's praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she discern any symptom of love.
7In the epilogue, he turned out to be demiromantic demisexual, because canon. But he was a full-blown aromantic asexual during the story itself.
8WTF YOU KILLED [SPOILER], [SPOILER], [SPOILER], AND [SPOILER]?!
9The issue of ‘canonical sexuality’ is a whole ’nother can of worms that I’d really like to get into, since it’s really where I see Austen fandom's heteronormativity most glaringly expressed – whether in het, gen or slash.
And by ‘yay,’ I meant ‘my country sucks slightly less today than it did yesterday.’
... Occasionally, talking about politics with other Americans feels like talking about fandom with other Austenfen. I’ll start to say ‘well, you know, they’ve tried it in Canada/Belgium/Argentina/etc--’ and inevitably get blank stares and/or WHAT IS THIS PLACE OF WHICH YOU SPEAK, AND WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT THEIR HEATHEN WAYS??
Only for civil rights instead of the merits of rec lists.
Also, on a largely unrelated note, I have no right whatsoever to object to arbitrarily ignoring/changing characters’ canon sexuality. Well, I do, but it’s massively hypocritical.
I recently posted many of my old Austen fics to AO3. Most of them had been written between 2004, when I discovered the fandom, and 2007, when I had a nice old-fashioned nervous breakdown. During those three years, I was at the height of my fannish activity. I also hadn’t yet identified as asexual. Of course, that was only because I didn’t know asexuality existed.
c. 2006:
I was one of the acest aces who’ve ever aced. But I was firmly convinced that I was just unromantic, broken, bitchy, repressed, or hormonally imbalanced, depending on the day.
Therefore, it made perfect sense to me that straight characters could be largely disinterested in romance and sex -- after all, if there were people way off on the ‘wildly passionate’ end of the heterosexual scale (and fandom had assured me this was so), it made sense for there to be people on the other end, my end, too.1
End result: these stories mostly star characters whose (oh so heterosexual) attractions register at about -20. Just like mine. But they weren’t gay, my reasoning went, so they had to be straight. (*cringe*)
Besides, most of them had that one person they were attracted to. They fell in love and got married and had fun sexy tiemz (which I had trouble even imagining them getting that much into – but of course they did, with some effort, behind the scenes) and all that jazz. Straightstraightstraight, like me. I just ... preferred to write about the other, more interesting parts of their lives. Yes.
c. 2010:
... Whoa.
Now, I’ve since come to terms with things. I’m very consciously asexual; even when I’m not actively thinking about it, my awareness of my asexuality never fully leaves my mind. (It’s sort of like being a girl, that way.) Everything I write – regardless of whether the characters are [meant to be] sexual or ace – is filtered through my perspective as an asexual.2
And I’m not sure I could deliberately write more blatant aces than the Faramir and Darcy of my old stories.
I never ran into much trouble with my cheerfully asexual Faramir, who was at most heteroromantic-for-Éowyn. But then, this is a character who canonically lumps pretty girls in with pretty flowers. Really. (Faramir, how much do I love thee? SO MUCH.)
Faramir was one thing. Darcy was – another.
And yes, I mean that Darcy. Darcy the
My Darcy’s sparse sexual experiences were uniformly awful; he ended up asking Elizabeth’s uncle for advice about the wedding night. Elizabeth initiated pretty much all sexual contact; Darcy was the ‘gatekeeper.’3
The stares -- well, they happened, but they were more confused than passionate. That’s why Charlotte (canonically!) mistook them for absent-mindedness. And he was so far from brooding on things that he wouldn’t think about them at all for months on end. (Poor Jane and Bingley.)
In fact, I wrote a fic all about his asexuality while still comfortably cocooned in my ‘I’m straight NO REALLY!’ bubble. It’s embarrassingly schmaltzy and I decided against posting it at AO3 for that reason, but it’s also rather amusing in retrospect.
These days, it’s not too hard to find stories about how very tragic it is for a sexual person to fall in love with an asexual. Somehow, even then, I’d lost patience with the constant narrative privileging of the sexual experience in that particular dynamic.4 So I wrote a version of that story where neither of the people involved were sexual. Instead, it’s the ~epic tragedy~ of a romantic asexual (Anne de Bourgh) falling in love with a largely aromantic asexual (Darcy)5.
I think I can safely say that Nor At Any Other6 is the only Anne/Darcy7 unrequited asexual romance in the history of forever.
In fact, even my long Darcy/OFC fic insists that neither he nor the OFC (another cousin) ever fall in love or are remotely attracted to each other. She’s heteroromantic, but not interested in him that way, he’s aromantic-except-for-Elizabeth, and they conceive their only child by thinking of England. That brief sex life is so traumatising that they mutually refuse to try for a boy.
(But he enjoys having sex with Elizabeth, once she persuades him into it, so he’s totally straight. Yes.)
While I got comments unrelated to Darcy’s blatant preference for cake8, they generally revolved around how ‘detached’ and ‘passionless’ he seemed, with the occasional ‘he must be seriously horny by now – hasn’t it been like seven years since he had sex? And that was really bad sex.’
My very wordy responses boiled down to ‘I don’t know what you mean’ with a side helping of ‘this is my interpretation of the canon character. Maybe you’re thinking of creepy stalker fanon!Darcy?’
I’ve now re-skimmed my other stuff. Oddly, I think my characters became less predominantly asexual over time – well, perhaps not that oddly. At some point, I figured out that if I wanted my versions of canonically sexual characters9 to be canon-compliant, they had to be sexual. Mine weren’t – I really couldn’t generalise my (non)experience of sexuality to sexual people, however weak their libidos.
So I tried to write sexual characters as actually sexual. I’ve even got notes to myself – ‘make more sexual.’ I still reframe presumably sexual characters as asexual (current note to self: resolve hatred of Luke-Leia twin twist AND Anakin/Padmé scenes by writing demisexual Anakin and sexual Padmé as purely platonic BFFs!) and I still write many many more asexual characters than I’ve ever known a sexual writer to do. Yet in a weird twist on how I’ve always conceived of repression, the less I’ve repressed my asexuality, the less it unconsciously bleeds into everything I do. Now, when I write characters as asexual, I’m doing it on purpose.
(Mostly.)
Nevertheless, it’s . . . I’ve still got industrial strength Ace Goggles. I’ll genuinely see a character as asexual (usually demi), only to find that the writer(s)/actor/rest of fandom are convinced that the character is actively recruiting for wild space orgies. It’s still jarring, especially when I can’t really avoid the fact that canon supports them much more.
Half of me feels like I’m obviously engaging in resistant reading when I do this, no matter how natural an interpretation it seems to me. Discontinuity-happy as I can be, I don’t always want my interpretations to require reading against the text. Especially not when it’s a text I don’t have any other objection to. With P&P, I don’t want to thumb my nose at the text. I love the text! In a happy uncomplicated way, completely unlike the love-hate I’ve got towards SW and HP.
But the other half wants to sign Darcy up for an ace manifesto at
asexual_fandom yesterday (or at least Charlotte). The very idea – that reading a character as ace, without overwhelming evidence for it, is inherently resistant to any text – is pure heteronormative brainwashing. I’m going to go beat my head against a brick wall now.
-----------------
1This is true. It was also epic rationalising, because none of these people were attracted in any direction at all. At most, they were attracted to one particular person.
2For the record: as far as sexual/romantic/aesthetic attraction goes, I’m ace/ace/bi with a preference for women. The only way I would ever again call myself straight is as some kind of bizarre joke.
3In one of the earliest stories, he recoils from their first kiss, rushing to explain to Elizabeth that
4Even though I didn’t know asexuality existed. I don’t know, I have universe-altering powers or something.
5In retrospect, that's still problematic from an aromantic perspective. Ack.
6cf Ch 31: Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his cousin's praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she discern any symptom of love.
7In the epilogue, he turned out to be demiromantic demisexual, because canon. But he was a full-blown aromantic asexual during the story itself.
8WTF YOU KILLED [SPOILER], [SPOILER], [SPOILER], AND [SPOILER]?!
9The issue of ‘canonical sexuality’ is a whole ’nother can of worms that I’d really like to get into, since it’s really where I see Austen fandom's heteronormativity most glaringly expressed – whether in het, gen or slash.
no subject
on 2010-12-21 10:14 pm (UTC)It's curious how after a while one can sometimes see why one wrote something in a particular way -- I mean, you already know about me and my latest realization. It's... idk. Interesting and embarrassing at once. Interesting when one can see it as it from outside and ignore the id (unconscious? unconscious biases?) peeking in is (are) one's own.
re:footnote 9. Regarding slash, do you mean the willingness to read Caroline or Bingley (for different reasons) as gay but not do the same with Darcy & Elizabeth?
no subject
on 2010-12-21 10:16 pm (UTC)*beams*
on 2010-12-24 11:39 pm (UTC)It's like asexuality is this subset of heterosexuality, so if you say "I don't think he's really interested" (and it's not Darcy), it's just ... not very sexual, that's fine, and (for them) leaves open the possibility that he could be if he met the right girl or whatever. So nobody's going OMG TEH GAY -- it's much more acceptable, I think, which is obviously a kind of privilege, but it tends to be very problematic at the same time.
I still have an issue with completely ignoring characters' sexualities, and especially the idea that you have to do that to write anyone as not-straight if they're not explicitly identified as such, but ... yeah, it's more complicated that I thought at the time.
re 9: I basically meant what I said last paragraph -- the assumption that all characters are straight unless proven otherwise, that straight is the default. (Actually, I think there are very good reasons to read Darcy and Elizabeth as exclusively straight. But instead it's always "he's DARCY. he can't be gay, because he's too MANLY" -- or whatever fail is in fashion this week.
no subject
on 2010-12-30 12:30 am (UTC)Looking back is ... I mean, I think when you do some that's bad, or just kind of embarrassing in retrospect, the impulse is to try and pretend it never happened. (The Internet makes this both easier and harder.) But of course if you're looking at a pattern rather than a specific instance, those things are important. And it is odd how that kind of realisation just hits you out of the blue -- I was sitting there arguing with my mother about gay marriage, and suddenly it's 'hey, Darcy was ace.'
I'm thinking about doing a similar kind of thing on OCs Over The Years (inspired by this post: http://community.livejournal.com/fanlit_project/5682.html), but that'd be ... kind of massive. *trots off*
no subject
on 2011-01-02 10:01 pm (UTC)what is it with the "i'm not gay, so i must be straight" thing every asexual i've ever seen has gone through? is it like a mandatory stop on the way to discovering asexuality? sheesh.
i don't like to think that darcy is asexual, mostly because i enjoy reading and writing about the sexy tiems! but then i do like the way you write(/have written) him. so, i'm torn!
(also, wow, now that you mention it, i have been fangirling you since, like, 2005. *feels creepy*)
you say awful, i say charming. a little awkward. endearing. and occasionally hilarious. :D maybe it's because your darcy is, as you say, such a (welcome) change from fanon's alpha male, priapistic darcy, but i also think it's because you make it believable. whereas uniformly randy darcy just... isn't.
dooo eeeet. although charlotte's would really be the shortest manifesto ever: "i'm not romantic." THE END.
sidenote -- lady harriet from wives and daughters: aromantic asexual Y/Y?
oh look, I'm not concise! again.
on 2011-01-07 08:01 am (UTC)Well, if it helps, romantic sexuals are actually the majority (ah, according to the few studies that have been done on that). I don't doubt that most of the ones you've met are aromantic, of course. Actually, I think it's part of stereotyping -- the assumption that asexuality and aromanticism are inextricably bound together (personally, I think it's part of the overarching assumption that romanticism and sexuality always march in perfect tandem and that's another thing I've been managing to post on).
Weirdly, I've always loved racy romance novels (even the really stupid ones) and romantic relationships are a big draw (though sex I can take or leave -- romantic friendship is probably my biggest kink). So yeah, even though gen is more my thing, personally, that does make sense
and is probably why I like your fics so much.what is it with the "i'm not gay, so i must be straight" thing every asexual i've ever seen has gone through? is it like a mandatory stop on the way to discovering asexuality? sheesh.
Yes. Well, no, of course, but the heteronormative brainwashing mentioned above makes it a common one. At least, I think that's what it's about -- that straight is normal with this weird aberration in gayness. So there's gay and normal, and if you're not gay you're normal by definition. Or something equally revolting.
i don't like to think that darcy is asexual, mostly because i enjoy reading and writing about the sexy tiems! but then i do like the way you write(/have written) him. so, i'm torn!
A nasty little conundrum you have there. :P
But seriously, thanks. And I don't think anyone (even me *adjusts goggles*) could argue that Darcy isn't attracted to Elizabeth. What you could argue (and what I did) is that he's not attracted (sexually or romantically) to anyone but Elizabeth -- essentially, he's straight-for-Elizabeth. So ... demi.
Kind of hilariously, the only character in 'Courtship' to pick up on it is Mrs Bennet. I guess she has acedar?
(If you're curious, this interpretation was mostly dependent on the scene at Netherfield where Darcy reflects that he's never been so bewitched by any woman. Ever. Obviously no interpretation other than 'he's so in love with Elizabeth that nothing he's felt for anyone can measure up to it' was intended, and I think you'd have to be deliberately contrary to suggest otherwise.
But, going all death of the author, you could argue that Darcy's feelings at that point are a fairly weak infatuation and thus the previous bewitchments were, like, mild aesthetic pleasure or something -- which would explain why he's blindsided even by the barest hint of attraction and is so epically inept at acting on it. In that reading, he's either largely gay or largely ace, and since he doesn't seem any more attracted to other men than, say, his house ...)
(also, wow, now that you mention it, i have been fangirling you since, like, 2005. *feels creepy*)
<3
hugs all around!
you say awful, i say charming. a little awkward. endearing. and occasionally hilarious. :D
Heh. Well, thanks, but I meant, the Darcy of Courtship (and that entire verse) has a few sparse sexual experiences (the ones that made him 'mostly chaste' instead of ... er, wholly chaste) that ranged between unpleasant and horrific. IIRC, his consent was never more than dubious. At best. Other than that most of his sexual knowledge came via his mother's wild affairs (well, and his father's, uncles', older cousins' and those of just about every other adult in his family -- it kind of sucked to grow up in the '70s and '80s).
While he's still significantly less sexual than Elizabeth, he is attracted to her and in love with her and enthusiastically consents in their sex life. But for Courtship's Darcy, all those feelings are specific to her and a single epic exception to his general preferences.
maybe it's because your darcy is, as you say, such a (welcome) change from fanon's alpha male, priapistic darcy, but i also think it's because you make it believable. whereas uniformly randy darcy just... isn't.
Thanks. I did try to show my Darcy as attracted to Elizabeth in a fairly normal way rather than a raging sex maniac who arbitrarily decides to limit himself to Elizabeth and her magically delicious breasts.
Heh, defying fanon was definitely part of the motivation (sort of like making him blond just because). But even when he was at his most blatantly asexual (TRAAR probably explores it the most deeply), I tried to anchor it in canon, so I suspect that's why he works for you.
dooo eeeet.
Gaaah! *tempted* *but also afeared*
although charlotte's would really be the shortest manifesto ever: "i'm not romantic." THE END.
It would! I don't even know how you can get more blatant than that. I suppose she could be an aromantic lesbian (First Impressions' Charlotte totally is), but -- I don't think so, really. Fandom's insistence on romantic!Charlotte who just hasn't met the right man ... verges on the horrifying, sometimes.
Darcy's would be more challenging, obvs. I considered just going with heteroromantic asexual, which requires less resistant reading, but I think demi/demi fits better.
I honestly never thought of Lady Harriet -- but yeah, she totally could be.