Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Let's Talk About "Mature" Han and Leia fanfic

It seems we got sick of talking about Carrie's book once it finally came out, and there are quite a few people who had no interest in discussing the real people as it interferes with the fun of the characters, and I totally respect and understand that. Of course we are all here far more for Han and Leia than we are for the actors who played them (although we thank them for doing such a great job and giving them such good faces to go with the characters). Of course any of you still interested in discussing the book can go back to the previous post, though things had slowed down.

So, let's move on to talking about fanfic again, since that is a very large part of why we are all here. And as a side note let's also thank Amara Z for that lovely photoshop job she did on the above picture. More specifically, let's talk about "adult" Han and Leia stories. You know, the ones that go into the sex details, the ones that sometimes we all seek out specifically rather than being bothered by looking for a story with actual plot. Although of course there are plenty of stories with actual plot that also include some good sex scenes.

I think as far as our readers here go, we have a wide range of ages and also a lot of variations as far as how long we have all been reading fanfic. There are people who have been around for a few years, a lot of years, and probably even some who have been around since you couldn't even use the internet to find stories. For myself, I discovered fanfic right around the turn of the century (that sounds old). For anyone not familiar with things back then, there were several good sources for fanfic stories, and most of them no longer exist. I think fanfix was the main one I visited. Also these sites were not like ff.net where anyone can go and post a story, stories had to be submitted, so there wasn't quite the endless stream of content that there is now, and updates were not all that frequent. I do miss some of the Han and Leia specific sites we used to have. There were so many of them that there was even a Han and Leia webring, which some of you old timers may remember. I believe exactly zero of the sites that used to be in that webring still exist. Each of these sites had pictures and fanfic, and a few had forums. There were usually not a ton of stories, but most of them were good.

One thing many of you who were not around then may not realize, is that finding adult Han and Leia stories was like finding buried treasure. There weren't that many of them, and if you spent even a small amount of time in the fandom it didn't usually take you all that long to find all of them, and then remember specifically where to find each one. And let's face it, pretty much the first thing you do when you discover fanfic (especially if you are a teenager, like I was) is go and find all the smutty stories, because online fanfic is your only way to read about that with your favorite characters, because it certainly wasn't in any EU book.

Now, aside from these stories being difficult to find, I would also say that they were probably pretty.... tame compared to what you see now. What I'm going to discuss now was actually more the point of this post, and you're going to see me kind of struggling to find the best way to say what I want to say about the differences I've noticed over the most recent years of things shifting.

Han and Leia stories with sex tended to follow a similar formula. Like, seriously, I think almost every single one was Han goes down on Leia, missionary sex, the end. I never really gave this much thought until quite a bit later when talking with other readers, but it really is kind of funny that they were all so similar. I probably have most of my "adult" stories follow this formula too. Please do not let this stop you from occasionally writing stories like that, because I'm sure they do it like that sometimes. It was just kind of amusing that that was pretty much the only way things went. But there usually wasn't much else going on, and it was incredibly rare that you would find a story where Leia would go down on Han. So rare, in fact, that for a long time you could probably count the stories on one hand and you would know exactly where all of them were located.

They also tended to not be overly explicit. Body parts were not referred to by much more than maybe something like "his manhood" or "her femininity" or something else like that. The thing is, I've noticed that there has been a general change in Han and Leia adult stories, and I was curious if I was the only one who noticed. One other thing you should know about me if you don't already is I am very monogamous in my fandom interests. I really only read about Han and Leia and Star Wars. I think some people are interested in other fandoms, and for those of you who are I'd be really interested to hear from you if there are similar tendencies within those fandoms, or similar shifts in how things are done or if maybe we are unique here in our Han and Leia corner of the universe. And also, please know that I am not calling any of these changes bad, or saying that there is anything wrong with the way these stories have evolved. It's just changed quite a bit and has become much more standard to be going in the complete opposite direction with it, and it is just interesting to me that it has become so much more normal when it used to be rare to non existent. Also I should note that I had never been a reader on AO3 because I find their tags frustrating and making it nearly impossible to sort and find a story you would actually want to read, so maybe this has all been around a lot longer than I would even realize.

So in like 2009 I started spending a lot more time reading Han and Leia fanfic again, and story updates on ff.net were fairly infrequent. I think there were literally like 4-5 pages of adult stories and that's it. And really even then there was very little just outright smut as most of the stories included sex within a much longer and more involved narrative. Sometime a few years ago there started to be more and more "mature" stories out there. And somewhere along the line I started noticing that they were a lot more explicit than the old ones had been, and it became more the norm than the exception.

This is really in terms of almost everything. Words that are used to describe body parts, positions, Leia finally more regularly going down on Han (I'm sure fictional Han is thrilled with this change in the dynamic) words the characters are using and such. Again, I'm by no means saying this is a bad thing, it is just something that has changed noticeably. Does anyone have any theories as to why this is? Part of it I think is just that one or two people "broke the mold" and started writing that way, and it was no longer this small niche of people writing stories that most everyone else was too shy to comment on or admit they liked. Also probably because the writing itself was of higher quality, where I can think of a few stories that went in that direction but the writing wasn't any good and it was done more purely for the shock value or just to be as graphic as possible. So once it became more "mainstream" and accepted, I think other people were less shy about being a little more explicit in writing those scenes.

One other theory I have is that this shift happened near the time that Fifty Shades came out. Of course the funny thing there is for anyone who read it, it actually isn't outrageously explicit, and the author especially shies away from using certain slang words to describe genitalia or anything, to the point that that, among other things, was largely criticized. So, maybe that made people less shy about holding back in writing those scenes? Again, these are all just theories that I have no way to know whether or not they are true. But seriously, a few years ago there were maybe one or two "dirty" stories you'd see the word cock in, and now it's pretty standard.

Again, don't get me wrong, it's been fun to see Han and Leia get a somewhat more adventurous sex life. I think they'd be far from boring. And it's also interesting that while there are certain things that once upon a time I'd have thought Leia might not say or do, seeing a lot of those things now in stories regularly makes me think more like, sure, why not? (although this does depend on what period in their relationship they are in). And again I'd be interested to hear from anyone especially who has been involved in other fandoms to see how these kinds of stories are handled there, and if there was a similar shift or if we were sort of behind the times here.

Anyway, hopefully this will be an interesting conversation!

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Princess Diarist is Out

Because the comments section on the last post had gotten a little long, here's a new one. You can still comment on the other post too of course, it's just easier if there are fewer than 200 comments. Anybody start reading yet? I haven't, I know it is already waiting for me on my Kindle. I'm trying to get some things done today before I start reading because I know once I start then it's all over for productivity. I really didn't expect that we were going to have so much to talk about with this book!

I saw Carrie on Stephen Colbert last night too. She took her glasses off for the first part of the interview and she should do that more often, because she looked so much more like herself. Also when he mentioned Harrison you could tell she knows that she is in big trouble and/or has now essentially ended that friendship. Maybe. Again, it's all so weird in so many ways. She still seems shocked that so many people are paying attention to this. Uh, sorry, of course everyone was going to be paying lots of attention to this.

I finished the whole book the day it came out. I stayed up way too late but got it done. Not because it was so good, but largely because I wanted to get the pain of reading it over with. That is not to say that Carrie is a bad writer, because she is of course not. It's actually incredibly impressive what a good writer she was even at 19 when you read her excerpts. But just the depth of her pain back then is downright heartbreaking. Especially because she doesn't seem to do much to assure her audience that she is much better off now.

Those of you who read excerpts and articles have probably already read most of the juiciest details. When you all heard this book was going to come out, what did you think it was going to be about? It is basically 90% about her being obsessed with Harrison. The beginning is some background of her and getting cast and her first movie role on Shampoo. And at the end there is some stuff about going to conventions and signing autographs. Other than that, it is all about Harrison, and her obsession with him, her wish he would love her, and him being pretty much dead silent about everything.

There is basically not one other thing she talks about in regard to actually making the movie. Oh, a long thing about the hair styling thing but that all happened before Harrison showed up, so she couldn't have talked about him yet. One surprising thing was that at some point in one of her diary excerpts she actually mentions she maybe wishes she had had her affair with Mark instead, because at least that might have been a little more meaningful.

It's just really, really hard to read about someone being so infatuated with someone and knowing that it is not and never will be reciprocated. I think we probably all knew she had self esteem issues, but it is just really awful to read about. And while I am sure all of us have felt similarly at some point, usually when you read something like this you get some reassurance later that things turned out all right, and all those awful feelings were unfounded. This is just that much more painful because we know that's not how it ended up. And I'm not even talking about her winding up with Harrison, because that was just never going to happen. I'm talking about her at least finding someone who would feel about her the way she felt about them.

I really doubt that Harrison possibly could've read this, even if he tried. How many pages could you read about someone having been obsessed with you so many years ago? It just keeps going and going, and then you get to the diary excerpts where it just gets worse when you see how she really felt about the whole thing.

This is just not at all the book I was expecting when this was announced. And I pretty much think there is no way he will ever speak to her again. I think part of him is mad, but I also think that part of him feels bad about the whole thing but what can even be done about it now? Nothing. It's just.... uncomfortable to read about, mostly. And I can see why Carrie is visibly uncomfortable now when she is on shows talking about it. Yikes.

Oh and I almost forgot that she also discusses how she had to start doing autographs and stuff because she really needed the money. Apparently money is an issue for her. So, I do think that that is probably a motivating factor for this book, though I also think maybe now she thinks it wasn't worth it. We probably all would've bought it if she had talked more about like, what it was like to work with a Wookiee. But really it sounds like she spent the whole time being obsessed with Harrison and thought about nothing else.

Monday, November 14, 2016

The Princess Diarist is Coming, and Will Reportedly Finally Contain Confirmation and Details of Affair Between Harrison and Carrie

It has been very quiet around here, understandably. And perhaps I should wait another week or so until after I download it on my Kindle and read it but I think it's time to get excited about this book coming out. I wrote this post one day before some very enlightening information hit the internet, so I will add on additional info after what I posted already.

For any of you who are unaware, although I'm not sure how anyone reading here would be, this is Carrie Fisher's latest book which will be publishing excerpts from her diary that she kept during the shooting of A New Hope. I believe it is only her diary from the first movie. This book was announced a very long time ago and I think originally was supposed to be published last spring and then kept getting bumped out but as of now it is still slated for November 22.

When it was first announced of course I, like many others, was very excited. For some reason I find myself less excited about it now but I will still be reading it immediately. I mean, do we really think she is going to let us know the actual good stuff? It will be interesting to see though just how much she goes into her crush on Harrison at the time. My guess is not much. Although actually I feel like if it only ever really was just a crush (I am far more undecided on the did they/didn't they question of Carrie and Harrison than I am about the same question about Han and Leia on the way to Bespin) she wouldn't really hold back on sharing those bits. Whereas if something DID happen, she would maybe tone it down and underplay it all.

One thing I'm hoping for sure is that she goes out and does some promoting on TV for this one, because if there is anything we all love, it is Carrie TV interviews. And also Gary, who accompanies her on all of these interviews. Also, this is one of the few upcoming Star Wars related things that I do not fear at all will ruin anything for me.

So, are you guys excited? Will you be buying and reading? Have you been reading any other Star Wars books lately? Is anyone still around?

ADDED IMPORTANT INFO!

 http://pagesix.com/2016/11/15/carrie-fisher-i-slept-with-harrison-ford/

There it is, everyone. What we have long suspected but never been sure of. As I said in my comment,  Ok, really, can we talk about this? I have a lot of thoughts. I mean like anyone I've always wondered, and part of me felt like it was so obvious that of course they did, but then another part of me always felt like, well, she was SO young, and he was definitely married (which makes me disappointed in him even though I should probably just accept that at some point he cheated on at least 2 of his 3 wives, probably a lot) and it also seems odd to me that you can later be close friends with someone after something like that. And now just reading a brief paragraph about how she fantasized about him proposing to her and stuff, even though part of that can just be like, young fantasies, still kind of makes me sad for her. It also makes me think less of him if he really did get her drunk and take her to bed, because that's... well, anyway...

So, well, while the fantasy of them having had this affair was always kind of fun, I'm annoying and can't not think about a lot of the outside factors that make the reality of it seem a lot less fun. But then rules in the 70s were a little foggier. And, well, Hollywood actors.

But seriously, why NOW is she just confirming this for sure? Is it that they shot their last movie together and it is apparent that she will probably never see him again so she's like, what the hell? This is now the only thing anyone is going to ask her about.