![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaIt's odd... and I wonder if other people who've written slash for awhile feel like this: reading this op-ed piece on Johnny Weir (the figure skater) in Washington Post, it just struck me that I'd really like to explore this whole... what it really means to be 'queer in the real world' thing. In my writing, I mean. I dunno. It's like... there should be more space between all-out 'queer lit' (not interested) and something beyond romance-fantasy (getting tired). I don't want to write some cliche coming out story or write about 'typical' gay men (or any typical anyone), but. Especially this quote struck me in particular:
One of the privileges of modern celebrityhood is a comfort zone between fabulousness and outness, and it is here that athletes, pop stars and actors who seem as if they might be the slightest bit gay go to live.
The safest refuge is to equate being gay with a set of sex acts only and not address it as part of an identity.
Specifically, that differentiation Weir himself makes between his 'private' life where he fucks (whomever, but I'd place money on men) and his 'public' life where he skates, and how false and sad that boundary seems to me. Not the sex-life-is-private bit (which it can be, depending on the person), but the relegating of orientation into sexuality only, a sort of... kink. I mean, you couldn't really get away with saying that about love, could you? Because while who you love may be personal, it's usually no more personal than your hopes and dreams, your ambitions, your personal history-- things closeted celebrities would share readily enough, generally, right. Things you're not ashamed of.
It's like, it's most publically accepted these days that queerness is a sexual identity; when we're not talking about gay marriage, we're talking about 'fucking whoever he wants to fuck', and love+dating+romance, so intrinsic to hetero discussions, come second or not at all. And then there's slash, where love comes first, like 'loving who he wants to love' and the sex part is either an afterthought ('so of course he also wants so fuck because he loves him'), a prelude or a consequence, somehow. I guess in slash, it can't really be about -overall- sexual orientation because generally even in porn, the character wants to fuck another specific character and no one else, which is inherently romantic. It's like this divide in perceiving the individual first vs. perceiving their gender first. (And clearly I'm on the 'side' of seeing the individual and do think that being attracted to 'other men in general' just seems dull, but at the same time some history/context is what gives that individual choice depth, also....) It's frustrating, 'cause hetero love-stories are so transparent in this respect, so you don't have to go against the current of gender; it's assumed the character also likes other women (in a theoretical sense) and can like that one woman above all others and never want another, all at the same time.
Anyway, for a moment, reading that essay, I felt like by (usually) separating my fic characters' sexual identity & their overall identity (which I'd prefer/try to leave as close to the canon source as possible), I may be perpetuating this boundary. In reality, it -does- matter; I mean, it matters to me. Not that every story could or should 'address' the whole coming out thing or any queer 'issue', but rather it matters that any romance story focusing on that character's identity sort of needs to contain the awareness that their sexual identity is part of their overall self. If they compartmentalize it, then that's what they're doing, but that too is a reflection on both their relationship to their sexuality & their overall personality.
The truth is, I just want to write about a gay boy (like Johnny), who doesn't just do 'gay things' but also does gay things, or things that 'read' as gay, and I feel a little hemmed in by the fact that the furthest you could go with most canons is that the guy is 'straight-acting'. I think the homoeroticism of straight-identified men/boys is fascinating, obviously-- that's why I love slash in large part-- but I do think there are interesting things to be found in the other modes of queer identity, like the weird midway zone between 'fabulousness & outness', for instance.
I mean, this isn't to say I haven't seen fics that project that sort of vibe onto an existing character in a fandom (like Draco or even Blair... good god, even Jim), but it almost always rings false & OOC. It's very hard to do it subtly enough to 'pass' in regards to canon, to slip between the cracks. So what I'm saying is, I sort of feel constricted by the limitations of slash as a genre in terms of what sort of story I can see myself believably telling. And yet I have this confusing attachment to the boundaries of slash, because while I like the existence of queer protagonists in fantasy novels these days & I realize some 'original slash' online is well-written, these never quite capture what I read boys together for, somehow. In fantasy books, usually 'cause the focus is more on the plot than the relationship/identity-angst stuff, and in most original slash I don't build up enough affection for the characters to read much about them, which is a sort of Catch-22, I guess.
In a way, what I want is a more realistic sort of yaoi (ie, most yaoi manga fixes the 'too much plot' issue even when it has a fantasy/other plot & maybe I bond more with the characters faster 'cause I can see them & that overcomes the clichedness of the characterizations that throws me off in fiction-only stuff).
In any case, this is more about my writing preferences and wanting to write new things, I guess. Feeling like I've been ignoring the ramifications on the identities of the boys I've written because it's been easier not to tell that story, which sucks in the sense of somehow cheating the characters. I guess what bothers me about commercial queer lit is that it's -just- about Teh Gay part of the equation (ie, focusing on that one social aspect of identity & unequivocally uniting sexual & overall self), the opposite of the way fantasy novels tend to be like '& btw, they're gay' (like, there must be some middle ground between gender-blindness and homophobia, that sort of thing). None of it feels right.
I dunno, I'm just rambling on. :P
I think it just struck me... realistically speaking, we're usually implying that most of the characters we slash are or have been closet cases (not like Johnny Weir-- because, I mean, how can you match a figure-skating queen??-- but still). And, you know, I think being in the closet is something that's... interesting, an interesting thing to add as a dimension to one's characterization. Like, what does it -mean-? Why are they? Like, they don't even have to come out, but I'm still starting to feel odd that I'm writing all these fics where closetedness is a non-issue. Not to be realistic vs. unrealistic, but just because-- hey, repression can be sexy :P All these little behavioral cues that gay men somehow apparently pick up (and I honestly have no idea how that works-- someone enlighten me)-- those are also interesting. Not that every-- or any-- character needs to share them, especially seeing as it'd be OOC most of the time, but these things aren't negative/boring/unrelated to the slash vibe the way cruising/disease issues/discrimination would be. Y'know, not so much the social-image stuff and more the individual psychology stuff that gets much less attention, maybe.
I just... okay, I basically feel like Draco is Very Gay (in my head) and so is Remus for a lot of people, but I myself couldn't seem to write him that way even in my 'Queer As Malfoy' fic, which turned out to be mostly parody-- and I don't see many believably (subtly) gay Lupins, either. It's like, I'm fine with ignoring the social consequences and concentrating on the personal & the romantic, but you have self-identity issues that define a person aside from their central relationship. And you rarely get 'just Draco' stuff in H/D fics and 'just Remus' stuff in S/R that involves developing sexual identity issues shown through behavior rather than emo introspection. It's those subtle (or not-so-subtle) behavioral cues that make one want to slash in the first place sometimes, isn't it? And yet I usually find these conspicuously absent (even in over-the-top omg-he's-so-gay characterizations, the character may be femmed to high heaven, but acts more like a stereotypical girl than a gay man, y'know? and... er... there is a difference. -.-)
...No, I don't know what I'm saying, why? ^^;;;
~~
Man. Sometimes I'm just. I mean, I don't think I'm a productive member of fandom (...though what is that? eh) but wandering out a little even onto the general interwebs just makes me want to huddle back to lj, having seen the error of my ways. -.- Maybe it's just that I'll always be a fangirl even when I'm not in a fandom or communing with the hive fangirl mind... but the point is, I feel so much more kinship so much more often just in terms of how we talk and view the world & what we think is important (ie, boyz, books, & of course Teh Buttsex... oh wait. well, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN). It's cold & alien out there, man. Cold. And. ALIEN :(
In retrospect, those guys on the craigslist 'platonic' section are kinda hilarious, in a sad, sad, pathetic loser sort of way. If I wasn't in fandom, though, I wouldn't know just how pathetic the average 'intelligent' guy's ideas of women really are, y'know? Like, uh, the truth is that most girls aren't... uh, all that geeky or if they are, not all that free with their sexuality, yes, but to go from that to 'omg, all you womens are so unintelligent and frigid, I may as well just be friends!!1' is just. Haha, yeah. -.- It's sort of funny to think that I spend a lot of time reading/writing about men and really, most of the time I'm glad there are so few in fandom ^^;; Mostly because explaining things I consider obvious to anyone with a minimum of emotional intelligence just feels pointless and draining? I dunno. It feels like babysitting. :/ Though obviously there are emotionally intelligent men... somewhere that isn't on the internet, usually :>
I know, I know. -.-;; I say that, but what is (the near constant) wank if not an expression of utter lack of emotional intelligence? Blech.
...I just feel weirdly nostalgic and maudlin again, don't mind me. Reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thechiapet's old post on her H/D fic characterization pet-peeves and the fic kinks one reminded me of my '02 self and I was like 'awww'. I'm still like that at heart... which is probably why sane people avoid me, I guess, but anyway.... :>
One of the privileges of modern celebrityhood is a comfort zone between fabulousness and outness, and it is here that athletes, pop stars and actors who seem as if they might be the slightest bit gay go to live.
The safest refuge is to equate being gay with a set of sex acts only and not address it as part of an identity.
Specifically, that differentiation Weir himself makes between his 'private' life where he fucks (whomever, but I'd place money on men) and his 'public' life where he skates, and how false and sad that boundary seems to me. Not the sex-life-is-private bit (which it can be, depending on the person), but the relegating of orientation into sexuality only, a sort of... kink. I mean, you couldn't really get away with saying that about love, could you? Because while who you love may be personal, it's usually no more personal than your hopes and dreams, your ambitions, your personal history-- things closeted celebrities would share readily enough, generally, right. Things you're not ashamed of.
It's like, it's most publically accepted these days that queerness is a sexual identity; when we're not talking about gay marriage, we're talking about 'fucking whoever he wants to fuck', and love+dating+romance, so intrinsic to hetero discussions, come second or not at all. And then there's slash, where love comes first, like 'loving who he wants to love' and the sex part is either an afterthought ('so of course he also wants so fuck because he loves him'), a prelude or a consequence, somehow. I guess in slash, it can't really be about -overall- sexual orientation because generally even in porn, the character wants to fuck another specific character and no one else, which is inherently romantic. It's like this divide in perceiving the individual first vs. perceiving their gender first. (And clearly I'm on the 'side' of seeing the individual and do think that being attracted to 'other men in general' just seems dull, but at the same time some history/context is what gives that individual choice depth, also....) It's frustrating, 'cause hetero love-stories are so transparent in this respect, so you don't have to go against the current of gender; it's assumed the character also likes other women (in a theoretical sense) and can like that one woman above all others and never want another, all at the same time.
Anyway, for a moment, reading that essay, I felt like by (usually) separating my fic characters' sexual identity & their overall identity (which I'd prefer/try to leave as close to the canon source as possible), I may be perpetuating this boundary. In reality, it -does- matter; I mean, it matters to me. Not that every story could or should 'address' the whole coming out thing or any queer 'issue', but rather it matters that any romance story focusing on that character's identity sort of needs to contain the awareness that their sexual identity is part of their overall self. If they compartmentalize it, then that's what they're doing, but that too is a reflection on both their relationship to their sexuality & their overall personality.
The truth is, I just want to write about a gay boy (like Johnny), who doesn't just do 'gay things' but also does gay things, or things that 'read' as gay, and I feel a little hemmed in by the fact that the furthest you could go with most canons is that the guy is 'straight-acting'. I think the homoeroticism of straight-identified men/boys is fascinating, obviously-- that's why I love slash in large part-- but I do think there are interesting things to be found in the other modes of queer identity, like the weird midway zone between 'fabulousness & outness', for instance.
I mean, this isn't to say I haven't seen fics that project that sort of vibe onto an existing character in a fandom (like Draco or even Blair... good god, even Jim), but it almost always rings false & OOC. It's very hard to do it subtly enough to 'pass' in regards to canon, to slip between the cracks. So what I'm saying is, I sort of feel constricted by the limitations of slash as a genre in terms of what sort of story I can see myself believably telling. And yet I have this confusing attachment to the boundaries of slash, because while I like the existence of queer protagonists in fantasy novels these days & I realize some 'original slash' online is well-written, these never quite capture what I read boys together for, somehow. In fantasy books, usually 'cause the focus is more on the plot than the relationship/identity-angst stuff, and in most original slash I don't build up enough affection for the characters to read much about them, which is a sort of Catch-22, I guess.
In a way, what I want is a more realistic sort of yaoi (ie, most yaoi manga fixes the 'too much plot' issue even when it has a fantasy/other plot & maybe I bond more with the characters faster 'cause I can see them & that overcomes the clichedness of the characterizations that throws me off in fiction-only stuff).
In any case, this is more about my writing preferences and wanting to write new things, I guess. Feeling like I've been ignoring the ramifications on the identities of the boys I've written because it's been easier not to tell that story, which sucks in the sense of somehow cheating the characters. I guess what bothers me about commercial queer lit is that it's -just- about Teh Gay part of the equation (ie, focusing on that one social aspect of identity & unequivocally uniting sexual & overall self), the opposite of the way fantasy novels tend to be like '& btw, they're gay' (like, there must be some middle ground between gender-blindness and homophobia, that sort of thing). None of it feels right.
I dunno, I'm just rambling on. :P
I think it just struck me... realistically speaking, we're usually implying that most of the characters we slash are or have been closet cases (not like Johnny Weir-- because, I mean, how can you match a figure-skating queen??-- but still). And, you know, I think being in the closet is something that's... interesting, an interesting thing to add as a dimension to one's characterization. Like, what does it -mean-? Why are they? Like, they don't even have to come out, but I'm still starting to feel odd that I'm writing all these fics where closetedness is a non-issue. Not to be realistic vs. unrealistic, but just because-- hey, repression can be sexy :P All these little behavioral cues that gay men somehow apparently pick up (and I honestly have no idea how that works-- someone enlighten me)-- those are also interesting. Not that every-- or any-- character needs to share them, especially seeing as it'd be OOC most of the time, but these things aren't negative/boring/unrelated to the slash vibe the way cruising/disease issues/discrimination would be. Y'know, not so much the social-image stuff and more the individual psychology stuff that gets much less attention, maybe.
I just... okay, I basically feel like Draco is Very Gay (in my head) and so is Remus for a lot of people, but I myself couldn't seem to write him that way even in my 'Queer As Malfoy' fic, which turned out to be mostly parody-- and I don't see many believably (subtly) gay Lupins, either. It's like, I'm fine with ignoring the social consequences and concentrating on the personal & the romantic, but you have self-identity issues that define a person aside from their central relationship. And you rarely get 'just Draco' stuff in H/D fics and 'just Remus' stuff in S/R that involves developing sexual identity issues shown through behavior rather than emo introspection. It's those subtle (or not-so-subtle) behavioral cues that make one want to slash in the first place sometimes, isn't it? And yet I usually find these conspicuously absent (even in over-the-top omg-he's-so-gay characterizations, the character may be femmed to high heaven, but acts more like a stereotypical girl than a gay man, y'know? and... er... there is a difference. -.-)
...No, I don't know what I'm saying, why? ^^;;;
~~
Man. Sometimes I'm just. I mean, I don't think I'm a productive member of fandom (...though what is that? eh) but wandering out a little even onto the general interwebs just makes me want to huddle back to lj, having seen the error of my ways. -.- Maybe it's just that I'll always be a fangirl even when I'm not in a fandom or communing with the hive fangirl mind... but the point is, I feel so much more kinship so much more often just in terms of how we talk and view the world & what we think is important (ie, boyz, books, & of course Teh Buttsex... oh wait. well, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN). It's cold & alien out there, man. Cold. And. ALIEN :(
In retrospect, those guys on the craigslist 'platonic' section are kinda hilarious, in a sad, sad, pathetic loser sort of way. If I wasn't in fandom, though, I wouldn't know just how pathetic the average 'intelligent' guy's ideas of women really are, y'know? Like, uh, the truth is that most girls aren't... uh, all that geeky or if they are, not all that free with their sexuality, yes, but to go from that to 'omg, all you womens are so unintelligent and frigid, I may as well just be friends!!1' is just. Haha, yeah. -.- It's sort of funny to think that I spend a lot of time reading/writing about men and really, most of the time I'm glad there are so few in fandom ^^;; Mostly because explaining things I consider obvious to anyone with a minimum of emotional intelligence just feels pointless and draining? I dunno. It feels like babysitting. :/ Though obviously there are emotionally intelligent men... somewhere that isn't on the internet, usually :>
I know, I know. -.-;; I say that, but what is (the near constant) wank if not an expression of utter lack of emotional intelligence? Blech.
...I just feel weirdly nostalgic and maudlin again, don't mind me. Reading
thechiapet's old post on her H/D fic characterization pet-peeves and the fic kinks one reminded me of my '02 self and I was like 'awww'. I'm still like that at heart... which is probably why sane people avoid me, I guess, but anyway.... :>
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 10:54 am (UTC)Still, I think that not all boys are like that; some are more like Keats than the Fonze, y'know, young poet or rock star wannabes everywhere, right, all hormonal longing and obsessing over The One They Can Never Have and so on and so forth :D And some are full of spit and vinegar and like to go around pretending they own the world but are really in denial about what they want emotionally (or who!) & inevitably that catches up to them one day & BAM! The biggest playboy turns out to be Mr Brings Home The Bacon :> Or something a little more appetizing, but anyway my point is that I'm not sure if it's a 'non-boy thing', even though in one sense it's not-- in another sense it's more that communicating it well isn't a boy thing, generally, though sometimes it is & you get emo boys who pine and skulk and take out their unloved emo rage on inanimate objects, etcetc :D :D Ahh, so cute. :>
I'm sort of torn between totally being with you on the 'faithful, patient tracing'-- yes!-- that's totally what I meant-- and thinking that with the more repressed 'manly' types, there really -is- a hidden essence. It really depends on the personality, I guess? I think the nature and mode of authenticity depends on the character; in the case of the conscious performance-artist, the mask is as important as what's 'beneath', if anything could be said to be 'beneath', and I've always thought so! So then, by 'authenticity' in this case I merely mean 'honesty'-- as in, an approach of total disclosure, whatever the contradictions or complexities it may produce. I don't need consistency (being woefully inconsistent), merely disclosure. I don't really want to sum up or condense, only find a pattern-- though you're right that 'self-aware, in a bad way' means having 'too strong a theory', yes! It's when you let your need for understanding get the better of you, and you see patterns where there are none, or not just patterns but rules. Generally, in real life, it takes quite a bit for me to see 'rules', but in fiction I get carried away with the certainties sometimes. At the same time, for some people it's just in-character to possess these certainties about themselves, whether or not they're true, and shape their world accordingly, through the application of Will.