Some stuff what I have been thinking of, mostly about me
My theory on why this year's American Idol won: the unmarked subject of the American cultural tale is a white guy. Because Lee is neither particularly talented, attractive, nor interesting, people felt completely free to project whatever fantasies they had on him. He served as a mirror for whatever fantasies they had, and they voted for the American Idol in their mind, rather than the boring, stiff, out of tune guy on the stage. That's all I got.
Some thoughts on sexual and gender identities in fiction and my relationship thereto: So, when I came to LJ, I added some people to my reading page that had not really been in my social circle on LJ. A number of these people were kinky, a few were asexual, and at least two were trans. This led to me reading not only about their lives as kinky, asexual, or trans people, but also to a lot of exhilaration about and occasional exhortations to join challenges for or read stories that included good portraits of kinkiness, asexuality, or transgender people.
I have come to the slow realization that these things do not make stories better for me. (I do my best not to judge people as better or worse people for things like sexual orientations and gender identity, so I'm not labeling people as better or worse in that way. And, to be perfectly honest, in the absence of an actual personal connection, my major concern about someone's life when I add them to my reading page is whether or not they can describe that life in a manner I find worth reading, not the substance of the life lived.)
Neither do they make a story worse for me, to be clear. I read almost everything
helens78 and
telesilla post, whether or not those stories are kinky, because I like the way they write, I like the way they depict the characters in fandoms we share, and their sex scenes - kinky or vanilla - really work for me. I do not as often read
kanata's fanfiction because he likes emotionally ambiguous to downright unhappy or creepy stories, which I mostly don't, but I don't check whether the characters are trans in his stories, because I've found that his interpretations are canonically well-grounded when characters are transgendered and when they're cisgendered. I do read his PWP's because his porn is usually hot, again, when dealing with cisbodies and when dealing with transbodies.
So, you know, I like stories about Hardison/Parker/Eliot, and I like stories about them to be good, but it's not a bonus to me if Hardison's asexual, Parker has a mess fetish, or Eliot is transgendered. If those are the characterizations an author runs with, and if those characterizations and the rest of the story are well-written, then, fine, but it doesn't actually give me a little thrill, and it's not the part of the story I'm going to be judging, unless it's really fucked up in a way I spot.
And I'm probably never going to write stories that include those character depictions, unless canon says in bold, flashy letters "This character is transgendered!" or "This character's pony play is central to the way they organize their life!" or "This character had a frank discussion with that character about the fact that their romantic relationship will not include sex!" because those aren't the lenses I use to view the world. I'm happy to have such fiction walk into view, and when I read sociology and anthropology and news and watch documentaries, I want those voices in my mix, but those aren't my stories, the way queerness* is my story, or stories about ethnicity are my story, or stories about poly are my story, or stories about dykiness are my story, or the tale of a group of disparate forged by circumstances no one else can understand into a closeknit family are my story.
*Some members of the kinky, asexual, and transgender communities embrace queerness as a concept of their self-identity. When I say that queerness is my story and their stories aren't my story, I'm not trying to kick them out of the queer tent, I am saying that as their stories reflect the general queer story, with things like social isolation, disorientation from the mainstream, joy in finding community, struggle with the community over identity and self-policing, discovery and naming one's own sexual desires, I get that, but the things particular to asexuality, kink, and transgenderness, not as much.
This section of the post mostly brought on by people repeatedly linking to
kink_bingo entries, and me opening a link hoping I will find something very exciting on the other end, and not finding something that excites me there, because it's meta about kinkiness, about which I don't get that excited. (The exception was helen's entry with the BDSM sheep, because plush identity animals are awesome, pretty much every time.)
So, in that meme about telling me about my id,
melannen said that I wrote characters who were non-heteronormative, which is not surprising, because (a) queer sexual preferences are a bonus to me in storytelling, and I prefer polyamorous relationships in fiction.
She also said that the gist of [my] stories is that [communicating clearly] is worth doing even if it's difficult, and that a relationship where partners actually say things out loud in plain language is much stronger than one where they don't. Which is interesting to me on a number of levels, the first being that I had absolutely no idea that this was such a theme in my work, but then I went back and checked out my stories for the past two years, and so many of them can be summarized as X asked Y for something and got it (more or less) or P told Q something (Q probably needed to know) or A and Z talked about something and A made the world a better place for Z because of it. Also, the remix I wrote becomes hilarious in the context of this discussion.
It's also interesting because one of the few widely held fanfiction tropes that I really loathe is the one where a romantic grouping has Obstacles to Their True Love because No One Wants To Say It, whatever It may be. (I actually kind of like the one where a romantic grouping has Obstacles to Their True Love because One of You Said This and Another of You Heard That [provided That was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the actual words used to attempt to communicate This.])
And last but not least, it's interesting because I feel like I don't do that, or, if I do do that, it's only after an enormous amount of soulsearching. It took me two days once to ask for a hug from someone I (a) was 99% sure would give the hug when asked and (b) when asked, not only gave me a hug but then also curled up with me for a goodly period of time. It took me a year and change to tell a very good friend that I had stopped calling her because I felt like a very big loser for not having a steady job or a career goal while she has had a calling the entire time I've known her and she is successfully pursuing that goal, even though it's the sort of career which is gig-based rather than lifetime employment based, so she was out of work for some of that period, too. (And for "told her" read "sent long, rambly e-mail.") I don't think I've ever actually told anyone I was attracted to them if they hadn't mentioned being attracted to me first, although in college my body language was almost certainly clear enough that an actual declaration in words wasn't necessary.
So, yeah, emotional communication, I think it's very good (I encountered the poly communication at a very young age, and lesbians ain't got nothing on poly when it comes to fetishizing process) but I would prefer to ride a roller coaster to initiating such a conversation. (I have only ever ridden two rollercoasters and then when I was twelve I told people I don't like it and would prefer the rides that feel fun from centrifugal force, instead of suspending you upside down at the mercy of some straps or a harness. So, I would rather do a thing I have never willing done since I was, oh, twelve, than initiate such a conversation. And by conversation, I can actually mean something as simple as asking for a hug from someone I know will give it to me. For perspective.)
So, hey, good call
melannen!
Also, I would like to talk about remix. But I've completely run out of energy, and I'm trying to get to Balticon at a decent hour, because I am going For A Girl, so I'll give it up now. Instead, have that absolutely delightful meme: If you could remix any of my stories from any of my fandoms, which would it be and how would you remix it?
I'm also sort of curious in the other direction, that is to say, if there are any stories of yours you'd like to know how I would remix, feel free to ask.
P.S. Saw the movie Behind the Burly Q about old American burlesque performers. I feel like there was a really great film in there that the editor failed to put together, but we wound up with an interesting if middling documentary with some real characters in it. I definitely don't feel cheated out of my $9.50, and I'm glad I happened to pass by The Charles and see it was playing.
Original post at Dreamwidth. Read (
) comments or reply there using Open ID.
Some thoughts on sexual and gender identities in fiction and my relationship thereto: So, when I came to LJ, I added some people to my reading page that had not really been in my social circle on LJ. A number of these people were kinky, a few were asexual, and at least two were trans. This led to me reading not only about their lives as kinky, asexual, or trans people, but also to a lot of exhilaration about and occasional exhortations to join challenges for or read stories that included good portraits of kinkiness, asexuality, or transgender people.
I have come to the slow realization that these things do not make stories better for me. (I do my best not to judge people as better or worse people for things like sexual orientations and gender identity, so I'm not labeling people as better or worse in that way. And, to be perfectly honest, in the absence of an actual personal connection, my major concern about someone's life when I add them to my reading page is whether or not they can describe that life in a manner I find worth reading, not the substance of the life lived.)
Neither do they make a story worse for me, to be clear. I read almost everything
helens78 and
telesilla post, whether or not those stories are kinky, because I like the way they write, I like the way they depict the characters in fandoms we share, and their sex scenes - kinky or vanilla - really work for me. I do not as often read
kanata's fanfiction because he likes emotionally ambiguous to downright unhappy or creepy stories, which I mostly don't, but I don't check whether the characters are trans in his stories, because I've found that his interpretations are canonically well-grounded when characters are transgendered and when they're cisgendered. I do read his PWP's because his porn is usually hot, again, when dealing with cisbodies and when dealing with transbodies.
So, you know, I like stories about Hardison/Parker/Eliot, and I like stories about them to be good, but it's not a bonus to me if Hardison's asexual, Parker has a mess fetish, or Eliot is transgendered. If those are the characterizations an author runs with, and if those characterizations and the rest of the story are well-written, then, fine, but it doesn't actually give me a little thrill, and it's not the part of the story I'm going to be judging, unless it's really fucked up in a way I spot.
And I'm probably never going to write stories that include those character depictions, unless canon says in bold, flashy letters "This character is transgendered!" or "This character's pony play is central to the way they organize their life!" or "This character had a frank discussion with that character about the fact that their romantic relationship will not include sex!" because those aren't the lenses I use to view the world. I'm happy to have such fiction walk into view, and when I read sociology and anthropology and news and watch documentaries, I want those voices in my mix, but those aren't my stories, the way queerness* is my story, or stories about ethnicity are my story, or stories about poly are my story, or stories about dykiness are my story, or the tale of a group of disparate forged by circumstances no one else can understand into a closeknit family are my story.
*Some members of the kinky, asexual, and transgender communities embrace queerness as a concept of their self-identity. When I say that queerness is my story and their stories aren't my story, I'm not trying to kick them out of the queer tent, I am saying that as their stories reflect the general queer story, with things like social isolation, disorientation from the mainstream, joy in finding community, struggle with the community over identity and self-policing, discovery and naming one's own sexual desires, I get that, but the things particular to asexuality, kink, and transgenderness, not as much.
This section of the post mostly brought on by people repeatedly linking to
kink_bingo entries, and me opening a link hoping I will find something very exciting on the other end, and not finding something that excites me there, because it's meta about kinkiness, about which I don't get that excited. (The exception was helen's entry with the BDSM sheep, because plush identity animals are awesome, pretty much every time.)
So, in that meme about telling me about my id,
melannen said that I wrote characters who were non-heteronormative, which is not surprising, because (a) queer sexual preferences are a bonus to me in storytelling, and I prefer polyamorous relationships in fiction.
She also said that the gist of [my] stories is that [communicating clearly] is worth doing even if it's difficult, and that a relationship where partners actually say things out loud in plain language is much stronger than one where they don't. Which is interesting to me on a number of levels, the first being that I had absolutely no idea that this was such a theme in my work, but then I went back and checked out my stories for the past two years, and so many of them can be summarized as X asked Y for something and got it (more or less) or P told Q something (Q probably needed to know) or A and Z talked about something and A made the world a better place for Z because of it. Also, the remix I wrote becomes hilarious in the context of this discussion.
It's also interesting because one of the few widely held fanfiction tropes that I really loathe is the one where a romantic grouping has Obstacles to Their True Love because No One Wants To Say It, whatever It may be. (I actually kind of like the one where a romantic grouping has Obstacles to Their True Love because One of You Said This and Another of You Heard That [provided That was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the actual words used to attempt to communicate This.])
And last but not least, it's interesting because I feel like I don't do that, or, if I do do that, it's only after an enormous amount of soulsearching. It took me two days once to ask for a hug from someone I (a) was 99% sure would give the hug when asked and (b) when asked, not only gave me a hug but then also curled up with me for a goodly period of time. It took me a year and change to tell a very good friend that I had stopped calling her because I felt like a very big loser for not having a steady job or a career goal while she has had a calling the entire time I've known her and she is successfully pursuing that goal, even though it's the sort of career which is gig-based rather than lifetime employment based, so she was out of work for some of that period, too. (And for "told her" read "sent long, rambly e-mail.") I don't think I've ever actually told anyone I was attracted to them if they hadn't mentioned being attracted to me first, although in college my body language was almost certainly clear enough that an actual declaration in words wasn't necessary.
So, yeah, emotional communication, I think it's very good (I encountered the poly communication at a very young age, and lesbians ain't got nothing on poly when it comes to fetishizing process) but I would prefer to ride a roller coaster to initiating such a conversation. (I have only ever ridden two rollercoasters and then when I was twelve I told people I don't like it and would prefer the rides that feel fun from centrifugal force, instead of suspending you upside down at the mercy of some straps or a harness. So, I would rather do a thing I have never willing done since I was, oh, twelve, than initiate such a conversation. And by conversation, I can actually mean something as simple as asking for a hug from someone I know will give it to me. For perspective.)
So, hey, good call
melannen!
Also, I would like to talk about remix. But I've completely run out of energy, and I'm trying to get to Balticon at a decent hour, because I am going For A Girl, so I'll give it up now. Instead, have that absolutely delightful meme: If you could remix any of my stories from any of my fandoms, which would it be and how would you remix it?
I'm also sort of curious in the other direction, that is to say, if there are any stories of yours you'd like to know how I would remix, feel free to ask.
P.S. Saw the movie Behind the Burly Q about old American burlesque performers. I feel like there was a really great film in there that the editor failed to put together, but we wound up with an interesting if middling documentary with some real characters in it. I definitely don't feel cheated out of my $9.50, and I'm glad I happened to pass by The Charles and see it was playing.
Original post at Dreamwidth. Read (
) comments or reply there using Open ID.