description: individual-as-category
Feb. 13th, 2007 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have been having vague thoughts about turning people into categories, and how it can sound sort of freaky, especially in the middle of a sex scene.
Obviously, when you're writing descriptions, you focus on the distinctive. With het sex you can sort of get away with 'he' and 'she', but with slash? Not so very. So you end up with 'blue eyed blonde' syndrome. Because apparently saying their name a lot would be breaking some rule of writing. :eyeroll:
Which is all very well, but... every label carries connotations. And while many of them are sort of politically neutral - 'short' has to be really extreme before it turns into a rights campaign - there's a whole other set. Technically 'black' is a simple physical descriptor, and yet, once it's on the page? Really not.
And there's so many ways that can get wonky. If one character gets a name and another is more a description, if race is used as adequate shorthand for one guy but the characters from the dominant ethnic group get a lot more detail, all sorts. And then there's what happens if you have some kind of power dynamic in the relationship, even a fun who's on top PWP kind of thing. As soon as you start using category words for a person you're kind of writing things done to a whole category. Which... very wonky very fast.
Thing that's been bugging me in fic lately is use of the label Welsh. I mean, it's a perfectly accurate label. It's a great label. It applies to many people who would happily claim that label.
But when you're applying it to one half of a slash pairing... since when did he become his country?
... which is a weird reaction, in some ways, but what I mean is...
Ianto is a lot of very specific things, individual traits, collected around the sign Ianto and called a character. And granted the blue eyed brunet thing isn't going to set him apart in some stories, but is Welsh really that distinctive it would?
And then calling Jack American... it's a pov thing, I guess, but I always find it jarring because we know he has the accent but we can be fairly sure it's a sign interpreted falsely by the locals. And it's entirely possible it's being used deliberately to be fake. So just having him unproblematically American strikes me as wrong.
Though, granted, not necessarily in the middle of reading porn.
Just once I start thinking too much again.
Also, it's kind of distancing dropping in a label that big. I mean, instead of being up close and looking at their eyes, you're suddenly looking at their country. Which... less fun.
Plus it's entirely possible to write a description where you don't know who is involved at all. Because there's a heck of a lot of Welsh men in Cardiff, and Jack could probably have any of them.
On a slightly more canon specific note - "Beautiful Welsh vowels" is a canon quote, and could be taken as an accurate expression of Jack's appreciation for the accent. But if you're going to have him repeat it? Consider the context in which Ianto *heard* it.
He's not going to find it a neutral sort of a phrase, methinks.
Okay, all that, vague flapping and irritability.
I'm going to go read textbook so I can do *specific* flapping and irritability with *references*.
Obviously, when you're writing descriptions, you focus on the distinctive. With het sex you can sort of get away with 'he' and 'she', but with slash? Not so very. So you end up with 'blue eyed blonde' syndrome. Because apparently saying their name a lot would be breaking some rule of writing. :eyeroll:
Which is all very well, but... every label carries connotations. And while many of them are sort of politically neutral - 'short' has to be really extreme before it turns into a rights campaign - there's a whole other set. Technically 'black' is a simple physical descriptor, and yet, once it's on the page? Really not.
And there's so many ways that can get wonky. If one character gets a name and another is more a description, if race is used as adequate shorthand for one guy but the characters from the dominant ethnic group get a lot more detail, all sorts. And then there's what happens if you have some kind of power dynamic in the relationship, even a fun who's on top PWP kind of thing. As soon as you start using category words for a person you're kind of writing things done to a whole category. Which... very wonky very fast.
Thing that's been bugging me in fic lately is use of the label Welsh. I mean, it's a perfectly accurate label. It's a great label. It applies to many people who would happily claim that label.
But when you're applying it to one half of a slash pairing... since when did he become his country?
... which is a weird reaction, in some ways, but what I mean is...
Ianto is a lot of very specific things, individual traits, collected around the sign Ianto and called a character. And granted the blue eyed brunet thing isn't going to set him apart in some stories, but is Welsh really that distinctive it would?
And then calling Jack American... it's a pov thing, I guess, but I always find it jarring because we know he has the accent but we can be fairly sure it's a sign interpreted falsely by the locals. And it's entirely possible it's being used deliberately to be fake. So just having him unproblematically American strikes me as wrong.
Though, granted, not necessarily in the middle of reading porn.
Just once I start thinking too much again.
Also, it's kind of distancing dropping in a label that big. I mean, instead of being up close and looking at their eyes, you're suddenly looking at their country. Which... less fun.
Plus it's entirely possible to write a description where you don't know who is involved at all. Because there's a heck of a lot of Welsh men in Cardiff, and Jack could probably have any of them.
On a slightly more canon specific note - "Beautiful Welsh vowels" is a canon quote, and could be taken as an accurate expression of Jack's appreciation for the accent. But if you're going to have him repeat it? Consider the context in which Ianto *heard* it.
He's not going to find it a neutral sort of a phrase, methinks.
Okay, all that, vague flapping and irritability.
I'm going to go read textbook so I can do *specific* flapping and irritability with *references*.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 11:07 am (UTC)Though I have seen him called 'the Londoner'.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 04:59 pm (UTC)As for the constant repetition of "beautiful Welsh vowels" in fanfic? Shoot me now. It was a throwaway flirty Jack-line and the best use I've seen it put to was the Torchstick cartoon where Ianto interrupts with, "If you say 'beautiful Welsh vowels' one more time..." Otherwise leave it be.
There's a thousand other things Jack would happily say in place of it.
Ahem. Sorry. You just seem to have mentioned two of my Torchwod fanfic pet hates.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 05:32 pm (UTC)(And I definitely agree with you about the epithets... see my comment to becca below.)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 05:29 pm (UTC)IMO the only time it works to vary how the POV character thinks of someone else is when it's done with specific intent to reveal the POV character's state of mind. If Ianto has been thinking of Jack as the Captain or Harkness and suddenly starts thinking of him as Jack -- it's a signal that something's changed. If Methos goes from thinking of Duncan as Mac and is now thinking of him as MacLeod, it's a signal to me that he's distancing himself. Those signals are consistent with POV.
But many writers seem to forget POV and use these as a crutch to avoid repeating a person's name or the pronoun problem, but I swear, sometimes I read a sex scene and I think there are six people in the bed, thanks to all the epithets -- and they sometimes make it harder, not easier, to figure out who's who.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 06:44 pm (UTC)