Friskbiskit

Cyrano deBergerac: The True Story

Ganked from LGBT Laughs.

Q&A with Kevin Smith

Just got back from the Kevin Smith Q&A.  Those of you who've been around here for awhile know what a seminal (ahem) influence Smith is in my creative life.  Before I stumbled upon Jay and Silent Bob slash during a google search for new KS movies, I thought I was the only woman who was into gay romance. J/SB opened up a whole world of slash, yaoi, and m/m to me, along with the realization that there was an audience for what I wanted to write.

The evening was awesome.  Steve and I were both struck by how kind Smith is.  Filthy, and kind -- one of our favorite combinations. And the guy can tell a story. He talked about working with Bruce Willis on Cop Out and how Willis wouldn't take any direction from him at all. It was hysterical. Plus, he's sucked his own dick. And guys, he endorses the fleshlight. Sex toy advice from a dude who's sucked himself off is probably worth paying attention to.  I'm just saying.

It was a Q&A, so of course, you know I had to go up and ask a question.  I was all set to go with "Do you ever read any Jay and Silent Bob fanfic?"  But about two people ahead of me, Kevin answered a question by saying how cool he thought it was that his stuff was at the point where people were taking it and running with it, and he cited slash fanfiction as an example of that. In and of itself, that was awesome, but now I was stumped.  So when it came time for me to go to the mic, I told him that J/SB was my gateway into slash, and that through it I discovered I wasn't alone, and so on (see above).  

As soon as I started talking about writing gay romance, the crowd at the Royal Oak Music Theater started to hoot and laugh and stuff. And here's the best part: Kevin shut them up! He listened to what I had to say, and was pleased that J/SB had led me to paying gigs. He said he wanted to write some J/SB fic anonymously and I told him he should, and he should send it here, and then he made some requests for things I should include in a J/SB fic:

Silent Bob loves having his balls tickled.

Forced feminization.

Okay, Kevin, I can work with that! 

'Course it'll probably be a Stan and Gus story, but, you know, that's pretty close.

I never know what to title posts like these

I'm busting ass to get Amaranth & Ash turned in before I go off to residency at the end of next week, and that means writing lots of sex scenes.  And writing lots of sex scenes means spending plenty of time on 4chan.  That's were I stumbled across these, though apparently they are from Warren Ellis. 

I really want to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It looks slasherific, an impression that's been confirmed for me by my friend JJ, who's seen it already and loved it. Another friend of mine hated it. She said it's nothing like the books. I don't care.

Kim Jong-il Institutes Totalitarian Slash Regime

Here's proof that yaoi will in fact take over the world.  And to think I limited myself to slashing the U.S. cabinet.

This is a fan vid for a Japanese erotic game based on the premise of dating a world leader. And here's more on that game.

Thanks for turning me on to this, Alex.

Unpacking the Case Against M/M: Part 5, The Objectification Obfuscation

In Part 4, I mentioned the sex-negativity inherent in the statement that women authors and readers of m/m are voyeurs, fetishizing and objectifying gay men for our own sexual gratification. 

A lot of women of my association have had one particular response to that statement, and since I've embarked on this series, I've heard it quite a bit: So what?

I think it's a pretty reasonable question. Why is that men can look at women, gay men can look at men, drag queens can present stereotypical portrayals of women, and straight men can watch women pretend to get it on with each other, but a woman reading a work of fiction with men falling in love and having sex together is a moral reprobate of the first order?

Well, we've already been over the whole thing about how women are not entitled to their own sexuality in our society, so that's part of it.  And of course, many people certainly object to lesbian porn for straight men.  In fact, that's another comparison that's often made with m/m as a shaming tactic. 

But here's the thing: if in fact you believe that sexually objectifying anyone is wrong, why would you focus your ire on li'l ole m/m?  For the love of Mike, we don't even use real people!  Why aren't the objectification objectors going after all that fake lesbian porn for straight men?  Or any porn for straight men, for that matter? Personally, and this may be uncharitable, but, I think it's because m/m looks like an easier target.

Some branches of the feminist movement have been trying to put a stop to het porn since the seventies, and they haven't had much luck with it. And our culture is filled with images of women which, while they may not be outright porn, are certainly objectifying. As a woman who, through no fault of my own, cannot hope to meet the ridiculous physical standards of beauty that still count as the gold standard of feminine value, I get pretty sick of it myself.

I sometimes hear people say things like, well, by objectifying men you're just giving men permission to continue objectifying women.  This makes me laugh.  As far as I've ever seen, men are not waiting for my permission or anyone else's.  I don't see het porn for men or the ubiquitous airbrushed supermodel going anywhere any time soon.

Beyond that, I personally don't think objectification is necessarily, in and of itself, sexist.  As noted, I have a few things to say about unrealistic beauty standards that I do in fact think are misogynist, but, just looking at someone and fantasizing about them sexually -- actually, I think that's okay.  What's sexist is the imbalance in who gets to objectify who. 

My pals over at Erotica Cover Watch are all over this, fighting tirelessly to prove to the world that men make great sex objects.  I think m/m can be part of that movement too.

I wonder what a world with gawking parity across genders and sexual orientations would look like?

Barack Obama, Jedi Master

Pretty much impossible to be down on a day that starts with this:

from The Empire Strikes Barack - Barack Obama - Gawker.

And you just know I am dying to write some Obama-Star Wars crossover slash to go with this.  And I have a full schedule today.  Argghh!  Help me, Obamawan Kenobi!

Everything Old is New Again

Here's a community dedicated to slashing the new, hot Dr. McCoy from the recent Star Trek film with the new, hot Captain Kirk from the recent Star Trek film.

What's NH McCoy/NH Spock like?  (Though O Spock is still the hottest of hot as far as I'm concerned.)  Surely, there must be some out there.  Let's see...   Why yes, there is!

Ameranth & Ash 8

This may be the last A&A for a little while, because right now I have to give everything I've got to another project that's on deadline.  But I have had a great time working on A&A and appreciate everyone who has taken the time to comment on it.  Your encouragement is a great motivator for me.  My hope is to continue with this story as soon as time permits.

This is the world-building edition of A&A.  I'm finally at a point in the story where I need to establish some things about the setting and the society at large.  But there's some story in here too. 

Here's an illustration (very badly drawn) of the city where A&A takes place.  More of a graph really, outlining each of the districts where the various castes live.  That line down the middle is supposed to be a river and where it curves out at the very bottom, beyond that is the sea.  The straight line running horizontally across the middle is a mistake.  :P

Anywhoo, without further ado, here is the latest installment of Ameranth & Ash:

Ameranth & Ash 8

Ameranth & Ash Main Page

Ameranth & Ash 3

So let's just see how many weeks in a row I can go before the segments get too short to bother with.  

Please note: these installments are first drafts, entirely unedited, so be forewarned!  Also, Ameranth & Ash is m/m hurt-comfort.  It contains explicit violence and graphic sexual content.  By clicking on the links below, you are certifying that you are 18 years of age or older.

photo by Jan Durina

Ameranth & Ash Main Page

Ameranth & Ash 3, 1,800 words

Rorschach Rocks My World

You know me, I like to share.  What's my dirty secret du jour?  My obsession with Walter Kovaks as portrayed by Jackie Earle Haley in the movie version of the Watchmen.  Okay, so, you know, I have a thing for scrawny, wiry, intense guys, and I've adored Jackie Earle Haley since Moocher wrapped a rag around his fist and punched a puchclock in Breaking Away.  Give him red hair and make him a dangerously violent moral absolutist and the next thing you know, I'm writing hurt-comfort m/m about him. 

That's right, Ash is inspired by Haley's portrayal of Rorshcach/Kovaks.  He's my reformulation of all the bits about that character that I adored, with the rest of it conveniently forgotten.  That's how the process works.  And I'm not alone, I tell you!

Which makes this web-paper from the Bryn Mawr Gender and Technology course all the more fascinating: Rorschach Doesn't Do Dirty Communist Liberal Gender.

 

Why Mo Likes It

Searches on the topic "Why Women Like Slash" never disappoint.

Here's slash writer Morgan Ginsberg's list of reasons why she likes slash:

http://mofic.livejournal.com/11804.html

Ginsberg makes a few points I haven't seen from anyone else before, and I particularly like:

* I write slash because I'm a lesbian and I like turning women on. I quite like fan letters that say things like "give me more sex like that and I'm yours" even if they don't really mean it.

Stan, Gus, and I Finally Get What We Deserve

Well, it was bound to happen.  Sooner or later, someone was going to take me to task for the Stan and Gus stories (if nothing else) and now they have.  I'm getting a solid ass-kicking for my transgressions over on a LiveJournal community called Weeping Cock (this is what it sounds like when penises cry). 

But I don't mind.  Nobody should be allowed to get away with the line: "Yes. Yesss. Fuck me with it, Gus. Fuck me with the honeycomb! I’m a bumblebee!"  I'll take my punishment like the Kevin Smith-obsessed slash perv I am.  It's worth it. Especially when, in the midst of all the well-deserved ire, comes a gem such as this:

Indiana Jones and the Molten Core of Stan's Ass, coming to a cinema near you.

Oh, thank you, thank you skew_whiff, for your comment and your original post. You rock. 

Now, if I can just get someone to design a book cover for me for that title.  (Nix?)  It's a perfect Stan and Gus story.  It demands to be written!

New Free Ficlet

I have a new story up on the ficlet page.  It's called Easter Sunday and it's a sequel to Thaw and Serve, which was a Thanksgiving Day story.  In Easter Sunday, Mal and Tom have been seeing each other for awhile, and it's time for Mal to meet Tom's parents.  He's extremely nervous, but his assessment of the situation is way off, and could lead to real trouble for him and Tom.  I hope you enjoy the story.  Please feel free to leave comments, here, or on the story page.

Go to Ficlets Page

Son of Why I Like It

A couple of years ago writer Melissa Pittman composed a thoughtful article about women's love of slash in an apparently now-defunct online magazine called the High Hat.  I just found it and I'm posting the link here because the article is well worth your time, for two reasons. 

One, refreshingly, Pittman does not dance around the fact that a lot of lesbians like m/m slash.  In fact, she makes it the centerpiece of her investigation into the whys and wherefores of the appeal of male/male romance for women, eschewing standard explanations such as "there aren't any interesting female characters on TV to write about" or "same reason straight men like lesbian porn."

Two, by looking past these arguments she arrives at what I believe may be the heart of the matter:

And then it hit me, for the first time, what the appeal of writing men is for a woman. I was reminded of my childhood, when all I ever dreamed of being was a boy...I wanted to be a boy because boys got to do things.

...And women’s bodies, unlike men’s, come with so many real and invisible shackles ... hindrances in their sexual liberty like pregnancy ... and then there is the universal desire to control women’s bodies...

Women, including myself, can identify the liberty that must come from having that kind of freedom of “body baggage” that men must have, and that freedom certainly reflects on the way men indulge in their entitlement to be Active, especially sexually, but also in pretty much everything else they do.

Perhaps that is what these women slash fiction writers are searching for — to have the freedom of being male in their female bodies. To feel physically and sexually liberated yet still be the women that they are.

In other words, we write about men in order to appropriate male power and entitlement  for ourselves, and we cast them in romantic relationships in order to celebrate our femininity within the empowered context of the male body.  Freedom from the cultural burden of the female body and free reign for the expression of female desire -- that's an attractive combination. 

Perhaps some feel that all of this is giving up on women's liberation, abandoning the idea of women as active agents, but I don't see it that way at all.  Maybe some day m/m will be totally passé because power and agency will be inherent in female identity, and not "in spite of."  That would be cool.  But for now, if writing about men together gives me and my readers ready access to that sense of agency, then I can't think of a single reason not to take it.

For the full text of Pittman's article, go here:

http://www.thehighhat.com/Marginalia/005/slash.html

Duelling Videos

There are about a million videos set to the song "I Kissed a Boy" by Cobra Starship, which is in response to/parody of "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. Here are two of them. I like the first one for the energy and the second one because, well, it actually has boys kissing. Which is your favorite?