Two things of differing significance to do with fandom

[elaby]

How about more significant first? I think that's a good idea. I read two articles the other day, found through glockgal's journal (where I find many of the most thought-provoking and self-improving things), about fandom perceptions and fandom's impact on people's lives. They're very thoughtful, informative, and important. Italicized quotes are from the articles.

iambickilometer on Dreamwidth writes META: Five+ Ways Being Transgender in Fandom Really Sucks, and Why I Stick With It Anyway

The title is self-explanatory, and this article is very well-written, helpful, informative, and ultimately optimistic. I learned a new term: cisgender means a person whose perceived gender conforms their physical sex and society's view of their gender or sexual identity.

You know what I want to see in source material? I want to see someone transgendered save the world, and pass while doing it. I want to see the guy win the transgirl. I want the genderqueer person in a position of power, kicking ass, taking names. I want the transguy to live happily ever after. I want to read or watch their stories and think, "Hey, maybe that could be me." I want other people, cisgendered people, to read and watch these stories and think, "Hey, maybe that could be me."

bookshop writes "i know you care for him as much as i do."

The title of this article, some of you may notice, is a line from Sherlock Holmes '09: Mary says it to Holmes about Watson. The article, which I can say reflects pretty much exactly what I think and feel, talks about how slash isn't just a treasure-hunting game, it's what we do to be able to see ourselves in fictional characters when there is a massive dearth of gay protagonists.

I don't slash because I like finding and pointing out homoerotic subtext everywhere I can. I slash because the stories I want, I can't have.

[...]

I don't want Holmes and Watson, House and Wilson, Merlin & Arthur, Blair and Serena, to make out onscreen because I am a slasher. I don't want it because I can go "aha!" and add that moment to my collection.

I want those main characters to fall in love and make out because it means that fans of their characters will have to come to terms with their gayness, exactly like they would have to do in real life. [...] The most empowering aspect of slash for me is that it takes beloved, known characters, and strips away their heteronormativity. Yeah, countless people have accidentally discovered Harry Potter slash on the internet, and gone "ACK MY EYES" and hit the back button as fast as they can, but that also means that for half an instant, countless people were forced to grapple with the idea that someone they loved was gay, even if that someone was a fictional character. And maybe they didn't get it, but maybe that moment brought them closer to acceptance or tolerance or empathy.

--

In less significant fandom news, I really really love this manga called The Last Uniform (Saigo no Seifuku). The art isn't spectacular, but it really gets better over the first two volumes, and the story is sweet and adorable and full of gentle girl-love in which the characters barely get as far as hugging one another. It's also very much about friendship, between the paired-off couples and between all of the characters, which is a nice change after all of the yuri, shounen-ai, and yaoi that's only about physical desire.

But it seems pretty evident that the third and last volume won't be released in English. *sadface* It's been since 2008 that anyone's mentioned it, and as far as I can tell from the publisher's forums, they were putting it "on hold" then because the first volumes didn't sell well. It's only one more volume! The second ended with a cliffhanger! BWAH! T_T

It appears to be available on the Borders.com website, on backorder, shipping in 2-4 weeks. I don't really trust this, since nowhere else does it say it's been published in English. And the thing is, I would take it in raw Japanese, in scans, anything. But I can't find any scans for volume 3, and my one known resource for Japanese books (www.sasugabooks.com) doesn't have it. Since it was a little obscure three-volume series from 2005, I'm not really surprised, but I had hoped they might be carrying it.

Anybody out there know any other Japanese bookstores I could navigate in English and order from online? Any manga sites that put up scans? I'm woefully ignorant about what's out there for raw scans, and I didn't have any luck searching for scanlations. Woe!

[Edit: For my own reference, Kinokuniya has the last volume if you search for it using Japanese characters. Not sure how to order yet.]

Comments

[elaineofshalott]

I read bookshop's post awhile ago, and went 'YES, THIS!' in my head. And then I watched some of season 6 of House and got kind of sad at a plot turn that I might before have been happy about, once, because what she (bookshop) says about the downside of subtext is so true. (House does have a canonically bisexual main character now though and I <3 her. House (the character) makes a big deal about her sexuality, because he's House and he likes to be offensive and silly, but generally I think the show does well by her. And she is hawt, as most of the people on the show are, and they dress her in these awesome boots.)

I read the other article you linked, too. I have duly added 'transgendered/genderqueer' characters to the list of people I need to include when I finally write the great american novel. The thing that frustrates me about this particular character trait is that English is pronoun-deficient and has no gender-neutral third-person personal pronoun, aside from narrowly used neologisms like 'ze', which I find awkward. I guess I'll just have to learn German. *adds this to list of reasons to live forever*

[elaby.livejournal.com]

I really want to watch House, but the doctor-show aspect of it frightens the heck out of me. But it sounds so incredibly awesome!

I really wish English had gender-neutral pronouns too.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

Scanlations are absolutely illegal, of course, but -- Manga Fox (http://www.mangafox.com/) and One Manga. (http://www.onemanga.com/)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Are they illegal if the source material hasn't been licensed in English yet? I suspect they are, but one can always hope.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are, not that anyone has been at all deterred. There's been a lot of discussion about this in the blogverse just lately. This (http://www.mangablog.net/?p=7492) is an interesting perspective. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with what he says in the last section (addressed to manga fandom). If attitudes have changed in the past ten years -- and I started reading manga in 1999 so I 'get' that they have changed -- the change is a direct result of the problems he outlines in the earlier part of the article. Even when manga became widely available in translation it was just too damned expensive. I still get most of what I read from the library which, from the creators' point of view, is no different from reading illegal scanlations.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point. Thanks for linking the article! I kind of fell out of anime-and-manga-circulation fandom back when fansubs were still the only way to get anime that wasn't released in the U.S. yet, and I never started watching it online once that became the norm.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That's about the first thing I've ever read about slash that makes any sense to me, so thank you. However, it leaves one big question unanswered: why do so many straight people enjoy reading and writing slash?

Now, you know what my position is. I'm so straight you could use me to rule up your quilting, but I am not in any way anti-gay; I don't wibble if I find a gay character in fiction (and I'll agree with you that in mainstream fiction they are fairly rare - you might enjoy Hugh Walpole, though, because with him there's always at least one character who is clearly gay, even if nobody ever says so outright), and I've written gay characters too. I will not, however, either read or write slash.

My problem with it isn't the gayness. If someone wanted to write Walpole-fic about, say, that engaging pair of lesbians in Judith Paris (I think it is), it wouldn't bother me... and, indeed, I would have a problem if someone wrote a story which showed one of them as straight. That should give you a big clue why I don't like slash. I'm all for fanfic, but once there's a canon I think fan writers should adhere to it. A person's sexuality is a huge part of them, and I feel that once you start altering that, you're writing about a different person, and you shouldn't give them the name of an established character whose sexuality is not the same as that of the person you're writing about.

There's an interesting example from Blake's 7, and since I have the privilege of knowing the actor concerned, I can give you his point of view. Paul Darrow played Avon, who was a very strong antihero. Avon is nearly everyone's favourite character, including mine, because he is superbly well thought out and acted. (I should also mention that he's a lot of people's favourite character because he was very good-looking, too, but that's another matter!) Now at that time there was some fairly unsubtle anti-gay sentiment about, far more than you see these days, and it was not uncommon to portray negative or ambiguous characters as gay or bisexual. (There are a couple of examples from B7 itself.) It was therefore suggested to Paul that he might consider portraying Avon in this way, and Paul, to his credit, decided he didn't want to do that, because it would only reinforce anti-gay prejudice. Yes, everyone liked Avon, but only in the sense that they thought he was a wonderful character. I don't think many people would have wanted to go for a coffee with him.

So Paul very carefully and subtly ensured that Avon was seen as 100% straight. I will leave you to imagine how he reacted when he was first made aware of the phenomenon of Avon-slash.

All that said, I've got a huge amount of sympathy with gay people who say "these are the stories we want but can't have". But where on earth do all the straight people fit in?

[elaby.livejournal.com]

why do so many straight people enjoy reading and writing slash?

You might get a better answer out of a straight person, but here's my two cents, for what they're worth. Part of it for some people, I think, is that they like the idea of two people of the same gender together because they think it's pretty, or sexy, or titillating. People who are straight liking to read steamy stories about people who are gay is kind of like people who don't ever want to visit Italy reading a story that takes place in Italy - you don't have to be attracted to someone of the same gender to like reading stories where people of the same gender are involved in a relationship.

More importantly, though, I think a lot of straight people like reading slash because, like gay people, they think people of the same gender should be able to be together and they like stories in which they're allowed to be. I think it's a misconception that slash is about people who are canonically straight. The great majority of the slash I read (and write) is about characters who are not defined as either straight or gay canon, who are canonically involved, or who are very close friends whose love for each other could be platonic or romantic depending on your interpretation.

once there's a canon I think fan writers should adhere to it. A person's sexuality is a huge part of them, and I feel that once you start altering that, you're writing about a different person, and you shouldn't give them the name of an established character whose sexuality is not the same as that of the person you're writing about.

I agree; however, sexuality is complicated, and there are few characters that I can think of who I could say with absolute certainty what their sexuality is. There are countless people who have had attraction or love for people of the same gender but who appeared to the rest of the world as straight, for all sorts of reasons (fear being among them). This could be justification, or not, for any number of slash pairings; it's up to the fan to decide. I think that people should be able to write whatever they want when it comes to fanfic. I wouldn't personally write anything that I see as being contradictory to canon, but I wouldn't tell anyone else that they can't if that's what makes them happy.

Your Blake's 7 example is very interesting. I'm glad that the actor decided not to portray the character as gay because he didn't want to enforce negative stereotypes. I would imagine that people writing slash with this character would be exploring the possibility of this character's sexuality only in in-world terms, and not adding the idea that "this is an actor who made this decision for a reason" to the mix.

I need to find myself some Hugh Walpole, clearly! Thanks for the recommendation!

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, you'd love Hugh Walpole. I do. Sadly there isn't much of his work in print at the moment (I think he ought to be due a revival around now, but it's difficult to predict); I have the four Herries novels (Rogue Herries, Judith Paris, The Fortress and Vanessa), plus one I picked up second hand which is called Bright Pavilions. (That one has an openly bisexual character in it. He's a rather nasty piece of work. Walpole was gay himself, and I like that he was relaxed enough to make his gay/bi characters a mixture of heroes and villains just like anyone else.)

I take your point about characters' sexuality not always being clear from canon; it's a while since I read any Sherlock Holmes, but I don't recall him ever getting involved with anyone of either sex, so that one is certainly wide open. (Incidentally, I may have mentioned this one before, but I'm quite sure Hercule Poirot is gay, even if Agatha Christie didn't realise it herself!) The reason I take such a strong line on not messing with anything that is established - and I don't confine that to sexuality - is simply respect for the original writer. If I write fanfic, I'm always very conscious that I'm using someone else's characters. If I want to do something radically different with them, I'll write an original story with my own characters, perhaps based on the ones who gave me the idea in the first place. For instance, going back to Avon, I've always had the idea in the back of my mind that he's of Russian descent (Paul Darrow has a very Russian mouth), and that "Avon" is actually derived from "Ivanov" (plausible, no? *grin*). But in the canon he is not Russian as such, so if I want to write a story about a Russian character who is similar to Avon, I call him something else. In this particular case it was Arkadii Gridnev, and his character changed rather drastically from the original inspiration because I'd made that initial major change.

Oh, and you've opened another really interesting can of worms here:

There are countless people who have had attraction or love for people of the same gender but who appeared to the rest of the world as straight, for all sorts of reasons (fear being among them).

Absolutely. And sometimes they are straight, because the attraction isn't sexual. Similarly (and how well I know this from experience!) it's possible to have attraction or love for someone of the opposite gender which is not sexual. Ask Mole. Now that is a really complicated and interesting issue which I don't think gets explored sufficiently in fiction, because it's rather got to the point where "strong attraction/love" = "sex" automatically. But it doesn't necessarily, and some of the most interesting relationships are the ones where it doesn't. One thing I like when you are talking about your own slash is that you very often leave it ambiguous, and I think that's a positive thing. (Yes, I will admit to being biased in that I don't enjoy reading about sex - straight, gay or any other sort - but it isn't just that. It's perfectly possible to have a story with sex involved without going into all the details, and I would still prefer to read a story about a relationship that is ambiguous or non-sexual, so it's not just the "spare me the details" factor.)

Fascinating, all this. :-)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

It is fascinating! And I don't really like reading or writing about sex either, which explains why my fanfic is so lacking in it.

Now that is a really complicated and interesting issue which I don't think gets explored sufficiently in fiction, because it's rather got to the point where "strong attraction/love" = "sex" automatically. But it doesn't necessarily, and some of the most interesting relationships are the ones where it doesn't.

Yes, precisely! The idea that love and attraction must have sex attached to it is one that I disagree with strongly, and I wish it was more explored in fiction, because it's kind of rare in my experience, like you say.

And sometimes they are straight, because the attraction isn't sexual.

I don't think that sexual attraction is the deciding factor in whether someone is straight or gay or where on the spectrum in between. At least not for everyone. I heard the term "affectional orientation" somewhere, in a legal document at work, I think, and I really like that one. I think one of the biggest problems with anti-gay thinking (in fandom or the real world) is that people assume that being gay is only about being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender. That can be a facet of it, but it's not the only thing, you know?

"Avon" is actually derived from "Ivanov" (plausible, no? *grin*).

That's really interesting! This is what I like about fandom: you can come up with theories like this and talk about them and share your ideas, without necessarily going "it must be so!"

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That really is interesting. I like the term "affectional orientation"; it's certainly a whole new angle for me, or perhaps it would be fairer to call it a whole new co-ordinate axis. The reason is that I'm not sure affectional orientation necessarily correlates very well with sexual orientation. I've known one or two gay men who are uncomfortable with women and couldn't possibly form a close friendship with one, but then there are others who seem to get on better with women than men as friends. (These tend to be the ones who are somewhat "girly", though not necessarily.) As for me, I have two categories of close friends: men, and women who normally get on better with men than with other women. But I know plenty of straight women who form strong friendships exclusively or almost exclusively with women.

As for the fiction, I strongly suspect you and I might enjoy collaborating on a story at some point. With lots of strong friendships and fluffiness involved. :-)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

The reason is that I'm not sure affectional orientation necessarily correlates very well with sexual orientation.

It might not correlate, but in my experience, they're very much intertwined. I think the extent differs for every person.

With lots of strong friendships and fluffiness involved. :-)

That's totally my favorite kind to write :D

[the-arethusa.livejournal.com]

I’m just gonna sneak in on this conversation (slightly rude I know, sorry) just to say that I agree totally with your reasoning re: straight people reading slash. I’m straight enough to give my opinion I think (I’m never sure that I like the term ‘straight’ but I can never think of a better one *is a loser*).

I would extend it slightly to suggest that slash fulfils a certain voyeuristic need humans seem to have. It’s the same phenomenon that induces men to watch two women together (which is considered less weird than woman reading slash, which really irritates me). We can get a thrill (romantic or strictly sexual) from seeing/reading about a couple, even if it excludes us and relegates us to the role of ‘viewer’. Even though not everyone is interested in that sort of thing I think it’s prevalent enough to suggest that it’s just another natural aspect of human sexuality. Of course, it’s perfectly all right to say “nah, that’s just not my thing.” I hate when het shippers are branded as homophobic, just as much as when het shippers say “OMG but he’s not gay, blasphemer!”. We really should learn to leave people’s fantasies alone. Guilt over fantasies causes much neurosis.

As for the canon sexuality of characters...I think it’s important to acknowledge it (drives me crazy when people dismiss Mary Watson...and all those women on three separate continents XD), but that doesn’t mean that you can’t explore the spectrum of sexuality. For sake of fantasy I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a little. For fanfiction purposes you can get away with a lot, as long as it isn’t like “character A awakes one morning to discover he’s been transformed into a gay man”. Then you’d just be taking the piss XD

I’ve babbled enough now. I’m gonna sneak away. *sneaks*

[elaby.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you responded! I don't think I'm very well equipped to respond to the question of why straight people like slash.

Itâ™s the same phenomenon that induces men to watch two women together (which is considered less weird than woman reading slash, which really irritates me).

Yes, seriously. I feel like guys kind of get judged more harshly it comes to discussions of sexuality, straight or gay or otherwise. It's certainly much easier for me to hold my wife's hand in public, being a woman.

We really should learn to leave peopleâ™s fantasies alone. Guilt over fantasies causes much neurosis.

I totally agree :D Also about Mary! She may have been sidelined by Doyle, but she's important to Watson's life, no matter how you interpret their relationship.

[the-arethusa.livejournal.com]

It's certainly much easier for me to hold my wife's hand in public, being a woman.

That's interesting and I definitely have observed more hostility (sometimes violent hostility) towards gay men than gay women. Although I sometimes feel that that stems from society's inability to fully accept the existence of gay women, as if our patriarchal society can't quite comprehend why a woman wouldn't want to be with a man (irresistible as they are /sarcasm). I think when seeing two women holding hands, a lot of people would assume a close platonic relationship first.

In short, straight people fail but most are very well meaning XD

She may have been sidelined by Doyle, but she's important to Watson's life, no matter how you interpret their relationship.

Yeah, you can follow Doyle's example and sideline her character. I think I've only ever mentioned her once or twice myself (but then I sneakily set mine after the hiatus). What you can't ignore is that Watson is sold to the reader as a typical heterosexual male of the time; with a wife and that wonderfully Victorian repressed lasciviousness. You should never ignore characteristics given in canon, because that's quite lazy, but you can give good reasons for a homosexual relationship (closeted man in a cover-up marriage, a bisexual etc.) Like I said, it's fanfic, if it's well written I'm willing to allow a little suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, I could babble forever about sexuality (something I've been secretly studying in my own time like a loser), but I will spare you it ;)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Although I sometimes feel that that stems from society's inability to fully accept the existence of gay women

You have a point there too. All the stuff I've read about Victorians having believed that women have no sex drive is part of the same problem, I think. And I agree about Mary, and your opinions on playing with canon. Babble all you like :D I think it's fascinating! And I've learned that all people have such a different perspective that learning more of them can only help in understanding.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Ohhh! Hey, that's a great idea! I never thought of either of those things :D Thank you, Mama!

[coastal-spirit.livejournal.com]

I've taken a quick look and don't seem to see any raw scans for volume 3. Have you tried Googling it with the Japanese characters? It's a possibility someone might have the scans on a Japanese or Taiwanese site, like Bill Wang, although they usually only have current releases. Also, have you emailed Sasuga? They might be able to order it for you if it's still in print. I also looked at a couple of other (American)Japanese bookstore sites, but they were in Japanese, so that didn't help much, but maybe you could navigate them: http://www.kinokuniya.com and http://www.jflalc.org/proftest/bookstore.html

I'll keep looking when I have time. :} And I'll read the rest of your post later.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

You are so helpful! *glomps* Thank you!