#reader response

Heya, didja miss me? haha *taps mic* Testing, testing. Is anyone even here?

I’m not in fandom, but I did miss rambling about stories enough that I did it in an Amazon review for a sci-fi romance on Kindle Unlimited. Enough factors combined that I was both alarmed and curious, so I skimmed to the end and it appears the alien hero murders the human heroine within a few paragraphs of the end, during what should be their wedding, because she refuses to have sex in public, in front of her daughter. They go straight from ‘no this is culturally inappropriate’ to 'sure okay I’ll die for my cultural norms’ and the hero just goes with it no problem, though he declares his love as he does it. Well then.

I don’t generally write Amazon reviews, and this isn’t a review, per se. I was curious about the ending and so I read the very end (instead of the very beginning). Things that stood out as bad, more so than the big shocking twist:

- Internal motivations aren’t clear, or even mentioned, even at a pivotal moment.

- Further, internal conflict (where obviously expected) is missing and not shown or told. This makes the big event– the hero murders the heroine– fall flat.

- It has no emotional leverage because of the way it comes out of nowhere (even within a page’s length) and has no apparent build-up or space for denouement. This sort of reliance on a shocking end twist and a surfacey and disconnected narrative is a sign of very, very amateur writing.

- You should not be able to follow the action in the ending from a quick glance. That is a sign, in and of itself, that the ending is apparently disconnected from the story and may even be considered random, just an end because the author needed something to happen and likes pointless drama. Lack of denouement makes the drama pointless in and of itself.

- There’s a reason big things happen in the middle of the book (the big crisis point) and not the end. That’s because readers feel cheated when it happens at the end, and emotionally satisfying plot or character arcs are made impossible, unless the whole work is a tragedy. Note, tragedies are the opposite of sudden. The whole point of Romeo and Juliet is the ending, and it’s built up from the first word Shakespeare wrote in the play. A tragedy is not a love story; they’re two different genres using human romantic relationships as a theme.

- Basically, these few pages at the end are enough to prove to me reading the book would be a pointless waste of my time. I do like analyzing why not, though, so here you go.

So I was thinking, broadly, about romance/attraction and the idea of insta-love and how that gets parsed for m/f vs m/m. I see a lot of it. I see so much of it that I don’t think it even registers unless it’s *love*. Like, for ex instant attraction and sudden/fast physicality in m/m stories and fic is pretty much the default. It may even be less overtly prevalent in straight romance. In gay romance, if you’re not having sexual thoughts at first sight, you’re probably a closeted and/or repressed character. The standard really depends on characters being modern and out, though. Not modern or not out are accepted reasons to have slow-burn and/or denial.

In m/f romance, often enough sex is deferred, but generally only because it’s seen as the ‘prize’ where the hero is having some emotional experience rather than merely physical. Generally, many authors even go to extreme (and silly) extents to defer het sex just so it wouldn’t be meaningless at first. Though of course sometimes you have a lot of sex and that’s the path to a lasting relationship and the reason for angst/development. This is common in m/m stuff, less so in contemporary m/f, which clearly seems unfortunate, or at least retrograde somehow. The women definitely feel fast attraction too, but excuses are made, obstacles arise and sex remains a reward.

Anyway, it’s rare when sex isn’t had and kisses aren’t either, *but* it’s just because that’s the natural progression and not 1) the author is very clearly not into writing smut and so sex feels like it isn’t really real anyway, so kisses may substitute for the timing sex would have; 2) there’s the the reward dynamic where it’s used as a motivation for change or a reward at the end, like I mentioned.

Alternatively, of course, there’s the insta-love phenomenon. It almost never happens in m/m romance, though it does in fic 'cause of the desire to skip to the good part we all know is real from fanon. In m/f romance, I suspect it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card so you can have sex as early as desired 'cause the emotions are in the bag. This sort of manipulation gets old, though it can be done better or worse. You start seeing gradations after enough exposure. I like mating bonds. At least it’s an excuse.

What happens in male-written m/f action/plot driven stuff is something else again. Kisses from the woman are sort of used as currency or a reward, which is bullshit, but a similar dynamic exists in female-written stuff, except the reward is held back longer. It’s hard to be incensed since the whole thing is stupid. There’s always more and less annoying ways to go about it, though.

WithGood Omens, I could tell the witch and the witch hunter were set up structurally. That’s more of a connection than you can expect, like the guy in the Battle Angel Alita movie– he was just the first her age to pay attention to her. Here, the exchange (so far) is more straightforward in that it’s sex/kissing (attraction under extreme circumstances) and not a shoehorned “love” of convenience. The two things are pretty different. If anything, I support random pairings based on physical attraction. That’s realistic, 100%. There don’t need to be Deep Thoughts or Feelings involved. That’s where it all goes wrong: romanticizing sex for spurious reasons. Possibly to placate women or moralistic people. I dunno.

Slow-burns that feel real and earned and not like people who fight their attraction for invented reasons are rare like hen’s teeth. Honestly it also works better when you have characters who are asexual or closeted. Normally, people don’t need deep or meaningful reasons to have sex or even have a relationship, unless there are outside factors. Especially het people. Like, I dunno, this applies to average guys in bars but even a guy like the one in Good Omens (the schmuck) ultimately is just a guy who never wanted to be a schmuck and will take the first opportunity to stop, definitely.

I was reading through Stiefvater’s blog post about her health struggles, specifically thinking about the mentions of the rather predictable fandom response to the resulting errors in The Raven King, her absences from touring, etc. I was thinking about how fandom– and online culture in general– tends to catastrophize, assume the worst of people but specifically creators. Naturally, that’s if we’re not idolizing our faves. Maybe you can’t have one without the other, I’m not sure.

Even when I agree in principle– for ex, about queerbaiting issues– in the end I disagree when the discussion frequently turns to intent. Some people do talk about queerbaiting regardless of creator intent, but that’s a touchy topic and a difficult balance to strike, isn’t it? If you’re upset, you want to blame someone. And if you see something wrong, the default assumption (even if it’s a reasoning error) is that it’s intentional. No one thinks to imagine the thing that irritates or hurts them is just a largely meaningless accident, let alone a result of totally unrelated personal issues like with Stiefvater. Surely it’s got to be related, people reason. Surely it’s about you.

However, the fact is, 95% of the time, I’m guessing it’s not, in fact, about you, or me, or us (or even them). It’s about the creator(s) and whatever their needs, desires and personal issues are. So yeah, I’m guessing most creators don’t do anything either for or against fandom, most of the time. Is that an ugly truth, or just boring?

Sometimes creators want to keep you in suspense. That does happen. JK Rowling and Moffat, for example, are both fans of playing with fans’ minds in that way. But it’s not personal. It’s a part of the performance, rather. In the case of shocking plot reveals, your shock as the audience is part of the theater of it all. Actually, this kind of audience manipulation is probably as old as stories. I’d imagine Shakespeare must have been a fan of the shocking reveal/reversal where possible. Romeo and Juliet is full of that sort of thing. And that play really plays with the audience, too. I only imagine it was limited by the fact that it wasn’t a long-term serial. Alas.

Anyway, back to the point. Anytime someone assumes the creator(s) are out to get you (or us) just for kicks and/or for some even more nefarious reason, I’d take a step back and indulge in some healthy skepticism. Not that I expect this to happen anytime soon, alas.

I skimmed an introduction to Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, where he says a bunch of cool things about the often very personal and diverse responses to the themes and characters in his book. He talks about the much discussed truth in fandom that the reason stories stick with us is ultimately because they’re *about* us, and the story is only truly created in the interplay or with the collaboration of the writer and the reader. That’s such a big truth, and it was cool to see an official writer’s perspective rather than a reader’s response, for once. He was so warmly insightful on the subject that I was strongly tempted to actually read the book(s), enough to put it on my to-read list, even though I’ve heard lots of things that make me think I’ll be disappointed eventually, especially reading as an adult who’s seen the stuff he’d said about queer people. But that’s neither here nor there. My point is, stories are always most meaningful when they’re *your* story.

Consequently, the simple truth is, I don’t need to have a ‘good enough’ excuse for why I can’t get myself to give things like reverse harem romance or threesomes in fanfic a chance. And conversely, I should stop beating my head against the wall of other people’s inevitably diverse reactions, even if they share some broad opinion (such as generally rejecting any reverse harem storylines). Their lives are different. They are different. Their book experience is never going to be the same, no matter how many starting point opinions we share.

This is, of course, the opposite of fannishness, so maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to accept. Fandom says the things we like in stories can be shared, not just among friends, but broad swathes of people. Orson Scott Card wasn’t talking about anything so large-scale, though. At most, he was saying a group of people with a shared real life experience– specifically, being a military rescue pilot– has a common approach to and interest in his book. That’s not the same as simply happening to share an interest or framework, is it? It’s not simply that there are these fans, all of whom like to focus on the military aspect of Ender’s Game. It’s not about reading preference. Hell, I’d bet many of these people don’t even like reading, particularly. It’s about identity: their identity, Ender’s identity, and the places they intersect.

It’s funny, because while I can easily take Ender’s Game itself seriously, a part of me has a hard time treating something as pulpy as reverse harem romance sci-fi the same way. Plenty of people treat all science fiction as not being 'real’ literature. But from all accounts, it’s simply written better than your average pulpy sci-fi romance. This difference in quality is distracting. It’s also hard to talk about identity and deeper meaning with stuff that’s much, much more escapist and unrealistic than even something like Ender’s Game. But the fact is, who you are as the reader is the constant. It applies to every single piece of fiction, no matter how badly written or ridiculous. Someone who’s pragmatic by nature and focused on their job as their source of identity would need books that reflect something of their real life experiences to be truly meaningful. And then there are people (like me and maybe even many reverse harem fans) that can relate to all sorts of things that have nothing to do with their real life experience, because their identity isn’t necessarily tied into their work or everyday environment. Maybe it’s their gender/orientation or their creative interest or hobby that provides their identity. Those things can get pretty far transformed and still retain their basic nature.

Anyway, the fact is that I relate most strongly to my ideals and values as the source of identity. It’s a no-brainer that anything that goes against my central values in the romantic sphere would be dead on arrival as far as romantic fiction goes. It would mean a story that says nothing to me. Other people may share my values (as in, one is more than enough in relationships), but their source of identity and connection may lie elsewhere in a given story. That’s all that would take for a potentially significantly altered personal reaction to the storyline. For me, of course, the value question would instinctively overrule any other concern, but that’s me. There are as many possibilities for readings as there are readers, and sometimes we just aren’t ready or it’s too late for a particular book to matter. Every story has its place and time, as well as its ideal reader. It’s really amazing, actually, that I still enjoy and relate to as many characters and stories as I do. That’s definitely something I count as a blessing.