I think I did know that (that it was intended to stir things up) about the Mad Nikita in the Perch story - the problem I had with boxing it off like that it is that it was really only on the outer edge of what DOMs already were saying *everywhere* about incompetent Nikita, so instead of seeming outlandish, it got read seriously, because it was really only a step or two removed from what so many thought/said/wrote already.
Besides - the mad woman in the attic is hardly a wild new invention.
But anyway - from this distance, that story doesn't stand out to me anymore as a vivid outlier, instead it symbolizes for me a general theme that is strongly present in lots of post-series fic, which is Nikita can't run the Section -- for whatever reason. Even your reason!
A lot of this makes sense for meta reasons, of course - DOMs and TRs hated that their favorite wasn't in the perch and wrote stories to get them back there, so Nikita is an obstacle to be eliminated, with a handwave or with a more elaborate maneuver. HRs (including me - I totally cop to this one!) wrote stories about their team outside, or inside. But the inside HR stories tended even so to fall back on the idea that it was *Michael* who should be really running Section with Nikita as his second.
So, I understand. But sometimes I need to rant anyway, especially coming off another fic reading binge.
And trends like that are weird. Because they don't, necessarily, produce bad stories. On an individual level.
I bought the Star Trek reboot movie before I left the states in March and, as a life-long Trekie, I have to say I utterly love it. And I went in totally skeptical.
So, as I'm playing around in AO3, I started poking around the 1,000 strong fic list for the film. And the trope of abused, crazy Jim Kirk is *really really popular.* Not in the hurt/comfort trope of Jim charges into danger and is hurt and Spock (or whomever) nurses him back to health, but in the Jim is a former teen prostitute/abused child and (especially bizarre in the Star Fleet setting) raging alcoholic of the binge variety from before he enlists right up through the 'present' of the story, and his resultant quasi-madness drives the plots, such as they are.
I have no idea if this picks up older trends in ST:TOS fic, I have read some but is it all from Shrift and Nestra's links and so that trope doesn't show up there particularly.
Some of the stories are pretty good, a few are really good in terms of capturing voice and character, even hot (as was, of course, their point!) Others aren't. But taken altogether they paint of a picture of a completely mentally unstable and self-destructive man who should be dead or in prison or a mental hospital, and not anywhere near a star ship, much less *on the bridge.* Now, each story has some compensating element to make it work that Jim Kirk can actually be in Star Fleet! but each compensation story is different, and the details blur, so what a reader comes away with is the dominant image of Mad Damaged Jim.
But writing a story about not-mad-not-damaged-Jim competently running his crew and his ship, without coming up with a 'plot of the week' -- is hard! (and coming up with a good plot-of-the-week is even harder.) And definitely not conducive to blogging-style 10,000 word PWP stories. I respect that. I do.
Still, it is interesting that the resulting fandom trope is Mad Damaged Jim.
So, all the dismissing Nikita to make room for preferred whomever does make sense. But each whomever and the particular justification blur and the overwhelming theme, when you swallow lots of fic all at once is 'incompetent Nikita, easily pushed aside.' Which is what makes me flaily. And not any one particular story, though some are worse than others, it is true. ;-)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 02:44 pm (UTC)Besides - the mad woman in the attic is hardly a wild new invention.
But anyway - from this distance, that story doesn't stand out to me anymore as a vivid outlier, instead it symbolizes for me a general theme that is strongly present in lots of post-series fic, which is Nikita can't run the Section -- for whatever reason. Even your reason!
A lot of this makes sense for meta reasons, of course - DOMs and TRs hated that their favorite wasn't in the perch and wrote stories to get them back there, so Nikita is an obstacle to be eliminated, with a handwave or with a more elaborate maneuver. HRs (including me - I totally cop to this one!) wrote stories about their team outside, or inside. But the inside HR stories tended even so to fall back on the idea that it was *Michael* who should be really running Section with Nikita as his second.
So, I understand. But sometimes I need to rant anyway, especially coming off another fic reading binge.
And trends like that are weird. Because they don't, necessarily, produce bad stories. On an individual level.
I bought the Star Trek reboot movie before I left the states in March and, as a life-long Trekie, I have to say I utterly love it. And I went in totally skeptical.
So, as I'm playing around in AO3, I started poking around the 1,000 strong fic list for the film. And the trope of abused, crazy Jim Kirk is *really really popular.* Not in the hurt/comfort trope of Jim charges into danger and is hurt and Spock (or whomever) nurses him back to health, but in the Jim is a former teen prostitute/abused child and (especially bizarre in the Star Fleet setting) raging alcoholic of the binge variety from before he enlists right up through the 'present' of the story, and his resultant quasi-madness drives the plots, such as they are.
I have no idea if this picks up older trends in ST:TOS fic, I have read some but is it all from Shrift and Nestra's links and so that trope doesn't show up there particularly.
Some of the stories are pretty good, a few are really good in terms of capturing voice and character, even hot (as was, of course, their point!) Others aren't. But taken altogether they paint of a picture of a completely mentally unstable and self-destructive man who should be dead or in prison or a mental hospital, and not anywhere near a star ship, much less *on the bridge.* Now, each story has some compensating element to make it work that Jim Kirk can actually be in Star Fleet! but each compensation story is different, and the details blur, so what a reader comes away with is the dominant image of Mad Damaged Jim.
But writing a story about not-mad-not-damaged-Jim competently running his crew and his ship, without coming up with a 'plot of the week' -- is hard! (and coming up with a good plot-of-the-week is even harder.) And definitely not conducive to blogging-style 10,000 word PWP stories. I respect that. I do.
Still, it is interesting that the resulting fandom trope is Mad Damaged Jim.
So, all the dismissing Nikita to make room for preferred whomever does make sense. But each whomever and the particular justification blur and the overwhelming theme, when you swallow lots of fic all at once is 'incompetent Nikita, easily pushed aside.' Which is what makes me flaily. And not any one particular story, though some are worse than others, it is true. ;-)