Wallowing in self-pity first. Thanks to a rather explosive nasal incident this morning (ACHOO!!) my head is once again firmly stopped up, I have a headache, and I'm already starting to hear my inner hypochondriac pointing out that I can't get on a plane two weeks from today if my sinuses don’t resume something like normal operation. Wouldn't want to burst the other eardrum as well, would we?

As I go through life, I'm always surprised by which moments and images stick with me.

I remember ten(ish) years ago we went to the IceCapades. I hadn't been to the IceCapades since I was a young 'un and I wasn't prepared for how the whole thing had deteriorated. This time around, I didn't really understand what the point of most of the numbers was or why out of all of the tens of thousands of ice skaters in this country they couldn't have hired a few that could stay on their skates.

I didn't mind the skating food number. Really I didn't. But the image that's lived with me ever since is the moment when the wiener threw itself ecstatically into the embrace of the bun.

If I were a better person, I might not have had to be forcibly removed from the arena a few minutes later.

I also remember the exact moment when I realized that Happily Ever After isn't a guaranteed right under the constitution, that some people don't get to marry the ones they love, and that others might just not marry at all. The same year, if I remember correctly, that I actually realized that the world kept on turning whether I was watching or not. That other people's lives did not, in fact, revolve around myself.

It was something of a shock.

I don't know why I felt like today was a good day to share that.

Still, the memories of those moments stay with me.

But. Enough about my and my life. Let's talk about me and fandom.

Reading torch, I see she is pondering the emotional story wallow today. (I always like to read what torch writes in her journal but I'm not commenting over there any more until I learn to behave myself and not call some people's taste in fanfic evil.)

Anyhow. I've read and enjoyed the occasional emotional wallow in fanfiction, but I'll admit that it's never been of the "interior monologue" variety. I dislike that kind of story more often than not.

You know what I mean. The story where it's all someone sitting around thinking about what happened so that the author can write the character's every angsty thought connected with it.

Honestly? I think of it as a gimmick and I think writing a story in that format more often than not results in pages full of predigested pablum.

Certainly it's a lot easier than writing the actual story, showing what happened, giving clues to the characters' emotional reactions, and letting the readers chew the material for themselves. Maybe that's why so many people write that way?

The problem is that not one in a hundred fanfiction writers can capture a character's voice and translate it to internal monologue in a way that I find convincing.

I also find that kind of story boring. Unless the author is very skilled indeed, no amount of dragging out the process of letting me know what it is that happened to inspire all of this brooding dismay on the part of the character will make me eager to read on.

Beyond my elitist suspicion that it's easier than writing a "real" story, I'm not sure I have any clue why someone would write something like that.

Some people say it's what they're "hearing" from the characters.

I say they're not listening closely enough. If the characters are telling you how they feel about what happened, they're telling you what happened and maybe you're just not choosing to listen to that part of the story?

Or, you know, not. I'm sure there are some perfectly lovely stories out there where Ray or Jim or Walter just sits around and examines his life, dissecting minutely each important incident, and puzzling over every word to find complex layers of emotional meaning.

After all.

It's such a guy way to behave, isn't it?

Forget Men With Brooms. There are days I'd be glad to find Men With Dicks in fandom.

Because, you see, I am not one of those readers/writers who comes to slash to work out my feminist issues or post thinly veiled revenge stories for the abuses I think I or other women have suffered at the hands of men or even because I think the world would be a nicer place if They were more like Us.

I'm here because I like men in all of their incoherent, fumbling, emotional awkwardness. I like the tendency to act first and think later. I like the territorial possessiveness about their emotionality and I like the way that half the time they don't know themselves why something is "right" for them to do or say. I like their testosterone approach to solving problems and their complex antipathy to tenderness that's all mixed up with a desire to be cuddled. I like the way they feel all of the things we want them to feel but that they don't know how or want to put those things into words. I like their reluctance to let down their guard and the amazing amount of warmth and compassion they hide behind their bravado.

I think in a lot of ways the stereotypically "male" emotional A=B reaction is more honest than a woman's tendency to put life on hold while she gets in touch with her inner self and figures out how she's supposed to feel about something.

Plus which, men tend to be big and strong and I like that. Even "small" men are usually bigger and stronger than I am and I don't have a problem with that. I think muscles are just fine, thankyouverymuch.

I like reading about men. I like reading about men building relationships with other men when they can't rely upon a woman's interpersonal skills to bridge the gaps. And I like men having sex with men because if one man is hot, two men together is at least ten times that hot.

I like men.

I think I had more to say, but I'm supposed to be writing a presentation for a meeting next week.