ella_menno

quote in subject line attributed to Alfred Adler

I'm in a mood (A Mood, if you know what I mean), and I don't feel like talking, but here I am, posting anyway.

Weird, eh?

Everyone's gradually settling into the routine of school - I'm including myself in that count. Still having ups and downs, all of us, but that's part and parcel of this gig called life, isn't it.

I read a story the other day. No surprises there, right? But it got me thinking about a few things.

It was Wincest, which I normally ~~avoid like the plague~~ don't read, but I made an exception because I really, really enjoy this author's work in other fandoms. This story was really good, too - good banter/dialogue, a couple of parts where I laughed, another couple where I got misty-eyed, and there were even a few OC's I grew quite fond of.

But. (You knew there had to be a 'but,' didn't you? *g*)

I read, and though I liked the plot and the twists and the characterization, I couldn't figure out why the author had made the story Wincesty, and explicitly so. I suppose some (many?) fans just default to that setting, for lack of a better term, but it didn't make sense to me.

Let me try to clarify. Back when I first got into fandom and started writing, I had the benefit of falling in with an excellent beta. She was (and still is) a great writer on her own, and she could challenge and inspire me like no one else has yet. She was also a huge, huge fan of slash fic.

One of the things she told me was that, in the context of a story, the sex should never just "be there." If your characters are going to sleep together/make love/have sex/fuck - and you'd better believe there's a difference - you, as the writer, need to have a reason for them doing so. Yes, there are PWP's, but even in those stories, I was told, you (both the author and the reader) should learn something about the characters because of it.

And yet. In this story, the one I'm talking about, there was absolutely no reason for the boys to be sleeping together. Yes, for story purposes, they definitely needed to have a deep and emotional connection to one another - but, see, to my mind? They already have that, just by virtue of the canon.

I don't know. This is probably just my issue, but. I've read a few other Wincest stories, and this particular issue has never pinged so hard for me before. Now, granted, my preference, if I'm reading the Wincest, is for it to be tremendously fucked up. Someone on my flist once said that as much as she sees Sam and Dean loving each other, she doesn't feel they desire one another, and that's pretty much exactly how I see them/their relationship. (IOW, if they're sleeping together, it's because something has gone very, very wrong along the way.)

I just popped into my memories to see if I have anything there that qualifies as "happy" Wincest - the only one I could find was The Firefly that Loved Metallica, and I'll throw down and defy anyone to read the first sentence of that story and not HAVE to keep reading it. It's not at all a story I'd have gone looking for, but between the title and the first line, it grabbed me and wouldn't let go.

Anyway. I'm getting tl;dr here (man, have I been waiting forever to use that abbreviation!), but my point is that I don't go for the happy!shiny!Wincest, and I don't understand why people take what could've been a fantastic gen story and shove sex scenes into it when they serve no purpose at all to the plot of the thing.

Phew.

There's this story idea I've been rolling around in my head for a while now that I finally started putting on paper today. I'm kind of pleased with how it's going, which more than likely means it'll never see the light of day. *sigh*

It is nice to be writing again, though. It's one of those things I promised myself I'd do more of once the kids were in school. Yay for follow-through, I guess.