cool things
Jun. 13th, 2023 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkit1) Relevant to my interests and perhaps to yours is Kai Ashante Wilson's essay Whither Queer: a Genre At Midlife and a Rec-List. Wilson looks at an issue I've talked about a lot: the historical lack of queer male characters in sff, and the current glut of queer male characters . . . written by and largely for women.
I had moments of intense recognition reading this piece (Judith Tarr! making note of books with queer men and hoping to stumble into them in used book stores!), and also moments of disconnect, because I've been involved in fic fandom for 20 years and Wilson has not; he is intensely skeptical of the influence of fanfic on contemporary sff. I hate it when people use "fanfic" to mean "writing I don't like," and Wilson does a certain amount of that here. He never entirely specifies what these fanficcy tendencies in sff are, either.
And yet, I can't say I entirely think he's wrong. When I read contemporary sff by younger authors (not just the queer male stuff, either), it does feel fanficcy to me, in ways I too find hard to pin down but often don't love. I read the first few paragraphs of Gideon the Ninth in a sample somewhere and bounced hard off that fanfic voice. (One of the few specific things Wilson mentions is ironic banter.) A lot of m/m relationships in contemporary sff are written using fanfic tropes and a kind of fundamental narrative structure or assumption that, again, I can't pin down, but it feels like slash fic to me. *shrugs*
I think part of what gets my hackles up, when people use "it's like fanfic" as criticism, is that I immediately think of the kinds of fanfic I enjoy. I forget that there's a ton of fanfic I don't enjoy but that is hugely popular, and that, I fear, is what's influencing professionally published sff these days. Anyway, I'd love to hear what other folks think of Wilson's piece.
As for his recs list, there's not much on it that I didn't know about, but I'm pleased to see Melissa Scott there (twice!)--Wilson's criticism of "the female gaze" in queer-male-focused sff does not boil down to "doesn't like women writers"--and also trans male writer Billy Martin (publishing as Poppy Z. Brite). Wilson's discussions of all the books are illuminating--I may have to give Water Horse another try--even if you don't agree with his general approach.
2) Samba Schutte, the actor who plays Roach in Our Flag Means Death, has designed an awesome t-shirt to raise money for True Colors United, an organization that fights homelessness among LGBTQ youth. OFMD-inspired without quite being referential (or copyright-infringing; I doubt David Jenkins would object but HBO/Max is evil). Beware the checkout process, though--it steers you hard to sign up for Shop Pay, a Shopify-based instant payment thing. You can avoid it by checking out as a guest, but I got confused and managed to sign myself up accidentally. Must remember to de-activate it once my order has processed.
I had moments of intense recognition reading this piece (Judith Tarr! making note of books with queer men and hoping to stumble into them in used book stores!), and also moments of disconnect, because I've been involved in fic fandom for 20 years and Wilson has not; he is intensely skeptical of the influence of fanfic on contemporary sff. I hate it when people use "fanfic" to mean "writing I don't like," and Wilson does a certain amount of that here. He never entirely specifies what these fanficcy tendencies in sff are, either.
And yet, I can't say I entirely think he's wrong. When I read contemporary sff by younger authors (not just the queer male stuff, either), it does feel fanficcy to me, in ways I too find hard to pin down but often don't love. I read the first few paragraphs of Gideon the Ninth in a sample somewhere and bounced hard off that fanfic voice. (One of the few specific things Wilson mentions is ironic banter.) A lot of m/m relationships in contemporary sff are written using fanfic tropes and a kind of fundamental narrative structure or assumption that, again, I can't pin down, but it feels like slash fic to me. *shrugs*
I think part of what gets my hackles up, when people use "it's like fanfic" as criticism, is that I immediately think of the kinds of fanfic I enjoy. I forget that there's a ton of fanfic I don't enjoy but that is hugely popular, and that, I fear, is what's influencing professionally published sff these days. Anyway, I'd love to hear what other folks think of Wilson's piece.
As for his recs list, there's not much on it that I didn't know about, but I'm pleased to see Melissa Scott there (twice!)--Wilson's criticism of "the female gaze" in queer-male-focused sff does not boil down to "doesn't like women writers"--and also trans male writer Billy Martin (publishing as Poppy Z. Brite). Wilson's discussions of all the books are illuminating--I may have to give Water Horse another try--even if you don't agree with his general approach.
2) Samba Schutte, the actor who plays Roach in Our Flag Means Death, has designed an awesome t-shirt to raise money for True Colors United, an organization that fights homelessness among LGBTQ youth. OFMD-inspired without quite being referential (or copyright-infringing; I doubt David Jenkins would object but HBO/Max is evil). Beware the checkout process, though--it steers you hard to sign up for Shop Pay, a Shopify-based instant payment thing. You can avoid it by checking out as a guest, but I got confused and managed to sign myself up accidentally. Must remember to de-activate it once my order has processed.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-14 10:16 pm (UTC)That makes sense. I have comparatively little experience of category romance and not much more of slash, to be honest. I can recognize something like The Wild North (1952) as slashtastic because good Lord it isn't subtle; also it's more than half a century old and its primary relevance to this conversation is as evidence that some of the tropes in current use are older than dirt.
Some of it, I think, is woobification (which may also be a romance trope; I don't read enough romance to be sure), where the sympathetic characters are excessively abused by the world but are nevertheless virtuous, kind, and good. Highly traumatized but not in any ways that are seriously difficult or that last for longer than it takes for them to be saved by love.
I agree on that pattern in most of the contemporary romances—het and queer—which I have encountered in the last few years, occasionally to melodramatic lengths. One of the reasons I want the mother of my godchild to finish her (nb/f) romance is that its central conflict is not based around anyone's aestheticized trauma but is instead a communications problem rooted in differing economics and life experience that both parties run slap into in a way that has to be talked out rather than dissolved by romantic gestures. I find that sort of thing fantastically compelling. And I have always gravitated toward characters who are trash fires, but I still found myself side-eyeing a romance I picked up on a recommendation and then found that one of the principals is terminally ill and the other has an opium habit and it's all very cozy and soft and what?
But I have noticed a pattern of books that make a splash, that everyone seems to love, and I read them and am unimpressed. (Part of the problem may be that I'm hearing about these books through fandom!)
You may in fact not be the target audience!
Do you like Kai Ashante Wilson's queer sff, speaking of? I've read A Taste of Honey, but not The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-14 10:45 pm (UTC)His short story The Devil in America is stunning, but brutal.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-14 11:10 pm (UTC)Can't imagine why.
(For what it's worth, I didn't find A Taste of Honey very sad—I liked the twist of its thought experiment, which reverses how its two narratives have seemed to interlock—but my parameters may not be yours.)
I read "The Devil in America." It made me think of the music of Zeal & Ardor.