(no subject)

[bubosquared]

I wasn't going to do this, but Zed asked for it, so hey, soapbox time! There's been a huge discussion about on FCA-L, brought on (as far as I gathered, about how slash portrays gay men in a way that is, at least according to one gay man, very unrealistic.

Now, my first reaction to this was "But I'm not writing about "gay men". And I'm not, I'm writing about character A and character B falling in love with each other. Especially in FPS, A and B are usually portrayed as straight, or at the most as bi. By that I mean that we only ever see a character show any romantic interest in women. With the exception of shows like QaF, we never see any of these characters partake in the "gay culture", or indicate in any way that they are, in fact gay. Sure, they could just be in the closet, but in that case it's highly unlikely that they'll be involved in the gay community in any way. In RPS, canon is a bit more blurry, but I think it's safe to assume that most celebrities who aren't openly gay might go to a gay club every now and then, but they won't be part of the "gay" culture".

What it comes down to is, we're not trying to write about "gay men", we're trying to write about certain characters, and so our characterisation shouldn't be in character for "gay men", but for the characters we're trying to write -- characters who more often than not don't act like "gay men".

And really, even if they were "canonically gay", why would they be portrayed incorrectly simply because they don't match the image one person has of "gay men"? Plenty of gay men (and women, for that matter) aren't part of the gay community at all, for whatever reason. (In my case, precisely because there's a tendency to force everyone in the same mold, to ban everyone who's different or weird, like goth/punk dykes writing m/m gay porn, or transgendered people, or whatever.) And even the ones who are involved in it aren't necessarily all the same.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's fanfiction. We're supposed to write about people as we see them in canon, not about some "standard gay male," because that's a completely fictional standard, anywa

Comments

[dolores.livejournal.com]

I wanted to respond to this but the coment got so huge I ended up making it a post on my own journal - hope you don't mind. Anyway, can be found here (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=dolores&itemid=52813) if you're interested.

Cheers, Dol

[pelicanzed.livejournal.com]

I'd never thought about the issue that way before, but what you say makes a great deal of sense. Ta Kenneth.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. ^_^