(no subject)

Ah-HAH! Explanations found. All is serene. Well, not entirely serene, but all is good with the world and my mixer for my other apocabigbangfic (Mixer, not artist, I forgot that) and so on. Apparently she told the mods but they didn't pass it along to me. So, that's cleared up then, I feel better, and she can take her time. I think it's a she. :D

( Russian )

Ugh. And that is about all the Russian I have brain for right now.

Human Target continues to give me fits. Oh the bunnies I have. Most of them are identical so if anything does get written out of this it'll only happen once. But oh the bunnies. They are breeding. Like bunnies. They are breeding and getting out of control. Oh yes.

Two big stories down, several more projects to go. Need to fuss with my writing schedule again, get that back on track. Fortunately today just might be a relatively light day. Then again, I keep saying that and it keeps not happening.

(no subject)

Huh. So, okay. Now I'm thinking about my RP and fictional characters, and how they represent homosexuality, inspired by a rant on homosexuality as represented in RP. Which amuses the shit outta me because of ... well, oh so many reasons. But. Here. My characters who are on various ends of the spectrum. We have:

Nameless. Does not identify as any particular sexuality. Has a girlfriend to whom he is deeply devoted. Has a ... life partner, we'll call him. Mate, in the wolf sense. To whom he is equally devoted who, yes, is male. Boyfriend doesn't apply because it's a little juvenile and husband doesn't apply because they're not married, so, mate stands as well as any. And he and Guy are very devoted to each other. In their own way. They beat each other up. They insult each other constantly. But god help you if you try to get between them or hurt one of them because the other will come down on you like the fury of a thousand hells.

They don't kiss. They don't make love often although it has been known to happen, usually in the intermittent periods where they're both away from civilisation together. Usually Nameless tops although that just seems to be the habit they've gotten into, and 'usually' is probably more like two times out of three. They prefer it rough, but neither one of them is the 'weaker' partner. They just play rough with each other, until they're alone in their house and have been for a year or two, settled into domesticity, into the mind-space where it's just the two fo them and they rarely even speak to each other because they don't need to. They just are. And then, and almost only then, do the tender touches and the soft seductions come out. At least with each other.

Apart from that, Nameless's sexuality is 'yes, please.' He'll have sex with a guy if he finds him attractive; note, not handsome, but attractive. Guy is far from handsome in any conventional sense. He prefers to have sex with people in general who can stand up to him, at least, for more regular sexual partners. For a one night stand he'll bang anything with a hole if he's in the mood. He leers and plays sexual a lot more often than he actually has sex. He doesn't actually complete sexual thoughts much at all when on his own, masturbates more rarely than he gives the impression of, does not do so many one night stands. And yet, compared to the number of relationships he's had, he's had a LOT of one-night stands. THis is mostly because he outlives most of his lovers.

( And oh dear god I wrote three paragraphs on one character's sexuality, this is going to get long. )

And I think that's about it for my characters of alternative sexualities and dear sweet GOD I rambled on and on and on.

And it does seem like I play a lot of bisexual characters, looking at it. But that's mostly because this started as a result of looking at characters of alternative sexualities. I'm trying to think if I have any gay male characters, and I don't think I do, but I do share a pair of lesbians with Kiki. Kendra and Mallory, of which the most vivid is Kendra, and Kendra is definitely a lesbian. More of the adult-hating variety than the man-hating variety, though, since she's mostly a teenager at the time of writing. But, let's see. Other characters.

Elaine? Straight. Maggie? Straight, with a few shenanigans in her past. Pollux? Straight. Eve, my latest? Straight. Irina? Straight. Glaucon? ... hell, never mind, he's not particularly set on species let alone gender, but he comes from a different time, too. Sam Winchester? Straight. Pam? Bi-leaning-towards-men. Or, well, monogamous to her angel. Astrid? Straight. Sascha? Bi, leaning towards women most of the time and men when he's molting. I don't ask. He also has a tendency to flame but that's just to annoy people. Winston? Straight. Kincaid, mostly celibate and mostly straight. He'd be one fo those guys who identifies as a straight man who occasionally sleeps with men. Very occasionally. Victor, straight. Valerie, bi.

The problem here is, by the time I get to this point I have to think about it. And half the time the answer isn't so much gay or straight, it's, "monogamous." Thank you, Kiki. ;) When I make a character, the first thing I think of isn't their sexual inclinations or practices. The first thing I tend to think of is, okay, what is this character's attitude/emotional baseline. Who are the people closest to them. Sometimes I pick a PB. Usually I pick a general set of most common moods. I go through their vocabulary, education level, what they do. And then, after all that, I figure out if they're seeing anyone. And then, after that, if it comes up, I figure out if they're gay or straight or bisexual. Or asexual. And even then, it's rarely that simple. Bi-leaning-towards-women, bi-leaning-towards-men, straight with a history of bi-curious shenanigans. Celibate. Too young to settle/decide. Hasn't settled/decided yet.

I started this list as an exercise in why the idea that people just want to play twinks, or effeminate or butch gay men, or hypersexualized caricatures thereof confounds me. Because someone wrote a rant on white female privilege attitude in RPing (at least I think that's what it was about) and how RP treats homosexuality, most of which I agree with. At least in the places I've seen as far as RP go, the women are all hypersexed and governed by their sex drives to sleep with anything with a cock until they get knocked up by their One True Love and suddenly they become domestic and dormant. Until something else happens to bring the drama. And the men go through various kinds of relationship drama, one of them being the butch guy who embodies most masculine stereotypes, swears a lot, and does the penetrating, while the other one embodies most feminine stereotypes, cries a lot, and is penetrated. The sex is largely the same, and there's a fascination with masturbatory exhibitionism and bondage and/or rape and/or dominance.

And I don't get it. I just don't. The relationships are the same. Every. Single. Damn. One of them. They're the same. Oh, I love this man beyond life. I love my husband beyond reason. Oh, the angst, my husband has gotten beaten up. Or my boyfriend. Or what the hell ever. Oh, tears, crying, comfort sex, the healing power of cock. I'm such a fag. I'm such a twink. Blah blah blah. Oh, cock cock cock cock climax white spunk everywhere, begin again. I don't get it. It's boring. It's flat and it's bland and it's boring. Apart from the whole issue that I'm pretty sure gay males don't actually come in two flavors, butch aggressive jackass and femme weepy dishrag, why on earth would you want to RP the same thing you're seeing everywhere around you? Is it really that fascinating? I don't get it, I really don't. It perplexes me.

And where the hell are all the lesbians? There's five gay couples for every lesbian one.

And where the hell is all the real life cute? The pizza and beer after work? Some of my absolute favorite threads or concepts involve Nameless ordering chinese and kicking back with a beer with Murphy after work and both of them giving each other shit, laughing, and then going up to bed. Screw the sexuality aspect of it, the banter alone is worthwhile. Whatever happened to your lover getting you that one DVD that he or she knows will make you laugh to surprise you on a day that's just crappy, and why doesn't that ever show up in these RPs? At least, not that I've seen.

And why the hell is the NC-17 version of the RP pit of voles just so damn bad at porn?

I'm sure there are aspects of my own characters that are all the same. I've noticed, for example, that I have way more alternative sexuality men than women. And I'm sure there's aspects of my writing that get boring to people who read them. But I don't see how people can conform to that level of sameness all the time and not get bored. I just don't understand it.