I could have written a(nother) thousand-word essay about genderswap, and cited specific stories and caused some wank and some bobble-headed nodding, and next week it would have vanished into the swirl.
Exactly! You know what, this is so interesting, because I'm a regular writer for the Hooded Utilitarian now, and . . . I find I can't really write articles. Sometimes I do write fannish meta essays, but . . . in the end, if I really want to say something, I generally write fic about it, because I find stories memorable and also . . . well, sort of inarguable in a way that an essay is not. It's not that I don't want people to debate with me. Maybe it's that it's easy to read a story as someone's opinion, or someone's POV; it doesn't tell you how things are, but rather how things could be, or how we could see them. And that's what I hated about academia, too; when you wrote essays about literature you were supposed to say, "this is what it is" rather than "this is what I thought". When I read a genderswap fic by you, I can see not, "You're doing it wrong!" but rather, "I do it this way" and . . . it's such a gentler and easier way for me to respond and self-analyze.
I want to write about girls in reboots for HU, and I was thinking about doing that thing about BBC's Sherlock as a girl, but I just don't know how to make it work. Oy.
no subject
Exactly! You know what, this is so interesting, because I'm a regular writer for the Hooded Utilitarian now, and . . . I find I can't really write articles. Sometimes I do write fannish meta essays, but . . . in the end, if I really want to say something, I generally write fic about it, because I find stories memorable and also . . . well, sort of inarguable in a way that an essay is not. It's not that I don't want people to debate with me. Maybe it's that it's easy to read a story as someone's opinion, or someone's POV; it doesn't tell you how things are, but rather how things could be, or how we could see them. And that's what I hated about academia, too; when you wrote essays about literature you were supposed to say, "this is what it is" rather than "this is what I thought". When I read a genderswap fic by you, I can see not, "You're doing it wrong!" but rather, "I do it this way" and . . . it's such a gentler and easier way for me to respond and self-analyze.
I want to write about girls in reboots for HU, and I was thinking about doing that thing about BBC's Sherlock as a girl, but I just don't know how to make it work. Oy.