Never in their wildest dreams...
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| Title: | Never in their wildest dreams... |
| Creator: | The Divine Adoratrice |
| Date(s): | December 22, 1997, addendum January 1, 1998 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | The Sentinel |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Never in their wildest dreams.... |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Never in their wildest dreams... is a 1997 essay by The Divine Adoratrice at The Nonsensical Ravings of a Lunatic Mind.
Some Topics Discussed
- the trope We're Not Gay We Just Love Each Other
Excerpts
There are people out there who think of themselves as being utterly heterosexual all their lives, with never even a glimmer of interest directed at anyone of the same sex. Then they meet that Special Someone and, well, they wake up gay the next morning. It happens in the real world. I am fully aware of this.
All the same, I'm troubled at the way this -- let's call it a phenomenon, shall we? -- this phenomenon is handled in a lot of fanfic. I'm sure most of you have come across stories in which the author goes to great pains to establish that the characters have never looked at another man. The point is pounded into the reader with sledge-hammer force: These Men Are Not Gay, They're Just In Love. Then, as they make their way to their rose-petal strewn bed (but that's a natter for another time), they affirm their essential heterosexuality thusly: "Except for you, my heart's darling dear, I've never ever ever wanted a man." They then proceed to have sex -- and, for two men who've never had the eensiest-weensiest inkling of a homosexual impulse, they seem to have a surprisingly good working knowledge of where all the bits and pieces are supposed to go.
No. Please, God, make it stop....
Look. If you have two men who have lived their entire being sexually attracted to women and only women, they are going to notice if the person they fall in love with is lacking a vagina. There's an excellent chance that there'll be some serious angst and denial going on. But even if they don't have any conflicts with the orientation shift, that's worthy of comment as well. Think about it: if you're straight, and you discover all of a sudden that you want to fuck someone of the same sex -- even more, that you're madly in love and it's not just a case of wacky gonads -- it's unrealistic to not step back and think, if only for a second, "Hmmm. This is odd -- but what the hell." (A story that deals with this whole situation brilliantly is Lynna Bright's "Sanctuary." I'd put in a link, but I've been out of touch and I have no idea where the various Sentinel archives are located now.)
Why do writers do this? I've heard a few people make the unfortunate comment that they approach the story in this respect because they want to concentrate on the romance, and they don't think gay men do romance. And, yes, I acknowledge that the characters are considered to be canonically straight. But you know, unless there's actually a line in a script where Character X says he's never been attracted to a man, it's not impossible to presuppose some kind of bisexual history. And really, if your goal is just to get the characters into bed, without all kinds of troublesome angst, that's usually the easiest way to go.
And, as a brief side note (as if I haven't opened a big enough can of worms already), why do some writers insist on specifically identifying the characters as being hetero even though they're involved with someone of the same sex? I simply don't feel comfortable identifying the characters as straight when they're in the midst of a passionate homosexual relationship. I'm not saying that I think the Big Three classifications (gay, bisexual and heterosexual) are entirely adequate when it comes to describing all the permutations of human desire. All the same, when you have two men rimming each other and loving every second, I think it's probably safe to say they're not straight.