(no subject)
So I finally saw Sky High. It was very cute, and didn't take itself too seriously. It was fun to see the older actors enjoying hamming it up. Hee. But Warren Peace! Daaaamn, now I understand what everyone was talking about. Even the bullies called him hot. He is the hottest thing--gawd in that suit, in his restaurant (lack of) clothes and bun, in his *leather jacket*. The huge amounts of eyefucking in the beginning. ::fans self:: He's so hot, he literally cannot contain his own hotness and bursts into flames. See, even the director thinks he's hot. And he speaks Chinese! I...don't really know why, but I don't care! It's just another facet of his hotness. Holy guh, batman.
How much do I love fic summaries like this one:
dark, twisted, brothercest, torment and mucho angst angst and more angst
err, enjoy! XXX
::giggles::
I was just musing last night on the Harry Potter fandom and why it seems to have no lines. At all.
I was just reading a fic in which Harry, while Draco is fucking him, keeps chanting out, "Hurt me, hurt me," and Draco tries his best to oblige with no pretense of safe words or concern or affection. Such a moment in most any other fandom's fic would play out very differently. If for instance Fraser said that to Ray, there would have to be a deep analysis of why Fraser would need to say that, and then some kind of emotional healing. Like in Speranza's "An Admirable Solution," Ray stops sex and takes a time out to talk about who had hurt Fraser by fucking him without lube at the airport.
And that's just the general fuckedupness of H/D, not even counting the:
Weasleycest, Malfoycest, chan (god I hate that word, it's shota, you TPM people, and it's not anyway when they're both "underage," whatever that means... err /wank), teacher/student or adult/child (like Sirius/Harry and then it *is* shota), beastiality (and does it count if you're both humans in animal form? Or hey, is Lupin technically an animal all the time? He's certainly a creature, but then so is a Veela...), other cross-species sex (like the canonical giant/human--or, hey where's all the centaur fic?), polyjuice!sex, veela!sex, gender changing, pureblood inbreeding, Deatheater!sex, invisible voyeurs, Imperius!sex, sex with the soulkissed, bdsm torture and rape during or because of the war (on both sides), bdsm torture and rape in or because of Azkaban, bitterenemies!sex, ot3s, sex impelled by magic or potion, sex influenced by: bodyswitching, ghosts, vampires, dementors, snakes, wands, magic swords, time turners, house elves, pensieves, the list goes on.
I'm sure this has been said elsewhere (HP is by far the best fandom for theory and meta I have ever seen), but I found 3 main reasons for the Harry Potter fandom's freedom from conventional morals.
1. It's a whole different world with customs different from the ones we're used to. Who knows what they think of (insert kink of your choice here)? Wizarding England (to say nothing of Wizarding Rest-of-the-World, and God knows JKR doesn't), is a world apart. And even if this world also condemns twincest or whatever, there are always extenuating circumstances like:
2. They're at war! People's sexual mores seem to become freer when they think they're about to die. Also, they have more important things to worry about--like saving the world, or at least themselves--than whether Fred and George are doing the nasty in the room above their joke shop. When they're not actively at war, they have PTSD and general trauma because of it. The older generation carries deep scars (Lupin and Sirius and Severus--Hell, even Dumbledore), from the last war. Anyone who survives this war will have massive trauma as well. They generally just have More Important Things to think about than who's snogging whom in the Astronomy Tower.
3. Magic. Looking at the list above, it's obvious that magic creates a lot of new kinks that just wouldn't be possible otherwise. Sure, everyone might fantasize about sleeping with the most popular girl in school, but with magic, you could Transfigure or Polyjuice your best mate to be an exact physical copy of that girl. Ah, the Polyjuice brothels of Cassandra Claire... Or if you were curious about how the other half lives, you could find a spell that turned you into a girl for the day and dust yourself with a mild irresistability potion. Magic just gives canon (and therefore canon-probable fanfiction) so many more *options*.
I should add that we are mostly writing about teenagers here, so there is that hormonal and life-changing aspect to consider, but I don't think that's really a factor in the sexual politics of this fandom. Take a control fandom, say, The OC. Here the only variable is teenagers. In the resulting fic, there are slightly traumatized teens having sex, but there is nowhere near the level of craziness as in HP. Add war, teenagers, and a whole different world in Gundam Wing, and you get ot#s, bitterenemies!sex, mission!sex, bdsm wartime torture and rape, and some shota with the Mads or with Oz. But there is very little Trowa/Cathy, even though there would seem to be a perfect setup for it, and also very little Zechs/Relena. In addition (substituting technology for magic), there is not that much Gundam-Pilots-programmed-to-have-sex, and very little Gundam!sex or Zero!sex. So I believe it's really the alchemical *combination* of a different world, war, and magic that produce the wonderfully complex pornucopia of the Harry Potter fandom.
Other fandoms have some of the same trends, so far as the physically possible sex between muggles goes. But without magic, some of the more *creative* ones are automatically labelled crackfic, because they're so far outside canon, that the only way you could even see them in the same universe is if you've been smoking crack. What makes Harry Potter fandom so amazing is the sheer diversity, scope, acceptance, prolificness, and acceptedness of these strange types of sexual exploits. It's great that in this fandom, what would be seen as crackfic or morally suspect somewhere else is not even seen as controversial. At all. If you don't like it, it's a matter of taste, not a matter of "OMG it's so wrong for Snape and Harry to be having sex because Snape is a teacher. He has a moral obligation blah blah blah." It's just--the fandom as a whole doesn't even *think* that way--I guess those kind of protests are muggle thoughts. They seem to have no place here. What's staggering to me is the sheer number of fics and meta and discussions which debate Ginny/Ron and Ginny/Harry and Ron/Harry with equal seriousness and validity.
This fandom is special because of the pervasiveness of the ideas in the above list, and their ability to stay within the realm of canon possibility. Because, for those three reasons above, canon has so *much* more possibility than other fandoms' more conventional worlds.
I usually just say these kind of things outloud to myself and don't bother writing them down (just like I usually only write fanfiction in my head and then forget it). But I guess I was feeling writey. ^__^
OMG Sulu is gay. I did not think it was possible for my love for George Takei to grow any greater.
Wow Charlies hair is really long. I think I like it shorter, especially over the ears. Usually I love long hair on boys, but it's in danger of approaching mullethood.
And the paper airplanes! So cute! Fleinhart is a predicate adjective! LOVE.
DEFENESTRATION! Larry uses grammar and vocabulary like a man after my own heart.
Remember, Fieldwork: accept no substitute.
Charlie's safety tip: avoid air-tight walk-in refrigerators and freezers when someone is trying to kill you. OMG.
Damn, he and his hair and his clothes and his Colombian companion all looked smoking hot in that heart-to-heart scene.
And I love how he totally talked down to Megan when she was trying to pretend like she knew what he was talking about.
Robin of Sherwood is so pretty that capping it wouldn't do it justice. It's pretty in context and in motion and with the Clannad and ::waves hand at screen:: go watch it!
Random actorspotting: Joan of Arc in Forever Knight is the bank robber chick from Due South Free Willie and Vault. And Weir from SGA is the vampire who went into the sun and left behind that doll.
Okay so in Chicago Holiday part 1, is that *James Allodi* in the vinyl bondage mountie outfit (with interesting nether accoutrements, judging from Fraser's reaction)? I can't find him credited anywhere, but it sure looks like him, and omg how AWESOME is that. I mean, someone could crossover with Wilby Wonderful about Dan's gay college days or something. ::grins:: It's like the Canadaverse. Like all of Canada is a fandom. All that 6 degrees of Due South could really be applied to anything Canadian. I love them all so much. Yay.