Dear Slashers,

[stranj100]

I'm sorry, but this has been building for sometime and I have to get this off my chest.

When you are writing, please be aware of gender tone. I know something like 80-90% of slashers are female, but that is no excuse to write a guy like a bad facsimile of a female.  Men are doers not talkers. A recent study has shown men talk about 40-60% less then

Comments

[wachey]

This is exactly what I'm worried about with my smm fic! Is there anything in particular I did wrong with the characters? Is there too much or too little of anything?

*worries*

[tmelange]

Amanda, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Are you *really* trying to write a story about two real life guys? We're talking guys in costumes, here, and isn't one preggers? Doh. How can you worry about what would happen in RL if two people were holding hands in public? I don't know about you, but I assume a unreal world in my fics -- and I'm happy about that.

[wachey]

Good point, I'm just worried I made Dick girly :3 but seeing as he's the one preggers, I can throw it off as hormones.

[stranj100]

That's what I did in my only mpreg fic. As a male, I'm strangely fascinated by mpreg.

[tmelange]

Well, I mean, if you're going to make a guy preggers, it's almost a given that you're feminizing him. If it's going to be important to you that the character be viewed as "male" by a RL standard, you shouldn't really be writing MPREG. But the fact is, women in slash fandoms love MPREG, and they're not particularly concerned that the scenario could never happen in RL. In fact, RL is very unimportant. So...what to say about all this? Sure, we could all write real manly men, and I don't know about anyone else, but I've had just about my fill of real men every day. I don't really need to write about them. LOL

[stranj100]

I think it goes back to the whole suspension of belief.

[stranj100]

Actually, your stories aren't the ones I'm referring to. I've recently read a lot of fics in other fandoms that have been really bad in terms of gender roles. I'm mostly just trying to spread awareness and make writers more attentive of their own work. Make writers think about what the character would do.

[tmelange]

I think this is an *excellent* idea. I just think that when writing, you have to be aware of your audience, and I think I can say for sure that the majority of the women slashers have no interest in writing real men. It's not that they don't *know*, they simply don't want to. LOL

[stranj100]

I basically grew in in a movie theater. I have a tendency to think in the terms of film making. I know about writing for an audience, but why limit yourself. My favorite films aren't the chick flicks or the guy films, but those that play to a general audience--your mystery and suspense, your summer epics and comedies. I do enjoy romances, dramadies and action films. What I like most are those that real mix it up.

[tmelange]

You know, if you could get some female slash writers to change their ways, they'd find that less people read and comment on their work. The audience for slash actually favors a more feminized characterization, contrary to what you'd expect in a RL artistic medium. So, you, as an atypical reader, wanting stronger, more grounded characterizations, would have to change not only the writers but the readers -- which is why I think you're fighting a losing battle.

After all, a large group of writers are married and know full well that they can't get their husbands to take them anywhere -- let alone a French restaurant, and they know quite well that no guy wants to be smooched on in public. LOL

[cmar_wingnut]

I think I can say for sure that the majority of the women slashers have no interest in writing real men.

I don't know about that. As a slash writer I am definitely interested in writing reasonably realistic male characters. (Female too, for that matter.) As a reader, I'm turned off by OOC, 'feminized' male characters. (Quotes because it's usually a stereotype of feminine behavior.) Most of my slash reader/writer friends feel pretty much the same way, and an awful lot of the critique I've seen of slash on the web brings up the same points as the OP.

This may depend at least in part on the fandom and on the particular circles you're in. (General you.)

[tmelange]

>>This may depend at least in part on the fandom and on the particular circles you're in.

Undoubtedly. I do think very often that slash writers *think* they are aspiring to reasonable male characterizations but in fact fall far short. In my 10+ years in various slash fandoms, I've never noticed a serious effort to write male characters the way males would write themselves, or even what I would consider as a reasonable effort towards a facsimile for purposes of ordinary fiction. The very fact that the fic is slash tends to undermine an ordinary male characterization. LOL But, obviously, that's just my experience.

[cmar_wingnut]

I've certainly seen an awful lot of slash that makes no effort at all to write male characters either realistically or in character. (And I've seen this from male writers too, btw.) But you've really never seen ANY serious effort towards accurate characterization of men in slash? Admittedly it's rare, but I've certainly seen it, and I've tried very hard to write it, too.

The very fact that the fic is slash tends to undermine an ordinary male characterization.

I don't see why. They're still the same characters no matter who they jump in bed with.

[tmelange]

>.But you've really never seen ANY serious effort towards accurate characterization of men in slash

[cmar_wingnut]

Ah, *movement*. The way you said it the first time, I thought you were talking about individual authors making no effort at all to characterize accurately in slash. I agree, there's no mass movement and not likely to be one, any more than there's a movement towards absolutely realistic characterization in fanfic in general. In het and gen fanfic I don't usually see the hero coming home after a long day kicking butt, plunking himself down in front of the TV, scratching himself and yelling, "Hey, get dinner on the table and bring me a beer, willya?" either.

Maybe I wasn't clear; I don't mean that kind of total realism. We want our fiction to be idealized and romanticized to some degree, and there's nothing wrong with that. What the OP (I think) and I object to is the warping of characters into something unrecognizable and beyond any suspension of disbelief.

a gay relationship cannot fall in the realm of ordinary male interaction. ...I suspect you and I are talking about different things here, or maybe seeing the concept of

[tmelange]

>>But what difference does that make? What do you mean by 'slash characterization'? Except for the obvious choice of partner in the bedroom, why should a character be portrayed any differently because he's gay, straight, or bi?

Um, sorry. I forgot to answer this.

I would posit that sexuality is a key component in characterization within stories that primarily focus on relationships. I'm...not sure how you could possibly think differently. But clearly, you do! And that's cool.

Thanks for the discourse! I think I've exhausted this topic for me.