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*.
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)