Smarm, Emo Porn, and Peak Moments: Are they the same thing?

[wickedwords]

So, I can't leave good enough alone. If someone says, 'don't push the shiny red button', well, I have to push it. So, today's question is: What is the difference between Smarm, Emo Porn and a Peak Moment or Money Scene?

So, the entry for Smarm is here:
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Smarm
It was about 1983 when I first used the term and it was based on a Star Wars zine I had been reading, where I came upon the word in a LoC column describing some nicely gooey scenes in a story from the previous issue. There had been all sorts of terrible torture and then extended bits of lovely comfort, and the letter writer said she thought those comfort scenes were a bit smarmy. I had never heard the word before and thought, gee, is that what zine pubbing fandom (to which I was just being introduced) calls that stuff I liked in the story, the gooey bits that gave me the spike in the stomach? Nice to finally know there is a word for it. It was not, of course, intended that way, but when I asked the person who'd loaned me the zine, she, apparently not willing to admit her own ignorance of the word, assured me that my interpretation was correct. Since she'd been buying and reading zines for a couple years before I even knew they existed, I had no reason not to assume she was right about this part of the whole fannish vocabulary I was just learning.

The definition of Emo Porn is here:
http://hth-the-first.livejournal.com/26700.html
So what, I asked myself, *is* emo porn, exactly? And the best I could do at defining it is that emo porn is a climactic moment of high-pitch emotion that is completely focused and unmixed, normally but not always focused on the purity of two characters' feelings for one another. You know it not by what's said but by how it's deployed, the kind of reaction it's intended to elicit from the audience: a breathles, riveted, completely absorbing moment of emotional response. Other kinds of writing tries to make you feel something, to be sure, but emo porn's goal is to make you feel that *whatever you are feeling is everything* -- at least for that moment. It goes straight for the spine, and when it's done well, there's a kind of disconnected elation that results, where you feel like you've been mainlining some powerful emotion in its purest form.

And a 'Peak Moment' is the emotional high point of a story, the gut-wrenching, heart-warming, peak emotional moment, the 'money scene'. Every entry on every story finders community mentions the money scene for a reader, whatever that may be; it's that moment we are trying to find.

I used to call myself an emotional junkie, because I was looking for my emotional fix. Is that something that needs to be documented too?

Comments

[sholio]

The way that I use the term emoporn is to refer to emotional displays and angst that are out of proportion to the actual requirements of the plot -- they don't *need* to be there to tell the story; they're in there to gratify the reader, instead. It's hard to describe this in a way that doesn't sound like I'm putting it down, because I do love me some good emoporn when I'm in the mood. But it needs to have that over-the-top element to be emoporn to me; if it's restrained and sparsely described, I don't really think I'd call it that, even if the emotions it evokes are powerful -- any more than I'd use the word "porn" to refer to a kiss and fade-to-black, even one that makes my toes curl.

If the particular circumstances of an emoporn scene happens to hit your kinks, it's a straight shot to the gut; if it doesn't, it's anywhere from squirm-inducing to laughable.

And smarm, like others have said, is a more specific genre -- the meaning of "smarm" that I was introduced to, in the late '90s, is more general than how I see it used now (I used to think of smarm as, basically, the "c" in h/c). But emoporn can be anywhere, in any sort of story.

[azurelunatic]

So emoporn is something like the gratuitous description of angst and emotion for the specific benefit of the reader, above and beyond the demands of the plot?

[sholio]

Yes, exactly! You have very succinctly summed up what I was flailing about. *g* At least that's my take on it. Though, now that I think about it, you can also have storie that don't really have much plot at all beyond the emoporn -- an emotional PWP, basically.

Edit: And, hey, your icon? SiP is full of canon emoporn. *g*

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

And hence my confusion, as 'an emotional PWP' was how Kitty described smarm.

[sholio]

Hmm, how about this: Smarm=emotional PWP, but emotional PWP=/=smarm -- like detective novel=mystery, but mystery=/=detective novel. Smarm can be simply and easily described as an emotional PWP, but it's not the only thing that can be described that way, because those are not its only defining traits (it's also gen, h/c, and possibly limited to a particular fandom and fannish time period, among other things). You can have an emotional PWP that doesn't have those other traits (it could also be slash, say, just with the focus on the emotions rather than the sex).

And I think that emotional PWP is only one subset of emoporn anyway, because the element that really defines emoporn (for me) is its unchecked and over-the-top emotion, and that can occur in any kind of story, whether or not it's the ostensible point of the plot.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I like that distinction! That's one that really works for me, as Smarm really did limit itself by excluding anything not nominally gen.

And hmmm about your definiton of emoporn. For me, I am still thinking peak moments, but for you, the whole story has an elevated level of emotional language the "warm fuzzy" stuff. (though not always warm fuzzy.) But don't those stories with their language at heightened intensity all the time, read a little flat? There's got to be some emotional variation in there somewhere, right?

[sholio]

Not necessarily the whole story, no. I wasn't thinking that -- what I meant was that the emotional moments, when they occur, are more frequent and intense than they really have to be, given the characters and the situation. Post-Trinity fics in SGA fandom are the example that springs immediately to mind -- they're not all emotion all the time, but Rodney breaking down in tears over his ill-treatment can't really be anything but emoporn. *g*

Although, hmm, I wonder if one of the things that makes emoporn read as emoporn is not just the intensity of the emotional experiences, but also their frequency and duration? I wonder if reader fatigue is actually part of it? Not only does the writer maintain the emotional bar at a higher level than usual, but they have to keep pushing it higher and higher in order to score the emotional hit that we're all going for when we write. I think you mentioned this in another comment, and I'm not sure if this is exactly where you were going there, but I do think that reader fatigue is something we have to be aware of when we write. To use a canon example, Supernatural has basically emoporned its way to the point where it doesn't really give those payoffs anymore -- at least, I don't get them. I get more of an emotional high off a small touch or a fraught look in SGA than I do from a sobbing scene of manpain in SPN, because the overall emotional tone is more restrained in SGA. In SPN, the small gestures are getting lost in the emotional background noise, and previous seasons have raised the emotional bar so high that there's really not anywhere left to go.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry but I disagree, stil.

Emo-porn, I believe, is not a question of pure 'watsonian' content (what happens in the story) but also a question of the stylistic treatment that these events receive at the hand of the author. So yes, a lot of post-trinity fic are emoporn and wallow in that, and of course, the people who like and seek emoporn are drawn to certain plot devices, to certain thematic choices, but it's still not the name of a genre like smarm or het or horror are genre names.

There are horror movies with a gore stylistic bent, and horror movies with a style a lot more sparse and with a lot less blood on the lense of the camera - they're both horror. In the same way, some smarm can be purple prose and some can be written in Hemingway's style - while oppositely, emoporn is the style in which the emotion is focused on, imo. Like you say, I'd say it's a question of "overall emotional tone", and not of the plot/events that drive use there.

So... yeah. Not a genre but a style, regardless of if the content matches across the stories that fall in the category. (of course you can gather all material with a stylistic common point and call that a 'genre' but imo that is a taxonomic mistake.)

[sholio]

I'm sorry -- I didn't realize that I'd been implying that emoporn *was* a genre! No, no, not at all. Emoporn is a style, *smarm* is a genre (IMHO), and I believe the two are distinctly different things -- in part BECAUSE of that difference. Emoporn can occur anywhere, in anything; smarm is pretty much limited to a certain subset of stories in a certain subset of fandoms. Sorry if I was unclear about that!

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say smarm was a PWP, though. I haven't read any, but it was my impression that a lot of smarm was longer stories (like, the "loving but nonsexual soaping each other up in the shower" would be part of a longer fic).

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, no, no! Those are the most famous of the genre, I admit, but Smarm was about the tiny moments of intimacy between two friends. Lots of domestic, shopping for curtains types of stories, between a couple of really good buddies. I think merryish wrote some of those in Sentinel, but you'd have to look on her web page to find them

[azurelunatic]

Oh, yes. So good.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

yes, that's it for me, too. While smarm is a content-type (guys engaged in physical non-sexual closeness is one), hinging on "what happens in the story primarily, emo-porn, though rooted in events, hinges on "the way the story describes what happens" (mostly through a very strong pov or mix of pov, with over the top emotion etc etc.

the money shot or peak of a story exist in pretty much story (every story has a climax), and can be wholly unrelated to either emotion, porn, or closeness of any stripe. it's a structural element of narration, and doens't predicate on genre or content, imo.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Remember, I'm talking about the peak emotional moments, not every peak moment in existence. I'm talking the really intense moments of emotional reaction in the reader, that's the peak moment that I'm talking about. And that's not necessarily going to have anything to do with the action plot, but it is what a lot of fans are always trying to find.

So really, it looks like yeah. Smarm, emoporn and peak emotional moments are all ways people have used to descibe the same thing: that moment of emotional intensity of a story that gives you the payoff and maybe a high. We really are all looking for the next fix.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

well, they might be cousins, but nevertheless, emo-porn is not a genre and smarm is, and peak emotional moment is just that, a moment - it can happen in a story that does not do emo-porn, and does not belong to the smarm genre. So they still need 3 articles.

Otherwise it's like you're putting in one article 'crime' as a genre, 'manierist' as a style, and 'suspense', the tension felt by spectators at certain key sequences. Notions that can meet and intersect but are not the same thing.

[azurelunatic]

Before this post, I had honestly never ever heard of 'smarm' as a story-style. I'd only heard of it in the context of that bloke who is itching for my fist in his face if he does not stop attempting to schmooze me.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Oh, this doesn't have anything to do with articles, but rather what's underneath all of these terms: we're trying to find a way to label and document and talk about the same gut-level feeling, the same emotional content. We have different terms for it, depending on when we joined fandom and what crowd we were with and what our personal prejudices were and all that, but it's basically a taxonomy of the same thing.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Pretty much yes. It's the same thing for the story's peak emotional moments as well. Comparatively speaking, the peak moment gets more intense language (whether that be hearts and flowers language or other descriptive terms) that the normal part of the story, so it draws attention to itself.

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I think 80% of fans are looking for emotional intensity. Underwriting the story most of the way through leave more room to describe those 'peak moments', whatever they may be. (And part of the thing with Smarm was that the moments of emotional connection were supposed to be non-sexual. Cool, huh?) Most new writers? young writers? in-progress-writers? are still working on their craft and they don't know to leave themselves room for for describing those peak emotional moments, so to make a difference, to say "wow, this one is even better/more intense/more deeply felt than the last one I just wrote about" is kinda tough to do if you set the bar too high. That's where the seriously overblown language comes from. How do you designated a peak moment when you've set the bar too high?

Course, it works the other way around too. Some people don't build up the peak moment and just leave it at the same level as the rest of the text, and that's frustrating in it's own way.

But call it smarm, call it emoporn, call it a peak moment...it's still looking for the sweet spot.