Fanfic + SF/F rant

It feels like I'm increasingly seeing posts that are like "a bold and daring thought: what if genre fiction actually is a lesser art form" and "fanfic really is cringe and shallow in a way original, or at least literary, fiction definitionally isn't, as a natural byproduct of the form."

I have many complaints about fandom trends, both generally and specific to certain fandoms. I have always had lots of complaints about these. But I hate this. I hate the snide, snappy versions of this especially, but I also hate the more earnest arguments about how this just naturally arises from the existence of magic or spaceships or the re-purposing of pre-existing characters. I hate the attempts to pass off nostalgia for ye olde SF/F + handwringing over the corruption of the youth/womenfolk/etc as somehow progressive. I hate framing the most absolutely conventionally pretentious arguments about why less "respectable" genres really truly deserve to be disrespected as revolutionary.

There are deeply ahistorical and short-sighted elements to this that I've ranted about before (most recently with regard to fanfic here), and trying to additionally suggest these ideas are dangerous and transgressive and simultaneously so obvious as to be above criticism is so nonsensical. If you want to talk in sweeping generalizations about how SF/F is trash and fanfic is trash, you can do that, but the demand to be welcomed for doing so in fandom spaces and that the entirely predictable result of people getting annoyed just shows how right you are and how defensive fandom is about their unsophisticated tastes is just raw entitlement and elitism. Upsetting people is not a vindication of your position.

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I reblogged this post from dingdongyouarewrong on Tumblr about how being critical is generally good, but generally the calls for approaching media critically are less about critical thinking than wanting people who like X Thing to self-flagellate and publicly confess their sins for liking it.

Tagged: #yepppp #a lot of times it's even pettier— 'you can only like a thing i don't if you publicly self-flagellate about it' #'MAYBE'

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So, at the end of Pride and Prejudice, Georgiana learns from Elizabeth that what a nearly 30-year-old man will accept from his 16-year-old sister/ward is not actually a model for how husbands and wives behave towards each other.

It seems that while Georgiana is initially unsettled by Elizabeth’s behavior towards Darcy, she (Georgiana) comes to accept that it’s fine for Elizabeth to treat Darcy in a very different way than Georgiana can treat him, with the implication that Georgiana herself will approach her own eventual husband very differently than she does Darcy (whom, we hear repeatedly, she regards as almost her father).

Of course, sometimes people take this to mean that Darcy and Georgiana’s relationship is actually ~problematic, and either he’s tyrannizing over her (intentionally or unintentionally) or, at the very least, the dynamic between them isn’t quite right. I unsurprisingly disagree; I think it’s perfectly fine for their relationship to verge on father-daughter when he’s much older and literally raised her, and that it will likely become somewhat less unbalanced as Georgiana fully grows up.

Meanwhile, an essay I read the other day takes it one step farther and argues that not only is Darcy tyrannizing over Georgiana, it indicates that he will also tyrannize over Elizabeth. Like … how you get from “Georgiana learns that this relationship isn’t what husband-wife relationships look like” to “actually this relationship is what Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship will look like” is kind of beyond me, except in an academia edgelord sort of way. Bleh.

Tagged: #the essay also completely ignored the explicit 'darcy and elizabeth were always grateful for their marriage' hea statement #like most of those sorts of takes do #and i ended up using it for my exam anyway #not that argument - a different part of it that was fine and relevant #i genuinely do think that pulling valuable aspects out of flawed work is okay and even important #but it still felt a bit dirty lol #thinking about it though #i've seen the attitude in fandom too #not the 'darcy will tyrannize over elizabeth' thing of course (...much) but #that the dynamic between a teenager and her 28-y-o guardian should be like everyday sibs and it's like... uh. no #even if we're setting the vast differences between 1795/1813 and 2021 aside #but i think part of the reason it annoys me so much is that i actually find the darcy-georgiana relationship really interesting #in how they're partially distanced bc of the age/authority gap yet also in other ways all the closer because of it #there's this repeated emphasis of how they're almost like father and daughter but it's always 'almost' and not quite there #like ... they're kind of stuck in this in-between space with very little personal direction and figured out this thing that works for them #and like. she's more talkative when he's around and they write long-ass letters to each other and-and-and #it /does/ work and the immensity of georgiana's love and respect is what ultimately saved her from wickham #i think it's both complicated and sweet and they're doing their best in a very human way

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An anon said (in clear response to this rant):

A big part of the reason that I don't read Forced Marriage P&P fic is because of the almost universal assumption that a pre-Hunsford Darcy would tyrannize Elizabeth, when it's pretty clear from the text that we're supposed to see his relationship with Georgiana (where his affection is always emphasised) and Mrs Reynold's glowing commendation (sweetest-tempered, never had a cross word, etc.) as proof that he's literally the opposite of a tyrant in how he interacts with people.

I replied:

Yes, exactly!

Fans and academics both tend to focus overwhelmingly on what the Pemberley scenes reveal about how Darcy has changed, but Austen dedicates a significant amount of time and space to revealing that Darcy was already different than Elizabeth thought.

Tagged: #tyrannical alpha male darcy is the worst

[ETA 4/2/2024: you can probably guess this, but if you're not particularly familiar with P&P fandom, my anon was referring to a fic trope common to P&P fics called FMS or "Forced Marriage Scenario." This is a fairly specific and formalized genre of P&P fanfic where Elizabeth and Darcy (usually before either has had their character development) are forced into marriage for reasons and they have to learn and grow and fall in love in that context. The reason why they're forced to marry can vary from something relatively believable to comically ludicrous, but it's pretty much always a fairly thin pretext to get them married off before they have matured. At least back when I still read these, FMS fics tended to depict Darcy as much more domineering and "alpha" and generally awful than canon Darcy—most often he is entirely unrecognizable in pretty much the exact way this anon was describing, yet still somehow framed as the only one for Elizabeth.

There are, or were, gentler FMS-adjacent tropes where the appeal is similar, but the author tries to sand down the problematic aspects of it, like AUs where Elizabeth accepts Darcy at Hunsford or shortly thereafter because of [pretext] and you still get the "getting to know each other in the context of engagement/marriage" aspect, but it's voluntary. I do get the appeal of the FMS and its various sister tropes—as a kid, I actually thought it was what was going to happen in P&P itself and was shocked!!!! that they got together in such a different way. But in practice, it's really difficult to manage this trope with P&P in a way that a) makes sense for Elizabeth, b) doesn't make Darcy a monster, c) doesn't fall into weird gender essentialist heteronormative shit, and d) doesn't completely lose the edge. Back in 2006, I was attempting a take on this with Such Terms of Cordiality that completely got rid of the consent issues by having Darcy and Elizabeth meet on much better terms, fall into a sort of calf love that would lead them to voluntarily marrying before they'd had their character arcs, and meant to focus on their clashes and growth within their marriage—but tbh I got distracted by subplots and wandered off.]

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tree responded to this post:

i can’t remember the wording, but someone (mrs gardiner?) even comments on the significance of such a recommendation of his character by an intelligent servant.

I replied:

It’s in the narration, but yes!

The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs Reynolds was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people’s happiness were in his guardianship!—how much of pleasure or pain was it in his power to bestow!—how much of good or evil must be done by him!f

The text is emphatic that the judgment of Mrs Reynolds and those in roughly similar positions to her is immensely important as an indicator of Darcy’s (or anyone’s) true character. I think people do tend to treat it as "trifling," unfortunately—nice, but not terribly weighty, despite Austen underscoring its importance here and Elizabeth suddenly grasping that Darcy’s character is best understood by those who are directly subject to his power.

I actually find that moment super interesting in general, because I think the implication is that Elizabeth had not before understood this. It’s not that she never thought about it before because she didn’t have access to the people under Darcy’s power, IMO, but because she wasn’t thinking of his power in those terms. So it’s doing interesting work with Elizabeth’s characterization, too, but still gets relegated to an afterthought. :\

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beatrice_otter responded to this post:

Elizabeth is very sheltered, young, and relatively privileged compared to 99% of the people in England. She’s probably never really thought about power, that much, or how easily it is abused. Well, she’s probably seen abusive husbands and definitely seen neglectful/rude husbands (her dad), but there’s a gap between “this specific relationship can be Bad” and “there are a variety of relationships that can be Bad because there is a common factor (power) and how a person treats people in X circumstance is a pretty good indicator of how they’ll treat people in Y circumstance.”

And then she goes to Pemberly, and meets Mrs. Reynolds, and Mrs. Gardiner points out obliquely why Mrs. Reynolds’ report is worth considering, and Elizabeth puts all the pieces together. She’s smart, just sheltered.

“Oh, yeah! A guy who has power over a lot of people and takes care to treat them well, will probably treat other people in his power well. A guy who treats his servants and his sister/ward in such a way that they love and respect him would probably also treat his wife in such a way that she could love and respect him.”

It’s an important point.

I replied:

I sort of agree (though I don’t think Elizabeth’s epiphany here actually owes anything to Mrs Gardiner beyond what she generally owes the Gardiners; she gets there on her own). But I would disagree a bit about the significance that she sees in the extent of his power and how he uses it.

I don’t think his treatment of the vulnerable people within the range of his power—his underage sister, his housekeeper, his other servants, his tenants, the local poor—operates purely (or perhaps even primarily) as an index for how he’d treat his wife, even for Elizabeth. I’d argue that what strikes Elizabeth here is that how Darcy treats those people—people whose welfares she’s never really thought about before—matters enormously in its own right and thus, says a great deal about his general character. That’s certainly relevant to how he might act as a husband and I think she’s aware of it, but her overall thought process here is not particularly self-centered IMO.

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I reblogged busymagpie's illustration of Tar-Míriel here. The image is small in her blog style, but if you click on it, you can see a much larger version!

I said:

#oh this is a wonderful míriel #the only last ruler of númenor we recognize in THIS house and such a great rendition of her!

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I reblogged this Jyn/Cassian gifset in shades of blue and red.

Tagged: #oh this is nice #it's such a beautiful film :')

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There are some fictional characters I judge for being murderers, and there are some characters I judge for not murdering someone who really had it coming, and then sometimes there’s a rare and special flower who is both.

YOU HAD ONE JOB.

[ETA 4/2/2024: this applies to multiple characters, but I was definitely thinking about Curufin murdering many innocent people in The Silmarillion, but not Eöl. Curufin is between kinslayings at the time; surely he could stop one(1) guy he clearly hates?]