Jules Jones

Jesse Wave's latest post about m/m romance being non-stop twenty-something white USAmericans inspired me to do a headcount. Let's see...

( the tl;dr stats under the cut )

So, how do I fit that stereotype of writing twenty-something white USAmericans[*] in an unidentified cookie-cutter USAmerican city, doing jobs like writer or artist or BDSM club manager? [* specifying because Wave is Canadian.]

Not too many twenty-somethings in that lot. An awful lot of scientists and engineers, to the point where I have been accused of being unable to write characters that are *not* geeks. And not a single one of my main characters is an American. Every one of the humans is British, even the ones in stories set in interstellar empires. Funny, that... The leads are uniformly white, but that's partly a reflection of my personal experience of discrimination based on my ethnicity being about things that aren't as obvious as physical appearance -- though it took me years to consciously recognise where some of the stuff in my m/m fiction about passing was coming from.

I wasn't deliberately setting out to write diverse characters (in the sense of "diversity" that Wave was using). I was writing stuff that interested *me*, and for various reasons that means a lot of characters in their thirties. As I get older myself, it becomes easier to write convincing characters in their forties and fifties, and I expect to write more of them. I don't write about US characters because from my perspective they're the alien, not the default. The non-stop parade of scientists and engineers is both "write what you know", and "write what interests you". Less obviously, the political characters fall under those headings as well -- $EX_EMPLOYER was big on encouraging staff to participate in the community, and I had several colleagues who were involved in local politics. So I've been writing these characters because they reflected my world and my interests. And I've been doing it for a long time, in genre terms. From before most of the epubs would consider m/m, from when one of the biggest said that it wouldn't take m/m because women didn't want to read that stuff. All the way back to when I was writing mostly fanfic, and there you have one of the biggest reasons why I write stuff about thirty and forty somethings with a strong political thread running through it. Because what set me writing somewhere back in the late 1990s was a dystopian sf show with 1970s BBC sensibilities and a cast who were easy on the eye but very much not selected on their sex appeal for the demographic that American network tv is chasing. I'm a product of my time and place, and that influence is just as obvious in my original fiction as in my fanfiction.

Which leads back to a conversation elsewhere a few weeks ago about a new wave in that fandom that seems to have been born out of the culture of a specific group of mailing lists. One of the markers of that new wave was an interest in experimenting with literary form, but it wasn't the only one. As I said in that discussion, I wasn't that interested in exploring literary style in my own writing, but I was very much interested in using the background universe provided by canon to explore political and psychological concepts, and yes, *especially* in the X-rated material.

That hasn't changed just because I've gafiated from writing in that fandom. Indeed, I probably started writing in the first place because I was already interested in such concepts, and along came a discussion forum that allowed me to chew those concepts to death, both in essay format and in fiction. Branching into original fic (which happened only a couple of years after I started writing fanfic) simply gave me new ways of talking about this stuff. One of the ways this shows up is the constant harping about identity, what it is, and who controls it.

This is utterly overt in Mindscan, where mental invasion and coercion is the very basis of the book. Hardly surprising, you might think if you're aware that the core of that book started life as a fanfic piece; but the reality is that I wrote the original novelette as fanfic because fanfic was my primary format at the time. The basic story concept, I could and probably would have written as original fiction had there been anywhere at the time where I could have sold it. On the other hand, watching the show as a young teenager nearly twenty years earlier, with no thought then of writing, was probably a contributing factor in my interest in such things in the first place - a pretty little chicken and egg problem.

But it colours other books as well. Promises to Keep, Spindrift, Dolphin Dreams -- these all address in various ways the problems faced by paperless people in an increasingly cradle-to-grave documented society. Particularly people who are paperless because they are outside the norm. There is, of course, another specific influence on these books, and that's Heinlein's Methuselah's Children.

There are other examples, and other influences. But it does rather look as if part of the reason my stories don't fit that stereotype quoted above is because I'm using a slightly different toolkit to a lot of m/m romance writers, and yes, I am including some of the other writers who came out of fanfic in that. There are fandoms and fandoms, and My Fandom had a strong self-selection for people who were interested in the sort of things you find in dystopian space opera, as is rather obvious when I look at some of my fellow fen who went off to play with original universes. We're perfectly capable of writing pretty twenty-somethings if that's what the story requires, but it's unlikely to be because that's what the market requires.

So why write romance at all, if what my toolkit contains comes from science fiction and fantasy? Because there is room within romance for the stories that don't fit narrow stereotypes of what romance should be. Because the genre conventions can be a self-imposed framework to work within, rather than an externally imposed constriction of my writing choices. The requirement of the Happy Ever After doesn't have to be an artificial limit imposing a fake conflict and equally fake resolution; rather, it can be an intriguing puzzle for a writer, a game to play with your readers. There will be a conclusion where the rough general nature is guaranteed, just as there is with a mystery, but there are so many interesting ways to get there. And writing about a wider range of characters than that narrow stereotype falls naturally out of playing the game.

Or, "Post in haste, repent at leisure." One of the most useful pieces of advice I was ever given about the online world was back when I was a wee newbie; I was told not to post in anger. Write it if I must, but then leave it. For at least ten minutes, preferably overnight. Come back and look at it when calmed down, and ask myself, "Do I really want to send that?"

( there is no such thing as 'delete all copies' on the internet )

I've been threatening for some time to do an essay that summarises the "why do girls like boys who do boys?" thread from rasfc in June/July 2003. This is a placeholder, with some notes as I go through the thread. Please feel free to comment and add further suggestions -- I'll work it up into something more coherent later. Possibly much later.

There was also discussion of the difference between graphic and explicit, whether it is possible to tell whether an erotica writer is male or female (often, but not always, yes), definitions of homosexuality through the ages, fanfic, and is there anyone in the known universe who doesn't want to shag Legolas...

[ETA: this was a discussion on a pro sf writers' group and was initially about profic, although we also drew on fanfic as the discussion progressed. I haven't explicitly identified most of the people involved, but as several of them read this LJ, if anyone wants to be credited, speak up. :-)]

( a) Why do women like m/m: )

( b) Why isn't more of it published: )

I don't normally do religion in public, but I'm getting very tired of some of the people who claim to speak on behalf of all Christians. No, they don't. And *this* Christian is of the opinion that some of the things they claim to be saying in the name of Christianity are decidedly unChristian.

My basic philosophy is agnostic, in the technical sense of the term - it is not possible to prove the existence or absence of a god. My faith, if you will, veers all over the place. But the core of my moral code, the foundation of how I see good and evil, comes from Christianity. For better or worse, I am a Christian in general, and in particular I am an Anglican.

And I say that these people who are preaching hatred in the name of my Lord are not Christians, whatever they might call themselves and however they might pronounce the name of the one they do evil for.

I mention Anglicanism, because one Anglican's discussion of "deeds not words" is very pertinent and has recent wide exposure. "Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he had truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted." Quite. Doing evil in the name of Christ is still doing evil. Is it any wonder that there are certain preachers who have attacked Lewis, called him atheist or Satanist? They have seen a reflection in a mirror, and chosen to call it a view through a window. Or a cell door, that door they wish to shut on others without knowing who is on the inside, and who is on the outside.

What is evil? Well, Jesus was pretty blunt about how he wanted us to treat one another. Part of his response when asked which is the greatest commandment: "And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Upon these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Nothing can be put above the commandment to love our neighbour. And who is our neighbour? He was asked that too. The point of his answer has been softened down the years, because anyone exposed to Christianity has almost certainly heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, but doesn't have the context of the time that parable was first taught. For us, "Samaritan" has come to mean "good person". Now read that parable over, and substitute "Israeli" for "Jew" and "Palestinian" for "Samaritan". *That's* what's going on in that parable. Your neighbour isn't just the person you think it right and proper to treat as a human being. Your "neighbour" is *everyone*.

Over and over again, he told us to have mercy, to have compassion, to treat others as we would wish to be treated. And he warned us against condemning others for their sins while ignoring our own. "Let he amongst you who is without sin cast the first stone." That's not open to weaselling about "My sins are minor, but *those* people deserve to be punished." Nor is, "First pluck out the log in thine own eye." There is a great temptation to attack others for their sins, to make them scapegoats for our own sins that we do not wish to acknowledge, and he knew it. Whether he was Incarnation of God, prophet, or simply a man with a vision, he understood people and how terribly easy we find it to turn and rend the weak and the few and the oppressed. Self-righteous hatred is a most gratifying and addictive drug, and so very very sweet to indulge. And he wanted us to stop doing that, and take the harder way.

So now I will indulge myself. I say of our modern day Pharisees who ride the airwaves to preach hatred and violence towards any who are not exactly like themselves; they are not Christians. With their fear and their hate and their greed they have put themselves aside from God; and they will not find Him again until they find it within themselves to open themselves to His love for all of us. All of us, including the lepers, the poor, the whores, the tax gatherers, the outcasts of society, and even the officer of the occupying army. We are all one in the body of Christ, and it is not the place of the Pharisees to give Him orders as to who may or may not receive His love. And I really, really wish they would stop parading their sick and twisted version in public and saying that this is what Christianity is. It isn't.

        And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as
        you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you
        did it to me.'

Sturgeon's Law: "90% of science fiction is crud. But 90% of everything is crud." Though there's anecdotal evidence that he used a somewhat stronger word than "crud"...

It's a well-known saying in sf circles. And it applies equally well to fanfic. 90% of fanfic *is* crud. The difference with fanfic is that the 90% is out there in public. The crud that in profic is only seen by unfortunate slushpile readers is in fanfic available to anyone who cares to go and wade through the relevant web archives. When you read the slush, the 90% of crud, it's easy to forget that the 10% does exist; that there are people writing fanfic who are competent, even brilliant, writers; who choose to write fanfic not because they are incapable of "doing better" but because fanfic offers them the opportunity to write stories that they couldn't write in the profic world.

( Some answers to the question 'You're such a good writer, why don't you write for money?' )