All the daughters of my father's house and all the brothers too...
Okay, I said I was going to talk about androgynes and I am.
To start with, a declaration of love: I love androgyne characters (using the term now in the wider sense of "not clearly gendered"). Their presence in a story always raises my interest. I've loved girls in drag for as long as I can remember and boys in drag only slightly shorter. My ideal partner would be as genderless as an angel - I don't know if I'm unlucky in this (since I'll most likely never be satisfied) or lucky (since I know I won't be satisfied and I thus don't have to have unrealistic expectations).
Obviously, there are other aspects of my love for people and characters both, and it's entirely possible that I'll like another character more than the most androgyne one. Still, androgyny is always a plus, and most of my favourite characters have something androgyne about them.
Sometimes it's physical. I remember when I saw As You Like It played in Malmö - some of the female characters were played by men, some of the male ones by women, but only some, and at first I didn't know about Celia. Her voice could be a low alto or a high tenor, and her voice was round and smooth without being definitely feminine. It really turned me on. (I found out later that it was a man, btw.)
Sometimes it's not physical at all. Take Hurley from Lost, for example. There's nothing androgyne about his appearance (unless one counts his long hair and boobies), but when it comes to his personality, he's caring, diplomatic, making sure that everyone is happy and friendly - he pretty much mothers the whole island.
Or Illyria in Angel: such a twee little thing, but a stone cold killer. And it's because she's a twee little thing that I can like her as a stone cold killer - in a more mannish looking woman (say, Jamie Lee Curtis, whom I adore in most of her parts) such behaviour would be too much, not so much androgynous as butch. There has to be some femininity involved - but too much of that and we're back to plain old Fred, who is pretty much all woman.
There are a lot of things to be balanced: body, personality, interests, actions. If one of them is gendered, the others have to strive in the other direction just enough to get the sum to right about zero. (Obviously, I'm not a nazi about it - people can lean towards male or female.)
This means that I don't often think of my favourites as men or women, but that when a character is clearly "manly" or "womanly", I may have different rules for a male or female gendered character. Not when it comes to morality, of course, but concerning how much I'll like them. Jamie Lee Curtis and James Marsden can both act pretty much the same way, since they're both a bit on the androgynous side, but Dolly Parton can't act like Arnold Schwartzenegger - or more accurately, if Dolly acted like Arnie and vice versa I'd probably like them better. And so I love Illyria better than Fred, Zoe better than Jasmine, and (despite the hotness) early Wes better than late.
(On a sidenote, I started mentally genderswapping some characters and found that the Spike Thomson/Lynda Day relationship becomes quite iffy when turned around, since she's in such a position of power already. Wizard Howl - book version - on the other hand would be pretty much his own charming asshole self as a woman too; he already has a mix of supposedly masculine and feminine character traits. He's arrogant and womanizing like a stereotypical "man", but vain and melodramatic like a stereotypical "woman".)
It also means that the "real men" debate that comes up from time to time about slash is completely pointless to me, since if the characters were "real men" in the stereotypical sense I probably wouldn't be interested in them in the first place. OTOH, while I quite enjoy the sort of feminizing of characters that's done in All the Wrong Places (Doyle in Cordelia's body but still Doyle), I don't see the point in writing the guys all girly.
The same goes for the "why we write/don't write women" debate - yes, most of my women are a bit on the butch, bitch or bossy side, but then, most of my men are a bit on the sweet or femme side, so it all balances out. And I've never felt I should have some sort of loyalty to everyone with girly bits - I believe the patriarchy exists and I'm against it, but that doesn't make women better or more noteworthy than men, or either of them better or more noteworthy than my beloved androgynes.
I think there's a reason my muse is Serendipity, who may look like Salma Hayek, but who is very clear on the fact that she's not a woman.
To start with, a declaration of love: I love androgyne characters (using the term now in the wider sense of "not clearly gendered"). Their presence in a story always raises my interest. I've loved girls in drag for as long as I can remember and boys in drag only slightly shorter. My ideal partner would be as genderless as an angel - I don't know if I'm unlucky in this (since I'll most likely never be satisfied) or lucky (since I know I won't be satisfied and I thus don't have to have unrealistic expectations).
Obviously, there are other aspects of my love for people and characters both, and it's entirely possible that I'll like another character more than the most androgyne one. Still, androgyny is always a plus, and most of my favourite characters have something androgyne about them.
Sometimes it's physical. I remember when I saw As You Like It played in Malmö - some of the female characters were played by men, some of the male ones by women, but only some, and at first I didn't know about Celia. Her voice could be a low alto or a high tenor, and her voice was round and smooth without being definitely feminine. It really turned me on. (I found out later that it was a man, btw.)
Sometimes it's not physical at all. Take Hurley from Lost, for example. There's nothing androgyne about his appearance (unless one counts his long hair and boobies), but when it comes to his personality, he's caring, diplomatic, making sure that everyone is happy and friendly - he pretty much mothers the whole island.
Or Illyria in Angel: such a twee little thing, but a stone cold killer. And it's because she's a twee little thing that I can like her as a stone cold killer - in a more mannish looking woman (say, Jamie Lee Curtis, whom I adore in most of her parts) such behaviour would be too much, not so much androgynous as butch. There has to be some femininity involved - but too much of that and we're back to plain old Fred, who is pretty much all woman.
There are a lot of things to be balanced: body, personality, interests, actions. If one of them is gendered, the others have to strive in the other direction just enough to get the sum to right about zero. (Obviously, I'm not a nazi about it - people can lean towards male or female.)
This means that I don't often think of my favourites as men or women, but that when a character is clearly "manly" or "womanly", I may have different rules for a male or female gendered character. Not when it comes to morality, of course, but concerning how much I'll like them. Jamie Lee Curtis and James Marsden can both act pretty much the same way, since they're both a bit on the androgynous side, but Dolly Parton can't act like Arnold Schwartzenegger - or more accurately, if Dolly acted like Arnie and vice versa I'd probably like them better. And so I love Illyria better than Fred, Zoe better than Jasmine, and (despite the hotness) early Wes better than late.
(On a sidenote, I started mentally genderswapping some characters and found that the Spike Thomson/Lynda Day relationship becomes quite iffy when turned around, since she's in such a position of power already. Wizard Howl - book version - on the other hand would be pretty much his own charming asshole self as a woman too; he already has a mix of supposedly masculine and feminine character traits. He's arrogant and womanizing like a stereotypical "man", but vain and melodramatic like a stereotypical "woman".)
It also means that the "real men" debate that comes up from time to time about slash is completely pointless to me, since if the characters were "real men" in the stereotypical sense I probably wouldn't be interested in them in the first place. OTOH, while I quite enjoy the sort of feminizing of characters that's done in All the Wrong Places (Doyle in Cordelia's body but still Doyle), I don't see the point in writing the guys all girly.
The same goes for the "why we write/don't write women" debate - yes, most of my women are a bit on the butch, bitch or bossy side, but then, most of my men are a bit on the sweet or femme side, so it all balances out. And I've never felt I should have some sort of loyalty to everyone with girly bits - I believe the patriarchy exists and I'm against it, but that doesn't make women better or more noteworthy than men, or either of them better or more noteworthy than my beloved androgynes.
I think there's a reason my muse is Serendipity, who may look like Salma Hayek, but who is very clear on the fact that she's not a woman.