I was listening to your podcast at work the other day and I felt the need to leave TLDR feedback. I actually feel kind of bad because I like this show and I've been listening to it for a couple months so far and I hadn't come by to leave a positive comment and now I've come just to leave a negative comment. So let me be clear: I love the podcast, I've listened to all the reboot episodes and some of the old ones, and I definitely will continue to download and enjoy future episodes.
But I got to say that the Writer's Corner was totally bananas this month. Most of the comments that made me roll my eyes started around 29:26.
-"There's no socially expected power dynamic. You can't automatically look at a couple and say: 'Oh, he's the one who's going to decide what they do and where they go.'"
I think if you are the kind of person who would believe that the man is going to make all the decisions in a het couple, then there's a good chance that you will do the same thing to m/m couples using a similar metric. People assume all the time that the character who is more traditionally masculine is the one who is "in charge".
-"I don't think there's any way to really Mary Sue a slash [unclear word]"
This is the craziest statement, and to be fair it does get contested a couple of seconds later. No Mary Sues in slash? What? Characters are made into Mary Sues all the time, it frequently goes hand in hand with woobification. Off the top of my head, the biggest example that I can think of Stiles from Teen Wolf, he gets Mary Sue'd in like every other Sterek fic.
-"Most of the same-sex romance that you're gonna get, you have two people who start out on equal footing in society in terms of expectations, behavior, of how they've been raised."
This one is probably somewhat true when it comes to historical pieces, but when applied to a lot of slash dominated fandoms it doesn't hold up well. In Teen Wolf, The Avengers, and The Hobbit fandoms the vast majority of the m/m pairings have extremely different backgrounds and expectations. Many of these pairings have individuals that come from completely different countries and even belong to different species. Clashing expectations are half the fun for many fictional couples.
-"You do take off that layer of societal expectations, of gender roles, you can just sort of think about almost an idealized relationship between two human beings."
Nope, I changed my mind. THIS is the craziest statement. Like, what does it even mean? Do you really think that a m/m romance is the epitome of human interaction? Because if so, holy shit. It's extra weird because this doesn't even take into account tons of tropes that are present in slash fic like: master/servant dynamics, large age differences, A/B/O, and so many more. Seriously, what was up with this comment?
But I got to say that the Writer's Corner was totally bananas this month. Most of the comments that made me roll my eyes started around 29:26.
-"There's no socially expected power dynamic. You can't automatically look at a couple and say: 'Oh, he's the one who's going to decide what they do and where they go.'"
I think if you are the kind of person who would believe that the man is going to make all the decisions in a het couple, then there's a good chance that you will do the same thing to m/m couples using a similar metric. People assume all the time that the character who is more traditionally masculine is the one who is "in charge".
-"I don't think there's any way to really Mary Sue a slash [unclear word]"
This is the craziest statement, and to be fair it does get contested a couple of seconds later. No Mary Sues in slash? What? Characters are made into Mary Sues all the time, it frequently goes hand in hand with woobification. Off the top of my head, the biggest example that I can think of Stiles from Teen Wolf, he gets Mary Sue'd in like every other Sterek fic.
-"Most of the same-sex romance that you're gonna get, you have two people who start out on equal footing in society in terms of expectations, behavior, of how they've been raised."
This one is probably somewhat true when it comes to historical pieces, but when applied to a lot of slash dominated fandoms it doesn't hold up well. In Teen Wolf, The Avengers, and The Hobbit fandoms the vast majority of the m/m pairings have extremely different backgrounds and expectations. Many of these pairings have individuals that come from completely different countries and even belong to different species. Clashing expectations are half the fun for many fictional couples.
-"You do take off that layer of societal expectations, of gender roles, you can just sort of think about almost an idealized relationship between two human beings."
Nope, I changed my mind. THIS is the craziest statement. Like, what does it even mean? Do you really think that a m/m romance is the epitome of human interaction? Because if so, holy shit. It's extra weird because this doesn't even take into account tons of tropes that are present in slash fic like: master/servant dynamics, large age differences, A/B/O, and so many more. Seriously, what was up with this comment?
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