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keiramarcosI have a metric fuck ton of stuff to do so I figured I'd hit an iHop for some french toast because I can't be fucked to make it at home.
Anyways-- I was browsing Delicious before I take myself off to forage for food and I realized a few things:
1. I absolutely fucking hate it (with one very notable awesome exception) when an author takes a male character and makes them "always a girl". There are plenty of fucking female characters in most fandoms and if there aren't any--just damn well make you one. Seriously because you might as well make an OC than turn Steve McGarrett into a fucking girl.
2. I really hate asexual Sherlock fics. I mean, I really really hate them and I don't know why because I've read/enjoyed plenty of asexual fiction and am considering working an asexual character into TTB. So, it isn't the asexuality that bothers me--it's that it's Sherlock Holmes. Maybe I can blame Robert Downey, Jr. for this particular thing because I can't look at that man without thinking about lots of dirty, filthy, morally reprehensible sex.
3. I hate mpreg less than I used to.
Additionally, I think I'm 9 times more bitchy and moody on this new medication that any instance previously recorded.
Anyways-- I was browsing Delicious before I take myself off to forage for food and I realized a few things:
1. I absolutely fucking hate it (with one very notable awesome exception) when an author takes a male character and makes them "always a girl". There are plenty of fucking female characters in most fandoms and if there aren't any--just damn well make you one. Seriously because you might as well make an OC than turn Steve McGarrett into a fucking girl.
2. I really hate asexual Sherlock fics. I mean, I really really hate them and I don't know why because I've read/enjoyed plenty of asexual fiction and am considering working an asexual character into TTB. So, it isn't the asexuality that bothers me--it's that it's Sherlock Holmes. Maybe I can blame Robert Downey, Jr. for this particular thing because I can't look at that man without thinking about lots of dirty, filthy, morally reprehensible sex.
3. I hate mpreg less than I used to.
Additionally, I think I'm 9 times more bitchy and moody on this new medication that any instance previously recorded.
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Date: 2011-06-12 09:16 am (UTC)2. I don't hate Sherlock asexual fics as long as he remains asexual through out the entire thing. I have nothing against a "Boston marriage" for Sherlock and John as long as it has a certain level of romance and feeling between the two partners. And I also agree completely with you about Robert Downey Jr.
3. I have a strange fondness for Rodney McKay pregnant. It has been done well in a couple of fanfics and I have to admit, at the worst hormonal surges in my own pregnancy I threated to quit trying to kill my husband. Or rather, he took it at a threat and told me I could keep trying as much as I liked as long as I didn't succeed. I could so see the Rodney in my brain doing the same.
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Date: 2011-06-12 09:21 am (UTC)1- I agreed, being the bottom and being fucked not make the guy a girl, makes him a very lucky one lol, thoses labels are just so stupid !
2- I don't like a lot asexual character because i can't stand a live without sex and for Sherlock i agree, Downey Jr is just a fucking and sexy bastard.
3- MPREG.... i like that in werewolf verse and in SF with the help of device but there are the only exceptions.
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Date: 2011-06-12 10:10 am (UTC)2. have not come across many asexual fics
3. I've written M-preg (consider it canon possibility for Captain Jack after all) and read it... it has to be done well though and realistic (pregnancy isn't all roses)
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Date: 2011-06-12 10:23 am (UTC)2)I tend to read fanfiction for the romance, so if there is romance but not sex, it's usually okay.
3)It depends on how the mpreg is presented. In the SG universes it's easy to buy, because really, it's about the only thing they didn't do on the show.
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Date: 2011-06-12 10:29 am (UTC)Also, as a woman I'm always offended by this whole girl = weak, submissive, blablabla. What kind of image of women do these people have? And I find it even more astonishing that it's so often women who say these things about their own gender. Seriously girls, what is wrong with you??? (to paraphrase Danny Williams ;-) ).
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Date: 2011-06-12 10:43 am (UTC)2: Can't comment, only just saw Sherlock this week, so I haven't read any fic yet. :)
3: LOL MPREG can be fun to read.
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Date: 2011-06-12 10:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-12 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-12 11:57 am (UTC)2. Right with you re: RDJ
3. Not a huge fan of MPreg, especially if the story is chock-full of gynecological detail, but I have to agree with
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Date: 2011-06-12 12:07 pm (UTC)am considering working an asexual character into TTB
w00t If you do, I thoroughly look forward to how that would work in a society where gender has nothing to do with sexual identity.
Maybe I can blame Robert Downey, Jr. for this particular thing because I can't look at that man without thinking about lots of dirty, filthy, morally reprehensible sex.
The blame for the complete loss of productivity in the justalurkr household today due to an unscheduled Robert Downey, Jr. moviethon can now be parked squarely at your door.
I hate mpreg less than I used to.
Turns out I only ever hated it when it took itself too seriously. There are gaspingly funny crackfics out there.
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Date: 2011-06-12 12:16 pm (UTC)Babies had better be totally fucking awesome, John thinks dismally, because not even sex is worth this shit.
The author was otherwise mercifully brief.
Oh, and near the end:
It puts John in a wickedly bitching mood and the marines seem more frightened by him than ever; John thinks there's something really sick about him finally putting the Nancy Air Force stereotype to rest by ripping all of his men new ones while almost nine months pregnant.
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Date: 2011-06-12 12:54 pm (UTC)2. "Maybe I can blame Robert Downey, Jr. for this particular thing because I can't look at that man without thinking about lots of dirty, filthy, morally reprehensible sex." YES.
3. I kinda like it when Rodney gets pregnant. I love an overprotective!John, and with the way he treats Teyla, I enjoy imagining him freaking out over his pregnant lover. Also really love picturing Rodney laying the smack down in response. McKay'd probably be more irascible than he already is.
Also. IHOP=yum.
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Date: 2011-06-12 01:22 pm (UTC)2. I'm right there with you on the Robert Downey Jr thing, lol.
3. Ah, mpreg. Again, it can be good... as long as they don't make the carrier of the baby a complete and utter girl and completely change the character until he's unrecognizable. But a lot of authors can't seem to manage that, so it's always been a cautious area of reading for me. Also, there needs to be a device or reason that a guy can get pregnant like magic in Harry Potter or possibly evolution in X-Men. *shrugs* And it's always fun when the authors are cheeky about it and just write it for complete and utter crack, lol.
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Date: 2011-06-12 02:10 pm (UTC)I did have the passing thought that the female Veelas in Harry Potter fanfic could potentially have children through parthenogenesis (where growth and development of embryos occurs without fertilization by a male.) Possibly as just an occasional happening 1 in 100 births are produced this way. But, given the Harry Potter universe, it'd be something I could see happening in fic.
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Date: 2011-06-12 02:26 pm (UTC)Thank you for reminding me of it!
~L
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Date: 2011-06-12 03:05 pm (UTC)2.RDJ Sherlock no way, and even BBC asexual sherlock is pushing it.
3. Some of it is good, some of it is really really bad. Im not one for reading graphic delivery scenes, but a writer could at least hit up "what to expect when you're expecting" as research material.
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Date: 2011-06-12 03:42 pm (UTC)Blair (Sentinel), Tony(NCIS), every fucking male character in HP, .... it makes me homicidal when they turn them into "girls", seriously? SERIOUSLY? It is really insulting to me as a female when they full on write that being a woman means being weak....
2. hmmm... as I am one of these unfortunate asexual people I do not mind stories with asexuality in them, but I need romance and lot of it if there isn't sex....
3. mpreg... I think that fanfiction has completely warped me, because nowadays I read and enjoy things I once thought that I would never ever enjoy....
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Date: 2011-06-12 03:51 pm (UTC)SIGH.
Just to play Devil's Advocate for a bit...
Date: 2011-06-12 03:58 pm (UTC)Certainly, bad writers tend to use it as an cheap device to make a gay couple het (rather than just writing as though they were het D:), and the characters tend to reflect that by becoming unrecognisable cut-and-paste cliches (Harry Potter fandom, I'm looking at you! Why on Earth would Harry being female automatically make him a) weak? and b) giggly and cutesy?).
The good ones, on the other hand, do the same thing that all good AUs do: take up the challenge of keeping the characters true to themselves in an unfamiliar environment. When done well, I don't see it as being that much different than a BDSM universe or an everyone-is-a-shapeshifter universe. I know we read slash for the gay sex, but if we were solely in it for the sex and the pretty men, we wouldn't worry so much about whether writers got the characterisation right or not!
For instance, in the BBC Merlin fandom, there are a couple of really good girl!Merlin fics that use the opportunity to explore post-Roman/medieval societal structure and morals, and whether "she" would still have been given the job of personal servant to Prince Arthur, or if some other reward would have been given to her for saving his life.
Another story starts with the premise that as female apprentices would hardly have been encouraged (but girl!Merlin still needed to learn control of her magic from Gaius), her mother helped her to disguise herself as a boy. Consequently, the story only splits from canon at the point that Arthur discovers her gender. It's an interesting study of Arthur and his reactions and character as much as anything else, and not in any way used to make Merlin a more girly character (unlike a couple of supposedly canon Merlin stories I've had the misfortune of reading lately).
To use another fandom as an example, I found a rather good Sherlock WIP yesterday, in which Sherlock's fridge suddenly sprouts a portal to an parallel universe in which his counterpart is a woman. The twist in the situation is that she's a physicist rather than a consulting detective; not because of any difference in character, but because the police were less willing to listen to a girl telling them they'd got the wrong suspect. And male Sherlock just does not understand why having a differently-shaped body would garner a change in attitude from people and discourage him sufficiently to want to give up detecting - after all, she still had the evidence to prove the murderer, just as he had, didn't she? It's a nice look at the road not taken, and the influences of privilege and sexism (plus, there's the promise of extremely hot threesome sex coming up *whistles innocently*).
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Date: 2011-06-12 04:08 pm (UTC)It is just that I would definitely love to "love" sex and to feel all these good things other people feel when they have sex and I would really like to enjoy my body, but -and this is why I say I am unfortunate- I do not feel a thing when somebody (or me) touches me in a sexual way...
So I am sometimes a little envious of how sex seems to feel incredible and how it seems to let people be closer to each other...
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Date: 2011-06-12 04:14 pm (UTC)But yes if I first saw the movie and then read that story than yes I would not like it at all because as you said Robert Downey, Jr. is sex on legs!!!
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Date: 2011-06-12 04:40 pm (UTC)2. Blaming RDJ seems entirely logical to me!
3. Depends, like most things, on how its written. Mostly I really don't like it and prefer "we touched an ancient incubator and it made us a baby" fics.
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Date: 2011-06-12 05:25 pm (UTC)2. I didn't watch the Ironman movies for the special effects.
3. I've never read any SGA m-preg. I don't read too much of that anyway. Though the idea of Rodney being preggers could be pretty damn funny...
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Date: 2011-06-12 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-12 08:40 pm (UTC)I can see it in SGC/SGA fics, with all those alien devices and cloning technology and stuff.
I can see it in Harry Potter/Discworld(though harder as I love Granny and her down to earth thinking)/BtVS (a Willow Ooops) and some of the more sci-fy geeky alien influenced or magic heavy fandoms (though not Narnia)
I cannot see it in most fandoms that mirror the real world closer, the one CSI NY fic with mpreg I accidentally found was so not working for me
Details or no details about the pregnancy depends on the writing style it takes much to squick me - not even the bloodiest work assisting a veterinary surgeon ever upset me or my stomach - but it only works well written
Sometimes the details are so biological and physiological impossible that I cannot follow more of the story, due to all the giggling
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Date: 2011-06-12 10:55 pm (UTC)You're already a goddess of snark. Increased bitchiness is likely to lead to utterly awe inspiring episodes of vicious snark.
*fangirling shamelessly*
*toddles off to investigate your notable exception*
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Date: 2011-06-13 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 03:41 am (UTC)I'm curious about the always-a-girl thing though. Why do you hate it?
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Date: 2011-06-13 04:10 am (UTC)I don't give a fig if it is well written, so what! I like them because they are two guys and they are about to do some pretty ass things together. Pun intended. I will now leave this subject alone!
3. Male pregnancy. I like it. But only if it is not too ridiculous and not written like crap and it leaves me laughing so hard I fall out of my seat!
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Date: 2011-06-13 10:57 am (UTC)I also don't think that Sherlock Holmes is asexual in canon. I've read the canon and while he has no reported relationships outside of his infatuation with Irene -- the entire thing is told from Watson's point of view and frankly his pov could be categorized as both worshipful and "unreliable". Irene entered the narrative because she was a criminal but Watson would have considered it impolite to mention any sexual liaisons Holmes engaged in outside of marriage -- considering the time it was written so would have Doyle. This is all just my opinion, however. ;-). I don't think that Watson and Holmes had a romantic/sexual connection in canon but they did have one epic bromance.
However, Sherlock's mind and who he really is remains a real mystery as far as what Doyle had in mind for him. He's a manic depressive, an addict who self-medicates, and he skirts on the edge of being a sociopath in canon. The sociopathology prevents traditional emotional connects but that thinking didn't exist when Doyle wrote the books. The character is complex enough in canon BUT the reader doesn't have a complete picture of him and unfortunately never will.
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Date: 2011-06-13 08:46 pm (UTC)See, this makes me think that changing one beloved slash object into a girl and banging away rabidly at the other is the ultimate authorial self-insertion and really just embarrassing for everyone involved.
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Date: 2011-06-13 08:55 pm (UTC)I've been accused of writing McKay because he reminds me of myself. It may be true (shrugs) but I do agree with you.
The only reason not to write an OC is because they're afraid that readers won't want to read Watson/OC or whatever. But in reality, when you change someone's sex you're creating a new character regardless of what you chose to call them. Of course, that argument could be made for making a character gay as well. When you change something so fundamental about a character--it should realistically alter everything about their life in a way that resonates throughout the story you're telling.
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Date: 2011-06-13 11:57 pm (UTC)In other words, if you're writing Rodney because he's so much like you, ponder the vast reservoir of snark that is SGA fandom and don't feel like an orphan. ;)
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Date: 2011-06-14 12:45 am (UTC)My favorite mpreg of all time (so far) only has a very brief pregnancy (there is a technological fix.... I do love Torchwood fan fics----much better than the actual show, or at least what that idiot Davies did with it). It has an actual plot, is has real angst, it has dignity and passion. I love it. It's Get Loved, Make More, Try to Stay Alive (http://dira.ficlaundering.com/dwt/getloved.html).
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Date: 2011-06-14 11:16 pm (UTC)I gotta tell you - I wake up tomorrow mysteriously and unexpectedly pregnant and I'm not going to spend 9 months gestating. But the "should I/can I keep it" conversation almost never appears. Mpreg fiction is almost always a vehicle for pregnant stereotypes and/or to provide the guys with a doll to play with. If the story can't tackle the real world problems of being pregnant (which are noticeably more significant than swollen ankles and nausea) I won't read it.
I kind of like BBC Sherlock as asexual - but I can't imagine RDJ Sherlock as anything but pansexual and gloriously self indulgent about it.
Always a girl! is fairly common in Star Trek fic and occasionally done exceptionally well. Exploring how the fanon background for Kirk would differently affect a woman can be interesting. However, I don't read a lot of it, because most of it is just a need for a het relationship and I can get that with canon characters - as long as I'm willing to read outside the major pairings!
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Date: 2011-06-15 07:49 am (UTC)You can find it here if you want to read it.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/112530/chapters/156427
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Date: 2011-06-15 06:04 pm (UTC)