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Aug. 1st, 2015 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI think reading fanfic, where gender and sexuality and romance tropes are often enough done a bit different, has left me really annoyed at most published stuff.
Moth and Spark wound me up because too het romance at first sight.
This week Rising Darkness left me really seriously creeped out because not only het but het 'fixing' asexuality. I'm pretty sure the author was just going extreme on the 'she'd never met anyone that made her felt like he did' trope, but in the process, they wrote a sex repulsed asexual who'd had a pretty happy mostly sexless marriage with a gay man who left her when he came out to himself, and then she meets her 'soulmate' and suddenly sex feelings happen, and it's completely worded as a healing and a completion of self. See she was only half a person and had feelings missing, and then magic healing cock.
I don't know why I finished reading it.
... no, I do know why, epic inability to put a book down once started no matter how creepy.
Author never used the word asexual, just wrote about how she'd never felt sexually attracted and sex made her feel creepy and she only did it in a 'fake it til you make it' attempt to be normal. Like the gay character pretending to be straight. Which is a pretty weird thing to drop in the intro to a story about soulmates anyways. Only the gay guy got a boyfriend and no attempt to 'fix' him, but the ace lady went and met the ultra violence guy of her dreams and suddenly had sexy times feelings. It's pretty gross.
Also the gay character gets killed. Worse than killed, in universe, they have ghosts and reincarnation and proper afterlife stuff definitely for real, but his spirit gets destroyed so there's no more him anywhere. Dead dead.
Because more dead gay characters are exactly how representation should be done. Ugh.
It's also double annoying because soulmate guy mentions how they haven't always done sex in assorted lifetimes together, their souls travel together, they don't necessarily shag. But then he's like, you're a woman and I'm a man and we're not related, it's meant to be!
Ugh, gross.
Usually people need more than that to hook up?
No, wait, possibly not, but to consider themselves soulmates in the fitting together way, should be more.
Only it's the ugly soulmates version, the one where previous lifetimes have done all the relationship building work and they really *are* incomplete without each other and being alone is like a psychic wound and they'd die if the other were destroyed and
blergh blergh yuck
gross book.
I should remember that fandom is unusual in the way the soulmates trope gets taken round the houses so much. Usually it's just straight up. Destined, need each other, skip all that boring small talk stuff.
Which is gross and creeps me out.
I'd rather a story like... I think it was astolat? wrote recently, where the whole soul bond thing got raised at the start, but then the two decided not to do it, only then they spent the whole rest of the story showing how perfect they were for each other and, like, growing into the bond naturally. That's showing your work. That's interesting. There's this one person in all the world who's perfect for you: why?
In the thing I just read it's because they're complete opposites and she's all feelings and compassion and healing, and he's all warrior sociopath. ... no, the word got used, early on, it's annoying. So because they have absolutely nothing in common they belong together.
Ugh and ew.
There are so many het romances that are basically about taking a very violent man with no human connections and healing them with squishy heart feelings, which tends to involve him roughing her up but it somehow not being a bad thing, and then all the sex scenes of being thrown around and pinned and clothes torn off, which ew, especially combined with earlier stated sex aversion.
... although to be fair some people are into BDSM in not-sex ways and could in fact find themselves enjoying the pinned down etc parts. but still.
A lot of fanfic pairs I've been reading lately (very MCU lately) are about super violent man who did terrible things but somehow it's not his fault, so everyone has to help him not feel guilty. And then he can do violence for great justice instead.
I'm not exactly keen on that in theory and yet I read a ton of it.
Also too much fiction sets someone up as a super awesome healer and their enemy as explicitly mentally ill and/or super traumatised and then the final confrontation is them facing their enemy and... learning to use their healing powers to kill.
No.
Where are all the books where healing and diplomacy are actually of themselves useful?
Granted I like stories with swords in them and also power armour and photon torpedoes, but these things are only useful to buy space for useful discourse, otherwise the problems in the system remain.
Also mental illness does not need being killed.
Also also mental illness does not work like that.
pick a story at random and it's very likely mental illness does not work like that.
So I picked up the next book on my shelf to read today and so far the main problems are (a) too many men (100% men except for) (b) only female character subject to human sacrifice to turn her into a magical artefact with no volition.
... kind of thinking I should quit now.
... probably won't.
*sigh*
Moth and Spark wound me up because too het romance at first sight.
This week Rising Darkness left me really seriously creeped out because not only het but het 'fixing' asexuality. I'm pretty sure the author was just going extreme on the 'she'd never met anyone that made her felt like he did' trope, but in the process, they wrote a sex repulsed asexual who'd had a pretty happy mostly sexless marriage with a gay man who left her when he came out to himself, and then she meets her 'soulmate' and suddenly sex feelings happen, and it's completely worded as a healing and a completion of self. See she was only half a person and had feelings missing, and then magic healing cock.
I don't know why I finished reading it.
... no, I do know why, epic inability to put a book down once started no matter how creepy.
Author never used the word asexual, just wrote about how she'd never felt sexually attracted and sex made her feel creepy and she only did it in a 'fake it til you make it' attempt to be normal. Like the gay character pretending to be straight. Which is a pretty weird thing to drop in the intro to a story about soulmates anyways. Only the gay guy got a boyfriend and no attempt to 'fix' him, but the ace lady went and met the ultra violence guy of her dreams and suddenly had sexy times feelings. It's pretty gross.
Also the gay character gets killed. Worse than killed, in universe, they have ghosts and reincarnation and proper afterlife stuff definitely for real, but his spirit gets destroyed so there's no more him anywhere. Dead dead.
Because more dead gay characters are exactly how representation should be done. Ugh.
It's also double annoying because soulmate guy mentions how they haven't always done sex in assorted lifetimes together, their souls travel together, they don't necessarily shag. But then he's like, you're a woman and I'm a man and we're not related, it's meant to be!
Ugh, gross.
Usually people need more than that to hook up?
No, wait, possibly not, but to consider themselves soulmates in the fitting together way, should be more.
Only it's the ugly soulmates version, the one where previous lifetimes have done all the relationship building work and they really *are* incomplete without each other and being alone is like a psychic wound and they'd die if the other were destroyed and
blergh blergh yuck
gross book.
I should remember that fandom is unusual in the way the soulmates trope gets taken round the houses so much. Usually it's just straight up. Destined, need each other, skip all that boring small talk stuff.
Which is gross and creeps me out.
I'd rather a story like... I think it was astolat? wrote recently, where the whole soul bond thing got raised at the start, but then the two decided not to do it, only then they spent the whole rest of the story showing how perfect they were for each other and, like, growing into the bond naturally. That's showing your work. That's interesting. There's this one person in all the world who's perfect for you: why?
In the thing I just read it's because they're complete opposites and she's all feelings and compassion and healing, and he's all warrior sociopath. ... no, the word got used, early on, it's annoying. So because they have absolutely nothing in common they belong together.
Ugh and ew.
There are so many het romances that are basically about taking a very violent man with no human connections and healing them with squishy heart feelings, which tends to involve him roughing her up but it somehow not being a bad thing, and then all the sex scenes of being thrown around and pinned and clothes torn off, which ew, especially combined with earlier stated sex aversion.
... although to be fair some people are into BDSM in not-sex ways and could in fact find themselves enjoying the pinned down etc parts. but still.
A lot of fanfic pairs I've been reading lately (very MCU lately) are about super violent man who did terrible things but somehow it's not his fault, so everyone has to help him not feel guilty. And then he can do violence for great justice instead.
I'm not exactly keen on that in theory and yet I read a ton of it.
Also too much fiction sets someone up as a super awesome healer and their enemy as explicitly mentally ill and/or super traumatised and then the final confrontation is them facing their enemy and... learning to use their healing powers to kill.
No.
Where are all the books where healing and diplomacy are actually of themselves useful?
Granted I like stories with swords in them and also power armour and photon torpedoes, but these things are only useful to buy space for useful discourse, otherwise the problems in the system remain.
Also mental illness does not need being killed.
Also also mental illness does not work like that.
pick a story at random and it's very likely mental illness does not work like that.
So I picked up the next book on my shelf to read today and so far the main problems are (a) too many men (100% men except for) (b) only female character subject to human sacrifice to turn her into a magical artefact with no volition.
... kind of thinking I should quit now.
... probably won't.
*sigh*
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Date: 2015-08-17 04:07 am (UTC)