~~wah. rant. wibble. gay!harry issues.
Nov. 17th, 2002 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkathe movie, still the movie -- aja's review and seren's review: i am unworthy. *bows down* read them and weep. gah. i saw it -again-, and now i want to see it... yes.... again. rock me, why don't you. perhaps i should make clear that i kind of hate seeing movies again-- i have too good of a visual memory (when i'm reminded, heh) ><
as they make blindingly clear, reviewing things is not, in fact, my forte. rather, i should stick to ranting and wibbling and squeeing without getting too into specifics because my mind is flitty and flighty and overwhelmed and i can't remember all the things i should. gah. i don't think i can remember things in that much detail unless i took notes. on the other hand (*pats self on back*) i do remember when i'm reminded. that counts for something, i suppose.
not that i mind :D i'm actually all bouncy about reading people's hugely amusing and detailed responses. after all, it's much more important to be amused than to be amusing~:D
as far as greatest hits: after reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seren_himitsu's review, i'm convinced that draco ripped out a photo of harry from the book, heh. and now i can't get the lucius/harry slashy ankle-flashing subtext out. of. my. mind. gah~!
and aja-- what -hasn't- she said??! ahahahahah. particularly loffed the squeeing about the 3-d opening title, all the little details i noticed -too-, and explaining the bizarre hagrid-love as set-up for the next movie's hagrid-persecution by draco :D
anyway, bleh. i wrote a rant about gay!harry labelling and how fics deal with that whole orientation issue and how pissy that makes me, so i'll just stick to what i know (ranting, being verbose, and talking about things no one's all that interested in.) in this particular instance, i feel weird, because after seeing the movie, i want to squee only about canon!harry and go on about chamber of secrets minutia and act swoony, and all this fanon ranting is seeming beside the point and ridiculous when i feel so united with the fandom in movie!canon-lurve. but then again, i wrote it and it was detailed and it had examples, so um. i didn't want it to go to waste ><;;
plus i want to contribute something, and i can't really think of anything original to say about the CoS movie at this point. not to imply any of the -following- is original, of course. *sniffle*
It's Hormones, Stupid: a rant.
this has been bothering me off and on for awhile. so here i am, on the bus on the way to see CoS, having to write it -now- all of a sudden.
in a number of slash stories, subtly or not-so-subtly, you get the fact established to you that the two main characters are gay. in "worst case scenario" they're angsting over it as the story begins. in particular cases, one or both is flamingly gay and sleep around, in contradiction to all canon characterizations, but that's okay, this way we know for sure where their preferences lie.
sometimes it's mentioned in passing-- oh by the way, he'd been having wet dreams about boys for awhile now. or, well, he'd always miraculously thought homosexual leanings were ok (even though there's every indication this character is sheltered, if not asexual).
worst of all is when it's in passing-- and btw, sometime last year, or the year before that, this character realized he was gay. so -that's- okay.
harry's attraction to cho is explained away by a number of fics, but of course most blatantly by the gay!harry ones. he was being delusional or in denial, you see. he didn't really have -sexual- feelings for her, and only realized what sexual feelings were when he first became attracted to a boy. it was an outright lie or a cover-up of his attraction to say, cedric. it was a one-time deal, before he realized the glory of gayness and of course realized his true self, which is free from the need to feel attracted to another girl ever again.
even less care is usually given to draco's dating of pansy. after all, he's just using her. he -has- to go out with her-- to keep up appearances-- afer all, he's the malfoy heir. he can't stand to have her-- or sometimes, any other girl-- a number of times, anyone but harry-- touch him. girls disgust him, and harry (initially) disgusts him too, but not as viscerally as girls do. he and pansy have "an understanding"-- it's just a platonic relationship-- sometimes friendship. but in truth, draco is more often allowed to just fuck anyone, indiscriminately, or no one at all. or he has the one confidante love-- often blaise, because of the fanonical dislike of pansy i guess-- to sleep with. it's not a sincerely open relationship but then, we know draco isn't that kinda guy anyway, so that makes it easy.
have i been guilty of these? oh yes. am i still annoyed, coming across these, over and over and over? oh yes. am i saying i want to see blatant het in h/d stories? hell no.
it's just the explaining and the labelling that annoys the living daylights out of me. wake up people, harry isn't [fully!] gay, and by making him so, you're not only making him automatically ooc, you're diluting the complexity and beauty of his personality and his relationship with draco, as well as underestimating human sexuality in general.
~~
once upon a time, there lived a bisexual. he/she looked at girls, and found them good. he/she looked at boys, and found them also good. most of all, he/she saw human beings, and their minds and spirits, and found them sexy.
what i find surprising is that a lot of the writers in slash fandom are declared bisexual. so what's with this, guys? maybe this wouldn't bother me if -i- was gay instead of bi. i hope it would. i would understand if a gay or ramrod-straight writer wrote such black-and-white fics. but we're not that straight and uneducated here, are we?
no wonder.
no wonder some people don't want the Trilogy slashed. no wonder! because dv!harry&draco aren't gay~! within the story, you have them exhibiting sincere, caring, heterosexual attraction. hey, that means they don't see each other "that way," right?
they can't possibly just love each other. after all, love follows orientation. so even if you love someone truly, madly, deeply, it doesn't matter if they're not the correct gender. in fact, their gender would by itself -prevent- you from liking them "that way" too. because it's hormones, stupid.
so, since the Trilogy hasn't established them of the proper gender for each other-- and in fact given many clues they like the opposite gender just fine-- well. sexuality must be blatant, after all. if it's not, we assume the default-- heterosexuality. it doesn't matter -how- intensely we love-- it's just friendship unless we want to grope them desperately.
and what about all the straight people who lead normal lives, marriages and children even, while being basically asexual, and not particularly caring if they never grope anyone again? they're ok, because they're nominally straight and they're invisible, right. but you can't be -gay-, and asexual, that just doesn't happen.
platonic -straight- friends date and even marry all the time. it's even encouraged by the more conservative layers of society.
this just makes me sick, thinking about it, really. i see what ivy meant about latent homophobia in slashers. there are many types and levels of prejudice. labelling people is one such level. of course, i'm not blind to the fact that many of us label ourselves, naturally. it's always like this, internalizing societal prejudices without even noticing on a conscious level.
we go around, conditioned to either beat our chests insistently just to be heard or denying everything wholesale. you -have- to establish your sexuality if it's "different" from the norm, otherwise you get put into a box and trapped there. of course, if you "come out," all that happens is that you get put into another box. but at least that one has your name on it, right?
but, that's the writer, not the character. you, not them. while it's not like harry & draco live on the moon, i don't see a lot of gay awareness or cultural identification needing to happen. also, like i said, both seem to like girls, harry, at least, sincerely. so by making him flat-out gay, you're really messing with facts as they stand for a questionable end goal. i'm just questioning that goal, really. do they need to be put into a box at age 15-16?
~~
bleh. tired and beginning to feel motion-sick. (still on bus ^^;;)
anyway. bleh, obvious, really.
while you, your brother, or your uncle may be gay, harry doesn't have to be just because he likes draco "that way". of course i'm not advocating the stupidity at the other end of the spectrum, "i'm not gay, i just shag boys." bleh. i don't see this as much but i know it's out there and that makes me almost more annoyed.
another gem: "i'm not gay, it's just that i can't stand to touch girls." or: "i'm not gay [or straight], but i make an exception for you." it's the label i resent, and embracing it whole-heartedly or avoiding it by transparent contradiction is equally bad as far as i'm concerned.
"Gay."/"Not Gay."
both piss me off, when applied to obviously sexually ambiguous (if you're saying they're not 100% straight) characters.
~~
yuck. rant over.
still on bus. eh. feel squee build up from my toesies. eeeeeeeeee~!
haaaaaaarrryyyyyyyyy~!!
here-- i-- come-- baby~!
*grins* heh. ah, life is good.
as they make blindingly clear, reviewing things is not, in fact, my forte. rather, i should stick to ranting and wibbling and squeeing without getting too into specifics because my mind is flitty and flighty and overwhelmed and i can't remember all the things i should. gah. i don't think i can remember things in that much detail unless i took notes. on the other hand (*pats self on back*) i do remember when i'm reminded. that counts for something, i suppose.
not that i mind :D i'm actually all bouncy about reading people's hugely amusing and detailed responses. after all, it's much more important to be amused than to be amusing~:D
as far as greatest hits: after reading
seren_himitsu's review, i'm convinced that draco ripped out a photo of harry from the book, heh. and now i can't get the lucius/harry slashy ankle-flashing subtext out. of. my. mind. gah~!and aja-- what -hasn't- she said??! ahahahahah. particularly loffed the squeeing about the 3-d opening title, all the little details i noticed -too-, and explaining the bizarre hagrid-love as set-up for the next movie's hagrid-persecution by draco :D
anyway, bleh. i wrote a rant about gay!harry labelling and how fics deal with that whole orientation issue and how pissy that makes me, so i'll just stick to what i know (ranting, being verbose, and talking about things no one's all that interested in.) in this particular instance, i feel weird, because after seeing the movie, i want to squee only about canon!harry and go on about chamber of secrets minutia and act swoony, and all this fanon ranting is seeming beside the point and ridiculous when i feel so united with the fandom in movie!canon-lurve. but then again, i wrote it and it was detailed and it had examples, so um. i didn't want it to go to waste ><;;
plus i want to contribute something, and i can't really think of anything original to say about the CoS movie at this point. not to imply any of the -following- is original, of course. *sniffle*
It's Hormones, Stupid: a rant.
this has been bothering me off and on for awhile. so here i am, on the bus on the way to see CoS, having to write it -now- all of a sudden.
in a number of slash stories, subtly or not-so-subtly, you get the fact established to you that the two main characters are gay. in "worst case scenario" they're angsting over it as the story begins. in particular cases, one or both is flamingly gay and sleep around, in contradiction to all canon characterizations, but that's okay, this way we know for sure where their preferences lie.
sometimes it's mentioned in passing-- oh by the way, he'd been having wet dreams about boys for awhile now. or, well, he'd always miraculously thought homosexual leanings were ok (even though there's every indication this character is sheltered, if not asexual).
worst of all is when it's in passing-- and btw, sometime last year, or the year before that, this character realized he was gay. so -that's- okay.
harry's attraction to cho is explained away by a number of fics, but of course most blatantly by the gay!harry ones. he was being delusional or in denial, you see. he didn't really have -sexual- feelings for her, and only realized what sexual feelings were when he first became attracted to a boy. it was an outright lie or a cover-up of his attraction to say, cedric. it was a one-time deal, before he realized the glory of gayness and of course realized his true self, which is free from the need to feel attracted to another girl ever again.
even less care is usually given to draco's dating of pansy. after all, he's just using her. he -has- to go out with her-- to keep up appearances-- afer all, he's the malfoy heir. he can't stand to have her-- or sometimes, any other girl-- a number of times, anyone but harry-- touch him. girls disgust him, and harry (initially) disgusts him too, but not as viscerally as girls do. he and pansy have "an understanding"-- it's just a platonic relationship-- sometimes friendship. but in truth, draco is more often allowed to just fuck anyone, indiscriminately, or no one at all. or he has the one confidante love-- often blaise, because of the fanonical dislike of pansy i guess-- to sleep with. it's not a sincerely open relationship but then, we know draco isn't that kinda guy anyway, so that makes it easy.
have i been guilty of these? oh yes. am i still annoyed, coming across these, over and over and over? oh yes. am i saying i want to see blatant het in h/d stories? hell no.
it's just the explaining and the labelling that annoys the living daylights out of me. wake up people, harry isn't [fully!] gay, and by making him so, you're not only making him automatically ooc, you're diluting the complexity and beauty of his personality and his relationship with draco, as well as underestimating human sexuality in general.
~~
once upon a time, there lived a bisexual. he/she looked at girls, and found them good. he/she looked at boys, and found them also good. most of all, he/she saw human beings, and their minds and spirits, and found them sexy.
what i find surprising is that a lot of the writers in slash fandom are declared bisexual. so what's with this, guys? maybe this wouldn't bother me if -i- was gay instead of bi. i hope it would. i would understand if a gay or ramrod-straight writer wrote such black-and-white fics. but we're not that straight and uneducated here, are we?
no wonder.
no wonder some people don't want the Trilogy slashed. no wonder! because dv!harry&draco aren't gay~! within the story, you have them exhibiting sincere, caring, heterosexual attraction. hey, that means they don't see each other "that way," right?
they can't possibly just love each other. after all, love follows orientation. so even if you love someone truly, madly, deeply, it doesn't matter if they're not the correct gender. in fact, their gender would by itself -prevent- you from liking them "that way" too. because it's hormones, stupid.
so, since the Trilogy hasn't established them of the proper gender for each other-- and in fact given many clues they like the opposite gender just fine-- well. sexuality must be blatant, after all. if it's not, we assume the default-- heterosexuality. it doesn't matter -how- intensely we love-- it's just friendship unless we want to grope them desperately.
and what about all the straight people who lead normal lives, marriages and children even, while being basically asexual, and not particularly caring if they never grope anyone again? they're ok, because they're nominally straight and they're invisible, right. but you can't be -gay-, and asexual, that just doesn't happen.
platonic -straight- friends date and even marry all the time. it's even encouraged by the more conservative layers of society.
this just makes me sick, thinking about it, really. i see what ivy meant about latent homophobia in slashers. there are many types and levels of prejudice. labelling people is one such level. of course, i'm not blind to the fact that many of us label ourselves, naturally. it's always like this, internalizing societal prejudices without even noticing on a conscious level.
we go around, conditioned to either beat our chests insistently just to be heard or denying everything wholesale. you -have- to establish your sexuality if it's "different" from the norm, otherwise you get put into a box and trapped there. of course, if you "come out," all that happens is that you get put into another box. but at least that one has your name on it, right?
but, that's the writer, not the character. you, not them. while it's not like harry & draco live on the moon, i don't see a lot of gay awareness or cultural identification needing to happen. also, like i said, both seem to like girls, harry, at least, sincerely. so by making him flat-out gay, you're really messing with facts as they stand for a questionable end goal. i'm just questioning that goal, really. do they need to be put into a box at age 15-16?
~~
bleh. tired and beginning to feel motion-sick. (still on bus ^^;;)
anyway. bleh, obvious, really.
while you, your brother, or your uncle may be gay, harry doesn't have to be just because he likes draco "that way". of course i'm not advocating the stupidity at the other end of the spectrum, "i'm not gay, i just shag boys." bleh. i don't see this as much but i know it's out there and that makes me almost more annoyed.
another gem: "i'm not gay, it's just that i can't stand to touch girls." or: "i'm not gay [or straight], but i make an exception for you." it's the label i resent, and embracing it whole-heartedly or avoiding it by transparent contradiction is equally bad as far as i'm concerned.
"Gay."/"Not Gay."
both piss me off, when applied to obviously sexually ambiguous (if you're saying they're not 100% straight) characters.
~~
yuck. rant over.
still on bus. eh. feel squee build up from my toesies. eeeeeeeeee~!
haaaaaaarrryyyyyyyyy~!!
here-- i-- come-- baby~!
*grins* heh. ah, life is good.
Interesting...
Date: 2002-11-17 01:48 pm (UTC)