![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This is a thing that's been wrong with me for many and many a year now, and I just don't tell people, on account of the shame and guilt and all. But it's gotten worse since SGA -- a lot worse -- and
There is a part of me that HATES and wants to PUNCH people who have strict OTPs. Isn't that mean and awful? I know! It totally is!
A lot of people, me included, tend toward hyperbole in general, and toss around "OTP" to the degree that we have two and a half OTPs in every fandom and three on Monday; it's basically just nifty in-group slang for "hey, this pairing rocks my socks!" I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the people who DO NOT and WILL NOT read stories that aren't about Character Blah and Character BliddyBlah being In Love, preferably Forever.
I don't know why that bugs me so goddamn much, but it does. In my rational heart of hearts, I know that there's no arguing with taste, and nothing in the world could possibly be wrong with people having different tastes in stories, different needs and interests and hopes and dreams and whathaveyou. Yay, diversity! I'm usually all for it. Not in this case, however. Two possible reasons for that:
1) I'm just a bitter, beaten-down progressive who's been burned entirely too many times by people who take the attitude that ONE THING and ONLY ONE THING is acceptable, out of a vast range of possibilities. I am taking this knee-jerk hatred of people who try to reduce a complicated, rich, surprising world into one-size-fits-all for everyone and totally unjustly projecting it onto people who know what they like for themselves and stick with that thing, as is their perfect right. (However, it doesn't help that the language OTP-types use sometimes devolves into "But Blah and BliddyBlah just HAVE to be together, because OMG, they SO HAVE TO! The LOVE, it cannot be thwarted!!! Death to the tramps who come between them!!!" I imagine this is mostly hyperbole, too, but it does carry the unpleasant undertone of "Why are you doing it wrong?")
2) Deciding, sight unseen, that you like X/Y so very, very much that you will not like X/P seems to imply that there's a set of expectations you have about both X/Y stories and X/P stories, such that you know you'll like the former better than you like the latter. Which is okay, but the truth is, you don't really know what a story is like until after you've read it. Even the most hard-core OTPer must have read stories in their pairing that just did not do it for them...right? Those stories thwarted expectations in some way, so that you don't get what you felt like you were going to get, what you were looking forward to. So why, why in the name of all that's holy, can't that work in reverse? Why can't people imagine that perhaps a story they don't walk into already expecting to like might in fact turn out to be surprisingly good, for reasons that perhaps never even occurred to you before you read it? Intense OTPishness sometimes seems to me like a refusal to be surprised by a story, which is ultimately a refusal to be drawn in at all, to let the story *have* you. And that's the way I read, and it's all too easy to go from "I don't understand why you're not like me" to "I see no reason you shouldn't be more like me, dammit!" -- a line I have unfortunately, in this case, crossed.
I don't even know why I'm unloading this right now. I almost didn't at all because I don't want it to look as if I, as a habitual writer of pairings that are less popular than some other pairings, am pulling some kind of weepy "I am being denied the attention I so richly deserve!" routine, because actually I get a dreadful lot of attention and approval from my fandom; I have zero complaints on that score. Truthfully, there's a lot to be said for tapping into a fandom niche market; you stand out. It's all about branding, baby! Anyway, it's not me being needy, I promise.
Moreover, it's none of my goddamn business what other people choose to read or not read in their spare time, and I know it. And really, I'm not usually like this, I swear. It's just a thing I have. I'm hoping medical science is, even as we speak, working on a cure.
There is a part of me that HATES and wants to PUNCH people who have strict OTPs. Isn't that mean and awful? I know! It totally is!
A lot of people, me included, tend toward hyperbole in general, and toss around "OTP" to the degree that we have two and a half OTPs in every fandom and three on Monday; it's basically just nifty in-group slang for "hey, this pairing rocks my socks!" I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the people who DO NOT and WILL NOT read stories that aren't about Character Blah and Character BliddyBlah being In Love, preferably Forever.
I don't know why that bugs me so goddamn much, but it does. In my rational heart of hearts, I know that there's no arguing with taste, and nothing in the world could possibly be wrong with people having different tastes in stories, different needs and interests and hopes and dreams and whathaveyou. Yay, diversity! I'm usually all for it. Not in this case, however. Two possible reasons for that:
1) I'm just a bitter, beaten-down progressive who's been burned entirely too many times by people who take the attitude that ONE THING and ONLY ONE THING is acceptable, out of a vast range of possibilities. I am taking this knee-jerk hatred of people who try to reduce a complicated, rich, surprising world into one-size-fits-all for everyone and totally unjustly projecting it onto people who know what they like for themselves and stick with that thing, as is their perfect right. (However, it doesn't help that the language OTP-types use sometimes devolves into "But Blah and BliddyBlah just HAVE to be together, because OMG, they SO HAVE TO! The LOVE, it cannot be thwarted!!! Death to the tramps who come between them!!!" I imagine this is mostly hyperbole, too, but it does carry the unpleasant undertone of "Why are you doing it wrong?")
2) Deciding, sight unseen, that you like X/Y so very, very much that you will not like X/P seems to imply that there's a set of expectations you have about both X/Y stories and X/P stories, such that you know you'll like the former better than you like the latter. Which is okay, but the truth is, you don't really know what a story is like until after you've read it. Even the most hard-core OTPer must have read stories in their pairing that just did not do it for them...right? Those stories thwarted expectations in some way, so that you don't get what you felt like you were going to get, what you were looking forward to. So why, why in the name of all that's holy, can't that work in reverse? Why can't people imagine that perhaps a story they don't walk into already expecting to like might in fact turn out to be surprisingly good, for reasons that perhaps never even occurred to you before you read it? Intense OTPishness sometimes seems to me like a refusal to be surprised by a story, which is ultimately a refusal to be drawn in at all, to let the story *have* you. And that's the way I read, and it's all too easy to go from "I don't understand why you're not like me" to "I see no reason you shouldn't be more like me, dammit!" -- a line I have unfortunately, in this case, crossed.
I don't even know why I'm unloading this right now. I almost didn't at all because I don't want it to look as if I, as a habitual writer of pairings that are less popular than some other pairings, am pulling some kind of weepy "I am being denied the attention I so richly deserve!" routine, because actually I get a dreadful lot of attention and approval from my fandom; I have zero complaints on that score. Truthfully, there's a lot to be said for tapping into a fandom niche market; you stand out. It's all about branding, baby! Anyway, it's not me being needy, I promise.
Moreover, it's none of my goddamn business what other people choose to read or not read in their spare time, and I know it. And really, I'm not usually like this, I swear. It's just a thing I have. I'm hoping medical science is, even as we speak, working on a cure.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:43 am (UTC)From:I tend to think of myself as an OTPer, though I'm probably not in the way you're objecting to, and only with respect to some pairings. Most of the time, if I'm reading an X/P story, it registers as nothing more than a constant plaintive wondering what about Y? where's Y? This is going to make Y really sad... although there are a few pairings I can't read at all because my sadness for Y overcomes any possibility of enjoying the story (Sam/Jack over in SG-1, excluding Daniel, for instance--my favorite solution to that difficulty is the OT3, and have I told you lately that I love Alpha Centauri?).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 11:52 am (UTC)From:I totally relate to this! I tend to have favorite characters and pairings rather than one true pairing, but certain pairings really don't work for me because they leave out a favored character. In SGA my favorite character is Rodney, and I know it sounds terrible, but I often have a hard time getting interested in stories that don't feature him in some way. I can get behind Rodney paired with any member of the team, but in a story that pairs up any other two members of the team, I find myself distracted, wondering what Rodney thinks, how Rodney feels, etc. (Surely not what the author was hoping for!)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 12:45 pm (UTC)From:I don't know, though. The prevalence (my perception of the prevalence) of that kind of okay, but where's Rodney? thinking is honestly what keeps me on the fringes of SGA fandom, kind of tucked away in my own little corner and only talking to people in my own lj. It's like...have you ever socialized with a couple who can't talk about anything except their brilliant child? Or a girl who can't talk about anything but her boyfriend? It's terrible. You can even be interested for a while, and then you're like, Please, you have to stop now, you have to be interested in *something* else, or I will stab myself in the ear.
However, I've seen plenty of attempts to reform fandoms fail; I'm not fool enough to attempt it. People like what they like, they're going to talk about what they want to talk about. I'll just be over here, playing quietly in my own little sandbox.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 03:53 pm (UTC)From:For me, though it's not *all* about Rodney. A big part of it is my own personal quirks with regard to pairing preferences. I have a big thing for losers getting lucky or a beauty and the beast kind of thing, and so I really like to see unlikely/unconventional pairings. I love the geek/scientist paired with a kick-ass soldier/alien warrior dynamic, so I can totally get behind Lorne/Parrish, Ronon/Radek, or Teyla/Radek, to name a few non-Rodney pairings. But for me, John/Elizabeth, John/Teyla and John/Ronon are all just too...conventional, I guess. Too much pretty/hip/cool paired with pretty/hip/cool. Too much like real life maybe, and one thing I know about myself is that I'm in fandom to get away from real life--I want the fantasy, where the hot chick goes for the geek and true love lasts forever. So for me it's about favorite characters, AND personal kinks.
I hate that this is keeping you on the fringe though--that's a bummer. Maybe not reform, per se, but I'm sure we Rodney lovers can pull our heads out long enough to talk about something else for at least a little while!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 04:52 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 10:56 am (UTC)From:I always assume, if I'm reading an X/P story that Y is only sad if I'm told Y is sad. Otherwise, Y is off having his own life like everybody else in the frigging cast. It always kind of baffles me how many people project existential grief on a character just because there's a particular story that's not about him, and yet I hear that all the time. Baffled! Takes all kinds, you know?
Also: yes. The OT3 solves all problems! And thank you *g*