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wickedwordsSo, 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?
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?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 05:41 pm (UTC)