fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #488 ]

⌈ Secret Post #488 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 150 secrets from Secret Submission Post #070.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

12: Because all gay people act exactly the same? I hate to break it to you, but when I realised I was attracted to women as well as men, my personality miraculously stayed the same. Revolutionary thought, I know.

15: Just a wild guess, but I suspect sympathetic, interesting characters with passionate dynamics might have something to do with it. Most real BL reads like recycled Harlequin romances.

29: These sorts of secrets never cease to baffle me. What's wrong with loving anime? And also, what does your hobby matter to your professional life?

43: That scene was pretty damn moving, and no mistake. I don't care what other people might have done with it, it's still as moving every time I watch that film.

45: Why deosn't it makes sense? Seemed perfectly understandable to me. I'm not saying it's the best story in the world, but I had no trouble following the plot. But of course it's not possible to like something and still se its flaws; it's either tear it down or put it on a pedestal. *sigh*

48: No, no, it's definitely your fault. You just have to find the reason. unless you're a troll, of course, in that case nevermind.

51: You've got me on your side as well! ...for what it's worth, heh.

52: No, I think it's incredibly cute, and she definitely fancies him - "can't claim to be his bride" indeed! They're side characters, so canon romance would be different than if they were main characters (I don't like canon romance in shônen either, unless it's between side characters).

Not the OP, but... I dunno, I don't think what you said necessarily disagrees with the secret in question. Heck, I think it -supports- it (as far as I'm reading both your post and the secret). If Character A suddenly realizes that he/she is gay for character B, and their personality changes because of it (or to make it work) then... it would be OOC. Because their personality *shouldn't* change just because their sexuality might have.

...or am I misreading what you're trying to say? :/

I thought the OP meant that they were OOC because they weren't written as "real gay men", but I think I might have misunderstood. I must have seen that argument too many times - now I even see it when it isn't there...

Excuse my density, but..... what? What did that have to do with anything in the secret?

I must have misunderstood then, because I thought it was the "you're not writing them as real gay men" argument again.

Oh, no, that wasn't my point. I agree with what you said, actually; there's no "one right way" to write someone as being gay, that's ridiculous.

My issue with OOC has to do with taking characters that are written as cannonically straight and then making them gay. The same thing bothers me when people take cannonically gay characters and make them straight, but that hardly seems to happen. And it wouldn't bother me so much, but it seems like most of the fandoms I'm in or are even aware of, this is the vast majority of the fanbase and finding things I want to read/look at/talk about are next to impossible. I don't mind it being there, I just wish it didn't dominate everything all the time.

Ah, sorry. I realised after rereading your secret that I'd read things into it that weren't there.

My issue with OOC has to do with taking characters that are written as cannonically straight and then making them gay.

Well, people can change, I guess? Sexuality is not an easy thing to define - I didn't realise I could be attracted to women as well as men until I was 21 (about a year before I discovered fanfic and fandom, so I didn't know it wasn't that unusual), and I felt a bit silly, but that's the way it was.

It's not as if sexuality is defined for most characters, though. For the most part we're pretty free to interpret them rather freely, I think.

What annoys me is the "suddenly gay now!" plot twist. I mean, if a character has had a love interest of the opposite sex, what's wrong with acknowledging that and just writing the character as being attracted to both sexes? This either/or mentality really gets on my nerves.

I'll agree with that last point, too. I think human sexuality (and humans in general) are more complicated than that-- too much of our ideology is depicted as black and white, there are lots of shades of gray out there that people don't like to acknowledge or discuss because then things get murky and confusing.

However, just like I don't think all gay people are secretly straight, I also don't think all straight people are secretly gay. I think there are varying degrees of sexual preference; some people are straight as an arrow or gay as can possibly be, but by and large, most people fall into the in-betweens. Most people pick one side or the other as their preference, and probably wouldn't date or sleep with someone that fell outside of that range; however, they can be aware of how attractive someone is, or have a certain chemistry with them, without going so far as to be sexually attracted to them. And sometimes, a person who identifies themselves as being "straight" or "gay" does find someone of the same/opposite gender they are attracted to, but they still identify themselves as being straight/gay. Essentially, there are exceptions to every rule, and I need to get back to my original point.

What bothers me about a large portion of fandom yaoi/slash are the people who disregard characterization altogether (and yeah, a large portion of het/gen fandom does this, too). Yes, with some characters, sexuality isn't ever addressed and could be argued either way; that doesn't bother me. It's when a character that has been portrayed as straight is deemed to be "in denial" or "overcompensating" by fans as an excuse to legitimize their pairing him with another male character. While that can sometimes be interesting to explore, when pretty much the entire fandom is saturated with it, particularly when it's not written/drawn well and the characters are only recognizable by their names, it gets very old for someone who would like to explore other things about them. When that point of view isn't represented in fandom, it can get very frustrating. That's basically what I was getting at, and I apologize for the length of my post.

I think we differ on two main points, really: I don't think characterisation is affected by the gender of whom a character is attracted to, and I don't see a character being attracted to a large number of people of the opposite sex as proof of being straight.

I'm also not much for labels, and tend to disregard them when writing (all my fandoms are AUs or take place in completely different worlds; rarely is the issue of how people with less common sexual preferences are treated dealt with).

[ SECRET POST #488 ]

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