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Do the mashed potato
Tuesday, 29 March 2016 08:39 pm[Originally posted elsewhere October 20, 2005]
I Like To Play Blackjack. I'm Not Addicted To Gambling, I'm Addicted To Sitting In A Semi-Circle.*
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An acquaintance asked about "mashed potato" stories—that is, comfort stories. I started writing a comment, but it all got out of hand and OT, so I thought it would be better to post here.
The idea of comfort reading interests me. There are novels that I have a deep love for because I read them during times of terrible personal crisis. I don't go back and read them again because there isn't really anything special about any of them, nothing to make me love them the way I do. I love them because they saved me, the way you'd love a life raft. You'd love it, but you wouldn't show it to people and claim it was the Queen Mary. There are some movies and TV shows that I feel that way about, too. Last year I was addicted to L&O for its incredible ability to comfort me. I'd tape a tape full of shows, then on the weekend I would turn on the tape, tip my chair back, wrap myself in a blanket and sleep. I needed the distraction of some safe TV to keep me from stressing and not being able to sleep.
Fan fiction doesn't do that for me. Finding an occasional brilliant piece of writing in something I'm interested in (like, say, the A Separate Peace story recently posted to yuletide treasure) is like finding an extra episode, or in that case, an extra chapter. But there's been so little new fan fiction in my preferred fandom that I don't even know how I feel about it anymore, or what it does for me. Wiseguy is my only real fandom (that is, the only thing I write seriously in), and coming across a beautiful piece of fiction is like getting a love letter from a dead lover: it's lovely, it's beautiful, and it means nothing. Your lover is still dead and will not be coming back.
For me, comfort fiction is what I write. The biggie was a story so dysfunctional I should probably show it to my psychiatrist if I ever decide to go back into therapy. I wrote on it only when I was depressed, when I was PMS-ing, whenever I was anxious and unhappy. The story itself was so painful, I couldn't throw myself into it unless I was already hurting, and when I got there, I gave it all my pain. (Poor Vinnie gets all my depression. On the other hand, he gets Sonny, too, so he's doing better than I am.) When I hurt and want to escape, writing is the escape. Maybe that's why I'm not reading anything the way I used to, it doesn't take me away. (I've been feeling guilty over that, that I don't read like I used to, because you know we live in this cult of reading-is-morally superior, which—is reading a gothic romance really superior to playing solitaire? Or is it simply a matter of which one makes your mind feel better?)
Maybe it's why I'm writing so obsessively on this ridiculous AU.
*Mitch Hedberg
I Like To Play Blackjack. I'm Not Addicted To Gambling, I'm Addicted To Sitting In A Semi-Circle.*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
An acquaintance asked about "mashed potato" stories—that is, comfort stories. I started writing a comment, but it all got out of hand and OT, so I thought it would be better to post here.
The idea of comfort reading interests me. There are novels that I have a deep love for because I read them during times of terrible personal crisis. I don't go back and read them again because there isn't really anything special about any of them, nothing to make me love them the way I do. I love them because they saved me, the way you'd love a life raft. You'd love it, but you wouldn't show it to people and claim it was the Queen Mary. There are some movies and TV shows that I feel that way about, too. Last year I was addicted to L&O for its incredible ability to comfort me. I'd tape a tape full of shows, then on the weekend I would turn on the tape, tip my chair back, wrap myself in a blanket and sleep. I needed the distraction of some safe TV to keep me from stressing and not being able to sleep.
Fan fiction doesn't do that for me. Finding an occasional brilliant piece of writing in something I'm interested in (like, say, the A Separate Peace story recently posted to yuletide treasure) is like finding an extra episode, or in that case, an extra chapter. But there's been so little new fan fiction in my preferred fandom that I don't even know how I feel about it anymore, or what it does for me. Wiseguy is my only real fandom (that is, the only thing I write seriously in), and coming across a beautiful piece of fiction is like getting a love letter from a dead lover: it's lovely, it's beautiful, and it means nothing. Your lover is still dead and will not be coming back.
For me, comfort fiction is what I write. The biggie was a story so dysfunctional I should probably show it to my psychiatrist if I ever decide to go back into therapy. I wrote on it only when I was depressed, when I was PMS-ing, whenever I was anxious and unhappy. The story itself was so painful, I couldn't throw myself into it unless I was already hurting, and when I got there, I gave it all my pain. (Poor Vinnie gets all my depression. On the other hand, he gets Sonny, too, so he's doing better than I am.) When I hurt and want to escape, writing is the escape. Maybe that's why I'm not reading anything the way I used to, it doesn't take me away. (I've been feeling guilty over that, that I don't read like I used to, because you know we live in this cult of reading-is-morally superior, which—is reading a gothic romance really superior to playing solitaire? Or is it simply a matter of which one makes your mind feel better?)
Maybe it's why I'm writing so obsessively on this ridiculous AU.
*Mitch Hedberg