Just my luck TCR was nice enough to hand me an idea XD
I kind of want to read it too - but I don't know if I could actually pull off the writing of it. That's the great thing about this meme: all the fun of meta, none of the work of fic. (And, in this case, none of the cringeworthiness of l!Stephen's flailing all over the place on race issues in glorious detail.)
So, here, have some more rambling:
Jon's scene came from something that's been on the back of my mind for a long time, ever since the interview that led to this blog post (the one where Judd Apatow pokes fun at his name change, and he instantly gets prickly). Basically, it seems that the normally Zen Jon has a serious twitch point about the idea that he has to fall in lockstep with, or be validated by, all other Jewish people.
So -- after shooting down the old chestnut that Being White And Jewish Is Exactly Like Being [Insert Racial Minority Here] at the outset, because that shows up on anti-racism bingo cards for a reason -- Jon gets to let out his frustrations about how no one member of any group is a representative of the whole group, and every time Stephen picks up a new argument and represents it as The [Minority] View, he's doing a disservice to everyone who has ever disagreed with it. Not even a figure as widely-respected as MLK spoke for All Black People (though he did speak as a black person -- which is something that Stephen will never do, no matter how well he can wrangle soul food and fist bumps).
The kicker, of course, is that towards the end Stephen can't just realize the error of his ways and agree with everything Jon has just said, because you wouldn't know if it's because he's come around or if he's just repeating the pattern of trying-to-agree-with-everyone which led to the problem in the first place.
So instead he gets introduced to the idea that you can hear an opinion and disagree with it -- and then go on your way, without trying to debate/question/discuss your way to agreement. And then he does.
(There's a lovely Lenny Bruce quotation: "Liberals can understand everything but people who can’t understand them." Which is basically the theory underlining factiness. L!Stephen has a hard time grasping that there are some times when no amount of facts or logic will bring everyone to the same opinion.)
I'm not sure if it's the most satisfying ending, but l!Stephen fics have a tendency to wind up like that. Usually the emotional climax of a story comes when the characters have broken down their walls and opened up to each other, whereas l!Stephen really needs to build some walls and close off a little.
no subject
I kind of want to read it too - but I don't know if I could actually pull off the writing of it. That's the great thing about this meme: all the fun of meta, none of the work of fic. (And, in this case, none of the cringeworthiness of l!Stephen's flailing all over the place on race issues in glorious detail.)
So, here, have some more rambling:
Jon's scene came from something that's been on the back of my mind for a long time, ever since the interview that led to this blog post (the one where Judd Apatow pokes fun at his name change, and he instantly gets prickly). Basically, it seems that the normally Zen Jon has a serious twitch point about the idea that he has to fall in lockstep with, or be validated by, all other Jewish people.
So -- after shooting down the old chestnut that Being White And Jewish Is Exactly Like Being [Insert Racial Minority Here] at the outset, because that shows up on anti-racism bingo cards for a reason -- Jon gets to let out his frustrations about how no one member of any group is a representative of the whole group, and every time Stephen picks up a new argument and represents it as The [Minority] View, he's doing a disservice to everyone who has ever disagreed with it. Not even a figure as widely-respected as MLK spoke for All Black People (though he did speak as a black person -- which is something that Stephen will never do, no matter how well he can wrangle soul food and fist bumps).
The kicker, of course, is that towards the end Stephen can't just realize the error of his ways and agree with everything Jon has just said, because you wouldn't know if it's because he's come around or if he's just repeating the pattern of trying-to-agree-with-everyone which led to the problem in the first place.
So instead he gets introduced to the idea that you can hear an opinion and disagree with it -- and then go on your way, without trying to debate/question/discuss your way to agreement. And then he does.
(There's a lovely Lenny Bruce quotation: "Liberals can understand everything but people who can’t understand them." Which is basically the theory underlining factiness. L!Stephen has a hard time grasping that there are some times when no amount of facts or logic will bring everyone to the same opinion.)
I'm not sure if it's the most satisfying ending, but l!Stephen fics have a tendency to wind up like that. Usually the emotional climax of a story comes when the characters have broken down their walls and opened up to each other, whereas l!Stephen really needs to build some walls and close off a little.