Monosodium Glutamate For The Soul (Xenophilia Review) · 7:21pm Oct 19th, 2014
NOTE: I posted this review some time ago, labelled as NSFW as it discussed a NSFW story. It got stripped away in the great NSFW purge of 2013. Here it is, reposted, with the NSFW links edited out. Enjoy it in most of its former glory!
Co-written with my boyfriend.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled over AnonAuthor’s Xenophilia, from those who love it, those who hate it, those who praise its sumptuous world building while lamenting its clunky expositional style, those who deride the sex scenes as awkward, to those who label it grade-A fap fodder. (Scarlet's thoughts can be found here.)
Something intrigued me about the role of Lero and Rainbow Dash, not so much their characters or roles in the plot, but their use as emotional tools. I had thoughts running round my head, but it wasn’t until my partner-in-crime (and partner generally) showed me this video that it all clicked:
Campster mentions that while Alyx Vance is a good female character, she’s not a great female character — contrast her level of characterisation with Dr Breen’s, for example — and the reason gamers love her so much and think she’s such an amazing character is that she’s been specifically designed to make you love her. To roughly quote him:
So you’re bumbling around City 17 and you meet this girl. She’s instantly warm and inviting, she gets you out of your current jam and helps you find where you need to go. She’s cool and hip, yet approachable; chaste and innocent yet still flirty; independent and capable yet still fragile in a weird way. Here is this beautiful, single, age-appropriate woman who lives with her father and by all accounts is just waiting for you to arrive, to befriend her robot dog, save her world, and whisk her away.
Pretty sweet deal for you. How could you be so lucky?
BECAUSE SHE WAS ENGINEERED TO MAKE YOU FEEL THAT WAY, YOU DOLT!
The basic premise of the story: Rainbow Dash has a severe crush on all around Good-Guy-Human Lero. Dash finally confesses, Lero considers the proposition, and the pair embark on a relationship. Sex and worldbuilding happen, with a tiny dash of plot added somewhere in the mix.
Lero’s role in this is obvious and a well-worn trope in the human-on-pone genre. He’s the reader insert, and not particularly remarkable except in his highly-competent execution. He has a sense of humor but the readers aren’t forced to groan though godawful ‘witticisms’ or punch the monitor as all the other characters laugh at things that aren’t funny. He banters with Rainbow Dash and shares her interests, while still being his own distinct character. He’s intellectual to a certain extent, but not so much that he verges on Mary Sue territory. He has a masculine occupation — handyman — but he’s a masseur, is quite capable of romance, and apparently the better cook in the relationship. He’s friendly, warm and empathic to everyone he meets.
As an aside, competently-executed reader inserts are rarer than you think. Compare and contrast Lero to the protagonist of This Magic Moment by ScatMan2001, who is a boring, snippy douchebag with a boring military desk-job in Equestria yet manages to earn and keep the romantic affections of Princess Celestia herself. Or the protagonist of Prefsab’s Sophistication and Betrayal, a boring engineer whom Rarity falls head over heels for despite the pair having nothing in common, kept together only by the machinations of the universe that seems to be exclusively on the protagonist’s side. Lero is better constructed because AnonAuthor is apparently smart enough to recognize there are people in the universe who aren't him.
Now, I suggest that a romance protagonist has three components that make the reader love them and their story: connection, fantasy and pathos. We’ll use Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight as an example, as it’s incredibly popular with readers and you’re all probably familiar with the basics from cultural osmosis alone.
Bella Swan is our protagonist. She connects with the reader because she’s just like what Meyer’s fourteen/forty year-old female (initial) readership imagine themselves as. Dark hair, just like you. Loves reading, and is a ‘cut above’ the rest of the dunderheads she’s surrounded by, just like you. Her family are nice, kinda, but don’t understand her and she’s as much their caretaker as they are hers. She’s intellectual but not intimidating, pretty but not beautiful, kinda clumsy, and is the ideal blank slate for the reader to project herself onto.
The fantasy is straightforward — she gains the affections of Edward Cullen, who is explicitly constructed to be the author/reader’s romantic ideal, an amalgamation of Romeo of Romeo and Juliet, Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice, and Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights. Like Romeo, he can think of nothing but Bella, but like Darcy he’s also mature and capable of actually caring for her. The fantasy here is that a man like this — alluring, exciting, dangerous but still loving — will fall for you — YOU, YOU THE READER, READING THIS, YOU — and your life will grow awesome.
If the ‘connection’ component is presenting Bella’s ‘good’ characteristics so that the reader can feel happy projecting themselves onto her, the ‘pathos’ component is presenting the shitty bits of her life so that the reader can better empathise with her. She feels completely alienated in the rainy, gloomy town she’s stuck in. Both of her parents are well-meaning messes and she feels like she’s gone from being the caretaker of one to the caretaker of the other. She’s painfully clumsy, she’s plain, she’s not exciting or a cheerleader or a genius (well, she might be this but only compared to her dull classmates who don’t read things), she’s just an average girl who likes reading and is burdened with a bunch of childlike idiots stuck in Craptown, USA.
Thus, of course, making it all the more special when Edward Cullen appears and uplifts her from her soul-destroying, rainy life.
The problem with this is that pathos is required for emotional impact, but if there’s too much or it’s done wrong, the reader will hate the protagonist and everything they represent. The protagonist will be seen as a whiny, unlikeable douche, and the reader will resent the implication they should project onto them. And if there’s no projection, the romantic triad falls apart and there’s no emotional impact, no catharsis. And the right/wrong amount of pathos varies considerably between readers (ain’t that the truth)
And that’s where Rainbow Dash comes in. All the stallions in Ponyville think she’s ugly and butch, she’s only had sex once, and the stallion dumped her the next day. All the stallions she knows are either taken or are shallow, and are only interested in hot mares who are total douchebags* or her friends, who she loves, but knows that she’ll never be as good with women stallions as, and it hurts her. She frequently gets crushes and they all work out badly, because the stallions only ever want to be friends with her, as if they have some kind of area, or ‘zone’ for romantic partners, and another one for friends, and she always ends up in the latter.
When she finally makes a move, she thinks that Lero isn’t interested and prepares to slink off, he kisses her back. He tells her she’s actually beautiful, and the rest of the stallions are just blind not to notice it. They take the moment where you confess your crush and the person is completely taken by surprise — a nightmare moment for a lonely twenty-year-old boy, who has gone through that exact same thing again and again — and turn it into a moment of pure, liberating, ecstatic catharsis.
Sorry, did I say ‘a lonely twenty-year-old boy’ instead of ‘Rainbow Dash’? I apologise, I have no idea how I could have gotten those two confused after all IT’S ONLY THE ENTIRE SUBTEXT OF RAINBOW DASH’S CHARACTER IN THIS FIC!
That, dear reader, is where your pathos went. Instead of the dangerous balancing act of placing connection, fantasy and pathos all in the same character, AnonAuthor splits the narrative in two. Lero connects to the reader and gets the fantasy of being seen as an awesome dude and banging Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash stirs up pathos by being unfairly unloved, and gets the ugly duckling/Cinderella treatment when it turns out she IS loveable after all, and by an awesome person who loves her back and oh she totally gets me she’s just like one of the guys we can talk about anything together it’s like we’re best friends and she’s totally hot — sorry, there I go reversing the genders again when you got the point two paragraphs ago.
This is the grand allure of Xenophilia. Just under the surface is a Nice Guy fantasy, but you aren’t innately repulsed by it because it comes from Rainbow Dash, raised in a different culture from ours (though, note how an explicit comparison is drawn when Lero remarks that ‘in our culture, courtship rituals are reversed’, implying that human males have to go through the exact same horrible shit that Rainbow Dash goes through in a culture with a 5:1 gender imbalance). It’s a story where you can eat your cake and keep it too: You get to feel like the decent, honest and worthwhile Lero, while also feeling the relief of the awesome but unfairly maligned by those bitch cheerleaders stallion culture at large Rainbow Dash when she finally finds love and lust.
So how do we judge Xenophilia with the facade stripped away and the internal mechanics revealed? It’s certainly a novel technique within ponyfic, it paid off in spades in terms of appeal, and AnonAuthor should be applauded for being an early adaptor. Otherwise, there’s a few views you can take.
On the one hand, in light of other HumanDash wish-fulfilment tropes? It’s a good thing that Dash and Lero are constructed this way because it presents a model of HiE wish-fulfilment romance that encourages the reader to try to project into characters who aren’t perfect models of themselves, and forces them to empathize with common experiences rather than common identities. From a strictly critical perspective, it means we can do better- it’s one thing to get people to empathize with characters because ‘look, they’re just like you!’, it’s another to start from scratch and immerse them in a character and make them feel a connection to someone they don’t necessarily want to use as their avatar. Xenophilia might be a best-of-breed, but what that means is that we can always be on the lookout for better.
On the other hand, it’s a blatant emotional manipulation designed to appeal to a certain subset of readers — the poor little straight young male readers, and fuck those guys because everything caters to them already — who get to put themselves in the same position as Dash. They get all the pathos and catharsis of your super amazing crush finally saying yes and validating them as an attractive and wonderful human being, and they also get to pretend to be Lero the omni-capable and omnibenevolent, but separating the two (and dumping the pathos on a character we already love, and justifying it by creating a whole universe so the cards CAN be stacked against her) stops more discerning readers from being grossed out and squickquitting.
When you open Xenophilia, you’re not just seeing a pair of central characters whose story you can immerse yourself in — you’re seeing an escape to a new and fantastic universe where you’re having lots and lots of magical sex with a perfect partner. It’s not immediately obvious who that partner is, however, and therein lies AnonAuthor’s cunning design. You think you’re just enjoying a touching, genuinely poetic love story. You think the writing is sweeping you off your feet. Nope! That’s just your fantasy carrying you away and making you forget that everything you’re seeing is engineered to feed your basest sentiment.
*(In fact, we technically even meet a few- the mares who freak about Rainbow Dash’s interspecies sex. Come to think of it, they’re also a way to make Dash a secondary conduit for reader projection- you jerk to MLP porn or have fantasies involving the characters, people will mock you. Ergo, hey, look, Dash has to deal with that too! in the context of the worldbuilding it works, but it’s worth noting that even details like this subtly reinforce her status as player-character two rather than ‘just’ object of desires.)
I don't have much to add except: yes, this feels correct.
I'm calling you on this. It is just as bad to insult "straight males" for being straight and male as it is to insult gays or females for being gay or female. It is still bigotry directed against sexual orientation and sex, even if you perceive your targets as being more powerful.
Aside from that, brilliant analysis.
2543631
Pffft. Go cry into your bud lite and your F.R.I.E.N.D.S. boxset, straight-boy.
2543635
Thanks! One of my better posts, I feel
Very nicely done analysis, I must say. I hadn't quite realized the RD part was as prevalent as it is.
Now, you mention that "[Lero]’s intellectual to a certain extent, but not so much that he verges on Mary Sue territory." and I have to question that. He's better to an extent than some HiE protagonists I've seen (not that I've seen a lot), but still suffers from acute thick-headedness at multiple points in the story. There were a couple that were truly monitor-punching worthy for me -- the Dash-in-heat part being the most notable of those. His capacity as a sounding board seems to over-ride things when the author feels like it.
What I suppose I'm getting at, is that I wonder how prevalent protagonist thick-headedness really is in HiE fiction, and if there are ways to avoid (over) doing it while not veering into Mary Sue territory. Are there any such examples of that being done both well and consistently? You've done excellent work on other aspects of fan-fiction writing, author-inserts, reader-surrogates, etc. and I would love to see a blog from you tackling this subject and offering some ideas and advice on how to avoid that irritant in the future.
2543679
I don't drink beer and I don't watch Friends. And I'm big enough not to simply invert your insult.
Why do you believe that it's okay to insult men for being men or straights for being straight, but not women for being women or gays for being gay?
2543694
Oh, I didn't mean Lero is astute—as you say, he's pretty obtuse at times. But he's intellectual. He reads. He knows enough about science to hold conversation with Spike and Twilight. He knows his history. He's educated, I guess is the word.
As far as other HiE fics...
Nope. Barren wasteland. If you find a HiE fic (except one-shot clops) that don't have utterly unlikeable protags, feel free to mention them. I haven't found any yet.
2543741
Try My Little Balladeer. For extra credit, it's a crossover, and with a well-characterized pulp hero who is fairly obscure today.
Though it's not a romance.
2543741
Ah, touche. I agree with you totally on that. I even used the phrase "so obtuse it's infuriating" within a story to describe Lero myself.
As for the wasteland... yeah, kinda what I was afraid of.
Still, I would love to see a Blog from you on HiE protags in general, even if it would largely be a bitch-fest (from appearances). I ran across a character that I could only describe as the king of the oblivious protagonists a little while back and am curious to see if there is a worse example.
2543728
Okay, assuming you're serious when you ask why the (mostly tongue-in-cheek, mind you) insults flung at Mr Heterobro Whitedude by queer people, women, people of color etc, don't carry the same weight as anti-gay slurs, racial slurs and the like, I'll answer your question.
When queer people and people of color insult straight white people, it's about the targets of their ire being oblivious, obnoxious, and potentially dangerous.
When straight/white people insult queer people or people of color, it's about their targets being subhuman.
And if you think those two things are equivalent, well, that's your damn malfunction.
2543745
Oh, I've seen good crossovers, and good non-romance long-form HiE fics (though struggling to remember the names right now), but actual HiE fics with the romance element? Damn fucker to find.
No, that's wrong. Damn fucker to find anything that rises to Xenophilia's level.
Maaaaaan I missed this.
I liked the old title. Monosodium Glutamate for the soul. It was so very apt.
2543774
But your insult was to straight men in general (you said nothing about whites, and in fact whites are less likely than members of several obvious non-white groups to be homophobic or sexist), simply for liking to read heterosexual romances. And why do you assume that gays, women or non-whites can't be "oblivious, obnoxious, and potentially dangerous."
"Agency" includes agency for ill purposes. And power is situational -- if I am at the mercy of violent people who are non-white, female or gay, I can't wave my "white male straight privilege" at them and have them fall back in terror like vampires before the Cross. Reality simply doesn't work that way.
For that matter, the most powerful person in America today is not a straight white male.
2543818
No. Read what I said. For being constantly catered to and for liking stuff that paints them as maligned, put-upon victims who just need the right person to give them a chaaaaaaaaaannnce.
Actually, this is true. As a cisgender bloke, I'm constantly worried about bigoted trans* individuals calling the police or just straight-up attacking me for using the men's loos. And as the member of the majority race in my country, I'm forever putting up with minorities cooing over how 'exotic' I am, asking 'no, where are you really, really from? like where's your family from?' and touching my hair without my permission. And as a man, I resent the fact that on the one-in-five chance that I'm sexually assaulted, there's around a 4% chance that my attacker will be convicted.
...Larry Page is black?
2543817
Ahh, that's what I called it. Much better title, changed it back!
2543855
Fuckin amazing you are.
... still not gonna read it, though.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with Bad Horse a while ago about power fantasy stories. I really forget the details of who said what exactly, but I think the gist of the discussion was that everyone enjoys power fantasies, but people don't like power fantasies which are "beneath them" - that is to say, if you can come up with a better power fantasy than the writer can, then the power fantasy is not only unappealing, but it is hard for you to even understand why other people enjoy it in the first place, because you can come up with better power fantasies and probably do so on a fairly regular basis. However, if a story tells a better power fantasy story than you can tell, or one which is significantly different from the ones you can tell yourself (i.e. having a power fantasy about something very different from what you ordinarily think about), it can really attract an audience.
And thus we have these power fantasy stories (not necessarily just about sex, either, though sex/relationships are a fairly common theme) where some folks really adore them, but other folks just despise them because, as you noted, they're trying to get you to project onto someone who isn't you and who isn't a good stand-in for you.
Rainbow Dash is actually fairly frequently used as a reader insert (along with Spike, and the infamous brony in Equestria), but you're right in that it was very clever that this story did a double insert by having both main characters (Lero AND Rainbow Dash) be characters the reader is intended to project onto. Though it isn't just a double insert - it is actually a TRIPLE insert. Twilight plays the part of the awkward virgin who pretends to be experienced but is actually a bit scared and is guided through it by a loving, caring, more experienced partner who wants them to relax and enjoy themselves and not worry about doing it wrong or screwing up on a date or anything because they actually care about you.
This might also explain why the story fell apart at the seams by the end of it - actually putting real plot into it would require us to actually put character into the characters which might interfere with these things.
That being said, the degree to which this was all intentional is something I'm not really so sure of; there are all these other kind of messy plot threads which are in the story which weren't really well-executed, and I have to wonder if the writer was simply self-inserting themselves into everyone in the story who we were meant to sympathize with, rather than doing it on purpose.
2543741
I know that Through the Well of Pirene isn't the sort of story that you're talking about here, but I'll bring it up anyway because it's that good.
The thing that gets me about Xenophilia is that it takes an in-depth look at the psychology and sociology of a matriarchal herd species, examining the difference between pony culture and our own...
...and then that examination somehow results in Yet Another Goddamn Harem Anime.
Curiously enough, most of what you said about the relationship and characters in Xenophilia – the dual roles the audience can put themselves in, the way the romance develops, etc. – can be applied to Titanic as well.
2544658 You mean they're both about
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
A ship?
YEAAAAAAAAH!!!
(That was way too easy.)
2544982
You made my fucking morning.
2543741 HIE's with not immediately-unlikable protagonists? I've seen a few.
Exchange http://www.fimfiction.net/story/169217/exchange
It does a decent job of developing a growing relationship between two characters, and any idiot-ball holding is usually more or less explainable due to circumstances (with one notable exception that's the primary central plot-point).
Your Human and You: I am not Spartacus http://www.fimfiction.net/story/156213/your-human-and-you-i-am-not-spartacus
An interesting take on a human playing with the natural speciesism/racism that a dominant prey species would deal with. A bit heavy on the protagonist power-fantasy angle, but it's not too off-putting.
Retired to Equestria http://www.fimfiction.net/story/8553/retired-to-equestria
I'm not entirely sure if this would count… the main character was originally human, but never actually is such until about halfway through, having consciously and actively prepared for the transition to Equestria beforehand by various means, including a (mostly) permanent self-transformation. He knows what he's getting into (more or less), though he has no knowledge of the show or anything of that nature. He's not particularly relatable on basis of pure character, but he pulls off enough weird and funny antics that he's amusing to watch interact.
2545011
Ugh. Haven't read Exchange, but I've read Spartacus and Retired. Spartacus is an ass in a fic full of morons, stuck in a damn stupid AU setting anyway. Retired would be okay if the Mary-Sue protagonist didn't blot out any possible tension or interesting character dynamics because A) whatever the problem he's going to win and B) any interesting character stuff gets overshadowed because he has to be the most important person in the universe.
2545143 Exchange is very good indeed, main character is not a Mary Sue at all. The Mane 6 are pretty damn OOC though.