Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I have been thinking.

So lycanthropy cures asthma, epilepsy, broken bones of all sorts, punctured organs and now apparently LEECHES AWAY PAIN.

Why haven't werewolves gone public if they have these benefits to offer to people?

The possibilities for people in palliative care alone are mind boggling.

All Derek or someone has to do is call for a press conference and have somebody shoot a beta or even just Derek break a bone or something and the cameras can catch the healing mechanism take place. Erica and Scott could be tested to see if they still have their very CHRONIC conditions, and boom! Nope.

It would turn hunters into a freaky fringe hate group like skinheads, and countless people could get better, or simply have a place to belong.

The bite truly is a gift, and it would ensure safety for their species. I'm not saying the societal transition would be smooth, but the things werewolves can offer are a tantalizing incentive to not commit genocide.

I've switched browsers, which only intensified my urge to lurk. So, hi! I've been reading your posts, I've just been ... mouse quiet.

And I've been thinking about my nigh humongous writer's block. And the recent big bang fails that J2 rps and Bandom has had and I kinda realized why I can't finish my Ryan turns into a Naga story.

White bread character, Indian mythological creature, white guy going to India, the plot centering on two white guys in love against the backdrop of transpacific angst and another culture's myths, mysterious Indian bookshop owners... it made me nervous.

Really fucking nervous. Even when I was still writing it, I was nervous how people would take it, because I didn't want offend anybody. I still think it's a good thing I didn't finish it, and I don't know how to strip away the things I think are problematic and still have the bones of the same story. Ryan becoming a Griffin or a unicorn doesn't have the same cache as a snake sort of creature.

These are not the same as writing your story amidst a country's still ongoing natural disaster with caricatures in the place of actual characters of color. Or rewriting a secular Jewish character as a Catholic priest.

I think something slightly different is going on in the latest round of *fail, though.

A caveat: I do not know the author, nor have read the fic in question. In other words, I am talking out of my ass and talking aloud. And it is early in the morning, and I will poke at this subject tomorrow, trying to get what I want down right.


I think that in light of the only readily agreed upon Day of Importance for the trans community is a day which honors the dead, this fic is in a sticky situation.

Trans kids don't exist in a vacuum, the same way other lgbqt kids don't exist in a vacuum. We all grow up in this toxic stew with gender roles and slut shamming and tons of other crap that says girls and boys are entirely different species. They and their allies know the statistics, know the danger of simply going to find a bathroom by yourself, among myriad other things that should be completely mundane, safe. (It makes vauge sense, then, that Ryan would want to guard Spencer while she's in a venue showering after a show. It's not a safe space to them. )

Some people grow up and buck all the gender/societal crap they don't like, some people buy in to all of the things pointed out here: (I'm thinking of the "Spencer is better than those dumb Barbie girls! If you take a drink from someone at a bar you're a slut!" bit)

Sure, there is badfic, and there is fic so offensive it makes your head spin. There is fic that gets trans issues so right (anything by azure_jay on LJ) you print it out and clutch it to you.

Trying to help in the form of fiction writing is always precarious, especially when the writer may not be from the population she is writing about.

I personally don't plan on reading the mtf!Spencer story, since I think it itself is the problematic 'after', but I can understand what the 'before' part felt like.

So I didn't think I'd talk about Mr. Brendon-gate, but apparently I am.

Not cutting, because your layouts will be fine tomorrow(1/9/08) morning.

||

I was taling to saline_joy about this, and some of this is taken from a comment thread we had.

I first want to clear up a vocab word or two that will come up.

Porn = wherin for values of porn, we take that to mean "stuff about people having sex"

Pornfiction = wherin for values of porn, we take that to mean "stuff about people having sex, with varying levels of romantic sappiness thrown in"

We write porn, yes, but we also write love stories, and there's a difference in the two.

~~

I just... it frustrates me that it's "ok" for young adult dudes to act like that.

Being informed only from things like Anal Adventures IV and last months' issue of Cosmo does not excuse crappy, douchey behavior.

I love porn and pornfiction but its crap at teaching intrapersonal relations and things like using lube and asking please before facials happen.

Porn shouldn't be how people learn the workings of sex, but because Western socioety in general and America as a whole is so freaked about sex ed(how to both put a condom on and talk to each other the morning after) for minors, we don't.

The fact that Ryan snips at Jac's photography while doing the same thing shows us something.

The fact that Pete makes thinly veiled comments about every girl he's ever been with shows us something(Ashlee's dieting issues{She means to me what i mean to Rap, check his blogspot for that header}, Jaenae).

The fact that people dismiss the "scene queens" but laud the male versions of them is really telling, perhaps most of all.

Seriously. Pete is dating Ashlee who is more famous than he is and I'm sure the added publicity for his band, DD and gross looking clothing line(said while wearing some of it) isn't keeping him up at night.

And yet its girls who are called "star fuckers".

Ryan internet stalked both Jac and Pete before they dated and signed his band. It may be the internet, but stalking is still stalking.

That emo is actually very hyper-masculine wherew girls are groupies, song material and muses is still unacceptable, guyliner or not.

Which leads to another thing: girls in bands.

Hayley Williams from Paramore, Alicia(techs count), Greta from The Hushies, Amanda Plamer, Lyn Z & Kitty from MSI. Ashlee's a solo pop star, but she goes here as well.

Where is the fic for them, exactly? Theres more about Brian, and Matt Cortez and Zack than even Greta.

I have problems with Hayley's outlook(Once a whore, you're nothing more, I'm sorry that'll never change - from Misery Business. She's trapped in the same whore/bride dichotemy that Ryan and Pete are.) on this meta actually, but still.

I'm sick of this huge gaping chest wound of a double standard in my music and in the larger world.

Brendon's dochey please-let-someone-kick-him-in-the-neck behaviour is only a symptom of this.