Writing about the builders

[beccaelizabeth]

Someone said in passing in a meta post somewhere (yeah, I cite sources so well!) that you wouldn't write about dentists just because there were no dentists in canon.

Which made me think of one of my favourite college text books, Rob Pope's "Textual Intervention". Which I still haven't finished reading. I should totally read the rest of it, the bits I've read are like 'why we fic' only in academic.

There's a bit about de and re centering texts. A text focuses on the main characters, maybe from the point of view of one of them in particular. Say it's a story about a prince and a princess and a tower and a garden. The only ones with speaking parts are the prince and the princess. BUT by having a tower and a garden the text implies the existence of builders and gardeners. Why aren't they in the story? What would their point of view be?

Sometimes 'why' is tangled up with issues like class or race or social inequalities. And then you could totally rewrite the story from a builder point of view as a political act.

Is that why dentists get left out?

If not, for me, there's less push to correct it.

But I have actually considered the existence or lack thereof of dentists in reference to some of my canon texts. It never got to being the center of a story, but consider:

Harmony's line "Who needs dental more than we do?" implies a whole industry of dentists for vampires, who somehow manage without the use of mirrors. And the first time they stick a mirror in a vampire's mouth would be an interesting moment - vamps don't show up in mirrors, therefore the mirror would never go dark. Freaky.

In both Highlander and Torchwood we have characters from other times who unaccountably have 20th century dental work - fillings that show when they scream loud enough. The simple thing to do is to not-see that - it's like if the wires are showing, clearly a mistake. But you can get character mileage out of it - what if Duncan MacLeod spent a few hundred years with toothache until someone invented fillings? Or how about Jack realising he's going to have to go around with metal in his teeth because he's stuck on the slow path and they haven't invented dental regeneration yet? And how do you explain to a dentist that thing where he can pull a tooth but the damn thing will just grow back... Way to have a first encounter with an Immortal...

But I never get around to writing this stuff down. Possibly because I can't currently see any way that doesn't lead to me going aarrrgh that could connect any of it to guys having sex. Possibly because it don't exactly fit with genre conventions. I mean, the bar where all the unusual people go is a staple, but the dentist? Not so very.


Babylon 5 had a recentered episode that followed some maintenance guys around. Worker caste, Delenn called them. Their existence had been implied by the nice clean station, but mostly the story wasn't focused on them. Warrior and Religious caste got most of the screen time. And then that turned into a political point when the Minbari council got remade. It was pretty cool.


... I'm now imagining a Warrior caste dentist. Or a Klingon dentist. Oh *dear*.

So, anyways, there's stories there. But... not so much with the writing them. Reasons why not could be interesting.

Comments

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Should be a ficathon, "The Forgotten Ones".

Fics about Harmony at the dentist, I dunno, Giles hiring someone to paint his flat, a whole list of "forgotten" people, and being challenged to write them.

[beccaelizabeth]

tis good idea.
would require organisational skills and, like, brains, so, is no a me thing.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Nor me.

But you might have friends.