Id-candy safety

[branchandroot]

Notice: This is a repost of an entry; the first was cruelly devoured in a crossposting glitch and all the lovely comments with it. If anyone wants to comment again or more I will be perfectly pleased to carry on the conversations.

So, here’s the thing. I’m all in favor of having books that are id-candy, brain-fluff, that demand nothing from your intellect and instead go straight on to punch your emoporn joybuttons.

This is, after all, why I own three quarters of everything Mercedes Lackey has ever published.

But, first off, id-candy is a different thing from good writing. The joybuttons don’t care about bad grammar or triteness or slop, they just resonate to the character shapes that hit one’s kinks. Kinks are often trite and cliche, when you think about it. Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work. To get enjoyment out of genuinely artful prose, you generally have to think, to ponder even, to put in some work.

Saying that you enjoy your id-candy immensely and saying that your id-candy is great writing are very different statements. Among other things, the first is true and the second generally isn’t. (Unless you’re using a completely Utilitarian definition of “good”, and when people try to compare Rowling and Tolkien it is unfortunately clear that they are not employing such a definition at all.)

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of trite, cliched slop, of course.

Let us consider Misty, for example. She’s the Queen of Exposition, has a tendency to extremely moralistic and preachy narrative, and drives home her morals with a ten pound sledge. She is guilty of the most egregious cultural flattening and caricaturization and the only thing that comforts me even minutely is that she does it to everyone, whitebread, ‘noble savage’ and orientalist alike. (I maintain that Ancient Egypt should take out a restraining order on the woman.) Her characters are flat, their angst is repetitive, and half the time the stories read like SCA handbooks instead of novels.

Nevertheless–three quarters, right there on my shelf, and I reread handfuls of them at fairly regular intervals. This is because they are excellent brain-fluff emoporn.

Also because they are not toxic. Her moralism can get wearing awfully fast, but at least they are morals I can agree with. Mostly.

That’s the second thing. You have to be careful of the id-candy that uses a moral framework that’s harmful to you.

The Twilight books are a prime example of this. The writing is no worse than most id-candy, but the value system those books are hung on is poison. It’s misogynist, racist, deterministic, conflates obsession and stalking with love, and runs the mobius strip of nihilism and femininity myths at full speed with special emphasis on death by/for childbirth. (I would not want to be this woman’s therapist, not without hazard pay). This id-candy has a razor blade in it.

Some people probably bemoan the loss of innocent fun now that we chop up Halloween candy before eating it to make sure there aren’t any evil surprises in it. I expect some people feel the same about their id-candy. But, you know, I’d much rather take the time to chop and evaluate than swallow a needle.

Comments

By jyuukoi of IJ

[branchandroot]

(comment recreated by permission)

My id-candy is Amanda Quick.. we own all of her books.

I agree with you about Twilight. Though I do get a special sort of warmth when I see Alice and Jasper icons roamng around. (because I liked that pair) I certainly wouldn't be taking sex/romantic advice from Twilight.

By annwyd from LJ

[branchandroot]

(comment re-created by permission)

This post got me thinking about what my id-candy is. Next thing I know, I'm making plans to play Marco from Animorphs at an RP.

I don't necessarily agree with this statement all the time:

Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work. To get enjoyment out of genuinely artful prose, you generally have to think, to ponder even, to put in some work.

There's stuff I get id-candy enjoyment from that I also love dissecting for symbolism and meaning and all that. It's possible to punch emoporn buttons over the course of a Genuine Work Of Creative Art. It's just not as common.

Mostly, though, I just want to applaud this analogy:

Some people probably bemoan the loss of innocent fun now that we chop up Halloween candy before eating it to make sure there aren’t any evil surprises in it. I expect some people feel the same about their id-candy. But, you know, I’d much rather take the time to chop and evaluate than swallow a needle.

Nice. I should keep it around for the next time someone complains that I care too much about the politics of my latest series.

By bridgetmkennitt on IJ

[branchandroot]

(comment re-created by permission)

Interesting post. I'm going to have to chew on this for a bit, but I do agree with most of what you wrote.

[ranalore.insanejournal.com]

Recommenting for the historical record, la!

Beautifully articulated, though I maintain Tolkien's a bad example to hold up in this kind of debate, since his status as any kind of good writer continues to be hotly debated. Technical competence is no less a component of "good" writing than compulsive readability, but nor is it any greater a component. I say this as an editor who has regularly rejected pieces that were proficiently written on a technical level, but which did not strike me as likely to engage the reader.

One reason I think this discussion crops up again and again is because you get a lot of people privileging technical competence, and a lot of other people privileging the Id factor, and thus they're not even speaking the same language when they use the term "good." This is unsurprising, since the term carries an inherent weight of subjectivity, and I'm not sure how useful it is to attempt to remove that weight. I think it's better to push for everyone to openly acknowledge it, and to articulate what measurement they're using.

By 7veilsphaedra from LJ

[branchandroot]

(comment re-created by permission)

Meyers seems to have been entirely unconscious of the horrible sea monsters hidden in her astral soup.

I think there are "deaf sailors" out there, to coin a phrase out of the Odyssey, where Ulysses has his sailors stuff their ears with wax in order not to hear the sirens. They can read the story and not be affected negatively. The sensitive reader has to be "tied up to the mast" in order to read any sort of astral fishing expedition and not be affected--the whole exercise of consciousness thing.

Yet I'm okay with Meyer's having written her story that way. I don't want another writer's subconscious creative process to be hogtied by my personal conventions and morality any more than I want mine to be limited by someone else, so it would be hypocritical of me to not extend that freedom to other writers, even if their writing sucks. That story sure came out the way "it" wanted to be told, whereas the author's main job seemed to be to getting out of its way. There's a lot of masochism and servility and snuff floating around in Meyer's blind spots, and now it's out in the open where everyone can see it. Every sensitive adult. So, yay for that. I am just very, very thankful for adult sensibilities and a moral center based on internal, not external authority.

By scarlet-pencil from LJ

[branchandroot]

(comment re-created by permission)

The joybuttons don’t care about bad grammar or triteness or slop, they just resonate to the character shapes that hit one’s kinks.

Uh... I read almost entirely id-candy. Although I can read literary stuff and enjoy it (I just started reading The Silmarillion by Tolkien, and before that I read Atlus Shrugged) I like to read id-candy because it's relaxing/leisure time/what floats my boat.

But that doesn't mean that I like bad writing. Id-candy can be just as valid as high prose. Of course, there are piles upon piles of badly written id-candy and piles of readers who want to read that. But that doesn't mean all id-candy is baby slop. Just because a story has certain charcater types or a certain plot doesn't automatically classify it as somehow being inferior to literary fic.

Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work.

Not necessarily, though. Even simple, well used plots can be done thousands of different ways.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of trite, cliched slop, of course.

But id-candy doesn't have to be cliched slop. It can be just as well thought out as any other genre. Of course lots of people write crap, but that doesn't mean that there isn't well thought out id-candy out there.

By readerofasaph on IJ

[branchandroot]

(comment re-created by permission)

This. Yes.

(BEDTIME BUT I WILL BE BACK SERIOUSLY.)

[ferdelance.insanejournal.com]

This is, after all, why I own three quarters of everything Mercedes Lackey has ever published.

Hahahaha, you beat me to exactly what I was going to confess! (Though really it's more like "one-third of everything" at this point; I pruned them something fierce last time I moved.)

This id-candy has a razor blade in it.

Yeah. This is what I seriously don't "get" about Twilight fans; it makes me uneasy around them because, if they're not seeing/feeling that razor blade... it means their insides are made of the same stuff. And the idea that I know/meet that many people with seriously skewed values is... disturbing.

[(Anonymous)]

Here via verilyverity (verilyverity, in case the coding doesn't work)'s LJ. I really like the idea you've shared and especially the extension of the metaphor (the razor in the candy).

--amedia (amedia@livejournal.com)

[gnatkip]

I... have no idea how I got here! From IJ, I guess? I've had this bookmarked for days so I could remember to tell you that I like it a lot, and especially your paragraph about Twilight. That's the most precise description of that series I think I've ever seen.