Forgotten Dialects of the Heart

[b_hallward]

I have discovered one of my most reliable kinks: characters who share a private language, who instead of falling back on "I love yous" and conventional gestures, build their own signs and signifiers, who find in pressing their foreheads together, or an insult, or in saving each other in wildly dangerous ways a language that's a better suited to the

Comments

[coffeejunkii]

oh. i didn't even know i had this kink! but yes. in fact, you made me think about something for my bradley and colin fic :)

[b_hallward]

something for my bradley and colin fic

Yay!

I wish I had more time for writing, because I have all these Merlin projects to finish and yet my little fannish heart has pinned itself on colin and bradley something fierce. And I also wish I knew a great deal more about the technical side of filming.

[coffeejunkii]

we'll see if it works.

as much as i like merlin and arthur, i like bradley and colin more so i'm very happy to hear that :D. is the internet not helpful regarding the details of tv production?

[b_hallward]

I am torn between two great loves. It's a fannish love triangle.

I'm going to have to delve deeper into the internets for production info, but so much of it is craft/trade-based and follows almost folk-ways. What I really need is for them to dump a few extra hours of cast video diary footage--when they are just randomly filming things out of boredom. I would support that!

[p_zeitgeist]

Oh, yes. A multitude of universes of yes. But then, you already knew that.

I wonder whether it makes sense to call it a kink, though, bulletproof or otherwise. When you look at these relationships you really are examining the limits of language and convention, the gaps between the way society tries to construct emotions and the truth of them as we (or some of us) live and experience them. So I have to ask whether in this instance we're talking about taste in art/literature, and not what one would ordinarily characterize as kink.

Not that the two things, kink appeal and taste/artistic appeal, can't be present in the same place at the same time. Happily for us, because when that happens it really is (as we say on Teh Internets) The Best Thing Evar OMG.

Edited to fix my crappy proofreading/HTML.

[b_hallward]

because when that happens it really is (as we say on Teh Internets) The Best Thing Evar OMG.

For me, I think this really is the case: a brilliant alignment of an emotional kink and a preference of taste and intellectual interests.

the gaps between the way society tries to construct emotions and the truth of them as we (or some of us) live and experience them

My all-time favorite for this is still S&H: what those two men felt for each other had no corresponding social-linguistic category--not lovers or partners or friends or brothers; I'm still amazed American TV could produce something like that. But even what Merlin feels for Arthur--I was talking with mossylawn about it recently here--doesn't fit any normal definition of romantic love. And as I read these theologians in the early mystical tradition for my angel!verse it just shocks me how much better that idea of love fits: passionate and consuming and devoted. (Add intense sexual attraction to that and you basically have it.) The vast gap between this feeling and the dominant social

[_profiterole_]

This sounds vaguely like Merlin/Arthur. ♥ ♥ ♥

[b_hallward]

Hmm. Yeah, you know, I think it does. *glomps M/A*

[ranalore]

My name is Rana and I approve this message.

I have actually pondered that, among all the various approaches to and reasons for shipfic, and particularly slash, there might be two broad categories of people who produce/consume the stuff: those who enjoy reinscribing conventional modalities of romantic love, the gestures and language generally accepted to convey such love, and those who enjoy creating entirely different modalities, or exploring the presence of those creations in the canon (because I do think a lot of the most popular fannish sources, for all the other things they have in common, often also have very...quirky relationship dynamics at their core). Which is not to say "I would kill for you" does not have its more general following as surely as "I would die for you," but it's not as popular, and frequently considered a sign of pathology (though I do like how many fannish sources have taken "I would die for you" and re-emphasized the crazy of it

[b_hallward]

there might be two broad categories of people who produce/consume the stuff

I think that is spot on. And what fascinates me is how these preferences about content line up very strongly with preferences about form. Conventional modalities of romantic love people want long linear narratives with straightforward language and easily available meaning; they care about pacing a lot, building up and delivering the emotional pay-off. And people who enjoy creating entirely different modalities tend towards short, dense pieces with a lot of subtext, elusive and often quite deliberately refusing to give the desired explicit emotional pay-off. And writing in either of these schools well takes a great deal of skill; it's just that the goals and values and purposes are vastly different.

often also have very...quirky relationship dynamics at their coreGood chemistry between the actors (in live media) and some strange brilliant quirkiness at the core of the dynamic describes a huge percentage of ships that fandom loves. Perhaps it is analogous to

[carodee]

And people who enjoy creating entirely different modalities tend towards short, dense pieces with a lot of subtext, elusive and often quite deliberately refusing to give the desired explicit emotional pay-off.

Thank you! This describes my writing style to a T and I didn't see it like that. It has been so frustrating to me that my readers constantly asked for sequels to 'resolve' the fic into a happy ending. I used to try to oblige them. Then I stopped but still felt guilty about it. Now I can just let it go as wrong writer/reader fit. *beams at you*

[b_hallward]

my readers constantly asked for sequels to 'resolve' the fic into a happy ending

That's happened to me, too. And it is frustrating because you know there's been a crossed wire somewhere. So I was really happy to find a theory that was non-normative.

[tree]

(here from metafandom)

oh yes, yes. it's as sharon olds says in the promise:

I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it-you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.

p.s. i love that jack gilbert poem, too.

[b_hallward]

Oh that is lovely. There is a fierceness to this kind of love that is truly entrancing.