Badger

There is a line between slash and fetishization, and that line gets dangerously close to being crossed 96% of the time.

I enjoy slash, obviously, I mean, I write it, but sometimes it's more a matter of "Guys fucking = hot" then it is a matter of "Guys fucking = hot, but there's more to a character than who he sleeps with." I don't mind PWP, but it doesn't *always* need to be about the sex. Sometimes you can have actual plot without gratuitous porning. You don't see a whole lot of slash fics that are just you know, little snapshots in time, two (or three, or more) men just being together, as a couple. A lot of it is fucking, which is all well and good in it's place, but it seems that lately, all the slashfic I read is either about the sex, or is leading up to sex.

If I'm going to read any kind of relationship fic, regardless of the genders of the characters involved, I want it to be believable. People interacting as people, not just as cut and paste sex objects. If two guys are going at it, make it about them, not the sex. I don't want to read fic where you can snip one guy out and put anyone else in there and have it read the same way. That just doesn't work. If it's a grudgefuck, fine, show me inside their heads and make me get why they're grudgefucking. Same thing for if they're suddenly in love forever, or anything else. I can understand a snippet of a pairing, just a one shot, with other similar fics being worked on. That's cool, I'm currently doing that with Holmstrom/Turco.

I also take umbrage at straight women telling me what I can and cannot do in bed. Not all gay men have anal sex. Sometimes we just tangle together and jerk off. Sometimes, we switch in between. Sometimes, we have terrible sex. We can have sex in missionary. Sometimes, we don't want to have sex, but we do it anyway because our partner wants it. Depending on your level of experience, you might opt to not use lube. If you've had anal sex several times, you probably don't need an intense amount of prepreparation. It all depends on the mood, and how you feel at the time. We don't always have sex in bed. We are just as fluid as anyone else is, when it comes to fucking.

And you know, we're not woobies. We don't need another person to depend on all the time. We can take care of ourselves, without a boyfriend there to hold us. Support is fine, codependance is not. Being gay does not make you incapable of being self-sufficient. A lot of us have no choice *but* to be self-sufficient, and usually from a young age. It comes part and parcel with being queer.

The trend, too, of essentially making one of the slash pair the "woman" is irritating and offensive on so many levels, and not a little misogynistic either. Not only do most straight relationships not work like that, gay ones don't either. BECAUSE HELLO THEY ARE BOTH MEN. The dynamic is gonna be different, because the combination of genders is. It's like writers just take the general conception of a hetero relationship and slot two men into those same roles. We are men, and, while there is nothing wrong with being a woman, at all, most men are not going to act like a man and woman would. The genders are different, the societal expectations of those genders are different, and the way two people of opposite genders relate to one another is generally not going to be the same way two people of the same gender will relate to one another. Isn't the typical "nuclear" hetero relationship just a Hollywood concept anyway? In my experience, Hollywood is not really a great basis for forming relationships in the first place.

How about we try to write our characters as functioning, capable adults, equal partners in the relationship, and not horrifically offensive stereotypes? I'm not trying to be the Ambassador of gay men here, I'm just trying to point out that, as a gay man, and having spoken to other gay men about this same thing, I think I have a little more basis to preach about this sort of things than the majority of the writers of slashfic out there.