lizbee | (Reply)

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I have thoughts about, like, why I love ST: Discovery and how I feel it's in conversation with the kind of fiction where it's a crapsack world and anyone who advocates for gentleness or optimism is hopelessly naive. (I think we've had this discussion several times actually. :D)

But, as much as I'd personally have cut a few of the darker scenes from Disco (was the cannibalism necessary? every single one of Ash's flashbacks?), the show as a whole works for me because it's not 100% fluff. It's very much in dialogue with both real-world bad stuff and with the trend for hopeless endings. But it's at least taking a stab (heh) at treating that seriously. It's not just going "lalala utopia!" We are Starfleet because we have Seen Some Shit and we still say no to despair and every-man-for-himself. Etc.

And I mean, I like fluff and comfort and cozy things sometimes. They just have to work for me, and like you said, people's fictional happy places can be very different. (Goblin Emperor is one of the few books I've read multiple times in a row in the last few years, and for me it hit a very specific note that I needed to hear about the process of choosing to be better than the crap you grew up with. But anyone who notes that it's wall to wall dudes and not great on queer stuff isn't wrong. Meanwhile, I often have the same problem with romance novels and their preordained HEAs as you do.)

I think that, mostly, I can come up with depressing scenarios pretty damn easily all by myself, so I'm usually looking for some kind of hopeful note in my fiction. Some indication that shit may be pretty bad, but that isn't ALL there is to the world. Some examples of people making choices to be kind or generous, or of people who fuck up or are imperfect but who can still be heroic.

But "wholesome" (and to some extent, "soft" in the Tumblr sense) make me twitch. Gah.