Enemies to Lovers

[ermingarden]

Enemies to Lovers by Aster Glenn Gray
My Rating: ★★★★☆

Note: I received an advance copy of this book to give an honest review.

Why do we write what we write, and love the stories we do? What does it mean for a story to be "good"? Enemies to Lovers explores these questions at the same time as it plays with some of fandom's most enduring and beloved tropes.

Enemies to Lovers pairs steamy sexual tension with an insightful exploration of internet fan culture. Megan and Sarah are both passionate members of the same fandom, and they're about the same age, but their different backgrounds in fandom – Megan started out on LiveJournal, Sarah is a Tumblr native – lead to what might be thought of as a culture clash around community norms. For a short romance work, Enemies to Lovers is impressively nuanced on an emotional level. Megan's feelings about Sarah are complicated, and that doesn't get completely glossed over as soon as they make it into bed together.

I enjoyed every minute of this book, and I'll likely read it again before too long.


Some additional thoughts that didn't make it into the Amazon review:
I am about 96% sure that the fandom Megan and Sarah are involved in, for the fictitious TV show "Paranoid", is a thinly veiled reflection of a particular corner of real-life Marvel fandom: Steve/Bucky shippers. And that means the "woobie Mishka wars," as Megan describes the discourse, probably echoes debates among Stucky shippers about woobifying Bucky. (Personally, I think people should woobify characters as much as they want. Write the stories you enjoy!) I was intrigued by that glimpse into the particular issues and dramas of a fandom in which I'm not involved, and which is very different from the corners of Tolkien and Star Wars fandoms I frequent.

And finally, since debate on the topic is so central to the book, I'm curious: what are folks' thoughts on woobification in your own fandoms?

Comments

[atamascolily]

Looking over the TVTropes page to refresh myself on the definition of "woobie," I'm struck by the fact that the woobie is defined by being a victim of circumstances - that is, the source of their suffering is always external to them, and never the result of their own actions, which allows them to be a compelling object of sympathy. The woobie is also defined by their own powerlessness/helplessness in the face of all the bad things that happen to them; they are not permitted by the narrative to escape, so they can only endure.

Most fandom tropes have projection at their core to some extent--not that that's inherently a bad thing, mind you--so I would guess woobifying characters allows the creator/audience some vicarious relief from their own pain, either via inflicting it on the character in question or by relieving said character's pain (aka, the entire hurt/comfort dynamic). Woobification of characters who have committed morally dubious actions also allows the audience to sidestep the issue entirely, by presenting those actions as something outside of that character's control.

This is a particularly pronounced trope in some sections of the Star Wars Sequel trilogy fandom, where many Kylo Ren fans will go to great lengths to insist he is a victim of circumstances and not responsible for anything actually bad, including on-screen canon actions. (I.e., Kylo didn't kill his father because Kylo was evil/flawed/chose to, he was misled by Snoke! OR Kylo's father abused him and he was getting back at his abuser, and it's actually Han's fault, etc, etc.) I find this absolutely fascinating, because these fans are taking a character who is presented in a decidedly unsympathetic light and converting all of these flaws into more palatable and sympathetic ones--thereby making him acceptable in their eyes.

It's especially interesting in comparison to the other approach to the character: unapologetic fans who declare outright, "He's trash/a terrible person, and I love him for it". These fans don't need to woobify Kylo, because they don't require him to be an object of sympathy in order to enjoy his character.

[ermingarden]

I really like that about the powerlessness of the character and the external source of the suffering as being crucial elements of the woobie.
It's funny, because my first thought was also Star Wars, but not Kylo; Obi-Wan gets woobified very frequently. Personally I have approximately zero emotional investment in Kylo Ren, but that sort of dichotomy in how fans of the character think of him reminds me a lot of attitudes toward the Fëanorians generally (and Maedhros particularly) in Silm fandom; you see at times the same sort of effort to read against the text in order to morally justify the character's actions.

[atamascolily]

My off-the-cuff reading is that there are actually two types of characters that tend to be woobified: problematic types such as Kylo and Bucky, who commit in-universe atrocities and must be woobified in order to be sympathetic, and "cinnamon rolls", who are tortured by the narrative, circumstances, and/or fandom as a way to emphasize their sympathetic qualities. The latter is particularly common in moe anime, which is an entire genre devoted almost entirely to canon wobbie characters, or the "uke" (bottom) character in Boy's Love manga.

[ermingarden]

Ooh, I hadn't thought of making that distinction, but now that you mention the categories I totally see it! Thanks!!

[pauraque]

Woobie!Whoever fics are generally not to my taste, but I can't imagine fighting people over it. Other people don't have any obligation to write fics that I personally like. The one aspect that can make it frustrating, for me, is that writers don't always think/realize they're doing it--maybe what I think is woobification, someone else thinks is totally IC--so unlike some other kinds of content, it's not always easy to avoid since it's not clearly labeled. But the worst it can do to me is waste my time, so... not exactly something to get worked up about.

[ermingarden]

This, 100%!

[independence1776]

Huh. Just from the fandom cultures angle, I'm tempted to pick it up.

I'm not sure I can definie woobification all that well; sometimes it seems to be in an "in the eyes of the beholder" thing if a character is woobified or not and I've seen it more than once applied as a negative term by villain haters to anyone who sees even a slight amount of nuance in a villain. If the fic is not to my taste, I'll click out of it and find something else to read. People can write what they want.

[ermingarden]

Honestly, I found the fandom cultures element the most compelling part of the book. At least based on what I've seen, original fiction with characters involved in fandom usually portrays fandom as a kind of monolith; and typically one character is in fandom and another Just Doesn't Get It. So I appreciated how Gray really digs into the differences in community norms originating on different sites and in different "eras" of fandom.

Agreed, on both counts! I was talking to a friend about this book and found myself completely unable to define "woobie" while still feeling like I understood the concept. (A bit like Justice Stewart discussing pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio: I know it when I see it.)

[independence1776]

The only book I've read with characters in fanfic fandom was Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl and I wasn't impressed.

Oh phooey. My library doesn't have it.

[ermingarden]

Yeah, it's only released as an ebook – $3 on Amazon, or included in Kindle Unlimited if you have that.

I have not read Fangirl, and haven't heard anything that makes me want to, lol.

[independence1776]

I checked Overdrive, too. Guess I'll have to be patient until I can justify buying it.

Definitely not worth it!

[chestnut_pod]

The worst of a bad lot! If you must read one pro-published fandom-centric novel, then Zan Romanoff's Look is the best I can recommend. I sort of quibble about whether it is a *fandom* novel, but it is most definitely in that delta between fandom/influencer culture, and it knows its Internet.

[independence1776]

Yeah. I really don't understand why everything I saw about it were rave reviews.

Thank you for the rec!

[chestnut_pod]

*through gritted teeth* Fanon!Fëanorians…

I completely agree with the above commenters who remarked upon the Woobie's helplessness in the face of circumstances -- those circumstances can neither be their fault nor escapable by them. I saw a ton of this back in my Torchwood days, very early on in the last years of LJ, but I think the purest versions of the form are less frequent now, or at least, I see them less frequently. If I had to wager a guess, the sorts of people who in the past would pick an ickle babey to woobify via all sorts of torments are nowadays in the purity camp, and would be horrified to write the sorts of stories that I most associate with the Woobie: torture, rape and recovery, kidnap, sometimes pregnancy fics, etc. However, the passivity and assumed moral purity have certainly not gone away. Perhaps the Woobie's torments have merely been watered down, and the core of the character really is the utter lack of agency!

In the meantime, I must get around to this book! I make a point to try to read all the pro-published novels about fandom -- so far I have found one (1) good one, and this sounds intriguingly like a potential number 2.

[ermingarden]

Eeeeeeeexactly.

I'm not sure all the (would-be) woobifiers are in the purity camp; the woobie!Obi-Wan fics I mentioned definitely feature those themes. (Thinking of, like, the entire oeuvre of I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning on AO3, for example.)

I think it captures the particular tensions between different models of Doing Fandom very well rather than treating fandom as a monolith; I think it does this because it's aimed at fans, while works like Rowell's are intended for a more general audience that might have no familiarity with, say, LiveJournal or even Tumblr.

[chestnut_pod]

True that! I think you're right -- I do think there's some kind of kinship between "character is woobie" and "character can never do anything wrong or morally questionable, therefore is totally passive and reactive" but you're right, it's not 1:1!

Though idk if I'd call Hydra Trash Party/Dead Dov kinds of fics woobie, necessarily? Something about the focus just seems sort of different, not that I could really explain why!

[ermingarden]

Agreed – you can definitely write about a character being tortured without woobifying, in the same way that a character can be a prodigy without being a Mary Sue (*cough* Vernestra Rwoh *cough*). "Woobie", as I understand it, implies that the character is perceived as out of character relative to the canon depiction.

This can be tricky, though, because a person can say "oh this is out of character because this character is a Total Badass and could never be helpless/would get over this right away" even though (a) the character was never in a similar situation in canon and (b) it kind of implies that when people are helpless it is Their Own Fault. So I imagine woobification – or characterization being perceived as woobifying – would tend to be a bigger issue in fandoms that don't have a high level of graphic violence in canon but whose fanwriters do write those sorts of fics, though I don't have any statistics to support that.

[oracne]

I definitely felt the Bucky resonance, too; my brain added in Old Skool Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well, because of the 60s setting of the fictional show.

[ermingarden]

Ooh, good point!

I've not watched the Man from U.N.C.L.E. show, but I loved the 2015 movie, so I probably should!

[oracne]

The tv show is very different from the movie, but is a GREAT primer on 1960s tv tropes.

[ermingarden]

I was reading this fic the other day and didn't realize for a while that it was set in the show canon, not the movie canon (and by that point I was already invested, lol).