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I was discussing with a friend the attitude that genderswapping male characters is not "celebrating female characters". Because it felt both true and false to me, and I think I've figured out why.
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Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror
Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human
Creative Interventions: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence
Gotta be honest, I only got partway through this, it's a bit repetitive and long winded. Also the attempt at trans inclusion is patchy. But the part I read was really thought provoking and avoided some of the major pitfalls I've seen in other similar toolkits.
And now some things I already posted to tumblr:
A discussion of Camp Which I still don't get, tbh.
mistakes don’t mean you deserve to suffer
The key to co-liberation is that it requires a commitment to and a belief in mutual benefit
the 14 properties of “ur-fascism”
Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human
Creative Interventions: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence
Gotta be honest, I only got partway through this, it's a bit repetitive and long winded. Also the attempt at trans inclusion is patchy. But the part I read was really thought provoking and avoided some of the major pitfalls I've seen in other similar toolkits.
And now some things I already posted to tumblr:
A discussion of Camp Which I still don't get, tbh.
mistakes don’t mean you deserve to suffer
The key to co-liberation is that it requires a commitment to and a belief in mutual benefit
the 14 properties of “ur-fascism”
The History and Politics of Wuxia
Tabletop RPG safety toolkit I think this has interesting ideas for any sort of collaborative storytelling.
In my many discussions on activism down the years, I've said that one of the most dangerous things we tend to do is treat *insights* as rules.
Tabletop RPG safety toolkit I think this has interesting ideas for any sort of collaborative storytelling.
In my many discussions on activism down the years, I've said that one of the most dangerous things we tend to do is treat *insights* as rules.
I've decided to go through my tumblr drafts, which are full of posts I felt too nervous to post publicly in case I got reblogged into Discourse, and see which are worth posting here. In most cases I feel like I didn't quite capture my full thoughts on the matter, but sometimes you gotta let yourself be a bit incoherent to flail towards understanding.
So, let's begin with a post about men writing f/f! *starts out intending some mild edits for clarity, ends up doubling the length*
The original post:
I keep seeing posts like this and...that is a thing that exists? As a group they tend to have the same male gazey sexism issues as male het shippers, but they still very much care about the romances.
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So, let's begin with a post about men writing f/f! *starts out intending some mild edits for clarity, ends up doubling the length*
The original post:
People comparing men’s fetishization of lesbians to slash fandom is always so funny like imagine a world where large amounts of men did get extremely emotionally invested in potential romantic relationships between fictional women
I keep seeing posts like this and...that is a thing that exists? As a group they tend to have the same male gazey sexism issues as male het shippers, but they still very much care about the romances.
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You can’t put themes of fealty and anti-imperialism in the same narrative box is a really interesting post, discussing the problem in the context of the Vorkosigan saga but generally worth reading.
One other approach I’ve enjoyed is Fealty is Fatally Flawed But Tragically Beautiful, set during the inevitable collapse of feudalism, and not saying that collapse shouldn’t happen, but still wallowing in the appeal of what feudalism remains. So vassals still feel that delicious fealty, but the actual power imbalance is in the process of disappearing. You can show how even the Nice Feudal Lords screw up, but since their power is waning it’s easier to forgive them for it, and there’s no way to fall into the Vorkosigan Saga trap of just giving the Nice Feudal Lords all the power and calling that utopia.
EDIT: Ok it has been pointed out to me that this is EXACTLY as romanticising, it's just a SAD romance. FINE.
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If you wanted to put them together, and somehow do both of them justice, I think you’d have two choices:
- Positively-presented fealty angle with the Barrayarans (or at least the Vor Barrayarans) but realistically and narratively terrible actions vis-a-vis the Komarrans and the proles. Which is to say, you have created a subset of the Feudal Fantasy register within a larger picture of Realistic Ack. Many, many people will be lovely to those they consider worthy (or Us), and awful to those they consider not (or Them), so this isn’t a stretch at all. You could re-write VS canon into this mold without too much trouble, I think, but you’d need a lot more narrative criticism of the MCs than you get from LMB.
- Fealty angle where the colonized/vassal desperately wants that relationship to actually work as advertised, perhaps to the point of willful blindness, but, of course, it doesn’t. This is Realistic Ack register all the way down, and probably chock full of whump and angst. This is maybe what I was trying to do with Duv, but I’m not sure I can actually manage it.
- I don’t think you can do anti-imperialism in the Feudal Fantasy register at all (since part of the premise is that feudalism, and by extension imperialism, aren’t inherently bad), but I’m open to ideas.
One other approach I’ve enjoyed is Fealty is Fatally Flawed But Tragically Beautiful, set during the inevitable collapse of feudalism, and not saying that collapse shouldn’t happen, but still wallowing in the appeal of what feudalism remains. So vassals still feel that delicious fealty, but the actual power imbalance is in the process of disappearing. You can show how even the Nice Feudal Lords screw up, but since their power is waning it’s easier to forgive them for it, and there’s no way to fall into the Vorkosigan Saga trap of just giving the Nice Feudal Lords all the power and calling that utopia.
EDIT: Ok it has been pointed out to me that this is EXACTLY as romanticising, it's just a SAD romance. FINE.
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The Story is a Spell. The Story is a Curse.
It matters who writes us.
Shock and Care: an essay about art, politics and responsibility
Otaku Blog And Proud
A Japanese woman's complex feelings on Japanese media.
Slash and sex scenes
MM Romance Readership Survey: Results
(Really wishing dreamwidth had a queue/delayed posting right now)
It matters who writes us.
Shock and Care: an essay about art, politics and responsibility
Otaku Blog And Proud
A Japanese woman's complex feelings on Japanese media.
Slash and sex scenes
MM Romance Readership Survey: Results
(Really wishing dreamwidth had a queue/delayed posting right now)
I usually like Smart Bitches Trashy Books but this annoyed me.
Breaking Up with Damaging Conventions in Romance: A Conversation with Kate Cuthbert
It annoyed me to start with by being more gendered than it needed to be. Not all romances are about or by women, and even the ones that are aren't just read by women. You can talk about it being a genre mainly about/for/by women (which it is, and that's important) without overgeneralising.
But then she did that thing a lot of anti-problematic-fiction people do, where they start out saying "write about whatever you want, but think about the context of what you're writing and do it mindfully" but by the end are unambiguously saying "don't write this". She talks a good game about being ok with women's sexuality and fantasy but she clearly doesn't get it.
*** Content note: discussion of rape fantasy ***
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Breaking Up with Damaging Conventions in Romance: A Conversation with Kate Cuthbert
It annoyed me to start with by being more gendered than it needed to be. Not all romances are about or by women, and even the ones that are aren't just read by women. You can talk about it being a genre mainly about/for/by women (which it is, and that's important) without overgeneralising.
But then she did that thing a lot of anti-problematic-fiction people do, where they start out saying "write about whatever you want, but think about the context of what you're writing and do it mindfully" but by the end are unambiguously saying "don't write this". She talks a good game about being ok with women's sexuality and fantasy but she clearly doesn't get it.
*** Content note: discussion of rape fantasy ***
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Inspired by this essay about the misremembering of Captain Kirk, I had some extra thoughts on tumblr and then I had some EXTRA extra thoughts and decided it was probably time for a proper post.
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Ethical Consumption of Woobie Villains Under Late Stage Capitalism by cephiedvariable, which stands alone pretty well but I had extra thoughts.
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I have no idea how universal this is. And specifically, I know some people find "being marginalised is like being a monster" metaphors super alienating, and may wish to not read further.
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It is in the interests of the creator to play down the full variation of human psysiology/psychology/culture etc. That way they can make their "alien" species "consistently different" to humans without having to make them genuinely different, and thus unrelatable and hard to write.
Inspired by a comment I just got on a Dragon Age fic I wrote about the experiences of a human with dwarfism in a world with fantasy "dwarves". I was thinking about why I haven't seen anyone else take on this pretty obvious plot, and realised it's because doing so is an uncomfortable reminder that (a) This is a real group of people we're exotifying into another species here (b) For the most part, fantasy dwarves (as well as halflings) are indistinguishable from especially short humans. Point this out, and they stop being cool and exotic.
And of course, as has often been discussed, this tendency has the implication that any experience too far outside the human "norm" is alien and weird. Where this "norm" is usually "WASPy American", as well as straight, cis, able bodied, etc. "Let me tell you of this human food called hamburgers" etc.
Inspired by a comment I just got on a Dragon Age fic I wrote about the experiences of a human with dwarfism in a world with fantasy "dwarves". I was thinking about why I haven't seen anyone else take on this pretty obvious plot, and realised it's because doing so is an uncomfortable reminder that (a) This is a real group of people we're exotifying into another species here (b) For the most part, fantasy dwarves (as well as halflings) are indistinguishable from especially short humans. Point this out, and they stop being cool and exotic.
And of course, as has often been discussed, this tendency has the implication that any experience too far outside the human "norm" is alien and weird. Where this "norm" is usually "WASPy American", as well as straight, cis, able bodied, etc. "Let me tell you of this human food called hamburgers" etc.
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An interesting tumblr post which makes the point that a lot of didactic works are the equivalent of a porn film with "AND THEN THEY GOT PREGNANT AND DIED" at the end that claims to be encouraging safe sex/abstinence etc.
Some thoughts I had as a result:
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Some thoughts I had as a result:
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So I love regency romances. Georgette Heyer is generally agreed to have been the creator of the genre, and is loved by most regency fans. And I can't stand her. I found myself ranting about why on twitter, but didn't have enough space to rant properly, so here we are.
I have only read a few Heyer romances, spaced out by the several years it took for me to forget how much I'd hated the last one before trying again. So I can't give an entirely informed opinion on her. Many people I highly respect adore her books, and that's fine. This is just why I don't like her. Note that the title isn't "why Georgette Heyer is objectively awful". I just get annoyed when she's presented as the Ultimate Regency Author All Regency Fans Love and All Regency Authors Should Emulate.
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I have only read a few Heyer romances, spaced out by the several years it took for me to forget how much I'd hated the last one before trying again. So I can't give an entirely informed opinion on her. Many people I highly respect adore her books, and that's fine. This is just why I don't like her. Note that the title isn't "why Georgette Heyer is objectively awful". I just get annoyed when she's presented as the Ultimate Regency Author All Regency Fans Love and All Regency Authors Should Emulate.
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So, a question that's come up in a game I'm working on, and is likely to come up again in future: how do you combine allowing the player character (PC) of a dating sim having a spectrum of gender identities available with having love interests who aren't all bi/pan?
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The comments to my last post on the subject made me realise I hadn't expressed myself very clearly, so I've been waiting until I felt clear headed enough to lay out my argument properly, and here we are.
My point: female protagonists are almost always the least invested in feminine presentation compared to other female characters in the story.
I'm not saying there's no such thing as major sympathetic female characters who care more about feminine presentation than other female characters in the story. There's lots of those. I am strictly talking about protagonists.
In most cases the main character is the best at looking pretty, but that's not the same as being the most invested. A common trope is the protagonist being forced to dress up prettily and looking fabulous with no effort on her part. Another common trope, especially on tv, is her looking fabulous and fairly girly despite explicitely "not caring". As many butch women have pointed out, mainstream fiction actually portrays women as being, overall, much more invested in feminine presentation than they are in reality. You almost never see genuinely butch women, instead many female protagonists SAY they don't care about feminine presentation but clearly LOOK like someone who cares a great deal.
I'm not saying that these stories are neccesarily sexist, especially not something like Fun Home which explores the generally ignored experiences of butch women. I just think it's notable that female protagonists are so limited, and want to poke at it.
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My point: female protagonists are almost always the least invested in feminine presentation compared to other female characters in the story.
I'm not saying there's no such thing as major sympathetic female characters who care more about feminine presentation than other female characters in the story. There's lots of those. I am strictly talking about protagonists.
In most cases the main character is the best at looking pretty, but that's not the same as being the most invested. A common trope is the protagonist being forced to dress up prettily and looking fabulous with no effort on her part. Another common trope, especially on tv, is her looking fabulous and fairly girly despite explicitely "not caring". As many butch women have pointed out, mainstream fiction actually portrays women as being, overall, much more invested in feminine presentation than they are in reality. You almost never see genuinely butch women, instead many female protagonists SAY they don't care about feminine presentation but clearly LOOK like someone who cares a great deal.
I'm not saying that these stories are neccesarily sexist, especially not something like Fun Home which explores the generally ignored experiences of butch women. I just think it's notable that female protagonists are so limited, and want to poke at it.
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Can anyone think of sympathetic female protagonists who are shown caring about their physical appearance and/or actively trying to look more feminine and pretty more than some/all of the other women in the story? Not sympathetic side characters where it's seen as a forgivable flaw, but protagonists.
I'm conflating "trying to look good" with "traditionally feminine" a bit here, I realise they're not the same thing and if people have examples which poke at that I'd be interested too.
EDIT: I'm looking for PROTAGONISTS, not secondary characters/non-main parts of an ensemble, and they have to be EXPLICITELY MORE into dressing up etc than other female characters in the same story.
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EDIT: some examples from further thinking/other people:
EDIT: Followup post.
I'm conflating "trying to look good" with "traditionally feminine" a bit here, I realise they're not the same thing and if people have examples which poke at that I'd be interested too.
EDIT: I'm looking for PROTAGONISTS, not secondary characters/non-main parts of an ensemble, and they have to be EXPLICITELY MORE into dressing up etc than other female characters in the same story.
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EDIT: some examples from further thinking/other people:
- Buffy from Buffy
- Elle from Legally Blonde
- Aisha from Aisha and Cher from Clueless, both modern retellings of Emma that turn Emma's advice to Harriet on being more upper class into fashion advice
EDIT: Followup post.
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I don't know if any of you guys can help with this, but if nothing else writing it all out will help me get it straight in my head.
So! I like to put wheelchair users in my games, because nobody else is going to. I feel reasonably confident writing/drawing people in my position: in a powerchair due to relatively recently acquired fatigue. Thanks to online research I also feel moderately confident with the Default Wheelchair User Character: a young, otherwise healthy paraplegic or amputee in a manual chair. The protagonist of SOON is this kind of character.
But I'm having trouble researching wheelchair using characters of other sorts, especially older people.
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So! I like to put wheelchair users in my games, because nobody else is going to. I feel reasonably confident writing/drawing people in my position: in a powerchair due to relatively recently acquired fatigue. Thanks to online research I also feel moderately confident with the Default Wheelchair User Character: a young, otherwise healthy paraplegic or amputee in a manual chair. The protagonist of SOON is this kind of character.
But I'm having trouble researching wheelchair using characters of other sorts, especially older people.
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There are certain sexist narratives media present to us. It's good to try to subvert them. But it is usually impossible to subvert all of them at once.
One of the narratives we're fed is that there is a single path of Good Womanhood. This path is inconsistent and impossible for any real woman to follow, and because it's so inconsistent parts of it show up in all sorts of attempted subversions.
One of the other narratives we're fed is that women should sacrifice our own enjoyment for The Greater Good. Thus letting ourselves enjoy the narratives we enjoy, no matter how "problematic", is itself in some ways subversive. (This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to avoid being actively sexist. Or for that matter racist etc)
Saying that there is a single Feminist Narrative all female characters should fit into supports this idea that there is a single Good Way To Be A Woman. Also, chances are there is some way this "feminist" narrative ends up supporting part of the typical Sexist Narrative, or is just not to everyone's tastes. Telling women that they are unfeminist if they don't like The One Feminist Narrative buys into the idea that women should sacrifice their own enjoyment for the greater good.
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One of the narratives we're fed is that there is a single path of Good Womanhood. This path is inconsistent and impossible for any real woman to follow, and because it's so inconsistent parts of it show up in all sorts of attempted subversions.
One of the other narratives we're fed is that women should sacrifice our own enjoyment for The Greater Good. Thus letting ourselves enjoy the narratives we enjoy, no matter how "problematic", is itself in some ways subversive. (This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to avoid being actively sexist. Or for that matter racist etc)
Saying that there is a single Feminist Narrative all female characters should fit into supports this idea that there is a single Good Way To Be A Woman. Also, chances are there is some way this "feminist" narrative ends up supporting part of the typical Sexist Narrative, or is just not to everyone's tastes. Telling women that they are unfeminist if they don't like The One Feminist Narrative buys into the idea that women should sacrifice their own enjoyment for the greater good.
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