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brightknightie) wrote2012-06-17 09:01 pm
brightknightie) wrote2012-06-17 09:01 pm
Entry tags:
Why I'm Personally Not Wild About "OTP"
Last week, I answered a survey about fanfiction trope classifications when couples are designated. I commented briefly that I often find such classifications puzzling. In a flash of nostalgia for days when the conventions were different and I ~wry~ innocently believed that I understood them — "gen" was everything that was not "erotica" in my '90s world (yes, including slash, though I understand that an older convention was that "gen" was everything that was not "slash;" no, no one I knew used the term "het" yet, and we still had "couples" instead of "pairings") — I added the passing observation that the acronym "OTP" (One True Pairing) has become a pet peeve, and also that I preferred its predecessor, "OTL" (One True Love).
Peeves are tiny crochets, niggling annoyances, recurring itches. They're what Andy Roony grumped about at the end of 60 Minutes. Not big deals. I'm not trying to stop people from using "OTP"! You use it, I'll roll my eyes, and everyone's happy, right? Well, no. Some found my peeve troubling. My preference could cause 'ship wars, one said. I was a bit taken aback.
Unfortunately, I just could not find the time then to respond seriously regarding something I had meant offhandedly. I've managed to carve out the time today; I hope it serves. In my defense, here are the layers of my personal, crotchety preference for OTL over OTP:
I was challenged on the legitimacy of the "One True Love" concept. Can there be such a thing? Should there be? In some literary genres, yes, there is and must be; that's their paradigm, their shape, their mechanism. Dante/Beatrice, please! Whether the concept applies in a specific story (television series) of course depends on that story's structure and tradition, among other factors. Whether it applies to a specific character then depends on that character's psychology and scope. (Naturally, many find the One True Love concept inherently problematic for a number of reasons — myself among them — but we must all grant its enduring place in our literature. Like it or not, our culture stamps out stories in that shape on an assembly line at great speed. The fun comes in analyzing its presence, reach and impact, perhaps deconstructing it, but always identifying it.)
For example, fandom seems widely agreed that that both Connor and Duncan MacLeod of HL are serial monogamists mainly because, in canon, they keep outliving their great beloveds; that is, only death parts them. I would submit that their natures are amenable to the "One True Love" paradigm but their circumstances are not, and that this is a brilliant part of the grand and glorious tragedy of HL. Duncan does not think Tessa (or Little Deer, or etc.) is his One True Love; he knows better... but while she lives, and while he mourns, he fervently wishes she could be, I interpret.
FK's Nick Knight, on the other hand, with a brain shaped by chivalry and presently living out an overt quest structure, repeatedly witnessed to have put his beloveds on a pedestal, may perhaps manifest the courtly love trope. Does he perceive each beloved as his One True Love at the time of that love, even though he knows better intellectually? Can he stop himself from repeating this pattern? Is it his story superstructure even if it is not his motivation?
For another FK example, Lacroix in "Be My Valentine" and "Fallen Idol" behaves, both past and present, as if he believes Fleur is his One True Love. Does he fully believe that, and, if so, what does that mean for his psychology? Or is some level a ruse against Nick, and if so, what is Lacroix's goal for that ruse? (It's all part of the fun of unknotting that knotty episode! Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we Mary Sue on screen...)
May I share a glance backward through rose-colored spectacles, at the happy glow of a moment grown golden in the rear-view mirror? Here's where I remember "One True Love" applied in discussion, usefully and gleefully. Once upon a time, before "Last Knight," some of us used to speculatively analyze FK's overall story structure. Many of us were English majors, and a few of us had tremendous fun nattering about whether FK's overall story was shaped more like a late medieval courtly love paradigm, or a nineteenth-century marriage plot, or a roman-a-clef, or an escape structure harnessed to episodic structure, or quests or transformations or...batdina very memorably laid out the Miltonic aspects of FK! At the time — again, before LK — I personally inclined in an N&Nerly direction, and subscribed to the "Beauty & the Beast" (close kin to courtly love) structure, in which Natalie was — consciously, unconsciously, or symbolically! open to happy debate — Nick's lady, the idealized woman whom he would honor and obey (without sex, mind) and thereby achieve and receive a higher place... in Nick's case, mortality/salvation in place of the troubadour's knightly character's battle honors and advancing rank in his lady's husband's court. Cousin Lisa P. and I chewed this over a few times, as well as others whose names I don't all remember. (Then — after LK — Ravens Batdina and Leela mustered adequate canon examples to persuade me out of my N&Nerism altogether, and I moved on to other favorite structures.)
For the record, as I trust my friends already know, I do not enjoy or respect the reductivist idea that a character (never mind a real person) may love only once in his or her life, or that a subsequent love invalidates an earlier love. That's repugnant. If you live to love again after a loss, you are greatly blessed. (That's significant in my life as well as in my fanfiction preferences.) I do not believe that the phrase One True Love enables that mistake, nor that the phrase One True Pairing defeats it.
Again, I am not asking anyone to abandon "OTP" or embrace "OTL." I just like what I like, and I was moved by nostalgia for happy hours in the computer lab after classes emailing fkspoilr via Pine, or scribbling FK notes in the margins of my class notes... I carried a dedicated FK notebook in the spring semester of my senior year of undergrad. ~grin~ I hadn't thought of that in ages, but I'm packing to move — yes, in addition to the commute and the job; I remember sleep fondly... — and happened to come upon it in a box of old papers yesterday. It contains at least two never-finished stories, but I'm not subjecting anyone to the leftovers of my '96 brain! Eeep. :-)
Peeves are tiny crochets, niggling annoyances, recurring itches. They're what Andy Roony grumped about at the end of 60 Minutes. Not big deals. I'm not trying to stop people from using "OTP"! You use it, I'll roll my eyes, and everyone's happy, right? Well, no. Some found my peeve troubling. My preference could cause 'ship wars, one said. I was a bit taken aback.
Unfortunately, I just could not find the time then to respond seriously regarding something I had meant offhandedly. I've managed to carve out the time today; I hope it serves. In my defense, here are the layers of my personal, crotchety preference for OTL over OTP:
- Utility: "OTP" used to stand for "Off-Topic Post." In the days of email lists, it was ubiquitous. I used it frequently. My brain still supplies the older meaning before the new one, causing a hitch every time I see it, and of course I must now spell out "off-topic post" whenever I want to use it. Thus, a peeve was born.
- Wordcraft: "Pairing" seems to have supplanted both "couple" and "love" in some fannish discourse. I lament the diminishment of what I consider the stronger, richer nouns, offering more scope and resonance, and also the distinctions supplied by the more precise terms. (I ♥ precise terms! I sometimes struggle with gender-neutral language over the ecstasy of supplying more information in a single, if sex-specific, word.) I personally find "pairing" a weak, distant concept where I prefer strong, intimate concepts to support strong, intimate feelings. So that stream feeds the peeve.
- Focus: "One True Pairing" is about what the fan prefers. "One True Love" is about what the character thinks and feels. While both are legitimate, meaningful objects of inquiry, I am, myself, frankly, much more interested in what the character thinks and feels — as revealed by close canon analysis — than in what individual fans prefer. Analysis is where I find my fannish fun! It's my delight. It's what I'm here for; please don't take it away and consign me to a shadowy netherworld of relativism. (OTL is open to canonical discussion; OTP is sealed shut.)
I was challenged on the legitimacy of the "One True Love" concept. Can there be such a thing? Should there be? In some literary genres, yes, there is and must be; that's their paradigm, their shape, their mechanism. Dante/Beatrice, please! Whether the concept applies in a specific story (television series) of course depends on that story's structure and tradition, among other factors. Whether it applies to a specific character then depends on that character's psychology and scope. (Naturally, many find the One True Love concept inherently problematic for a number of reasons — myself among them — but we must all grant its enduring place in our literature. Like it or not, our culture stamps out stories in that shape on an assembly line at great speed. The fun comes in analyzing its presence, reach and impact, perhaps deconstructing it, but always identifying it.)
For example, fandom seems widely agreed that that both Connor and Duncan MacLeod of HL are serial monogamists mainly because, in canon, they keep outliving their great beloveds; that is, only death parts them. I would submit that their natures are amenable to the "One True Love" paradigm but their circumstances are not, and that this is a brilliant part of the grand and glorious tragedy of HL. Duncan does not think Tessa (or Little Deer, or etc.) is his One True Love; he knows better... but while she lives, and while he mourns, he fervently wishes she could be, I interpret.
FK's Nick Knight, on the other hand, with a brain shaped by chivalry and presently living out an overt quest structure, repeatedly witnessed to have put his beloveds on a pedestal, may perhaps manifest the courtly love trope. Does he perceive each beloved as his One True Love at the time of that love, even though he knows better intellectually? Can he stop himself from repeating this pattern? Is it his story superstructure even if it is not his motivation?
For another FK example, Lacroix in "Be My Valentine" and "Fallen Idol" behaves, both past and present, as if he believes Fleur is his One True Love. Does he fully believe that, and, if so, what does that mean for his psychology? Or is some level a ruse against Nick, and if so, what is Lacroix's goal for that ruse? (It's all part of the fun of unknotting that knotty episode! Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we Mary Sue on screen...)
May I share a glance backward through rose-colored spectacles, at the happy glow of a moment grown golden in the rear-view mirror? Here's where I remember "One True Love" applied in discussion, usefully and gleefully. Once upon a time, before "Last Knight," some of us used to speculatively analyze FK's overall story structure. Many of us were English majors, and a few of us had tremendous fun nattering about whether FK's overall story was shaped more like a late medieval courtly love paradigm, or a nineteenth-century marriage plot, or a roman-a-clef, or an escape structure harnessed to episodic structure, or quests or transformations or...
batdina very memorably laid out the Miltonic aspects of FK! At the time — again, before LK — I personally inclined in an N&Nerly direction, and subscribed to the "Beauty & the Beast" (close kin to courtly love) structure, in which Natalie was — consciously, unconsciously, or symbolically! open to happy debate — Nick's lady, the idealized woman whom he would honor and obey (without sex, mind) and thereby achieve and receive a higher place... in Nick's case, mortality/salvation in place of the troubadour's knightly character's battle honors and advancing rank in his lady's husband's court. Cousin Lisa P. and I chewed this over a few times, as well as others whose names I don't all remember. (Then — after LK — Ravens Batdina and Leela mustered adequate canon examples to persuade me out of my N&Nerism altogether, and I moved on to other favorite structures.)For the record, as I trust my friends already know, I do not enjoy or respect the reductivist idea that a character (never mind a real person) may love only once in his or her life, or that a subsequent love invalidates an earlier love. That's repugnant. If you live to love again after a loss, you are greatly blessed. (That's significant in my life as well as in my fanfiction preferences.) I do not believe that the phrase One True Love enables that mistake, nor that the phrase One True Pairing defeats it.
Again, I am not asking anyone to abandon "OTP" or embrace "OTL." I just like what I like, and I was moved by nostalgia for happy hours in the computer lab after classes emailing fkspoilr via Pine, or scribbling FK notes in the margins of my class notes... I carried a dedicated FK notebook in the spring semester of my senior year of undergrad. ~grin~ I hadn't thought of that in ages, but I'm packing to move — yes, in addition to the commute and the job; I remember sleep fondly... — and happened to come upon it in a box of old papers yesterday. It contains at least two never-finished stories, but I'm not subjecting anyone to the leftovers of my '96 brain! Eeep. :-)
no subject
I hope the other comment thread wasn't too distressing or upsetting. *hugs*
I think the reason -- well, maybe part of the reason -- that "One True Love" was getting such a strong pushback in that comment thread is because the current fannish paradigm in Western media fandom (as I see it, anyway) is very heavily oriented towards "everyone is right in their own way, and entitled to their own way of looking at canon", as opposed to the idea that there is an objective truth of canon which we, as fans, can discover, i.e. the idea that some fans are right about canon and others are wrong is something that is strongly condemned in fannish circles these days. And, at least to some people in that comment thread, I think the concept of a character having "One True Love" in canon sounded very much like the "this is canon, and your way is wrong" argument that was, once upon a time, used to condemn slash or alternate takes on canon other than the most accepted ones.
... Basically I think fans these days have been culturally trained not to say "This is how the character feels", but instead, "This is how I believe the character feels" so as not to risk stepping on other fans' interpretation of the character, if that makes any sense. And most fannish analysis seems to proceed from that assumption. When it comes to heavy fannish meta, I see a lot more fannish discussion from an out-of-universe perspective than an in-universe perspective -- for example, I see a whole lot more meta talking about how Natasha in the Avengers movie is presented in terms of media gender roles and how her presentation as a character supports or undermines gender stereotypes (for example), than I see meta talking about who Natasha is from the perspective that Natasha is a real person with thoughts and feelings and desires, which we can uncover from close analysis of the movie.
As a fan, I started out very much in the latter model (in-universe fanning, "this is who the characters are", etc) and have gravitated towards the former model mostly because, I think, I've soaked it up from the current fannish gestalt. I still have very firm ideas on who the characters are to me (see, for example, my strictly lightside Forever Knight fanning *g*) but because I have a diverse array of opinions and different fanning styles on my flist, I tend to bend over backwards trying to hedge my opinions 'round with the caveat that these are just my opinions, etc. Personally I think that's the dominant fanning mode these days in general -- a side effect of LJ fandom factions being so much less walled off from each other than mailing list fandom tended to be, I guess.
Anyway, I found this post very interesting and informative, and I share your nostalgia feelings about my early days in fandom, even if my experiences were different. :)
I <3 Objective Reality
:-) I did not mean to inspire nightmares! :-)
>"I hope the other comment thread wasn't too distressing or upsetting. *hugs*"
Thank you very much; I appreciate your kind thought. It was a bit distressing, surely mainly because I was coincidentally in a fragile place at the time, but on reflection, (1) I earned misunderstanding by expressing myself offhandedly, without context, in mixed-fandom company, and (2) the mere existence of my preference really seems fundamentally threatening to some fans. What an oddity! What a wrongness! Yet it is so. My preferred way of playing the game is, as you say, open, ultimately, to being right or wrong. Not all textual interpretations are equal. To me, that's fun! To some, that's nigh unto assault.
Ironically — predictably — the orthodoxy that all preferences are equal declares my preference unequal. :-)
You make a sound case for a noble origin of this "all interpretations are equal" attitude in vigilant compensation for past injustices toward minority interpretations. However, its utter dominance may cost us something we will regret losing.
(I can't help thinking of how people today can pick and choose their news sources to match their existing views, while a generation ago we all shared a few news sources in common, regardless of our views.)
---
Natasha has been a real individual to me since she was Daredevil's partner and I was reading my dad's and uncle's comic books. I am going nowhere near the movie fandom. I'm not that brave! :-) But I have been swept lately by a powerful urge to dig out the summer A and WCA annuals with the east versus west baseball games... I loved those, not for the baseball, but for the emergence of every Avenger from every corner of the Marvel Universe...
Bosco's Comics, Anchorage, AK. Pre-Adolescent Summers: Endless daylight, tuna sandwiches, badminton, bicycle and Marvel annuals to the limits of my allowance. ~nostalgia~
no subject
I tend to agree with
I'd be interested at some point to hear what made you switch from Nick & Nat to Nick & Janette (or rather Nick/Nat to Nick/Janette in current usage).
N&Nerism and IBism
That's what I said in the first place. :-) Except, of course, I heartlessly noted that I care very much about what the characters feel, while not really so much about... ;-)
It occurs to me that FK's "couple factions" are "OTP"s, really.
>"I'd be interested at some point to hear what made you switch from Nick & Nat to Nick & Janette (or rather Nick/Nat to Nick/Janette in current usage)."
Thanks for asking! It wasn't really a switch, as such. Giving up enjoying a N&Ner construction came well before reliably finding enjoyment in other romance constructions. I don't deeply commit to any couple even now, though I do prefer Immortal Beloved (Nick/Janette) and Les Miserables (Nick/Urs) to N&Nerism (Nick/Natalie); but I'll enjoy any combination in a story sufficiently well written. (Fingers crossed for well-written stories. ~grin~)
What happened back in the summer of '96, following cancellation, with all those emotions raw, is that Batdina and Leela mustered canonical examples to demonstrate that (1) Nick did not necessarily love Natalie more than his other loves, nor was he necessarily better inspired/led/behaved for loving her than for loving them, and (2) my then-favored interpretations of FK as courtly love or "Beauty and the Beast" inevitably led to tragedy. If I wanted triumph instead of tragedy, I would have to favor another overall paradigm for FK. They had examples from all three seasons, but I believe that the clinchers were (A) that I still felt guilty over the whole Nevermore thing, and thus was especially persuadable by a couple of Ravens, and (B) that "The Human Factor"/"Last Knight" nexus of "Janette's cure" (true love + sex) permanently poisons the courtly love/BatB paradigm backward and forward from those moments throughout FK canon. Oh, how I have come to despise the "true love + sex" paradigm! Its myriad faults ate away at my vestigial N&Nerism year after year, story after story... rewatch after rewatch (and I have watched HF more times than anyone, surely). Later, I encountered NatPackers who would add to this the reading of Nick/Natalie as domestic abuse, adding another layer of discomfort with that paradigm.
Having Nick romance Janette (or Urs) allows little place for a courtly love overlay, and none, really, for "Beauty and the Beast." There is more equality there and, today, I enjoy a manifest mutuality in my romance stories. I prefer couples to rescue each other... Janette and Nick sometimes achieve spectacular mutuality on screen (they are also, to be frank, quite hot together). Urs and Nick, I imagine, could have achieved their own different kind of mutuality, if only...
How about you? Were you always inclined as a Raven and Immortal Beloved? (Or, for that matter, to your Stargate OTP?)
Re: N&Nerism and IBism
Yes, absolutely, quality can make almost any pairing work for me. Although there are some that I'll only read with very specific set-ups and interpretations.
I'm not terribly familiar with the tradition of courtly love, but I must admit the idea of inevitable tragedy is not appealing to me either.
As for me:
I think the primary thing that drew me to Nick/Janette is that I adore equality in romantic relationships. I don't know if I'd call Nick & Nat's relationship abusive (although I can see how one could interpret it that way), but I do think that while Natalie is stubborn and confident and would certainly push for equality--does push for equality in the show--getting Nick to perceive Natalie as an equal given the disparity in their experiences would be very difficult. He and Janette seem to be on more equal footing, and I like that. The main detraction for me from their relationship is that I think Nick sometimes treats Janette rather carelessly--using her and running--and then I'm forced to justify it in terms of their long relationship and assume that it probably evens out over time. But I must admit it bothers me.
My Stargate OTP (John/Cam)...there's an equality element there too, in that I prefer reading fic that treats them as both competent adults rather than making one a mess that the other needs to take care of. (I'm not talking about temporary ailments of the hurt/comfort variety, but one partner being a complete emotional mess dependent on the other for care or salvation.) But I think what drew me to them was the potential for unexpected vulnerability--two relatively stoic soldiers opening themselves emotionally and vocalizing those feelings--combined with enough commonality in background to make a match reasonable and enough differences in orientation to life to make things interesting. Nothing terribly highbrow, I'm afraid. The thought just popped into my head one day and wouldn't go away.