chicafrom3 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chicafrom3) wrote2010-04-05 09:57 pm
chicafrom3) wrote2010-04-05 09:57 pm
in which chica talks about old fic tropes she doesn't like
So I have been reading a lot of old Andromeda fic. Why? I don't know. Because. That's not the point.
There's this disturbing trend I've been noticing in a lot of the how-Harper-met-Beka stuff written pre-BAMSR. ...And also written pre-BH. ...A lot of the how-Harper-met-Beka stuff written really early in the show's run, okay?
Anyway.
There's this trend, in these fics, where a lot of them have Harper and Beka meeting off Earth -- on a drift, on a random planet somewhere, whatever -- which is totally valid, given that it wasn't until a while into the canon that we found out she'd picked him up from Earth and all these fics were written before we found that out.
Totally valid, understandable, and not troubling.
The troubling thing is how many of these fics, when needing to give an explanation for Harper wound up on not-Earth to meet Beka, basically have him say, "Oh, yeah, I was sick of all the dying and starving and misery so I left."
Which bothers me on a lot of levels.
I realize that these fics were written at a time when very little about Harper's past was known. Obviously they were all written post-TLTFL because Siobhan and Declan get namechecked in many of them (often as his only cousins ever which makes me LOL for personal-canon reasons but was totally a valid backstory choice at the time) and also because that was three episodes in and the first time we actually had it pointed out that Harper was from Earth and it was not a happy childhood and it involved starving.
And some fics used other justifications, of course; escaped!slave!Harper was popular for a while, and I've seen a few indentured!servant!Harper and stowaway!Harper fics to explain how he got off Earth. All of which work for me a lot better. But it seems like "'cause I felt like it" is the most common justification in not!Earth HHMB fics.
But that justification bothers me so much, and it's hard for me to explain why, but here's an attempt:
For one thing, it implies that all the people who are still stuck in the misery that is Harper's childhood home just weren't motivated enough to leave. They must secretly be okay with all the starving and dying and misery and being crushed under the Drago-Kazov's jackboots and hunted by the Magog, because they're sure as hell not making much effort to go somewhere else! It says that leaving Earth is pretty easy, really, IDK why more people don't. I guess all those people who are still there just deserve to be treated like that.
Which is so incredibly squicky.
I know these writers didn't intend for that to be the implication, but I am completely unable to read it any other way.
And I think there's a (subconscious) hierarchy there: that Harper is special, and clever, and deserved to get off Earth (which, duh, true) and also that all those other people, the ones still stuck there, the ones who died there, well, they're not real people, so who cares what happened to them.
And I kind of get the reasoning behind that? Because we know Harper. Harper is awesome. Harper doesn't deserve to be whumped, as much as we all love whumping him.
And, no, those other people aren't real, we don't know them, it's just a number. It's not even a number, at that point in canon. It's a very vague idea that, oh, there are still people back on Earth.
But if I'm suspending disbelief enough to enter the world of your fic and care about what happens to Harper, I have to suspend enough to disbelief to believe that those vaguely-defined people back on Earth exist, too. And some of them probably matter to Harper. And they're hurting and they're starving and they're sick and they're dying and they're watching the people they love die and "I left because I felt like it" becomes really insulting.
There's also the way "I left because I felt like it" is (only occasionally, thankfully) used as a source of cheap guilt. As in: Harper feels guilty about leaving when his family and/or friends are still stuck there.
Which works in canon context, of course, because it's earned. Teenaged Seamus saw a chance, took a risk, and it paid off; he left Earth and, eventually, wound up with a cushy job on an awesome warship of his dream with awesome people, and he feels guilty because not everybody he grew up with got that chance, because people he loved are still struggling to find enough food to survive the week. It's survivor's guilt. I got out, they didn't. What makes me any better or more deserving than them?
But in the context of "I left because I felt like it", it doesn't work. At least not in the same ways. It becomes "I feel guilty because I wasn't brave/tough enough to put up with the starving and the abuse and the possibility of being dragged off as a slave or infested with Magog babies." The only source of guilt in that idea is that he didn't stick around for more abuse. Which is gross. And the other side of that idea is what I was talking about earlier: it leaves you wondering why everyone else didn't just leave, if it's as easy as deciding you don't want to put up with it anymore.
And it's really, really troubling.
There's another but unrelated recurring theme in Harper backstory fics written in the first half of season one, which is the tendency to write on-Earth Harper dealing with the starvation, and the misery, and whatever, as a securely middle class kid suddenly dumped into unpleasant poverty.
This version of baby!Harper recoils in horror when his food is a little rotten or he's made to sleep on dirt or he is otherwise confronted with the fact that his family is not exactly rolling in wealth.
Which bothers me because it's actually a fairly common trope in a lot of fiction dealing with poverty. I guess to appear sympathetic to a predominantly middle-class audience? It's Cinderella, the pre-rags-to-riches part of the story: they started growing up in a comfortable home, loved and taken care of, and then that comfort was taken away and now they are unloved and hungry and abused, and, damn, don't you feel bad for them?
Except that in a lot of this fiction (particularly with Harper) it's characters who are meant to have grown up in this environment of poverty. They should be used to this. They've never experienced a life where this wasn't normal for them. But there's this (probably unconscious) idea that an audience won't sympathize with a character who doesn't react like they would, who instead reacts like his or her background would have conditioned them to react. And it's a really squicky, gross idea.
...You know, on second thought, this actually may be related to the "'cause I felt like it" trope I was talking about. It is, after all, the same basic idea: Harper is special, Harper doesn't deserve to have grown up in this environment. With the (probably unintentional) (and extremely unfortunate) implication that everyone else there does deserve it.
And I agree that Harper is special. We love the Harper. The Harper is ours.
I just hate that in so many of these fics, that fact comes with the caveat that those other people are less special and deserve what they had coming to them, the plebes.
In some ways, the show handled this issue a lot better. BAMSR and Bunker Hill both did a pretty good job of illustrating just how much Harper's life on Earth sucked, and how it affects him even years after leaving. And BH especially made the people trapped on Earth real, and showed that they didn't deserve it either, that they weren't okay with the way they were being treated, and that it wasn't as easy as just standing up and saying no.
But then on the other hand the show failed sometimes, too. Especially in latter seasons, there was more than one instance where I found myself going "WTF, Harper, where you grew up you should be the last person complaining about this situation, this should be hardly any hardship at all to you."
But. The show didn't say or imply that the billions of humans trapped under Dragan rule deserve it for not being motivated enough to leave. So that's a big plus.
YMM, of course, V. I over-think stuff.
Also, I should probably get a life. Or at least babble on at length about a fandom I'm overinvested in for a fandom that isn't really fairly old and forgotten in Internet terms. :/
There's this disturbing trend I've been noticing in a lot of the how-Harper-met-Beka stuff written pre-BAMSR. ...And also written pre-BH. ...A lot of the how-Harper-met-Beka stuff written really early in the show's run, okay?
Anyway.
There's this trend, in these fics, where a lot of them have Harper and Beka meeting off Earth -- on a drift, on a random planet somewhere, whatever -- which is totally valid, given that it wasn't until a while into the canon that we found out she'd picked him up from Earth and all these fics were written before we found that out.
Totally valid, understandable, and not troubling.
The troubling thing is how many of these fics, when needing to give an explanation for Harper wound up on not-Earth to meet Beka, basically have him say, "Oh, yeah, I was sick of all the dying and starving and misery so I left."
Which bothers me on a lot of levels.
I realize that these fics were written at a time when very little about Harper's past was known. Obviously they were all written post-TLTFL because Siobhan and Declan get namechecked in many of them (often as his only cousins ever which makes me LOL for personal-canon reasons but was totally a valid backstory choice at the time) and also because that was three episodes in and the first time we actually had it pointed out that Harper was from Earth and it was not a happy childhood and it involved starving.
And some fics used other justifications, of course; escaped!slave!Harper was popular for a while, and I've seen a few indentured!servant!Harper and stowaway!Harper fics to explain how he got off Earth. All of which work for me a lot better. But it seems like "'cause I felt like it" is the most common justification in not!Earth HHMB fics.
But that justification bothers me so much, and it's hard for me to explain why, but here's an attempt:
For one thing, it implies that all the people who are still stuck in the misery that is Harper's childhood home just weren't motivated enough to leave. They must secretly be okay with all the starving and dying and misery and being crushed under the Drago-Kazov's jackboots and hunted by the Magog, because they're sure as hell not making much effort to go somewhere else! It says that leaving Earth is pretty easy, really, IDK why more people don't. I guess all those people who are still there just deserve to be treated like that.
Which is so incredibly squicky.
I know these writers didn't intend for that to be the implication, but I am completely unable to read it any other way.
And I think there's a (subconscious) hierarchy there: that Harper is special, and clever, and deserved to get off Earth (which, duh, true) and also that all those other people, the ones still stuck there, the ones who died there, well, they're not real people, so who cares what happened to them.
And I kind of get the reasoning behind that? Because we know Harper. Harper is awesome. Harper doesn't deserve to be whumped, as much as we all love whumping him.
And, no, those other people aren't real, we don't know them, it's just a number. It's not even a number, at that point in canon. It's a very vague idea that, oh, there are still people back on Earth.
But if I'm suspending disbelief enough to enter the world of your fic and care about what happens to Harper, I have to suspend enough to disbelief to believe that those vaguely-defined people back on Earth exist, too. And some of them probably matter to Harper. And they're hurting and they're starving and they're sick and they're dying and they're watching the people they love die and "I left because I felt like it" becomes really insulting.
There's also the way "I left because I felt like it" is (only occasionally, thankfully) used as a source of cheap guilt. As in: Harper feels guilty about leaving when his family and/or friends are still stuck there.
Which works in canon context, of course, because it's earned. Teenaged Seamus saw a chance, took a risk, and it paid off; he left Earth and, eventually, wound up with a cushy job on an awesome warship of his dream with awesome people, and he feels guilty because not everybody he grew up with got that chance, because people he loved are still struggling to find enough food to survive the week. It's survivor's guilt. I got out, they didn't. What makes me any better or more deserving than them?
But in the context of "I left because I felt like it", it doesn't work. At least not in the same ways. It becomes "I feel guilty because I wasn't brave/tough enough to put up with the starving and the abuse and the possibility of being dragged off as a slave or infested with Magog babies." The only source of guilt in that idea is that he didn't stick around for more abuse. Which is gross. And the other side of that idea is what I was talking about earlier: it leaves you wondering why everyone else didn't just leave, if it's as easy as deciding you don't want to put up with it anymore.
And it's really, really troubling.
There's another but unrelated recurring theme in Harper backstory fics written in the first half of season one, which is the tendency to write on-Earth Harper dealing with the starvation, and the misery, and whatever, as a securely middle class kid suddenly dumped into unpleasant poverty.
This version of baby!Harper recoils in horror when his food is a little rotten or he's made to sleep on dirt or he is otherwise confronted with the fact that his family is not exactly rolling in wealth.
Which bothers me because it's actually a fairly common trope in a lot of fiction dealing with poverty. I guess to appear sympathetic to a predominantly middle-class audience? It's Cinderella, the pre-rags-to-riches part of the story: they started growing up in a comfortable home, loved and taken care of, and then that comfort was taken away and now they are unloved and hungry and abused, and, damn, don't you feel bad for them?
Except that in a lot of this fiction (particularly with Harper) it's characters who are meant to have grown up in this environment of poverty. They should be used to this. They've never experienced a life where this wasn't normal for them. But there's this (probably unconscious) idea that an audience won't sympathize with a character who doesn't react like they would, who instead reacts like his or her background would have conditioned them to react. And it's a really squicky, gross idea.
...You know, on second thought, this actually may be related to the "'cause I felt like it" trope I was talking about. It is, after all, the same basic idea: Harper is special, Harper doesn't deserve to have grown up in this environment. With the (probably unintentional) (and extremely unfortunate) implication that everyone else there does deserve it.
And I agree that Harper is special. We love the Harper. The Harper is ours.
I just hate that in so many of these fics, that fact comes with the caveat that those other people are less special and deserve what they had coming to them, the plebes.
In some ways, the show handled this issue a lot better. BAMSR and Bunker Hill both did a pretty good job of illustrating just how much Harper's life on Earth sucked, and how it affects him even years after leaving. And BH especially made the people trapped on Earth real, and showed that they didn't deserve it either, that they weren't okay with the way they were being treated, and that it wasn't as easy as just standing up and saying no.
But then on the other hand the show failed sometimes, too. Especially in latter seasons, there was more than one instance where I found myself going "WTF, Harper, where you grew up you should be the last person complaining about this situation, this should be hardly any hardship at all to you."
But. The show didn't say or imply that the billions of humans trapped under Dragan rule deserve it for not being motivated enough to leave. So that's a big plus.
YMM, of course, V. I over-think stuff.
Also, I should probably get a life. Or at least babble on at length about a fandom I'm overinvested in for a fandom that isn't really fairly old and forgotten in Internet terms. :/