How To Make Your Friends Regret Ever Commenting On Your Blog Post

So a comment on last week’s blog entry (thanks, Diana) got me thinking, although maybe not in the way its author intended (sorry, Diana). She asked, via my Facebook feed of this blog, “…have you watched 30 Rock at all? I’d be interested on your take of the female characterization and relationships…”

Well, I haven’t watched 30 Rock, but whether I intend to or not isn’t the point of this ramble. Instead, I caught myself thinking: surely there are stories out there that don’t or wouldn’t annoy me as much as the ones I do follow. I mean, my favourite TV show has been characterized by MadTV as  “written by men for women who like abusive men”; the video games I like are targetted mainly at young male audiences; and while there are hundreds of MG and YA fantasy books that feature women and girls as fleshed-out protagonists, I somehow gravitate to the ones that feature old-school Narnia-style plots and characters. I don’t know how 30 Rock measures up to my favourite stories, never having seen an episode, but the point remains: if the themes of the stories I love bother me so much, why don’t I just find different stories?

You might ask this in two ways*: one, why would I stick with stories that upset or, at worst, offend me, when there are many other candidates for my entertainment out there that do neither? Surely it would be a better use of my time to find stories written or performed with an audience like me in mind (although then I probably wouldn’t have nearly as much to blog about). On the other hand, you might choose to call me out on my hypocrisy: with such a choice of stories out there, isn’t it wrong of me to support ones that don’t always match up to my feelings about, say, feminism or science or politics, rather than their worthier rivals, which are, after all, competing with them for funding and attention?

Indeed, sometimes I feel guilty about watching and reading the things I watch and read when instead I could be perusing much “better” material —  for instance, I’ve lost count of the people who’ve recommended The Wire and How I Met Your Mother to me, and I’m shamefully out of the loop about most of the publications in the fields in which I claim to be interested enough to want to do my PhD. I do my best to read the latest and/or greatest YA and MG, but no matter how well written or altogether worthwhile a book seems,  if the back-cover copy looks boring, I’ll shirk it like yesterday’s homework.

As much as I wish it weren’t the case, I do love these books and shows and movies and games that drive me nuts, and not in the way I love others that perhaps deserve it more. Just because I know in the long run broccoli will make me feel better doesn’t mean I suddenly prefer it to chocolate cake.

For instance, I’d love to fall in love with a bunch of well developed, actually strong female characters written by talented women for women and have them fuel my imagination, but although I devoured their stories, I can’t force myself to develop the same obsessive interest in Temperance Brennan, Katniss Everdeen, or Vicki Nelson that I already have in Dr. House, Severus Snape, and Sherlock Holmes. Heck, even though I adore the work of Diana Wynne Jones — even though if I had to choose only one author to read for the rest of my life, I’d pick her — her characters don’t hang around in my head the way these other ones do.

But what does that mean? In the worst case scenario, perhaps I have to take my preferences as evidence that I’m not as feminist or liberal or… etc. as I think I am. Sure, these ideas move me, and intellectually, I’ll defend them to the bitter end, but when it comes to choosing based on how ideas make me feel, choosing not-so-ideologically-consonant stories might show that, emotionally, I’m tied to quite different stances.

There are obvious reasons why this interpretation doesn’t appeal to me, though, naturally, there’s a grain of truth in it. But I have my less obvious reasons, too, and one of those is: because I’m a writer myself. Allow me to explain.

From my perspective, the reason I like the stories I like is because they’re the kinds of stories that speak to me. I know there are lots of better written stories out there, with themes that feel more comfortable to me. But they’re not the kind of stories I want to read or watch.

I don’t like realistic fiction or literary novels. I like fantasy. I like mysteries. And what’s more, I like the kind of mysteries where unrealistic genius detectives ferret out ridiculously complicated plots and/or catch creepy genius serial killers. Procedurals or hard sci fi? Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy them and sometimes do seek them out, but srs bsns is too serious for me: give me appealing, flawed characters — preferably ones with some sort of problem experiencing, evaluating, and/or expressing their emotions — and an intriguing premise, and I’m willing to ignore that the plot makes no sense or is totally unrealistic.

And here’s what I firmly believe: there is nothing intrinsic to the kinds of stories I like that means they have to be sexist, or racist, or heteronormative, or feature simplistic philosophies of what the world’s like and how people behave. You can create a Sherlock Holmes dynamic that acknowledges the limitations of reason. You can people Narnia with feminists. You can send a Muggle-wizard revolutionary to Hogwarts.

How do I know this? Because the kinds of stories I like to read are also the kind I like to write. And although that first explanation, of me not being totally in touch with my own feelings on various ideological stances must be partly true, because my stories aren’t perfect paragons of feminism or anti-racism, etc., I try. And I succeed to greater and greater degree with each new project, as I understand better and better what I believe.

I should not have to compromise by seeking out stories in genres or with premises that don’t appeal to me in order to satisfy my meta-story beliefs. Yes, everyone should create the stories they personally support — there’s no point in forcing yourself to write something when your heart isn’t in it. And, yes, it’s always good for readers and viewers like me to expand our horizons and try something we might not enjoy. But the world is changeable: I can’t believe in a philosophy of action that says, accept the current circumstances and do your best to work within them.

It’s not my responsibility to cultivate emotional interest in otherwise unintriguing shows that have themes I can get behind, as though I should be grateful to actors, authors, producers, and publishers for any sort of effort to accommodate my demographic. I’m not going to settle for a choice between stories that move me and stories with interesting themes; I refuse to demand anything less than both.

* Firstly, in your normal voice, and then in a kind of silly, high-pitched whine.