mf

You know that thing where you’ve tried to explain something to various people, over and over, and you always get a reaction that is, at best, something like “omg you’re so weird”? Like maybe you're trying to explain what it's like to talk to your favourite library clerk, or you're explaining that you've come up with a plot for the perfect Christmas movie, or you're talking about characterization in Harry Potter. And every time it's like "cool, you do you" or maybe a side-eye or maybe just "...ok?"

But then one day. One day. You're explaining that same thing to someone and they kind of move their head a little and say something like "do you mean, like [thing you were trying to say but more coherent and succinct]?" And then you feel, even if you don't hear, the song Thank You for Being a Friend playing in the background and it's amazing?

I’ve been thinking about lust-driven stories a lot. I was reading Venus In Furs over the holidays and wondering why I can't think of a lot of similar narratives, and the question stayed with me because the thing about Sacher-Masoch is that when Venus in Furs was published it was meant to be interesting on a literary and intellectual level, as well as on an erotic level. Which I think it is, personally. I think it has a lot to offer? So I was reading it and I kept trying to work out what was striking me as unusual about it, that is, what it was that I felt some other narratives could benefit from but were strangely choosing not to incorporate. What is it about the way Sacher-Masoch's narrator describes what's happening that makes it riveting in that specific way, like not just in a AND THEN WHAT HAPPENS? way but also in a visceral, physical way? The closest I could get to describing it was to say that it was like fic, as in, the thing about fic that's still missing from most of my other reading experiences.( Read more... )