Why I Write Everything - ANGST! RECRIMINATION! BUTTSEX!

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Title:	Why I Write Everything - ANGST! RECRIMINATION! BUTTSEX!
Creator:	acadine
Date(s):	August 18, 2003
Medium:	LiveJournal post
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External Links:	here, Archived version
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Why I Write Everything - ANGST! RECRIMINATION! BUTTSEX! is a 2003 essay by acadine.

Some of this essay is a response to Why I Write Slash by Ivy Blossom.

acadine: If you can't write het that's non-sexist or not based in sex roles, it is because you are a shitty writer, which usually boils down to the fact that you haven't been looking at life hard enough and haven't been listening to what it tells you.

Excerpts from the Post

There is a strange tendency, on the part of many fanfiction writers in general and slash fanfic writers in particular, not to own one's own writing. This is counter to the popular notion of "owning" writing - the kind of emotionality and pride that has us going going into fits of passion and rage if someone plagiarizes our fic, or even (in some cases) "rips off" our ideas.

What I mean is ownership of what one has written; recognition of its truth.

There's a phrase that people use a lot, especially in conjunction with non-con, rapefic, incest, RPS, and so on - taboo fic, basically - "it's just fiction".

Well, yes, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Every single word you have written and will write is true. All of them. Even the fiction. Especially the fiction. This is true whether you are an extremely skilled writer or a hack; a skillful writer is simply conveys more truth, more strongly, and in fewer words.

Every character you have ever written is you. Someone you are, someone you have been, someone you could be or will be. This is why I find the whole tendency to claim "oh, I'm so [XYZ character]!" purely laughable (although it can be funny) - you're all of them, dumbass.

Everything your characters have thought, you have thought, even if only in the writing of it, and the editing to make it beleivable.

It's all true, 100%, and it's all you.

Yes, in my case, this means that I'm a man and a woman, straight and bi and gay and largely asexual and wholey oversexed; that I've been a rapist and a rape victim, a drug addict and a drug dealer, a werewolf struggling with the beast, a kid who wanted to fuck his brother because it was the only way he could get intimacy and the brother doing the fucking, a math nerd and a mathphobe, an angry Hindu girl, a transgendered shapeshifter, someone obsessed with the idea of a person and full of regret for a wasted life, a girl who lusted after the adult world (literally) and a pair of elegant and noble perverts, a mystic who craved the numinous and utterly failed to get the point, an overconfident lesbian bitch who hated The System(tm), the victim of a relationship that wasn't, a girl painfully self-conscious about her body and a girl who reveled in being female, a woman only comfortable in her head and one supremely comfortable in her body, someone capable of destroying themselves utterly and reforming theirself from the ground up, and a whole host of other things beside - and that's just in this fandom, which I've only been in for a month in a half.

Obviously, I can't (in the real world) be all of these things simultaneously or even serially; but I'm able to write them because I've lived a lot, because I have had experiences that are common to the experiences of these people, and because to be a good writer, I have made myself develop an empathy to as much of human experience as I can.

This is why people who say things like "I can't write male/female/a dog's POV" irk me; doubly so for the people who say things like "oh, male/female stereotypes are always there in het". By now you have perhaps realized that this essay/rant/thing is part of my reaction to ivyblossom's explanation of |why she writes slash, which for the sake of honesty I will admit made me want to tear my desk in two.

This is why I have an overwhelming and tremendous hatred of the methodology most slash writers and most het writers, and the conventions of both slash and het - yes, slash is often just as guilty of this as het is.

If you are relying on the default in any of your writing, and that includes fanon, the pat 2D characterization stereotypes that pervade (slash) fandom, and the deeper slash archetypes, of which rivalslash is but one, you are a shitty writer. Period. End of story. This is as true for het as it is for slash, and I honestly don't think that anyone who blames this sort of stereotypical characterization on "societal gender roles" can be a good writer. There's no honesty in that, no truth - Ivy's take on het, and the fandom's take on het - is basically an excuse.

And what I think about good writing, any writing worth doing, is this: it needs no excuses.

Comments at the Post

[moonlight69]:

Wow. This is truly a beautifully written argument, and I find myself pretty much in complete agreement with it. *hugs* You rock.

[neotoma]:

Damn, you've got great counter-arguements to the slasher arguements that piss me off.

[dragonelle_fics]:

Thank you for posting this. You've touched on a lot of things that I've been thinking in private, and expressed them so much more eloquently than I ever could. (Particularly: No one really seems comfortable bringing up the notion that, perhaps, the reason many female readers aren't interested in female is because they don't like females or don't like being female...) You've also given me food for thought, which at 2am will no doubt result in mighty bouts of insomnia. But the good kind.

[rivetcat]:

as people have already said, thank you for saying these things. crap stereotyping and prefab characterization is no cooler in the fandom than anywhere else, and it's good to be reminded sometimes. and you have shamed me into beginning my next Narcissa!fic, just so you know.

[musesfool]:

I think you make a fabulous argument here on many levels. I find the disinterest in so many female characters criminal - I expect it of men, but not of other women.

I just wanted to clarify this one point, though:

This is why people who say things like "I can't write male/female/a dog's POV" irk me;

The thing is, it's not male/female/dog that bothers me, but there are some characters who baffle me, or who appear opaque, or who I just plain don't like and can't get into their heads. It's not a gender issue (the list includes Aragorn, Arwen, Jean Grey, Storm, Professor Xavier, Buffy Summers and Harry Potter, to name a few), it's a *character* issue, and I think that needs to be stressed - characters are *more* than their gender or their sexual orientation, or who they're fucking (or not-fucking).

The stereotypes you speak of are sadly prevalent, and I'd say slashers are just as guilty as het writers of misogyny and female-character-bashing/ignoring, but they couch it in terms of politics, saying they're subverting gender paradigms and traditional relationship roles by writing about two men (strangely, I never see this argument used by writers of femslash), and yet I'd say at least 75% of slash is guilty of feminizing one of the men in the story, though sometimes it's not as overt as making one guy 'delicate' or 'emotional'.

How is that not conforming to stereotypes? How is that not rewriting a queer relationship as a *traditional* *stereotypical* straight one? How is that subversive?

Eh, I'm just a disgruntled fan who writes a lot of het, as well as slash, and while I understand the argument that certain things may be too close or feel too private to write into a story (at least, before one is confident one can separate oneself out from the characters), I've never seen being distant from the characters as a successful writing strategy. You have to be close, to live in them and let them live in you, to be a successful writer.

Huh.

I hope that made sense.

Anyhow, a big slice of Word Pie on the post.

[mollymoon]:

Messrs Jeud and Frung concur completely. The three of us are lighting cigars in your honor as I type this. We applaud your honesty.

Now all we need is for Oprah to have an episode dedicated to slash writers who can't accept that what they write is a fetish. Or perhaps have Dr. Ruth host a session on masturbation so they can all learn to love themselves through orgasm.

That being said, there is nothing *wrong* with slash as long as you know why you are writing it. As a college professor once told me "We are all the heroes of our own lifestories." Such a simple statement that has meanings on so many different levels. The more you think about it, the more it rears its head in everyday life and in writing.

Good on you again for a great rant!

[musesfool]:

That's the problem - you know how we say men think too much with their dangly bits? Apparently many slash writers think too much *about* those dangly bits, and forget about the nice neat tucked away bits they themselves have.

[aesc]:

This was a lovely essay (and I shall thank MHC all the rest of my days for referring me to it in her LJ.) This manages to encompass nearly everything I detest about bad fanfiction -- a list that has a accumulated over the years: the cavalierness, the reliance on stereotypes, and the fanaticism that leads most slash writers into holding up the default/norm even as they proudly proclaim their rebellion *against* it. The question of intellectual/emotional ownership that you raised was one I've never really considered in that light before. But now, looking back at my investment in my writing and that of others (as a beta, friend, reviewer, etc.), I think I have a new paradigm, as it were -- oh, god, meta! -- for evaluating how a work appeals to me as something generated from a writer's experience and personality, as opposed to just flung out onto the page with a disclaimer and a "its just fic, flamez ok!!!!" note.

[salazaar]:

I own my writing, but for me this doesn't mean talking about my sexuality or my own life experiences. It just means saying that all my characters are very much alive in me, and I adore them (even the awful ones) dearly. And I'm determined, within my limited skills, to do them all the justice they deserve. And they are first and foremost characters for me, not Representatives of the Gender. So I don't feel the need to point to autobiographical details to justify or "own" my work. Or to explain them by reference to my personal life. There's no need. I don't think that the most interesting things about me are what sort of genitals I prefer to play with or the places I've travelled to in my life. And I certainly don't think these things are necessarily relevant to my stories. Because whatever it is that motivates my fics -- what motivates anybody's fics, in other words -- comes from something deeper and more idiosyncratic than that. Just the "me-ness" of me, for lack of a better way to put it, and when you think about it, that's a far more personal and scary thing that I'm sharing -- that we're all sharing, by daring to write -- than whom we've fucked and what sorts of people we find attractive.

[justacat]:

Or that just maybe the reason these straight women like the idea of slash so much is that, really, they'd kind of like to have a dick and be able to fuck people with it and get blowjobs.

I'm a straight woman, and I'm willing to cop to this one, no problem. I'd love to have a dick - and a prostate for that matter - at least for one night, and I'd love to know what it's like to be able to get off like a man - stick it in a hole, move it around, boom (is that a stereotype?).

Sex between men seems to have elements that traditionally have been more "forbidden" for women. Sex for men seems has always seemed to me to be ... well, *easier*, from a purely physical perspective, than it is for women – less complicated, quicker, more raw physicality, more strength. Most women I know feel that for them to get pleasure and enjoyment out of sex takes more work than it does for men – more concentration, more time, the right "mood" (i.e., mental state). A quote from one of my favorite dS fics (female author): "That night, we make love like the first time--animalistically, so hard it almost hurts. I find myself glorying in the strength of Ray's body, the tight grip of his hands. This attraction to strength is, I think, the constitutive part of my sexuality--the harder body, the higher proportion of muscle mass, the potential for equal physical fierceness." Men seem to be able to get off with much less fuss, and I think the physicality, the rawness, the idea of losing oneself in sex the way men seem to (again another stereotype?), is incredibly appealing.

As is the idea of having a dick, and being able to fuck people with it. And of being able to be the fucker or the fuckee or the sucker or the suckee (some gay porn star - I think he might even have identified himself as straight! - once said this about why he preferred sex with men - more options). I don't think I really want to *be* a man - but yeah, part of why I read slash is because there's part of me that really really really wants to have sex like a man, to have a dick and all that comes along with it in this society.

perhaps, the reason many female readers aren't interested in female characters is because they don't like females or don't like being female

This one I'm reluctant to cop to. I don't *think* it's true ... but way down deep inside your comment makes me squirm, suggesting that there might actually be more elements of truth to it than I'm willing to acknowledge. As ptyx said over on my lj, commenting on my response to Ivy, "I'm not sure I like it, but it's good to know, anyway."

Very thought provoking post! Thanks!

[ex_mommybir]:

I think when I first started writing slash, back in the dark ages (i.e., the fall of 1998), I'd've been willing largely to cop to ivyblossom's explanation for why I did it. It seemed to me there were things I wanted to say about my own experience as a (mostly) heterosexual woman in a monogamous relationship that could be more easily and effectively said by writing about a homosexual relationship.

Nowadays... I'm not brave enough to come out and say, as you did, -- No one really seems comfortable bringing up the notion that, perhaps, the reason many female readers aren't interested in female characters is because they don't like females or don't like being female, or that just maybe the reason these straight women like the idea of slash so much is that, really, they'd kind of like to have a dick and be able to fuck people with it and get blowjobs. These are not arguments I have seen very much of.

No one ever brings up the idea that, well, if you are so uncomfortable writing about "your" sexuality because it's so "personal", it just might not be your sexuality after all, or you might not be so comfortable with it, or that might not be the person you are anymore.

I can, however, applaud you for saying what I have thought, and said in private, a great many times over the past two years or more. I can mention that a great many people have told me they won't read het fanfic, but they *will* read *my* het fanfic, and my theory is that they like it because I write it based not on cliches and conventions but on *my own experience,* and my far from conventional marriage.

[switchknife]:

So exquisite, so passionate. I treasure your post. Fiction is indeed the more sublime truth, because it synthesizes/bypasses/overwhelms/underwhelms reality--I loved that you mentioned this. In 'reality' (subjective term that it is--and in itself nothing more than a gathering of weaker fictions) we fence ourselves into convenient labels--but of course, there are spaces within us beyond labels, and by shapeshifting in the world of fiction, we acknowledge our own multiplicity.

) I love you. This is such a gorgeous post--if only everyone, everyone in this fandom could read it.

In terms of your autobiographical info, it's remarkably similar to mine--I identify as a lesbian, but technically am bi--have/had TG tendencies, and currently identify as genderless or having a malleable gender--gender being a social and personal construct. And non-con fantasies from the aggressor's point of view--yes. And have been a victim in actuality--yes. Am fascinated with the beauty of pre-pubescent boys--yes. But fall in love with older women--yes.

Perhaps the reason we seek to justify writing, be it slash or het, is because we (most of us) cannot accept that human beings contradict themselves--internally. Why, I do contain multitudes--why then can I not play with identity? Why can one not play with identity as a writer, forge/destroy one's own, rebuild/rebirth another's? Fiction is beautiful, at its finest, and beyond justification.

At the same time, I still believe that regardless of the fandom's different views on this, I'm glad that writers write--even if writer X's views contradict mine. Quite often, I find myself humming with joy at a person's work, and cringing when I read their justification of it. :) In the end, variety is the spice of life, and I shamefully admit to simply ignoring a person's notes on their writing in favor of reading the writing itself. After all, human beings have made a history out of misunderstanding themselves. And, Acadine, and as you said: Let the fiction speak.

[alara rogers]:

I've been known to refer to myself as "slash's loyal opposition." I *like* slash, I enjoy reading and writing it with the right pairings, buuuut... slash subverts the dominant gender paradigm? Hell no. I mean maybe if we saw more of the smaller, more pacifistic, less traditionally heroic of the pair being a big ol' butch and doing the Big Hero up the butt, or for that matter if there was less anal sex in general and more stuff that doesn't closely resemble het genital intercourse, I might start to buy into this argument. But so often, slash is about mapping a heterosexual relationship onto two men. And the reason we don't notice it until it becomes egregious is that most fanfic writers who're willing to work with het have a. never been in an actual romance in their lives or b. are not willing to write about actual romance, but must map some Harlequin-esque fantasy onto the characters. So we're used to the *het* relationships in fanfic being over-the-top, bearing no resemblance to actual het relationships in real life, and therefore don't notice that the slash is behaving like real-life het instead of real-life gay.

It's like the Harlequin writers took over het, so the people who would theoretically have been capable of writing a reasonable-looking heterosexual relationship threw up their arms, went, "Het has too much sexist baggage!" and went and wrote their het relationships with two guys instead. Like guys going, "You're *mine*" and this is all gooshily romantic, when in real life homosexuals are much, much more likely to be accepting of open relationships than hets are. Like anal sex being the be-all and end-all of sexual activities, the gold standard that makes it "real" sex. Like men ending up in brothels, selling their bodies, getting raped, or in general being treated as if there is no fundamental difference between the life experiences of men and women, despite the fact that in *real* life all those things are much, much more likely to happen to women and the older the guy gets the less likely it becomes. (60-year-old bald men as sex slaves? Uh... no.)

Badly written het is all over the place. And maybe that *is* part of the reason people bug out of writing het. We all know, or are, someone who won't write an OC because so many OCs are Mary Sues. Fanfic writers don't necessarily like to be challenged. A lot of us do what's easy. But badly written het is BADLY WRITTEN, and says not a damn thing about het in itself. Do we assume that badly written comedy means all comedy is bad? Hell no.

Me personally, I write slash because no one seems to want to create a series in which there's a sympathetic villain with reasonable ideological or personality conflicts with the hero and the villain and the hero are of opposite sexes. Or for that matter a series in which the hero and the hero's second-in-command are constantly feuding for ideological reasons, not "you're a jerk!" "oh, you know you want me" "dream on!" reasons, but they are of opposite sexes. If one of Blake and Avon had been a woman, or one of Picard and Q, or one of Magneto and Xavier, hell yes I would be writing het. It's just that the kind of relationship that turns me on is snarling conflict that's *about* ideas and not sexual tension (which is why John/Aeryn doesn't quite do it for me.) Closest I've ever seen is Avon/Servalan, and Servalan, though really cool, is not remotely a sympathetic villain. Janeway/Chakotay *could* have done that, and didn't, which I think is partly why I hate that pairing so very much-- such a close-but-no-cigar thing.

And yeah, what's up with the women-hating? I get that straight gals don't find imagining sexy women to be having sex nearly as much fun as bi me does, but what's wrong with sympathetic women being pals to the sexy men who are having sex with each other?

[malachan]:

Very interesting, though I agree with about 10% of what you say, tops.

[snipped]

I'm not meaning to be insulting here, but it did sound like you were trumpeting your own view of writing as valid and reinforcing it by decrying others' as 'shitty'.

The default is an inescapable part of society. To ignore it is to see society through a tinted glass. If defaults exist, why should they be ignored in any writing that has pretensions to realism?

[snowgrouse]:

Hmm... so many things to think about and reply to:). I think the main reasons even a lot of good writers don't write more about the women are a) boring female characters in canon, vastly outnumbered by interesting male characters and their interactions b) the mortal fear of Mary Sue-ing the female character even when you aren't c) fear of gender politics (as in succumbing to stereotypes or just plain revulsion towards politicizing fic as there is enough of gender politics in one's own life, which is where I'm coming from).

I think that the major reason people separate themselves from their stories is the amount of *twats* out there who insist on identifying the writer 100% with their characters. As in, writer A writes rapefic, so she must condone rape. Writer B writes about a psychopath, so she must go around killing people in her spare time. *tears at hair*

I don't like misogyny in fic, and want to strangle anyone writing female characters as jealous bitches because they're in the way of the writer's beloved m/m relationship. Jealous Scully, anyone? However, I've looked at your argument on the "doesn't write females because hates being female and is disinterested in one's own set of genitals" from different angles and can't say that would apply to me. Especially the hating to be a female bit. To me it sounds like yet another heterosexist stereotype, if you see what I mean--saying This Is What Women Think. Sure, it's easier to be a man, and writing about the opposite gender's mind and body is interesting, but I don't think a lot of writers actually *hate* being female if they write m/m. I'd say it's more about genuine disinterest in a lot of female characters (especially when there are so few well-written canon females around even today), and seeing the most intense stuff happening to/between the guys.

Personally, I'm 50%/50% bisexual but I find it almost impossible to find f/f or het that I'd actually like. I may get off on visual lesbian/het porn, and fancy women, and be goddamn homosocial in my relations, but it's really hard to find f/f or m/f fic that would work for me emotionally or in terms of sexual titillation. Well-written m/m is what I most enjoy reading, and that's definitely not because of any obsession with dangly bits, just interest in those particular characters. I don't know, maybe I'm in the wrong fandoms.

This is not to say that there isn't far too much conscious chickening out and misogyny in slash writing. IMHO a lot of writers just aren't interested in the women, plain as that, but there are some who make it quite clear that they find female sexuality repulsive. I just wouldn't make *too* many generalizations about this, no matter how common it is.

[much snipped]

[saraslash]:

Well, I obviously can't speak for all slash fans, but my liking it has nothing to do with being afraid my sexuality. It's about celebrating my sexuality! I think finding out what turns me on and embracing that is a really important part of sexuality. I also enjoy het, but lately I haven't been finding as many het pairings that really intrigue me. I also enjoy f/f slash, though well-written femslash is hard to find (in the Buffyverse fandom, anyway)--therefore, I'm more likely to find and read it in a book than online. For me, though, the real reason I enjoy a pairing, whatever the gender of the characters, is because there's something about those two *people* that clicks, as a couple. And I also love being a woman. (Because, dude, having a penis would *suck,* in the non-good connotation of the word. I'll take periods over erections and painful kicks in the balls anyday.)

[tanacawyr]:

You've written this all out so well, but the problem is that it's all stuff I agree with, and stuff that if I let myself think about too much (and PLEASE do not tell me I'm full of it here, this shit is hard and heavy and not fun), I'll just eat the business end of a shotgun or else at the very least stay in bed and never get out.

These are NOT FUN ISSUES. Being bisexual, lesbian, transgendered, or probably something else that has no fucking definition is NOT FUN. Spending your goddamned life wondering WTF your problem is is NOT FUN, especially when, in the midst of all of those supposedly like, oh-so-progressive self-questioning, you still have to manage to hold down a job, get an education, and pay your fucking bills.

I tend not to write much het, no. I've only felt it come naturally for me in one fandom -- SG-1. Sam Carter's the only woman character I've ever seen that I've identified with enough to be able to write her, or to even want to. Geeky, funny, skinny, smart as hell, and a little uncomfortable in her skin. (Just a titch, or is that self-projection? Who cares?)

The reason why I don't write het isn't quite the same as, "It's impossible to get rid of the gender dynamics." It's more that it's so much fucking work, and it's so damned depressing, and even thinking about it makes me want to eat buckshot on some days, and I'm tired and I'm fucking busy, and I just don't feel like it, okay?! Jesus fucking Christ, when do I just get to relax and enjoy myself? I have to be "on" as Little Miss Gender Subversive all the time?

I don't think that's what you're saying here, but that's what I've always wanted to yell in the face of people who demand to know why I don't write women. Being a woman is a serious pain in the ass in this culture, and most of my life would have been easier if I'd just been a man. And yes, it would definitely be fun to have a dick -- I'm not sure what I want to be, though. I think I just want to be a woman with a dick instead of a man.

I mean, what the hell do you CALL that? "Come out!"

[much snipped]