One for Sorrow

I was reading a discussion on Scans_Daily today that circled around one of my pet peeves: the importance of a "normal" life. I don't know why this bugs me--I can remember getting into a big fight about it once regarding a kids' book years ago.

Let me define normal in this context. Sometimes fandom etc. uses "normal" to describe people not in fandom, often associating the word with things that are boring and mundane. That's not what I mean here. I don't think there's anything wrong with living a "normal" life that you enjoy. I don't think that Jim and Pam on The Office have betrayed themselves or us by admitting that they are satisfied working at a small paper company while they enjoy each other and their baby probably soon to be babies.

This is not about putting down the "normal" life--it's more about the opposite, the sometimes unthinking judgment that "normal" is healthy and therefore "abnormal" is unhealthy. ( That always confused me. )

Just read a great post by mrs_laugh_track on a subject that I think doesn't get covered enough. In a nutshell:

"There is a LOT of people who are GOOD at things on television right now. People who are naturals. Who are the best something to ever something. And in order to emphasize that we don't really get presented with them working really hard to get there. And to me personally that can lead to a lot of genericness. Because by removing the hard work you are removing the part of them as a person that is heavily influenced by whatever it is that they do. So you end up with these very interchangeable characters having very interchangeable banter. And the banter is interchangeable because it's barely about their jobs because the character isn't ABOUT the job."

I have to say, I've felt that same frustration. I love characters that are what they do, whose personality has developed around their profession. I feel like this also connects to the competency porn idea. In case you've never heard that, that was a term I think made up by the Leverage writers who said that they originally worried that the audience would be bored by too much exposition in an ep, but then discovered that the audience loved scenes where people who were damn good at they do discussed their plans. I think what turns something from generic talented people banter to competency porn is making us believe that the characters love what they do, find it fascinating to actually do it in ways they can only do because of years of study and discipline.

Read the actual post here

What I love, too, is that she zeroes in on this being about characters caring about something and not just characters being too talented.

I was talking to somebody today about a certain kind of story. We had totally different reactions to it, and it made me realize that it probably said something about how I felt about life or something?

( No spoilers for anything, really. )