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Mar. 18th, 2010 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeHuh. 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.
Samael, or my Sorcerer, is mostly male for the sake of convenience and because it balances out. I'm female, he's male. And, at least as far as I've read, most Sorcerers in fiction are male. His sexuality is, lots, and yes, but it has more to do with a few things: control over others, fulfillment of desire, escape/release of energy or tension. He switches from top to bottom, as the term goes, depending on what suits his mood at the time, and the frequency is usually 55/45 or so.
I'm... not even sure how to describe Samael's sexuality. Or sexual history. He's been in love several times, twice, notably with men, once, more calmly, with a woman, and he eventually settled down with a woman. He's also fooled around with... guh, so many people. Men and women. A lot.
The Covenant Boys, mine are Tyler and Pogue and Chase, and half of this I suspect is just awkward writing on the part of the movie writers. Because I know at least one scene I'm pretty sure was meant to come across as bullying and instead came across as a teenaged guy incredibly insecure about his very repressed homosexuality. Which might have been how it was intended, too, hey! I don't know. But, man. The slash wrote itself.
My Tyler... is mostly straight. With two notable exceptions. He isn't even that into, sexually, the other two boys, although they have his fierce devotion as well as all the rest of his sort of brothers. One of the notable exceptions is Reid. Which started out as fooling around just, in the discovering sexuality ways that young to mid teen boys do. Hey, we're naked, ooh, this feels good, hey, what's that that's happening here. Etc. And it felt good. And it felt good, and safe, to do it with Reid. He trusted Reid. Cared about him, as his friend, and also kind of maybe as something more. The longer it went on with neither of them in any other serious relationship, the more they turned to each other until, in some timelines and/or stories, they made that slip from best friends who fool around to actual lovers. And that was that.
And he doesn't really top or bottom. He switches 50/50. All kinds of positions, whatever, and sometimes there's fooling around that results in bumped elbows or bumped heads on the edges of things or almost falling off the bed or whatever. And sometimes things slip or get dropped. He's kind of adorably silly that way. He's a slob, and when he sleeps he sleeps pretty deeply, whoever's in the bed with him. But he's sensitive to his lover's sleep pattersn as well.
My Pogue is mostly bisexual, leaning towards monogamy. Which means he has a few very strong relationships. He doesn't differentiate about his attractions, but he's quiet about his attractions, so it's hard to say if he has a gender bias. He loves deeply and strongly. When he sleeps, he takes over the bed and makes a mess of him and his long hair and probably snores those loud, wet, rolling snores. He's also a bed furnace. His lovers don't seem to mind.
Pogue... out of most of my guys who sleep with guys, is about the only one with a position preference. And it's not even a strong preference, just a fondness for being bent on his hands and knees and ridden that way. I have no idea where it came from, and I don't really ask. He is, however, up for just about anything. As long as it's healthy and consensual. He enjoys having his girlfriend astride him and just taking their time like that. He enjoys being face to face with his male lovers and engaging in slow frottage sex. He really enjoys going down on his lovers, male and female, and making them moan. He just enjoys being with people. He's as likely to enjoy coming up behind his lover and hugging them and just snuggling as he is to enjoy the sex itself. He's a very mellow kinda guy.
And he's not effeminate. Apart from the fact that he's Taylor bloody Kitsch, god of muscles, he's just not. He's got that kind of guy-type obliviousness. He conforms to a few masculine stereotypes, riding and working with motorcycles, keeping in serious physical condition, playing video games, munching junk food, watching the occasional football, playing pool, drinking beer. He also enjoys reading and hanging out on the porch at the Vineyard just to hang out. He's just a guy. THat's how he thinks of himself, anyway.
Chase... man. Chase is so broken I don't even know where to start. Chase is in love with Caleb because he believes Caleb is his salvation, he believes Caleb can save him. Somehow. Whether it's by taking his power or by giving him the example to look up to or just by dragging him out of his mental hellhole, something. Chase, my Chase, suffers from Borderline Personality disorder. With all the sexual and relational difficulties that that brings. I'm not going to go into them here, there are other sites you can look at to research them, but I will say that BPD plays havoc on his ability to have any kind of relationship, at least until he gets into therapy for it. Talk therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, I believe I got all those terms right. And then, slowly, over a period of at least three to five years, he builds a normal relationship. Or a good beginning to one. In one line, with a guy, and in another line, with a girl.
Let me repeat that for those of you in the cheap seats: It takes him three to five years to approach anything like a normal and healthy relationship with the person who becomes his lover. And his friends, for that matter. Three to five years of therapy sessions at least once a week, trying out medications, late night phone calls to his therapist... really, phone calls at all hour of the day and night, at least one entire week of staying full time with a therapist, and lots and lots of patience from his friends. And lots of patience. And watchfulness.
As far as sex goes, I don't even know how to untangle his sexuality from his other issues, so I won't ... even address it. His sexuality is very much tied in with how healthy he is at the time in other ways.
Paul Kingdom, who I wrote for a game a long time ago, is quite cheerfully bisexual. Leaning towards men, I think, actually. He had a few relationships, the ones in game he had were with Jack, who I think he really did love but wasn't in love with. With Caitlin, who he was very much in love with. And with Peter, now his husband, and with whom he is deeply in love.
Paul is just sexual. He'll top, he'll bottom, he'll give head or receive, he'll jump around the living room naked because he thinks it's funny. He and Peter have, apparently, "naked husband time." Which as much involves pouncing each other and wrestling around naked on the bed and tickling and biting of ankles and laughing and scruffling hair and raspberrying of tummies as it does actual sex. It's how they love. They're very playful about it.
Paul and Peter are just the old married couple. They take care of each other. They cook, both of them really enjoy cooking, they clean because neither of them likes to live in a pigsty. They buy each other little gifts, both thoughtful ones and needed ones. And sometimes just silly ones to make each other laugh. They hold each other after a long, hard day at work. They argue, sometimes. They forget to put the toilet seat down when Dee comes over to stay and then she yells at them for it. Or more like calls from the bathroom to tease them. They curl up on the couch and watch History channel and Discovery channel and mock the history because thye're reborn gods and they do that. They eat popcorn, throw popcorn, and belch soda. And they wear their wedding rings with pride, and talk about their husbands with great big beaming smiles.
Dee
Dee's an odd thing. Dee's very determined in the way she loves, in some ways. Not pushy, but determined. She'll hold onto a love for a long time even if the person doesn't seem to be in love with her or willing to act on it. Sometimes it pays off. Other times, less so.
Dee is bisexual probably more 60/40 leaning towards men. She's had a few flings with girls in her life but only one real solid relationship with a woman. This may have something to do with the fact that she's had three real solid relationships in general, but hey. And she loves them all. She loved Marek deeply, fiercely, more than she expected to. And it hurt her when he left. She tried to move on because, after all, he was ten years older than her and she had kind of sandbagged him with that in the very beginning of theri relationship, and that wasn't very nice of her at ALL. Or very conducive to trust. But it was her first real relationship, and she was young, and she wanted it to last forever. Whether or not it would have... no idea. She was very young.
And then she met and fell in love with Caleb, yes, of the Covenant. And she didn't do anything about it because Caleb's heart was elsewhere. Over time, and patience, she came to be a good friend to him, which was about all she was aiming for anyway. And in one 'verse, they did become lovers. And she was always endlessly patient with him. He did a lot to settle her down, really.
And then, too, she met and kind of not so much fell in love with Irene, someone else's original character? It was a lot more like Reid and Tyler, up above. They met. They became friends. Both of them were in love with other people but they hung out because they liked each other, and because they were good friends. They roomed together because it was convenient. They had sex together because it felt good, physically and emotionally. Neither of them was the dominant sexual partner, it was pretty much equal, and it was mostly calm and quiet and luxurious, as far as I can tell. And eventually, when the object of Irene's affections finally noticed her, Dee let her go. Because it made her friend happy. Of course, eventually they worked out an arrangement whereby all four of them were together, because apart from two cross-corners, everyone was deeply in love with everyone else, and even the cross-corners were close friends, and so that worked out possibly as well as it could have. Their sexual relations vary from the plain, simple lovemaking, to the fairly elaborate dominance play scenarios. About 75% of the time, it seems, Dee is the submissive one. Who dominates her depends mostly on who's around when they're discussing the scenario to play out. And when she dominates it tends to be slow and pleasurable torture.
Dee's sexuality is much informed by her family life. She grew up with one set of parents, a mother and father, and another set of parents, a father who was single for a while and then married to another man, and no one either overtly or unconsciously told her that this was in any way not okay. She also was raised by the incarnation of Ishtar, whose attitude towards sex was, like Paul's, as long as it's consensual and healthy. (Ishtar was tempered pretty much by her mortal host; as those who read mythology know, the gods aren't always picky about consensual or healthy). She was raised with condoms in her purse, taught to be safe when she had fun, and to communicate with her partner at all levels and in all stages. If she wasn't sure about something, she was taught to ask. And this translates both to her adventurous sex life and to her relationships.
Stephen
Stephen is a Dresden Files OC who is very, very happily married to Solace, the daughter of Margaret LeFay and Justin DuMorne (long, long story). Stephen was raised by a very repressive, rigid man who believed homosexuality was a sin and a perversion and that his son should marry for profit and advantage, not for love, and should have affairs for sexual pleasure but never publicise them. Stephen loved one woman once, slept with her, then had the relationship blow up entirely when she miscarried, though she didn't tell him at the time, and after their drunken orgiastic and impromptu marriage. He didn't have another serious relationship again (though he had a string of quiet, business-like affairs) till he met another woman in the course of his business who was as sharp-minded as he (if not more so, he would say), very sexually adventurous, with a phenomenally strong personality and yet small inclination to be forceful with it.
Shortly before he met Solace he met and hired Max. Max is his bodyguard and his security chief, and as such is probably the closest to him of all his employees and would be even if they weren't lovers. With Max, he learned, little by little, to unbend. Somehow, something in him responded to something in Max that maintained both the spirit as well as the letter of the honor he had been raised with, and without sacrificing merriment or joy or pleasure in life. He learned how to unbend. And it's probably because of this that he learned how to be in love with Solace, and eventually married her.
Stephen, along with the stereotype that men in power (he's the head of his own not inconsiderable company) prefer to give up power in the bedroom, most often is the submissive partner to both Max and Solace. More often, a bit, to Solace than Max. I don't really knwo why this is, I haven't asked, it just seems to be a part of his personality. I think because underneath the authority that he presents he's really very unsure of himself, insecure. He knows, intellectually, very much of what he's doing both in his personal and in his professional life. He's just lacking some kind of quality of being sure of himself, so he's always glad to cede up control because he trusts them implicitly. Later in life, probably, this evens out, but I've not done much with him there. (Solace's mun considers that they both switch control more often than he and Max, and I wouldn't disagree. It sounds right.)
Stephen and Solace, after they were married, continued to be sexually adventurous to the point where they regularly invited trusted third parties to their bed, either trusted because they were well-paid professionals or because they were people known to both Stephen and Solace. Most of the time these were heterosexual encounters for Stephen and either hetero or homo?sexual encounters for Solace (yet to be confirmed with mun.) Until Max. Stephen found himself becoming more and more curious about the homosexual aspect of things, consulted with Solace, and she both suggested and approved of some things and this resulted in them inviting Max to their bed. The first night it was both men on Solace, and it wasn't for some time that Stephen gingerly accepted penetrative sex by another man. Gingerly, pretty much because of the potential pain aspect. He likes his pleasure to be pleasurable! After that things went pretty well smoothly until Stephen realized he was also falling in love with Max. Being the attentive husband that he was, he consulted Solace about it, and she counseled him. For the most part, any time he finds himself confronted with emotional confusion on that level, he consults with Solace, and he trusts her to steer him right, or at least to help him talk it through and figure out what to do. Eventually, Max died in the course of his duties, and Stephen was devastated. After a hundred plus years of friendship and love, it went very hard with him, and he likely wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for his beloved wife.
There's another verse entirely, since both Stephen and Max could exist in the Dresden Files world proper since they're not connected to any main characters, where Stephen never met Solace and only met Max while Max was working in a brothel. There, Stephen is much more in control and much more dominant, but it's the kind of control and dominance that can be easily shattered (well, for a given value of easily) because it has nothing behind it but strength of will and rigid, warped thinking. He demands control, and mostly, Max cedes it to him. That verse is also known for being we-won't-go-there icky.
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.
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.
Samael, or my Sorcerer, is mostly male for the sake of convenience and because it balances out. I'm female, he's male. And, at least as far as I've read, most Sorcerers in fiction are male. His sexuality is, lots, and yes, but it has more to do with a few things: control over others, fulfillment of desire, escape/release of energy or tension. He switches from top to bottom, as the term goes, depending on what suits his mood at the time, and the frequency is usually 55/45 or so.
I'm... not even sure how to describe Samael's sexuality. Or sexual history. He's been in love several times, twice, notably with men, once, more calmly, with a woman, and he eventually settled down with a woman. He's also fooled around with... guh, so many people. Men and women. A lot.
The Covenant Boys, mine are Tyler and Pogue and Chase, and half of this I suspect is just awkward writing on the part of the movie writers. Because I know at least one scene I'm pretty sure was meant to come across as bullying and instead came across as a teenaged guy incredibly insecure about his very repressed homosexuality. Which might have been how it was intended, too, hey! I don't know. But, man. The slash wrote itself.
My Tyler... is mostly straight. With two notable exceptions. He isn't even that into, sexually, the other two boys, although they have his fierce devotion as well as all the rest of his sort of brothers. One of the notable exceptions is Reid. Which started out as fooling around just, in the discovering sexuality ways that young to mid teen boys do. Hey, we're naked, ooh, this feels good, hey, what's that that's happening here. Etc. And it felt good. And it felt good, and safe, to do it with Reid. He trusted Reid. Cared about him, as his friend, and also kind of maybe as something more. The longer it went on with neither of them in any other serious relationship, the more they turned to each other until, in some timelines and/or stories, they made that slip from best friends who fool around to actual lovers. And that was that.
And he doesn't really top or bottom. He switches 50/50. All kinds of positions, whatever, and sometimes there's fooling around that results in bumped elbows or bumped heads on the edges of things or almost falling off the bed or whatever. And sometimes things slip or get dropped. He's kind of adorably silly that way. He's a slob, and when he sleeps he sleeps pretty deeply, whoever's in the bed with him. But he's sensitive to his lover's sleep pattersn as well.
My Pogue is mostly bisexual, leaning towards monogamy. Which means he has a few very strong relationships. He doesn't differentiate about his attractions, but he's quiet about his attractions, so it's hard to say if he has a gender bias. He loves deeply and strongly. When he sleeps, he takes over the bed and makes a mess of him and his long hair and probably snores those loud, wet, rolling snores. He's also a bed furnace. His lovers don't seem to mind.
Pogue... out of most of my guys who sleep with guys, is about the only one with a position preference. And it's not even a strong preference, just a fondness for being bent on his hands and knees and ridden that way. I have no idea where it came from, and I don't really ask. He is, however, up for just about anything. As long as it's healthy and consensual. He enjoys having his girlfriend astride him and just taking their time like that. He enjoys being face to face with his male lovers and engaging in slow frottage sex. He really enjoys going down on his lovers, male and female, and making them moan. He just enjoys being with people. He's as likely to enjoy coming up behind his lover and hugging them and just snuggling as he is to enjoy the sex itself. He's a very mellow kinda guy.
And he's not effeminate. Apart from the fact that he's Taylor bloody Kitsch, god of muscles, he's just not. He's got that kind of guy-type obliviousness. He conforms to a few masculine stereotypes, riding and working with motorcycles, keeping in serious physical condition, playing video games, munching junk food, watching the occasional football, playing pool, drinking beer. He also enjoys reading and hanging out on the porch at the Vineyard just to hang out. He's just a guy. THat's how he thinks of himself, anyway.
Chase... man. Chase is so broken I don't even know where to start. Chase is in love with Caleb because he believes Caleb is his salvation, he believes Caleb can save him. Somehow. Whether it's by taking his power or by giving him the example to look up to or just by dragging him out of his mental hellhole, something. Chase, my Chase, suffers from Borderline Personality disorder. With all the sexual and relational difficulties that that brings. I'm not going to go into them here, there are other sites you can look at to research them, but I will say that BPD plays havoc on his ability to have any kind of relationship, at least until he gets into therapy for it. Talk therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, I believe I got all those terms right. And then, slowly, over a period of at least three to five years, he builds a normal relationship. Or a good beginning to one. In one line, with a guy, and in another line, with a girl.
Let me repeat that for those of you in the cheap seats: It takes him three to five years to approach anything like a normal and healthy relationship with the person who becomes his lover. And his friends, for that matter. Three to five years of therapy sessions at least once a week, trying out medications, late night phone calls to his therapist... really, phone calls at all hour of the day and night, at least one entire week of staying full time with a therapist, and lots and lots of patience from his friends. And lots of patience. And watchfulness.
As far as sex goes, I don't even know how to untangle his sexuality from his other issues, so I won't ... even address it. His sexuality is very much tied in with how healthy he is at the time in other ways.
Paul Kingdom, who I wrote for a game a long time ago, is quite cheerfully bisexual. Leaning towards men, I think, actually. He had a few relationships, the ones in game he had were with Jack, who I think he really did love but wasn't in love with. With Caitlin, who he was very much in love with. And with Peter, now his husband, and with whom he is deeply in love.
Paul is just sexual. He'll top, he'll bottom, he'll give head or receive, he'll jump around the living room naked because he thinks it's funny. He and Peter have, apparently, "naked husband time." Which as much involves pouncing each other and wrestling around naked on the bed and tickling and biting of ankles and laughing and scruffling hair and raspberrying of tummies as it does actual sex. It's how they love. They're very playful about it.
Paul and Peter are just the old married couple. They take care of each other. They cook, both of them really enjoy cooking, they clean because neither of them likes to live in a pigsty. They buy each other little gifts, both thoughtful ones and needed ones. And sometimes just silly ones to make each other laugh. They hold each other after a long, hard day at work. They argue, sometimes. They forget to put the toilet seat down when Dee comes over to stay and then she yells at them for it. Or more like calls from the bathroom to tease them. They curl up on the couch and watch History channel and Discovery channel and mock the history because thye're reborn gods and they do that. They eat popcorn, throw popcorn, and belch soda. And they wear their wedding rings with pride, and talk about their husbands with great big beaming smiles.
Dee
Dee's an odd thing. Dee's very determined in the way she loves, in some ways. Not pushy, but determined. She'll hold onto a love for a long time even if the person doesn't seem to be in love with her or willing to act on it. Sometimes it pays off. Other times, less so.
Dee is bisexual probably more 60/40 leaning towards men. She's had a few flings with girls in her life but only one real solid relationship with a woman. This may have something to do with the fact that she's had three real solid relationships in general, but hey. And she loves them all. She loved Marek deeply, fiercely, more than she expected to. And it hurt her when he left. She tried to move on because, after all, he was ten years older than her and she had kind of sandbagged him with that in the very beginning of theri relationship, and that wasn't very nice of her at ALL. Or very conducive to trust. But it was her first real relationship, and she was young, and she wanted it to last forever. Whether or not it would have... no idea. She was very young.
And then she met and fell in love with Caleb, yes, of the Covenant. And she didn't do anything about it because Caleb's heart was elsewhere. Over time, and patience, she came to be a good friend to him, which was about all she was aiming for anyway. And in one 'verse, they did become lovers. And she was always endlessly patient with him. He did a lot to settle her down, really.
And then, too, she met and kind of not so much fell in love with Irene, someone else's original character? It was a lot more like Reid and Tyler, up above. They met. They became friends. Both of them were in love with other people but they hung out because they liked each other, and because they were good friends. They roomed together because it was convenient. They had sex together because it felt good, physically and emotionally. Neither of them was the dominant sexual partner, it was pretty much equal, and it was mostly calm and quiet and luxurious, as far as I can tell. And eventually, when the object of Irene's affections finally noticed her, Dee let her go. Because it made her friend happy. Of course, eventually they worked out an arrangement whereby all four of them were together, because apart from two cross-corners, everyone was deeply in love with everyone else, and even the cross-corners were close friends, and so that worked out possibly as well as it could have. Their sexual relations vary from the plain, simple lovemaking, to the fairly elaborate dominance play scenarios. About 75% of the time, it seems, Dee is the submissive one. Who dominates her depends mostly on who's around when they're discussing the scenario to play out. And when she dominates it tends to be slow and pleasurable torture.
Dee's sexuality is much informed by her family life. She grew up with one set of parents, a mother and father, and another set of parents, a father who was single for a while and then married to another man, and no one either overtly or unconsciously told her that this was in any way not okay. She also was raised by the incarnation of Ishtar, whose attitude towards sex was, like Paul's, as long as it's consensual and healthy. (Ishtar was tempered pretty much by her mortal host; as those who read mythology know, the gods aren't always picky about consensual or healthy). She was raised with condoms in her purse, taught to be safe when she had fun, and to communicate with her partner at all levels and in all stages. If she wasn't sure about something, she was taught to ask. And this translates both to her adventurous sex life and to her relationships.
Stephen
Stephen is a Dresden Files OC who is very, very happily married to Solace, the daughter of Margaret LeFay and Justin DuMorne (long, long story). Stephen was raised by a very repressive, rigid man who believed homosexuality was a sin and a perversion and that his son should marry for profit and advantage, not for love, and should have affairs for sexual pleasure but never publicise them. Stephen loved one woman once, slept with her, then had the relationship blow up entirely when she miscarried, though she didn't tell him at the time, and after their drunken orgiastic and impromptu marriage. He didn't have another serious relationship again (though he had a string of quiet, business-like affairs) till he met another woman in the course of his business who was as sharp-minded as he (if not more so, he would say), very sexually adventurous, with a phenomenally strong personality and yet small inclination to be forceful with it.
Shortly before he met Solace he met and hired Max. Max is his bodyguard and his security chief, and as such is probably the closest to him of all his employees and would be even if they weren't lovers. With Max, he learned, little by little, to unbend. Somehow, something in him responded to something in Max that maintained both the spirit as well as the letter of the honor he had been raised with, and without sacrificing merriment or joy or pleasure in life. He learned how to unbend. And it's probably because of this that he learned how to be in love with Solace, and eventually married her.
Stephen, along with the stereotype that men in power (he's the head of his own not inconsiderable company) prefer to give up power in the bedroom, most often is the submissive partner to both Max and Solace. More often, a bit, to Solace than Max. I don't really knwo why this is, I haven't asked, it just seems to be a part of his personality. I think because underneath the authority that he presents he's really very unsure of himself, insecure. He knows, intellectually, very much of what he's doing both in his personal and in his professional life. He's just lacking some kind of quality of being sure of himself, so he's always glad to cede up control because he trusts them implicitly. Later in life, probably, this evens out, but I've not done much with him there. (Solace's mun considers that they both switch control more often than he and Max, and I wouldn't disagree. It sounds right.)
Stephen and Solace, after they were married, continued to be sexually adventurous to the point where they regularly invited trusted third parties to their bed, either trusted because they were well-paid professionals or because they were people known to both Stephen and Solace. Most of the time these were heterosexual encounters for Stephen and either hetero or homo?sexual encounters for Solace (yet to be confirmed with mun.) Until Max. Stephen found himself becoming more and more curious about the homosexual aspect of things, consulted with Solace, and she both suggested and approved of some things and this resulted in them inviting Max to their bed. The first night it was both men on Solace, and it wasn't for some time that Stephen gingerly accepted penetrative sex by another man. Gingerly, pretty much because of the potential pain aspect. He likes his pleasure to be pleasurable! After that things went pretty well smoothly until Stephen realized he was also falling in love with Max. Being the attentive husband that he was, he consulted Solace about it, and she counseled him. For the most part, any time he finds himself confronted with emotional confusion on that level, he consults with Solace, and he trusts her to steer him right, or at least to help him talk it through and figure out what to do. Eventually, Max died in the course of his duties, and Stephen was devastated. After a hundred plus years of friendship and love, it went very hard with him, and he likely wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for his beloved wife.
There's another verse entirely, since both Stephen and Max could exist in the Dresden Files world proper since they're not connected to any main characters, where Stephen never met Solace and only met Max while Max was working in a brothel. There, Stephen is much more in control and much more dominant, but it's the kind of control and dominance that can be easily shattered (well, for a given value of easily) because it has nothing behind it but strength of will and rigid, warped thinking. He demands control, and mostly, Max cedes it to him. That verse is also known for being we-won't-go-there icky.
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.