Oh god, not moral bloody complexity again
Still torn by the atmosphere of political correctness getting in the way of what I write. And my own morals getting in the way of what I write, a bit. And then I wonder if I really do want to write anything where people act like arseholes, even if it's in character. And even if the stuff is set in the 1940s where the prevailing ideas of homosexuality were largely that they were twisted perversions. This ties in with two story ideas I have where the discovery of a villainous character's gay tendencies are a source of shock and disgust because that'd be fairly realistic for the time, but again, I don't know if there's much of a point to the stories beyond that. I mean, I'm not out to write a gay sob story about the world being oppressive either because god knows there are enough of them out there.
The two examples I'm thinking of (you'll never guess whose movies I'm talking about):
-Renault gaybaits Strasser and humiliates him in front of the other Nazis by exposing his tendencies (they'll discover him doing something dodgy, trying on frilly pink knickers or something) so that Strasser loses face and will never be able to set foot in Casablanca again. And Renault can walk off, smoking a fag, the sneaky little shit he is. Of course, this is hypocritical of Renault since he's bisexual and all, but the whole point would be that a bunch of hypocritical closeted homophobes would turn in on each other. Also, Renault is a little shit.
-Anna Holm discovers... things about Torsten Barring and in the context of the story, they are horrifying and bad because he's a bad guy and they would also explain why he can be such a sadist towards women. I am not sure if I would go the whole hog with the trope of "closeted guy loves torturing women because he's angry that he can't sexually perform with them and they remind him that he's not normal" (seriously, *is* there a trope name for that)? Because he's so awesome in bed you'd kill for him and I doubt he would be if he was completely gay, so I'm going for depraved bisexual. And that they would be perversions for him--bound up with all kinds of twisted and sick stuff--and he would relish them. She'd be disgusted, but also, because it's these two we are talking about, she'd also be unable to resist and would be pulled along with his perversions, and even enjoy them to her shame. I'll give you two guesses as to whether anal sex and transvestism/genderfuckery would be involved. It wouldn't be happy, but it'd be fucked up and hot. Actually, my biggest problem there would be that I'd have to write him doing and saying cruel and misogynistic stuff and I don't know how much of that *I* could take to still regard the story as readable (it wouldn't be completely pleasant, but I don't want to write a really depressing and miserable story either, so I'd have to draw the line somewhere).
And I would not even know what the fuck because how in the hell does a modern reader even read that sort of stuff? How many disclaimers would I have to make, knowing that disclaimers are often bad for a story? It was a common thing in the past for someone with homosexual tendencies to just go into full "well, I'm a perverse bastard, so fuck off" mode because that was one of the few ways in which you could embrace that identity. If you were told you were a sinner and a horrible person, but if such things were such an intrinsic part of your nature, it would be natural to just embrace that, no matter what. People called themselves devils for enjoying sex and sensuality and partying, for crying out loud (Hellfire Club, anyone?)... And from looking at modern-day Satanists, that sort of attitude is still going strong--I suppose if you were brought up by stuck-up nuns you might get something out of shagging a woman dressed as a nun in a coffin and spitting on a cross, I guess, even if all of that stuff does seem woefully outdated and teenager-rebellious from my own perspective.
Just don't tell the PC nutters that. Gaybaiting is WRONG even if the guy suffering from it is a Nazi douchebag and evil LGBT characters are WRONG because gay is not evil, omfg.
But... IDK. My problem is that neither of these stories would be happy. And I've already done the "woman has hot anal sex with bisexual man and it involves transvestism/genderfuckery" thing. Even though this one is so tempting because it'd be so, so dark and nothing like the playful stuff I've had with the Persians. And hot. Hey, I grew up with the tropes of homoerotic evil and they were hot and there's a reason I'm using an icon from the Devil of Winterborne and shut up, Gatiss understands me. And what twists me about Anna/Torsten is that it's probably the only Connie character ship for me that comes--emotionally and character-wise--closest to slash. She's more masculine than he is, for crying out loud!
Also, how sad is it that I would never wonder about the reception of these things if I was still participating in mailing list culture and talking to Blake's 7 fans? They would've written fics like these and been intelligent about it. But fandom has gone so shrieky and kneejerky in recent years that it's harshing my creativity:/.
The two examples I'm thinking of (you'll never guess whose movies I'm talking about):
-Renault gaybaits Strasser and humiliates him in front of the other Nazis by exposing his tendencies (they'll discover him doing something dodgy, trying on frilly pink knickers or something) so that Strasser loses face and will never be able to set foot in Casablanca again. And Renault can walk off, smoking a fag, the sneaky little shit he is. Of course, this is hypocritical of Renault since he's bisexual and all, but the whole point would be that a bunch of hypocritical closeted homophobes would turn in on each other. Also, Renault is a little shit.
-Anna Holm discovers... things about Torsten Barring and in the context of the story, they are horrifying and bad because he's a bad guy and they would also explain why he can be such a sadist towards women. I am not sure if I would go the whole hog with the trope of "closeted guy loves torturing women because he's angry that he can't sexually perform with them and they remind him that he's not normal" (seriously, *is* there a trope name for that)? Because he's so awesome in bed you'd kill for him and I doubt he would be if he was completely gay, so I'm going for depraved bisexual. And that they would be perversions for him--bound up with all kinds of twisted and sick stuff--and he would relish them. She'd be disgusted, but also, because it's these two we are talking about, she'd also be unable to resist and would be pulled along with his perversions, and even enjoy them to her shame. I'll give you two guesses as to whether anal sex and transvestism/genderfuckery would be involved. It wouldn't be happy, but it'd be fucked up and hot. Actually, my biggest problem there would be that I'd have to write him doing and saying cruel and misogynistic stuff and I don't know how much of that *I* could take to still regard the story as readable (it wouldn't be completely pleasant, but I don't want to write a really depressing and miserable story either, so I'd have to draw the line somewhere).
And I would not even know what the fuck because how in the hell does a modern reader even read that sort of stuff? How many disclaimers would I have to make, knowing that disclaimers are often bad for a story? It was a common thing in the past for someone with homosexual tendencies to just go into full "well, I'm a perverse bastard, so fuck off" mode because that was one of the few ways in which you could embrace that identity. If you were told you were a sinner and a horrible person, but if such things were such an intrinsic part of your nature, it would be natural to just embrace that, no matter what. People called themselves devils for enjoying sex and sensuality and partying, for crying out loud (Hellfire Club, anyone?)... And from looking at modern-day Satanists, that sort of attitude is still going strong--I suppose if you were brought up by stuck-up nuns you might get something out of shagging a woman dressed as a nun in a coffin and spitting on a cross, I guess, even if all of that stuff does seem woefully outdated and teenager-rebellious from my own perspective.
Just don't tell the PC nutters that. Gaybaiting is WRONG even if the guy suffering from it is a Nazi douchebag and evil LGBT characters are WRONG because gay is not evil, omfg.
But... IDK. My problem is that neither of these stories would be happy. And I've already done the "woman has hot anal sex with bisexual man and it involves transvestism/genderfuckery" thing. Even though this one is so tempting because it'd be so, so dark and nothing like the playful stuff I've had with the Persians. And hot. Hey, I grew up with the tropes of homoerotic evil and they were hot and there's a reason I'm using an icon from the Devil of Winterborne and shut up, Gatiss understands me. And what twists me about Anna/Torsten is that it's probably the only Connie character ship for me that comes--emotionally and character-wise--closest to slash. She's more masculine than he is, for crying out loud!
Also, how sad is it that I would never wonder about the reception of these things if I was still participating in mailing list culture and talking to Blake's 7 fans? They would've written fics like these and been intelligent about it. But fandom has gone so shrieky and kneejerky in recent years that it's harshing my creativity:/.