tiamatschild | (no subject)

I am obsessing about a potentially hurtful thing I said over a year ago. Which is a thing I often do. I worry about hurting people a lot, and when I'm feeling down I loop into tracks about Did I Hurt That Person? I Hope I Didn't Hurt That Person, I Don't Think I Can Make Up For It Now.

In mostly unrelated thoughts, I'm feeling intensely ambivalent about

lgbtfest. It's an odd thing. I like reading the fic that comes out of the fest, but I hate reading the prompt lists, because...

Okay, so this probably isn't entirely fair. But sometimes it starts to feel like a lot of the people prompting are basically prompting misery porn, and given that I have immense issues with the extent to which stories about LGBT people generally are. Not joyful. I mean, okay. As a queer teenager, I hated reading YA novels about queer people, because -

Well. Let me be honest here. I tended to get the feeling that those novels weren't for actual queer teens. That they were intended for straight teens, and that was why they were so horrible, and the people in them were rarely brought joy by their sexuality, and when they were it was frequently elided, while pain was examined and almost reveled in. It used to make me so mad.

It still makes me so mad. Because yes. Things are hard, and the closet sucks, and frequently so does being out, and people are always happy to tell you how you're not you enough, and sometimes it's hard not to believe them, and it's always dangerous, people might very well hurt you, and hurt you very badly, kill you even, and there is vulnerability and danger -

But damn it. Just. Just.

Fuck that, I'm going to be happy. Judging by the fic that gets actually written, a lot of people feel the same way.

(This might be somewhat ironic, coming from someone who writes incessantly about mental illness, which means I write a lot about fear and pain and sadness, but pfffffffft.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm so glad you made this post.

I agree, so much. When I was growing up as a queer teenager, I would have LOVED to see something about queer people being HAPPY and having FUN.

There's also the issue where people seem incapable of giving queer characters any conflict that doesn't revolve around other people's reactions to their sexuality. Which is, er, not good.

I know! It was all No One Can Change Who They Are, But YOU WILL FOREVER BE UNHAPPY. I still have unfulfilled longings for stories that have fun picnics with ice cream and general silliness. Or adventures! Adventures embarked upon just because, not because your homophobic parents kicked you out, Lackey, I am looking at you.

Yeeeeeah, that one's a big problem. I'm not good at coming up with conflict in prompts, myself, but there's always the old stand by of "why am I the only one in this organization doing any work?" which could totally be entirely queer people!

Adventures embarked upon just because, not because your homophobic parents kicked you out, Lackey, I am looking at you

I was totally thinking of The Last Herald Mage while writing this. I remember the part in the first book where Lackey decided that Vanyel's lover committing suicide over a revenge-murder (was that what it was?) wasn't enough angst -- no, no, he ALSO had to overhear what must have been the only homophobic Herald in existence making some cruel remarks about his relationship. And, of course, when he's captured by the villain, he has to be raped -- god forbid there be any trauma in the guy's life that isn't connected to sex.

Anyway.

The line for LGBTfest is an odd one -- some people want to write about queer ISSUES, which are unfortunately still very much concerned with intolerance, and some people want to celebrate queer CHARACTERS, in which case the focus really should be on their lives and experiences, not the hatred and misery inflicted by others. Ah well.

I knoooow. It makes me want to write totally non-sexual torture scenes. And I hate torture scenes! (I actually never read The Last Herald, mainly because I, uh, read her other stuff! And there were homophobic parents kicking their kids out of the house all over the place and I didn't really need that.)

It is kind of weird. I think the guidelines kind of encourage the confusion? There's a conflation of queer experience and queer issues. Which are kind of the same thing? But then you have the problem where queer experiences are defined by the world as large as consisting entirely of those issues - queer people existing only when straight people see them.

:/ It is so complicated and tangled.