Eccentric Flower:199904/the problem is the boys
From Eccentric Flower
 |
april fifth (again!) the problem is the boys This is the third postcard today, or the second, depending on whether you count the one I posted at 12:05 am last night. Just so you know. I wouldn't want you to miss anything :) I know I only mentioned it a short while ago, comparatively, but if you've read the C story ("My Dear Louis:") in twenty-six, would you answer a question or two for me? Do bear in mind that the story, like all the stories in that section, is mildly smutty. That's why I don't link to them directly. People do get offended over the weirdest things. I figure that if you follow that link, and see the two nude women and the disclaimer, you'll be able to judge for yourself whether to proceed. (Uh-oh, I said "nude women" - now my traffic is going to peak from the search engine hits. Won't they be disappointed when they get here?) Anyway. If you don't plan to read it, that's fine with me. If you do plan to read it but haven't yet, you should skip the rest of this postcard, which contains "spoilers." The rest of the postcard is for those who have already read the story - which, in case you're about to dash off to that link, is 5000 words long and written in deliberately Fieldingesque language, so caveat lector. - - - OK. Did you notice that the gender of the narrator, the letter-writer, is never given? Did you assume the letter-writer was one gender or another without being told? Did it frustrate you to not be told the character's gender? Certain friends, such as Mary Anne, who have corresponded with me about my fiction will already know that I have a bee in my bonnet about this: That I often don't see the gender of my protagonist as very important, and often the audience does. I try to avoid frustrating readers - otherwise they won't read - so I'm slowly teaching myself to break this habit. However, in this case, the avoidance of gender wasn't deliberate. It was an accident, made possible by the format. I knew what gender the character was all along. The sex complicates things. No matter which gender our protagonist H-- is, she/he obviously swings both ways. C-- is very clearly female, and Louis seems, from the name if nothing else, to be male. As it happens ... mentally, I pictured H-- as a male. But on rereading the story, I realized that H-- is a very femme male, at least in the prose style. Part of that is deliberate; the letter is meant to sound flowery and ornate. But e'en so it is not difficult to picture H-- as a delicate fainting creature and Louis as a rugged soldier type - or, at the very least, a dashing Errol Flynn character. I have historically avoided male/male sex scenes. Now, this is not because of any prejudices on my part. For one thing, I like men more when I learn they're gay - it's the straight ones I'm initially suspicious of. For another, um, I know from experience that I have no problem whatsoever with anal penetration. [blush!] That will suffice. I avoid such scenes simply because I'm not sure I can write them well or even believably. I look down the list of upcoming topics for twenty-six and none of them involve m/m sex. I'm in good company - in ten issues, Phil Foglio's XXXenophile, which is very similar in its light tone and treatment, only ever implied m/m sex in two stories, and never showed it. Every other combination of consenting adult cartoon sex, including several aliens and at least one of changeable gender, transformations, masturbations, et cetera appeared there ... making the lack of m/m conspicuous by its absence. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one day I'll start to write a m/m sex scene and find out I do it perfectly well. I don't know. I'm a little frightened to try.
© columbine |
