it's recurringly felt like queerness only exists to add a bit more forbidden-ness to the relationship or - more often - to have the interpersonal conflict fall neatly into an oppressed/oppressor framework, where much of the friction or action is driven by other characters being unfair to a blameless protagonist
Yes, and to my mind it's in the top 10 most irritating ways to tell a story.
I tried to write a original m/m romance once, and I didn't get very far because writing a novel is HARD. But at least most of the conflict between the two MCs had its origins in a disparity of money, power, and social status, and even the Wicked Rival was a decent-enough guy who just really didn't get the whole true love business and had other things on his mind anyway. It's the sort of thing I wish other people would write. KJ Charles was getting close to that, once, but then (perhaps around the time she quit her day job and had to start pumping out 3 novels a year?) she moved back into a more traditional formula.
if the concept internally is actually about putting out LGBTQ literature to any real extent or if it's primarily just about providing a marketing demographic of fiction readers (which I suspect likely skews towards young women) with something they previously weren't getting
The latter, I suspect. My sense from the writers I follow on Twitter is that publishing is incredibly dysfunctional, that it's following film in wanting only blockbusters, and if that means repeating the same formula until the audience indicates they won't buy it anymore, so be it.
Who are the up and coming queer male authors who aren't finding publishers because their market is seen as distinct from the one above? Given how much of the current m/m SFF out there feels very YA and New Adult, is male authors' work assumed to be too adult for the zeitgeist?
It's interesting that to the extent there seem to be any queer men writing genre, it's horror. Which isn't fully going for that same audience of 15-25 year old women, although based on the recent kerfuffle about "cozy horror," I think it may be starting to.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2023-06-21 12:58 am (UTC)Yes, and to my mind it's in the top 10 most irritating ways to tell a story.
I tried to write a original m/m romance once, and I didn't get very far because writing a novel is HARD. But at least most of the conflict between the two MCs had its origins in a disparity of money, power, and social status, and even the Wicked Rival was a decent-enough guy who just really didn't get the whole true love business and had other things on his mind anyway. It's the sort of thing I wish other people would write. KJ Charles was getting close to that, once, but then (perhaps around the time she quit her day job and had to start pumping out 3 novels a year?) she moved back into a more traditional formula.
if the concept internally is actually about putting out LGBTQ literature to any real extent or if it's primarily just about providing a marketing demographic of fiction readers (which I suspect likely skews towards young women) with something they previously weren't getting
The latter, I suspect. My sense from the writers I follow on Twitter is that publishing is incredibly dysfunctional, that it's following film in wanting only blockbusters, and if that means repeating the same formula until the audience indicates they won't buy it anymore, so be it.
Who are the up and coming queer male authors who aren't finding publishers because their market is seen as distinct from the one above? Given how much of the current m/m SFF out there feels very YA and New Adult, is male authors' work assumed to be too adult for the zeitgeist?
It's interesting that to the extent there seem to be any queer men writing genre, it's horror. Which isn't fully going for that same audience of 15-25 year old women, although based on the recent kerfuffle about "cozy horror," I think it may be starting to.