Ten Thoughts About Writing "Realistic" Men
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Ten Thoughts About Writing "Realistic" Men |
| Creator: | Carene |
| Date(s): | likely 2001 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | all fandoms |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Ten Thougths About Writing "Realistic" Men, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Ten Thougths About Writing "Realistic" Men is a 2001 essay by Carene.
The essay has ten parts.
"I keep hearing this complaint: women writing slash don't portray men, or gay men, realistically."
For additional context, see Timeline of Slash Meta and Slash Meta.
Some Topics Discussed
- women writing men
- slash
The Essay
1. The characters, in canon, are not realistic men. They are unrealistically handsome, they are unrealistically smart, clever, strong, brave, thrifty, clean and reverent. Or alternately, smart, clever, strong, sneaky, mean and evil--but still hot. They are faced, week after week, with unrealistic situations in which they draw upon skills, knowledge and lucky guesses that unrealistically just happen to be what's needed.
[snipped]
2. Compared to real life men, media characters are not... very deep. They are often sketches, outlines, stereotypes, archetypes. There are loads of subtext to them -- and not just gay subtext. You look at characters and think: The Odd Couple (strong silent hero with free-spirited buddy; snarky individualist hero with buddy who plays by the rules). Or the Mentor and the Student. The Brothers In Arms. The Adversaries. The Sworn Enemies. The Loner, the Geek, the Mild Mannered Reporter. A whole lot of their character auto-fills in for you after you recognize the type.
[snipped]
3. Many charges of unrealistic characters in slash (along with unrealistic sex, and plot, and physical endurance) can be sent directly to the canon's in-box. The usual complaint about hurt/comfort is that realistically, getting beat to shit is not sexy. Yet it's portrayed as sexy in TV and movies constantly.
[snipped]
4. Characters drawn from your own experience of real-life men will tend to have "unrealistic" qualities. As an experiment, I wrote down a short list of things my husband does that would probably be called unrealistic if, say, Duncan MacLeod did them.
[snipped]
5. Sometimes when people complain about "unrealistic" men, it's more or less nitpicky stuff about the right way to have anal sex or other mechanical stuff about men's bodies. That, yeah, is helpful, the same way it's helpful to know the layout of Paris or what kind of handgun FBI agents use.
[snipped]
6.Too often, when people talk about writing more "realistic" men they point to superficial and/or stereotypically male behaviors. Let me obsess for a moment on "men don't talk about their feelings the way women do." Beg to differ
[snipped]
7. Men are portrayed in TV and movies the way men like to be portrayed. Much of it isn't, ahem, accurate. Much of it is self-serving. So probably anything you'd come up with would be at least as accurate. Women living alone in caves for forty years could probably write more realistic men than men do. Maybe when we write about the "ideal" men who are more like women, it's not what men want to hear, but who cares?
[snipped]
8. Slash writers do write male characters who are more like women. They also write male characters who are more feminine than they are in the canon. They also write characters who are more sensitive than they are in canon, and who talk more about their emotions, sometimes at length. They also focus on one episode or one line that serves as jumping-off point for stories of angst and sap undreamed of in canon.
[snipped]
9. And why not? Slash is about women writing women's sex fantasies for women. It's about men only in the way Penthouse is about women. Sometimes, it's going to be just that groaningly obvious, too; eyeroll-inducing obvious in the same way that James Bond fantasies about fucking bevvies of beauties are obvious. Other times it will be subtle, and revelatory. A lot of times, it's just going to be badly written. Of course, we're all lookin' for the good stuff. But the thing is, whatever it is, it's OUR SANDBOX. We can invite men to join us, but for them to complain that we're NOT DOING IT RIGHT is like, unclear on the concept. Take the "feelings" thing again
[snipped]
10. So the only thing to do when men cross the line between making helpful suggestions and telling us how to write slash, is to put our fingers in our ears. LA LA LA LA LA LA LA--