Thank you! But, to put it in context, there's rm's no-star, two-thumbs-down review on her journal.
Fanwriters vary greatly in attitudes toward canon, and how we think our stories have to/should relate to canon. And romantic fiction (fannish or otherwise) often has a very tight focus on the couple. That is, not only do Jack and Daniel not exist in the context of a gay community, in a lot of fics they don't exist in the context of a military community or a social scientific community EITHER.
Most romance fic assumes a context of monogamy. If, for the moment, we only look at cisgendered heterosexual couples, and Alice marries Tom, this is seldom perceived as an act of misandry, although we assume that she will not thereafter become involved with Rick or Nigel or Gary.
If we then move to slash examples, unfortunately it's easy to find misogynistic examples, where two men get together because no woman could ever be good enough for them. But it's *possible* for m/m or f/f couple formation in a fic to take place for positive rather than negative reasons--i.e., Angel and Wes really suit each other, not because they trash Cordelia but because they care about each other.
There's plenty of fluffy slash fiction, so although "everybody's gay! Let's party!" is not very believable in the real world, that isn't necessarily the test.
Another possibility would be to say, "OK, there's only one gay or lesbian couple in the team that we see on the screen, but I'm going to write them interacting with the gay community outside the team." I think that's a very sound strategy, but lots of readers hate OCs.
FWIW in one of my first B7 stories, Avon turned up with a pink triangle badge on his jacket. Let's just say the story was not universally loved. A commenter said that Avon is a very private person, but I don't think he'd forfeit an opportunity to get up in people's faces (in the figurative sense, as well as the many on-screen discussions he has where he's pretty much standing on the other person's boots.)
I'm also not without sympathy for the position "After decades of misery-drenched LGBT fiction where the characters shot themselves or lived horrible lives, I kind of enjoy Gaytopian stories even if they don't strike me as at all realistic." I've never actually heard anybody *say* it though.
And it might be a worthwhile propaganda objective: "If I keep writing happy, smutty, filthy, hot stories with happy same-sex couples who never encounter any homophobia, perhaps at least one person will begin to think of this as a normative state."
no subject
Fanwriters vary greatly in attitudes toward canon, and how we think our stories have to/should relate to canon. And romantic fiction (fannish or otherwise) often has a very tight focus on the couple. That is, not only do Jack and Daniel not exist in the context of a gay community, in a lot of fics they don't exist in the context of a military community or a social scientific community EITHER.
Most romance fic assumes a context of monogamy. If, for the moment, we only look at cisgendered heterosexual couples, and Alice marries Tom, this is seldom perceived as an act of misandry, although we assume that she will not thereafter become involved with Rick or Nigel or Gary.
If we then move to slash examples, unfortunately it's easy to find misogynistic examples, where two men get together because no woman could ever be good enough for them. But it's *possible* for m/m or f/f couple formation in a fic to take place for positive rather than negative reasons--i.e., Angel and Wes really suit each other, not because they trash Cordelia but because they care about each other.
There's plenty of fluffy slash fiction, so although "everybody's gay! Let's party!" is not very believable in the real world, that isn't necessarily the test.
Another possibility would be to say, "OK, there's only one gay or lesbian couple in the team that we see on the screen, but I'm going to write them interacting with the gay community outside the team." I think that's a very sound strategy, but lots of readers hate OCs.
FWIW in one of my first B7 stories, Avon turned up with a pink triangle badge on his jacket. Let's just say the story was not universally loved. A commenter said that Avon is a very private person, but I don't think he'd forfeit an opportunity to get up in people's faces (in the figurative sense, as well as the many on-screen discussions he has where he's pretty much standing on the other person's boots.)
I'm also not without sympathy for the position "After decades of misery-drenched LGBT fiction where the characters shot themselves or lived horrible lives, I kind of enjoy Gaytopian stories even if they don't strike me as at all realistic." I've never actually heard anybody *say* it though.
And it might be a worthwhile propaganda objective: "If I keep writing happy, smutty, filthy, hot stories with happy same-sex couples who never encounter any homophobia, perhaps at least one person will begin to think of this as a normative state."