throbbing light machine

The first drawerfic I ever wrote - well, I never even dared to write it down, because I had a strong sense of shame & propriety as a kid, and knew it was a subliterary impulse - was about Wendy Darling. It was about how Wendy got to come back to Neverland, and have what she wanted: Peter, and a family, and the Neverland as well. Romance and reproduction and pirates and adventures. I just looked back through my "peter pan" tag here, and saw that I almost compulsively reference this fantasy - I've still never written a word of it down in earnest, but clearly some part of me is burning to express or realize it.

I feel ashamed of it. I had a feeling - still do - that it was wrong to fight against the terrible inexorabililty of the ending. I've always found it easy to fall into fatalistic, obedient acceptance of that particular kind of wrenching ending - the one that asserts that you can't always have what you want, that there's always a price to pay and you can't choose. Narnia and Lord of the Rings and The Dark is Rising and His Dark Materials - the list kind of goes on. This xkcd sums the trope up pretty nicely. I've been working on learning to subvert, to disobey even there. But I've always had a hard time disobeying J. M. Barrie. I was always more cautious and circumspect with the Peter Pan daydreams than with anything else. I have no problem screwing around with Narnia, but even in the context of this journal I don't seem to have ever managed to so much as question Barrie before. I pulled off a Grey Havens rewrite years ago. Why is Barrie so unresistable?

I wonder if it isn't because Wendy Darling is female. And, maybe even more, because she's feminine, and because the things she wants get tangled up in both a reification of gender roles and a reactionary repudiation of the same.

( Apparently, I have ~thoughts~ )