<a href='https://skywardprodigal.dreamwidth.org'>a princess of now

stellamira?

Yeah. She's sick with it. White privilege is a helluva drug.

By the way...I think you and stephiepenguin (http://stephiepenguin.livejournal.com/213009.html) might share geographic territory, and possibly, fannish interests. Maybe. Possibly. She's fannish too. And Vegan, iirc.

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ardhra

That panel at SwanCon sounds awesome. But I dunno if I'll be able to make it all the way out to Perth... And I know I'll be really really busy next year. We'll have to see...

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I still stick by:

"Oh my god, what a tragedy that happened here!...let's have sex" as the ultimate summanation of that piece.

Too bad it wasn't a satiric commentary on stupid foreign tourists. At least then, we could have pointed and laughed and gone 'oh god I know people like that! WTF?!'

I'm also wondering at the whole 'life affirming' angle. Wouldn't it have made more sense to use someting from one of the characters' pasts to 'affirm' over rather than some exotic spot that neither of them really know much about? Or is that just me and what we did that once in story?

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And before I get my ass handed to me, 'exotic' as in the whole reasoning was that it wasn't where-ever these characters come from originally, and that usually gets coded by the stupid as exotic.

Even those of us who know better and don't watch what they type the first time around (that would be me...^^; ).

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"Oh my god, what a tragedy that happened here!...let's have sex" as the ultimate summanation of that piece.

I agree with you. The stellamira, though, has changed her story so that the men don't visit the killing fields. She's still got 'poor but happy' people in there though. *sigh* I bet that when she does get it, she'll be so embarrassed...

What did we do in a story that's like that?

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We didn't spell it out, but I seem to remember a lot of 'better do this now and enjoy it, because god knows if either of us will make it home again' stuff at the beginning. Like, you know, quite often when someone kept getting paged to work. :)

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That was specific to them and both of them kill for a living. It wasn't...it wasn't a prop.

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And that's the point, and the point of this thread. It wasn't 'prop'--it was natural outgo and reaction from what was going on in their lives. Not just a sudden 'oh god that got me, now let's have sex'.

Not only that, but we used what was in their lifes, not something like the Killing Fields or Katrina or 911, etc., which is another point. Anyone knowing what's going on with those two characters would get why they'd 'reaffirm' that way--it's not just an empty 'hi, we're here in an extoci places screwing each other's brains out'.

And that's the whole problem with the story, the writer, and slashfic in general--it's all backdrop for them, and even when they say it isn't about the sex...it's about the sex.

I mean, I didn't comment when I followed the links, but I know my first question was 'If you were really trying to treat the place and historical event with any sensitivity and with an eye towards awareness, then why wasn;t that the focus of your character's intentions? What does sex, really, have to do with that. And if you took the sex scene(s) out completely, would the story still stand? Would the intended message about re-affirming life still come across?

If not, then you're fooling yourself into thinking that you've managed any awareness at all...and yes, it was about the sex at that point.

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Feh, and because I'm scatter-brained, I didn't fully include everything I meant to say.

Which is, to whit, since the 'backdrop' is just 'backdrop', even the writers who research stuff to use come at it with the mind of 'get just enough to link it with the exact place/situation I want it to match.

Which means, no, they don't take into account that some people might have actually experienced the things that happened in Cambodia, or lost people in 911, or lost their entire lives/belongings/homes/family in the after math of Katrina. They're looking for the cheap way to jerk tears if they can. And sometimes, they don't even care about that.

It's like giving a monkey a hammer and expecting it to be able to make of those little ship-in-a-bottle things with it. Except in this case, the monkey is white, and the hammer is all the prejudicial things mentioned in this discussion thus far.

...and now I'm rambling, so I'll shut up.

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Which is, to whit, since the 'backdrop' is just 'backdrop', even the writers who research stuff to use come at it with the mind of 'get just enough to link it with the exact place/situation I want it to match.

Pretty much, also GENOCIDE.

It's bigger than two people, and...maybe I'd have to read the rest of the fics in her series, but if she was writing about genocide and life and death...maybe she should have done a better job. Even if her fanfic was meant to be escapist.
The link?

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littleeva.livejournal.com

Yesterday I was speaking to someone about "are people too hypersensitive today?" I came to the conclusion that it's not that people are hypersensitive, it's that people are hyperUNsensitive. People talk without thinking. It's like "white" is the default, they're assuming everybody is white and POC don't even know how to use computers; that's what pisses me off.

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*nods*

Many outspoken people really seem to think that everyone is white, Christian, and straight.

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It's part and parcel of the whole slash fantasy, which, for a disturbingly large part, not only pointedly excludes minorities and minority sensitivites but women as well not to mention fetishing gay male relationships by turning fake gays (fays?) into melodramatic Barbies with dicks.

Because nothing in this WORLD is more important than the love between two unobtainable white guys who are having unrealistic, melodramatic sex for our amusement and we'll write whatever we want to accentuate and protect this fantasy, up to and including themes celebrating misogyny, racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, heterophobia and purposeful ignorance of queer culture.

Like I said, it's just ... just ... ARGH. It gives me migraines, it does.

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littleeva.livejournal.com

Question, so is all slash bad? Tell me now because 10 years ago I used to write mad slash stories. Lots of them are still around.

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You're not asking me, but I don't think that all slash is bad. That said, I think a lot of slashers are fucked in the head when it comes to gender, and have a head full of slurs, and a heart full of privilege and janky avoidance issues, when it comes to respecting everybody especially themselves.

Is that you? Probably not. But if you're straight, white, a slasher, and a good writer, I'm not going to assume that 1) you <3 gay people and 2) are down with the brown.

I look at it the way I look at inter-ethnic/interracial dating. If it was true that every white man that made it a point to have sex with women who weren't white (or weren't bio-women) were into liberty and justice for all, this would be a way different planet.

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No, definately not. I wrote slash for years and years too, but there are definite -- how can I put this -- accepted tropes within the genre that could use a healthy dose of reexamination.

Like the old "I'm not gay, I just love YOU" business that was finally, after God knows how long, recognized as a homophobic statement, m/m slash as written by fandom has a whole plethora of issues that need to be weeded out.

Lately it feels as if it's getting worse instead of better with time or maybe I've grown less tolerant of the crap I'm seeing flung around in the name of "subversive expression" -- just because it's supposedly about two guys fucking does not making everything about it okay no matter what.

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I think slash, the icky part of slash fandom to which you refer, I think that? Is an exercise in coolness or downness. It's people trying to impress one another with how 'cool' or 'cutting edge' they are rather, than, exploring love/relaitonships/friendship sex between characters that have seized their imagination. Though that's it in part. Just...it's the characters so many slashers refuse to write (or pairings) that had me calling bullshit way back when only a few people were writing Wes/Gunn.

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See, and I think exactly the opposite -- that this type of slash is a throwback to the hoariest old Victorian ideals, with a healthy dose of Victorian racial/sexual/gender standards thrown in for good measure.

I think a lot of this lily-white OTP m/m slash is regressive, hidden beneath a veneer of "it's about gays so it makes it beyond reproach so STFU" The only problem with this is that these "gays" are nothing more than a het romance-novel cliche in disguise that excludes everyone else -- women, pocs, lesbians, etc, for reasons that are dicey to say the least.

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that this type of slash is a throwback to the hoariest old Victorian ideals, with a healthy dose of Victorian racial/sexual/gender standards thrown in for good measure.

Oh, for reals? (Of course for reals). Break it down for me some more, please? *blinks* WOW.

O.O

Wow. You've just blown off the top of my head. O.O

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Let me preface this by saying I don't think it's conscious or deliberate, but the type of slash I'm talking about (which, of course, is not all slash before I get hit with the generalization stick) is basically a Victorian het romance novel with two dicks instead of one, plus all the dicey things this genre comes with -- a pronounced lack of racial/gender/queer consciousness, which isn't surprising, considering the subconscious old-timey inspiration.

The "rape leads to love" fantasy, the bodice ripper, the hurt/comfort as a means to sexual liberation, the "exotic other" -- these are tropes that can be traced for a large part to 19th century sensibilities and are seen in this kind of slash over and over again.

Look, it's just a pet theory that will probably get me into all kinds of hot water, lol, but needless to say, I don't believe the kind of slash that uses these things is progressive, edgy or anything of the kind -- in fact, I think it's as old and conservative as the hills.

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a pronounced lack of racial/gender/queer consciousness, which isn't surprising, considering the subconscious old-timey inspiration.

Ah-hah. O.O

Um. Yeah. I think I've read/deleted what you mention. O.O Cool pet theory.

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If I can drop a few cents in, I think you nailed it right on the head. God knows that of all the slash pairings I've seen in RP on LJ (which is pretty much just one step sideways from salh fanfic, and often travels hand-in-hand with these players), I'd say about 98-99% of them could be text book, check off the marks as you go down the list, examples of everything you just said, with maybe variations on whichever male is the 'girl' being a little stronger or a little weaker.

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Oh, and you can also trace the fascination with romantic sibling incest to this time -- it was perhaps the most favortist thing of all back in those days.

Which might be a reason why the SPN fandom, for all its edgy possibilities is probably the most backwards-looking fandom of all.

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*sneering stronger than Elvis*

Yeah. I now see why so many people call SPN, and SPN fans self-hating racist misogynists.

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I meant to say "19th century white European sensibilities", duh. ;)

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I figured as much.

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quinacridones.livejournal.com

See, and I think exactly the opposite -- that this type of slash is a throwback to the hoariest old Victorian ideals, with a healthy dose of Victorian racial/sexual/gender standards thrown in for good measure.

Yes! I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with every comment you've made here. And this is as a slash fan who reads almost exclusively slash (I go to original fiction for hetero relationships) and cannot stand most 98% of slash, so I don't have a lot of fanfic to enjoy period.

For many it's like... one of those low-fat, LITE! desserts. Indulge in all of these oppressive ideals with none of the guilt. It's enraging sometimes how so many folks can have two guys fucking in the most oppressively heternormative relationships ever and there are still no women about!

Then you got all the people who are like, don't judge my kink! But kinda like how their slash dynamics tend to be ridiculously heterosexual, their kink dynamics are ridiculously vanilla, as there tends to be little willingness to negotiate the issues of power and consent. I think more slash would be a lot less horrible if they reframed some of these cliches away from a simple regurgitation of our societies' oppressive institutions ~~and Harlequin romance novels~~, and more towards self-aware kink spaces like feminization, power play, age play, mpreg-as-a-kink, etc., as well as actual queerness. But then that would require an explicit exploration of female sexuality (and how it is constructed in society) on the author's part, which is exactly what this kind of slash is an escape from.

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But then that would require an explicit exploration of female sexuality (and how it is constructed in society) on the author's part, which is exactly what this kind of slash is an escape from.

*nods* It's also a large part of the racial disconnect -- pocs weren't originally part of this repressed fodder and when someone says, 'uh, where are a couple of the, you know, 2 billion OTHER people who live on this planet in all these stories" -- that's where the head-scratching comes in, even though, if a writer could step back from their protection of the fantasy they'd see that this exclusion in any kind of literary endeavor, even erotica, makes no sense.

There's an amount of self-awareness here that's necessary to appreciate these issues that I'm not sure fandom has or wants -- which is why we're feeling the friction now. People are possessive and protective of what gets them off, often at the price of rational thought.

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