itsallovernow | Three Day Weekends Are a Cruel Juest

Three Day Weekends Are a Cruel Juest

Whenever we get a three day weekend, it just makes the following week all that more exhausting. I'm just sayin'. For those of you who didn't get it off, take some comfort in that. (Not too much, because I'd be lying if I didn't say I loved me some three day weekend, even if it was full of obligation).

I continue to be allergic to the furnace, and when I called Sh. to tell her this and she asked why I didn't just get it cleaned, or vaccuum it out (neither of which makes sense to me logistically, although I realize that both or either are possible), I was forced to admit that the furnace and the tiny room/closet that houses it reminds me too much of the boiler room in The Shining and I feel better just leaving well enough alone. She loves me, did not laugh, and agreed that the closet (she lived her too, before I did) has bad juju. But I should still clean the furnace.

While I'm still two eps behind (technically three, but I saw 1x04 and not 1x03), I'm still so excited to see people talking about and loving The Sarah Connor Chronicles. A show with women! About women! And robots! And the future! And the apocolypse! What's not to love?

It reminded me, as many things do, of how important it is to have female role models. This thing happens when we talk about the way that we as fandom can disenfranchise women, the way we both expect more of female characters and also condemn them. The double standard we lay on them of having to fullfill all our own desires, and simultaneously never being good enough for our beloved, flawed male characters. It makes me angry, and yet I get it. Hell, I do it. I am not a huge fan of Sam Carter as written, but I'll stand behind Sam as a character despite the flaws because she is a woman in a man's world and she mostly rocks it. (Plus, truthfully? I find Jack and Daniel so hard to take that Sam tends to shine in comparison. It's just that I'm not a huge fan of blondes:) Or the military:)

I get a little angry when I put forth my "if there are no women" in the story hypothesis and get the "it's about the story not the gender" argument in return because the truth is that we as a society constantly strip women from the story. We as storytellers strip women from the story, and as viewers and readers, when we accept that, we're complicit. We allow mothers to be absent, lovers to only exist in context with the men in their lives, women to exist at the edges of the story and not at the heart.

I have this student, 16 or so, bright, funny and lacking in sort of interest in pushing herself forward. If there's no guarantee that she'll succeed, she doesn't even bother trying. And you know, it's not even a contest for her, not even a dilemma, not even... she doesn't even think about it? Language class too hard? Drop it. Science class too much work, drop it and get the easy A in summer school. And I finally lost it, told her that being afraid to fail, never pushing yourself was never, evern going to serve her well. She needs to see women out there, girls out there, who struggle and risk and succeed. She needs something or someone with a hand on her back and a boot to her ass telling her to have a little fucking faith in herself, to not accept the easy road, to not be proud of it.

We tell these stories, and we, in fandom, celebrate these stories of women, but we also deny them in equal measure everytime we write them out of the narrative. Everytime we say that it shouldn't be about gender, it should be about story because your story is tied intimately to who you are, the twists and turns of your DNA as much as your heart and mind.

I realize I'm not making a logical arguement connecting these things, but I... mostly I'm just thinking in my head that the "genderless" arguement doesn't work for me.

I've got other things to say about why it's ~~disingenuous~~ (this is not the word I mean. Well it is, but not in the context in which it's coming across. Maybe "fair" is what I mean.

cofax7 called me on the word, and C is many fabulous things and never, ever disingenuous) to condemn fandom for its interest in sex and sexually driven stories, but that's a post for another day. We follow our biological imperitive, all the way down to our stories, and fic is largely about getting off - for some it's the emotional orgasm of plot or characterization or more time spent with those characters that make us swoony, but for the rest of us it's the actual getting off, the physical release, the breathlessness of fucking that happens in combination with a certain type of vulnerability. We know these characters, their wants and desires, we inhabit them in our heads and when they get some, in a way, we're getting some - and it's... easy. It's safe. It's satisfying. It's always fucking gratifying. And how often can you say that about real life sex?

ETA: It isn't that I don't get the desire to tell a story that is "story" driven, that's ultimate satisfaction is in the care and weave and weft of the characters and their journey. Nor do I think that's any less of an imperitive to writers in fandom, nor should it be. It's more that... the questions of WHY sex is so prevalent in fic seems to me fairly obvious, and not something we should be ashamed of. I love a good story. And I love a good story with good sex. And I don't read romance novels anymore because I'm rarely interested in the story of a romance unless it's got an extra... something that intrigues me (and honestly, I'm usually just turned off by the tropes, but the characters and their genres, and this... tonality that the women characters have even in newer books that makes them come across as... softer and I don't know, weaker, somehow than I want them to be. I'm actually kind of happy that "erotica" is now becoming more mainstream (although some of that still takes the same old silly tropes but uses "cock" instead of member, but I'd still rather read about a cock, I guess:) I guess I just want to do a little championing of the fucking in our fic. Which shouldn't be in opposition to "gen" fic. But should rest happily side by side, complementing it:) (I'm usually happy for the gratuitous sex scene, I must say. I don't understand readers who skim the sex scenes. I should, and I don't condemn them, but I just don't understand it.) However, as I do think that fic largely serves a different purpose for the reader (if not always for the writer) than regular books do, I do realize it's totally a case of YMMV and reading fic for what you want to get out if. Again, it's kind of like sex. You go into it saying, " I want to read X, Y, and Z", and when you get those things, you're generally pretty satisfied, and sometimes when LMNOP gets thrown in to, it's like your birthday and Christmas and the Feast of St. Vigius all rolled up into one:)

I get story porn. I get characterization porn. I get plot porn and casefile porn and emo porn. And mostly, really, really get porn porn:) (Also, please keep in mind the narrow, shallow pool of what and where I read - my primary fandoms either had stellar authors, sex in canon, or intensive recs list that kept me away from most of the crap. I know for a fact that art and sex can exist together, and maybe me being spoiled is what's got me defending fandoms interest in sex writing. And again, I'm not defending it against gen. I'm all for Gen. Just giving it a little of it's own.)

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ok, it's too late for me to say more than GO YOU! For not letting women take the easy way out, and for doing the heavy lifting with more than one woman you touch in your tutoring.

Placeholder here to ponder the use of "disingenuous" without getting my back up. (Since I assume I'm one of the folks doing that challenging.)

I do tend to agree with the rest of your post, though. *g*

Disingenuousness is not the right word, I think. Because I totally get the desire for story for the sake of story, not just as sexual release!!

I think I need to flesh out that whole idea more, because it's... I don't think it's weird that the bulk of people want some sex in their fic. Nor do I think it's weird to grow so weary of the sex for the sake of it that the real longing is for story.

I don't think it's weird that the bulk of people want some sex in their fic.

Me neither. Many of my favorite novels have a romance in them. The longer and the more drawn-out and angsty, the better. *g* Sex is part of life. Stories reflect life and human pre-occupations, and that includes, necessarily, sex and romance.

Nor do I think it's weird to grow so weary of the sex for the sake of it that the real longing is for story.

Exactly. While sex is part of life, so is saving the world, remembering to pay the cable bill, and catching murderers.

That fans love sex is unsurprising: it's a primary human drive. But it's not more important, on a day-to-day level, than saving the world, catching a murderer, or even (sometimes) getting along with one's coworkers.

The constant privileging of sex in fanfiction over every other subject for storytelling, to me, both flattens the importance of sex as a tool for human connection and communication (I often skip the sex scenes because there are so many of them and so few actually say anything meaningful about the characters or their situation), and, IMO, can result in out-of-character behavior within the story. Because while love and sex are important, these are in fact people responsible for saving the world and catching murderers and taming wormholes and all that--and if they really spent as much time mooning about their love lives or fucking up against bulkheads as fanfic writers have them do-- well, the world would be a smoking cinder by now. *g*

I mean, it's not like our love-lives take place in a vacuum, either: we're always worrying about something else as well. Why can't we grant the characters that option, to be fully rounded human beings, answerable to more than just their genitals? (And I'm not arguing with YOU here, really: I'm arguing with ... some construct of fandom-at-large that doesn't really exist.)

I do my fair amount of smut-reading. But I tend to think of sex as just one dish on the table, like, oh, mashed potatoes. I can't survive on a diet of mashed potatoes (even though my ancestors did, hah!): I also need rare steak and vegetables and a nice glass of zinfandel. And pie for dessert.

But I tend to think of sex as just one dish on the table, like, oh, mashed potatoes. I can't survive on a diet of mashed potatoes (even though my ancestors did, hah!): I also need rare steak and vegetables and a nice glass of zinfandel. And pie for dessert.

I totally agree with and buy that argument:) (I also think, truth be told, that my reading is limited in fandom and that influences my perspective in ways).

Because while love and sex are important, these are in fact people responsible for saving the world and catching murderers and taming wormholes and all that--and if they really spent as much time mooning about their love lives or fucking up against bulkheads as fanfic writers have them do-- well, the world would be a smoking cinder by now. *g*

I think the difference, though, is between writers who want to tell stories depicting what life is like for particular fictional characters, and writers who want to tell stories that satisfy their innermost desires.

But we've had this conversation before.

-J

It's also a reaction to the sexually immature or sexually neutered narratives that most genre (at least in the past) put forward - sex fic, that is. Because, really, what's more natural when faced with characters that fancy each other silly than to put them in bed together. If most interpersonal encounters in genre storytelling weren't so entirely contrived to keep characters apart, people would be less interested in seeing people shag.

As for stripping women out of the narrative, word to all of that. As I get older, I'm simply not prepared to work as hard as I did as a kid to find something redeeming in stories where the characters I identify with are marginalized or absent - hence my entirely diffident response to Stargate and SPN.

Also since gender (or represntations of gender) are fundamental to character and character is fundamental to story, any argument about narrative that starts "it's not about gender, it's about story" is automatically bollocks IMO. Even something like The Assassination of Jesse James - with three whole female speaking roles and less than 50 lines of dialogue (counting grief-striken wails) between them in a three-hour movie says something about gender (although more about the people who made the film).

Edited 2008-02-20 08:40 (UTC)

It's also a reaction to the sexually immature or sexually neutered narratives that most genre (at least in the past) put forward - sex fic, that is. Because, really, what's more natural when faced with characters that fancy each other silly than to put them in bed together. If most interpersonal encounters in genre storytelling weren't so entirely contrived to keep characters apart, people would be less interested in seeing people shag.

Yes! The X-Files surely are the best and worst example in this context, but you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the Stargate franchise.

Of course, on the other (more authorial) hand, this is why I have nothing but contempt for writers sneering at shippers and their passionate desires.

The writers purposefully don't give us sizzling romance between the actual lead characters with chemistry precisely because they want to keep up whatever they call it--tension, romantic and otherwise, integrity, focus; what they really want to do is have us wishin' and hopin' for an indefinite time because it keeps us, fanciers of different pairings, watching. All of us. Forget storylines and plots and characterisation; ratings are where it's at.

I very much agree with you where (I think) you say that the issue is complex and that you don't want to be putting down gen. (And that even as you don't prefer gen, that has nothing to do with your regard for people who prirmarily write gen.)

(And that's actually a bit more generous than I can be towards 'ship fic in the aggregate, double good for you.)

But.

Everytime we say that it shouldn't be about gender, it should be about story because your story is tied intimately to who you are, the twists and turns of your DNA as much as your heart and mind.

For me, my gender is not the most significant or basic thing about me. For me, my gender (and who I sleep with, or that I'm sleepign with anyone) is far less intimate to me, than other things.

So part of the whole gen/not gen divide, for me, is looking for stories that reflect what I think is important, and (to a certain extent) what I value.

Another part is that there is so. damn. much. sex in the stories - or in my circle/my fandoms. While yes, it is a part of many adult's lives, imo, fangirlsnboys write about sex and don't write about solving mysteries, flying space fighters, or fighting demons. In that sense, gen is in opposition to 'ship fic, because while sex & other stuff can go together, in my experience, the other stuff generally ends up getting short shrift.

So. Any way, that's my take on it.

- hg

I think all of that's true (and totally legitimate) and for this: fangirlsnboys write about sex and don't write about solving mysteries, flying space fighters, or fighting demons.

I think... it's easier to imagine the sex, truthfully, easier to get to that point in a story because it doesn't take the same leap of... faith, imagination, creativity. It allows people to write something that they know (or not, as i've read plenty of sex driven fic that displays a painful ignorance of the actual act, as well as the characters performing it).

I'd say that my preference is for a great story with good tension and the possibility of sex between characters I'm invested in. And despite all this, I would choose good Gen over mediocre ship/sex driven fic.

For me, my gender is not the most significant or basic thing about me. For me, my gender (and who I sleep with, or that I'm sleepign with anyone) is far less intimate to me, than other things.

So part of the whole gen/not gen divide, for me, is looking for stories that reflect what I think is important, and (to a certain extent) what I value.

I definitely respect and understand that. For me, my gender is a HUGE part of my identity, not the only part, but a part I value. And I want the same thing from stories - to reflect what's important to me, to challenge me on those definitions, to make me proud of who I am, and to question it too.

This is hardly a comment directed at you, but this:

It allows people to write something that they know

is in fact the problem. Because, even when I read a romance produced by an experienced writer, nine times out of ten I think, "Who are these people? Where did my soldiers/scientists/doctors/astronauts go?"

Which is problematic when you're in it for the psychological realism--and I understand that's a minority interest in this land.

Like Connie, I certainly don't think sex is incompatible with story: it's a basic human drive. But fanfic romance blows it out of proportion (all romance does, to my mind, but that's neither here nor there), and more fundamentally it erases the web of mechanisms, the structure that makes sex a component of a whole, and because a story is subject to the same systemic constraints as anything else, that distorts the characters as well.

I gotta say, finding an instance of epistemological individualism in a relativistic bastion such as fandom is an irony that doesn't pass me by.

Which is problematic when you're in it for the psychological realism--and I understand that's a minority interest in this land.

I'd say this? Is definitely true. I love when I get this from fic, but I don't expect it. I think there's a lot of fic - gen or sex based - that I drop because it doesn't present me with any sort of realism, any sense of characters as I see them. But I also think that I'm not really looking at fic to explore more of the character's psyche. Mostly, if I don't see enough of their psyche on the screen, I don't get invested enough to care about fic.

But fanfic romance blows it out of proportion (all romance does, to my mind, but that's neither here nor there), and more fundamentally it erases the web of mechanisms, the structure that makes sex a component of a whole, and because a story is subject to the same systemic constraints as anything else, that distorts the characters as well.

I would agree with that as well - I think it's a fine line to do a long piece, one with plot and depth and have a romance become a natural part of it, one that makes sense in the context.

Mostly, if I don't see enough of their psyche on the screen, I don't get invested enough to care about fic.

I like filling up people.

That comes out wrong, doesn't it?

I think it's a fine line to do a long piece, one with plot and depth and have a romance

I'm not sure it's a factor of length, necessarily. By whole, I don't mean a plot, bells and whistles--I mean a whole character. A whole person. We're not just sex drives on legs, even the sex compulsives among us. One doesn't need an action/adventure novel to convey that, though sometimes it makes things easier. But I've got whole anthologies of short stories on my shelves that manage to be about full people, even when the stories are about sex.

That's where we get into the nebulous discussion of 'fanfic aesthetic', I guess. As one who's been told on more than one occasion that her stories fail as fanfic (and took it as the compliment it wasn't meant to be), I'm probably not qualified to circumscribe what that aesthetic is.

By whole, I don't mean a plot, bells and whistles--I mean a whole character. A whole person. We're not just sex drives on legs, even the sex compulsives among us. One doesn't need an action/adventure novel to convey that, though sometimes it makes things easier. But I've got whole anthologies of short stories on my shelves that manage to be about full people, even when the stories are about sex.

I think, for me, my own understanding of a character is something I bring to a piece of fanfic. Where in litfic, or an original piece, I want and need to understand that person in all of their forms, with fic, I know who I think that person is. I want a story that meshes and matches with that, and if it introduces me to a new facet, helps to form a new idea, that's great. And if not, if it tracks with my view and vision of the character, that's enough. If it doesn't, I stop reading.

I really do want different things from fic than from original work, and I think that informs a lot of my reading and my expectations, and it isn't simply about the sex or romance, but about what I want from the experience, from the process of taking in words and stories.

Yup, I totally get that. I started where you are. I don't know what happened that my requirements changed like this. Perhaps it's as simple as an overdose, which turns tolerance into allergy.

I think that's probably true:) For me, it's meant that I stopped reading fic almost entirely.

I think... it's easier to imagine the sex, truthfully, easier to get to that point in a story because it doesn't take the same leap of... faith, imagination, creativity.

...huh.

I...don't come from the same place here.

I look at 3/4 of the romances in media, and about 9/10 of the romances in fanfic (and here I think I'm being generous) and I'm going why the hell are they together?

(I only think that about a quarter of the real-life couples I know.)

I don't agree that having a pair of characters engage in sexual intercourse (or pursue a romance) doesn't require convincing build-up, justification, and support.

I totally get that there are people who want the romance itself bad enough to skip over the heavy lifting, and if that's what you like, you'll like those kinds of stories. But I don't agree that putting sex into a story should be any easier than putting in ghosts or mysteries or space ships.

- hg

I don't agree that having a pair of characters engage in sexual intercourse (or pursue a romance) doesn't require convincing build-up, justification, and support.

I totally get that there are people who want the romance itself bad enough to skip over the heavy lifting, and if that's what you like, you'll like those kinds of stories. But I don't agree that putting sex into a story should be any easier than putting in ghosts or mysteries or space ships.

I sort of agree with you and sort of think ... no, not the same. I agree that I want to see the same amount of thought and effort go into a story about love and sex or one or the other, I want the justification and the story. I like a build up even if the point is the sex, like to see the tension and the foreplay. But I also think that sex, and the sexual pull, and sexual tension is something fundamental and biological and inherently different than other story elements. Not that it shouldn't be just as well done, but that it really is not the same. (I also need to clarify that I am NOT necessary equating sex and Romance. I'm much more interested in the sex than the romance for the most part, in fic at least. I like it when there's tension in both.)

Much applause for everything you've said about female characters and role models. I was 20 years old before I met a flesh-and-blood female role model (in the sense that this was the first woman I'd ever met who was doing the kind of thing with her life that I wanted to do with mine; most of the other women I knew up to that point--however much I admired many of them--were housewives and public school teachers). Up to that point, all of my role models were fictional--and I wonder if this may be the main reason I cling so hard to female characters even still.

I won't tell anyone that she shouldn't prefer stories about male characters, or simply "story" regardless of gender, but I would encourage every woman who does to at least give some consideration to why that is.

And clearly I need to watch TSCC!!! I hear nothing but good things, and the kind of good things that most push my narrative buttons. My problem is I never saw the Terminator films in the first place, so I was behind from the outset and I keep getting further behind every week. I think I need to make catching up a priority, though!

I won't tell anyone that she shouldn't prefer stories about male characters, or simply "story" regardless of gender, but I would encourage every woman who does to at least give some consideration to why that is.

Absolutely!!

And yeah, totally watch TSCC. You can watch without the movies, although the set up will make more sense if you see the first two!

we as a society constantly strip women from the story

Concur. If "it's not about the gender," then why are women so absent? If stories are written with no regard to biological sex, then why are all the stories still about men?

I'm curious about your yoking that thought to your defense of sex in fiction, however. (Unless you mean to create a backhanded point about how particular flavors of slash also make women absent the same way that plot stories can.) If the only way women can get into a story is via her body as a sex object, I say no thank you.

And anyway, I can only assume we read for different reasons, or with totally different protocols. Because I usually find sex stories (het or slash) boring, the moreso the more of them I read in a row. I could tolerate it more, when it was more commonly pairing + action in a single story; but pairing by itself, even pairings I endorse, is thunderingly predictable and dull to me.

Mostly, the tie-in was because for once, my brain was thinking fannish thoughts and I didn't want to lose them. They're loosely connected, but there's definitely not a linear trajectory their:)

Unless you mean to create a backhanded point about how particular flavors of slash also make women absent the same way that plot stories can.) - Although that is a point that I often think in my head, so if I were smart, I'd have used that as a tie-in:)

And anyway, I can only assume we read for different reasons, or with totally different protocols. Because I usually find sex stories (het or slash) boring, the moreso the more of them I read in a row.

Yeah, I think that's where reader needs come in, and reader desires. There's so little that I read in fic AT ALL anymore that I feel like I shouldn't even be proclaiming, but I find that I want a little bang for my buck when I do read fic these days. I see the adventures on screen, I want the stuff I'm not seeing in my fic. Doesn't mean I'll turn down a good, plotty story, or that I'll read every single repetitive sex-based fic (and yes, totally legitimate point about that. I like fics with set-up far more than just straight fucking, or queer fucking, or simple fucking. I want the set up to have resonance too, but that's a different story, right?), but I'm definitely looking for something with more of a...physical and emotional rush than an intellectual one in fic:) Except, of course, for the few times that I'm not:)

It's curious, though. The novels I read are generally picked up and followed through for entirely different reasons( plot, character, etc) than the fics that I read. In that case, it's definitely more about story (partly because sex becomes something else entirely in a lot of lit fic, and often just isn't that much fun. I can't remember the last time I read a sex scene in a regular novel that made me physically and emotionally breathless in the way that certain fic does).

Aha. See, my reading pattern in fanfic is not substantially different from my reading pattern in original fiction. I want the same things from both, and the chief difference is that in fanfic I'll endure lesser quality.

I find sex in fanfic a bit tyrannical, honestly. It bothers me that the range of human experience is so often narrowed to the sexual, nay, the romantic-sexual. That's fine, for what it is, but it's such a huge volume of fanfic that all other fanfic is affected by it. (Which is why the definition of gen has bloated so excessively.) I have had readers interpret my writing of a married couple as romantic/soul-bondy, despite textual evidence to the contrary; as if people can't be married and sometimes hate each other. As if people can't be intense with one another in a way that explicitly skirts the sexual. As if every sex act were always an affirmative expression of emotion. It's tiring, and it's a facile interpretation of the complexity of real-world emotions, and it makes me crazy that I have to wade upstream against the norm to bring even the most basic ambiguity into a relationship.

What I want are readers who approach a story with an open mind; and I guess I blame the similarity and repetitive architecture of romance-oriented fanfic for allowing readers to close their minds so effectively.

As if people can't be intense with one another in a way that explicitly skirts the sexual. As if every sex act were always an affirmative expression of emotion. It's tiring, and it's a facile interpretation of the complexity of real-world emotions, and it makes me crazy that I have to wade upstream against the norm to bring even the most basic ambiguity into a relationship.

I definitely see your point there. And I think that really good fic that is sexually tinged leaves that open - when not even every act of sexuality is positive, or meaningful, when it's angry or bitter or hurtful.

So yeah, I think... the sexuality of a story does get coded for so many other things, replaces the deeper exploration of emotions and ambiguities and I can absolutely see the frustration wanting to convey those emotions and having people code something for simpler and less accurate on to what you write.

But yeah, what I want from fic and from lit are different. When I get something fantastic from fic, I'm thrilled, and I'll put down both forms for similar reasons even if I pick them up for the same reasons.

I'm with you all the way on women in fiction. If there isn't a woman I can love, I'm just not interested. When I did that fandom census thing, it turned out that something like 90% of all my stories were written from a female POV, and the other 10% only existed because of John Crichton. *g*

(I use my GO WOMEN GO! icon just for you.)

90% of all my stories were written from a female POV, and the other 10% only existed because of John Crichton.

Totally fair and valid percentages, and really, Crichton's a great big girl part of the time anyway:) Hee.

Actually, one of the things that worked SO well for me in FS was that while John could be a great big girl with his feelings, and his obsessions, and his emotions, he was still such a guy, not emasculated, but not afraid to cry:)

Just to note that I'm...impressed? Maybe not the right word. 'Respect' isn't quite right, either, but it's close.

I think that the degree to which you are at ease with writing women is greatness. I do love and appreciate lit with only male characters, but I can see where you're coming from, when you say you need a female character.

- hg

I agree with what you said.

We can't strip women out of the story they're in - they have to be tough and strong and wonderful and not stop being women. We need them as female role models, to know that we can do absolutely anything, even if they are flawed (because, who isn't?). Gender should not be attached to a series of traits that can automatically stereotype a character as 'the girl', but you can't look at a character and completely ignore if they are male or female (fine, in some sci-fi cases they are neither, but - you know).

Of course gender matters. It's not all we are, of course, just a gender. But why does it have to be put out of the equation if it's an important part to who we are? ~~Also - romance fic is so popular because most of the time it's 'the part we are not getting' in those shows, and we want it. Maybe it's even the only element we lack to make the story perfect.~~

And I probably didn't make much sense. XD

(I'm usually happy for the gratuitous sex scene, I must say. I don't understand readers who skim the sex scenes. I should, and I don't condemn them, but I just don't understand it.)

Because I find most sex scenes about as interesting as reading about/watching someone using the toilet to relieve themselves. I really don't want a detailed description of a character's bowel movements even if it is part of the biological process, happens regularly (we hope), and provides a physical release.

Hope that helps in understanding.

It's definitely a perspective! Not mine, but valid nonetheless.

Hi, you don't know me. I ended up here to read your fics, then go off and tell other people how awesome they are and how they should go read them. Then I found we both had pretty much matching takes on SG-1, so I've lurked a bit since then :)

But with this post, I'm compelled to comment. YES to everything you said! Oh my Gods, I am pissed at fandom right now. It's just fucking ridiculous. I've ranted about this at length on tielan's LJ recently.

Also:
I find Jack and Daniel so hard to take that Sam tends to shine in comparison.

You should know that I have tears of joy streaming down my face right now. Not only have I found someone who loves Cam and Vala, but you don't like Jack and Daniel! I thought I was alone! So very, very alone. Gods, I hate those guys.

Hmmm. On the one hand, I agree with you completely about the usefulness and importance of role models for girls and young women, in both real life and the media. I also agree with you that (most) stories lacking any female characters are annoying and absurd. (I read a nonfiction history book a while back, published in... let me check... 1997, which really got to me on that level. Sure, guy, maybe the limited roles of women make them largely irrelevant to your thesis, but they were still there, and at the very least you might remember you're writing about men with wives who got arrested two days after they did. Three women mentioned in the entire index, and two of them because he was quoting from their contemporary accounts. Sheesh.) Uhhh... where was I?

Oh, right. I agree with you about all of that. However, it really gets my back up whenever anyone, anywhere starts making assertions about gender and its importance to identity or personality. My gender is not all that important a part of my personality. It's really, really not.

I would rather read about or watch a male character who I have something else in common with than a female character who I don't, because gender is very, very, very low in my hierarchy of significant commonalities. I just don't want that character to be living in some sort of weird men-only alternate universe.

(Note, this is Cee speaking. Dee, if she ever actually used the journal, would agree with you 100%, with the exception of the sex. Speaking of which, I haven't addressed that, but I'm running low on time, so never mind.)

Sorry, I forgot to say, here from metafandom.

I grew up on the X-Files (Scully and Reyes are way cooler than Mulder and Doggett), I grew up on Inspector Gadget and Alegra's Window and Eureka's Castle. I grew up on The Secret World of Alex Mac and I Love Lucy (which I will defend to the death as a feminist work) and Dear America and American Girl and A Little Princess and Mathilda and the Saddleclub and the Thoroughbred books and The Witch of Blackbird Pond and the Cimorene books and Tamora Pierce and Dragonriders of Pern and lots and lots of documentaries (that brought in piles and piles of female experts. And Shark Week. I idolized the women who got in those cages.).

(I somehow managed to miss them as a kid, but I'm tearing through Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula LeGuin right now. As an adult I've fallen in love with Dead Like Me and Farscape and SG1 and Firefly and Avatar: the Last Airbender. And I fell in love with George and Aeryn and Chiana and Zhaan and Sam and Janet and Zoe, Kaylee, Inara and River and Katara and Toph and and and -- )

Times when the Bible was the only reading material around? I skipped straight back to Ruth and Esther. I never got why people disdained Mary Magdalene. (I grew up in a pretty very Christian household and church promised the Bible being the only book available.)

I guess I was also supremely lucky to have parents who told me I could be anything I wanted to be - so of course I choose to charge into the middle of one of the Old Boys' Clubs*. My parents - my whole family - expected me to be smart, to talk back, to ask Why? ~~(Unless I was doing the why why why thing for the express purpose of annoying them but that's another story for another day)~~ I never learned how to sit demurely in class or withhold my opinion or generally be ladylike - I still won't sit with my legs crossed in most circumstances. People have told me since freshman year of high school that I "Am Intimidating To Boys". (I joke about giving off anti-boy pheromones.)

I guess what I'm trying to say ultimately is that it just never occurred to me that girls and women shouldn't be the primary protagonists, narrators, heros. Stories about boys bored me - I didn't want to read or watch boys kicking butt - I wanted to read about girls kicking butt. (One of the reasons I really didn't like HP at all -- I always thought it would have been more interesting if it had been Hermione's story instead of Harry's.)

I still want to read about girls and women kicking butt -- it shows more in my original fiction than in my fanfiction. Original fic - the first character I write in any given 'verse has consistently always been a woman or a girl. She usually remains my primary protagonist throughout the story; trios are 2XX:1XY, quartets usually 2XX:2XY or 3XX:1XY. In my fantasy/Not Earth 'verses, I try my very hardest to show women really and truly being equal with men. My sole On Earth 'verse is about feminist issues and girls growing up in a sexist, oppressive fundamentalist Christian environment (which was present in my life early on - not at home, but from the schools I went to).

So when I break down the stories I've written in fandom, I am Really Weirded Out to find that I'm writing mostly the guys. I think, perhaps, that part of the reason is that I do not want to fail the women I have come to love by writing them badly -- I personally have much less to lose by writing a mediocre Jack O'Neill than I do by writing a mediocre Sam Carter. I do know with certainty that the way I gravitate to the guys in fandom is something I'm uncomfortable with as a writer and is also something I'd like to change about myself.

Anyway. /longwinded. (Here from

metafandom, btw.)

*(Homeland security, for anyone interested, and I've just seen one of my first instances of sexism in The Real World and it stings, even though it's not directed against me. Oh good god what am I getting myself into?)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Three Day Weekends Are a Cruel Juest

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Addressing the feminism stuff more than the pr0n stuff