December? Ack!

[jlh]

Last night I had a surprisingly long dinner with sistermagpie—as in, we sat down at 6:30 and when we got up to go we were like, my God, it's midnight, oops. This is what happens when you go to a 24-hour bistro; it never really clears out and they don't really try to get you out of there. (Besides, we had drinks and dessert so it's not like they didn't make money off us.) This is also what happens when you have dinner with Magpie because there is just so much to say!

Then this morning calloocallay and I had brunch and looked at one of the holiday bazaars on this beautiful fall day. Lovely time, lovely day, lovely company.

Lately I've been reading a lot of metafandom and it seems that every time there's an attempt at some sort of hegemony, piles of the usually-silent come out of the woodwork to say, um, no. I think I'd rather make my arguments in fic. You know, in January, when the term is over and I can breathe again.

Speaking of which, I'm around. I haven't been posting much because I don't know that I have much to say for myself at the moment. I'm doing a lot of work, and then occasionally reading Starsky and Hutch fic. And . . . that's sort of it. Working so much can get kind of lonely so don't be a stranger! I've been a bit addle-brained so I haven't been doing the reaching out I usually do, and I've been burned a lot lately by inaccurate IM statuses (curse you, googlechat!) so I'm really not pinging anyone at all anymore, but please do come find me if you see me!

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I love that you used the word 'hegemony' in your post. LOVE. What a great word. (I am totally not joking.)

What kind of holiday bazaars do you go to?

You know, I've never seen the original Starsky & Hutch. I've seen the movie with Owen Wilson and Ben...oh crap, what's his last name? Er. That guy. I reeeeally like Owen Wilson as Hutch, although I expect the original dude wasn't quite so, er, wacky.

Ben Stiller! Gah, that was going to bother me.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That was so fun last night! I swear I looked at my watch at 9:55 and then the next time I looked it was midnight. No idea how that happened, but this morning I woke up still wondering what on earth Britney is trying to say with those photos, and I can no longer think of Starsky & Hutch without thinking about that fic you described.:-)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I also like problematic and overdetermined. And if you ask me, I'll tell you what the hegemony was and what my issues are with it; though some of them have been aired (thank goodness) I might as well stop bothering everyone in chat with it.

These holiday bazaars are outdoors in parks under a series of tents. They're mostly crafty--TONS of jewelry, soap, candles, scarves, pottery, that sort of thing. One year I really cleaned the place out. This year, though, I want to give people very practical things because I don't have a lot of money and also because I'm making various kinds of nut brittle for everyone too, so they'll get the fun present that way.

Once again, my darling, the Butterscotch Stallion has blinded you to anyone else in the vicinity. The characters they played in the movie were much closer to riffs on their own well-established comic personas than the original Starsky and Hutch: Starsky was more the cool street-smart one, but also a coiled spring of energy; Hutch was more the uptight upper crusty, but also possessed a Zen-like calm. But the overt homoeroticism was straight from the show. I have season 1 on DVD and would be happy to send it along to you so you can see it for yourself. In the meantime, check out their entry on ship_manifesto.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

And if you ask me, I'll tell you what the hegemony was and what my issues are with it

I ask. And, I have no idea what's going on so I can guarantee I won't have heard any of what's on your mind before, either. :D

Your bazaars - oh man, I'd go crazy with joy at places like that. We have arts and crafts street shows occasionally around here along the same lines, but never around gift-giving times of the year. Which is a bummer, because I love shopping those sorts of things for gifts. (I know, what's stopping me from doing that kind of shopping when the shows do happen? My own lack of ability to plan ahead, mostly.)

The Butterscotch Stallion? *DIES* Is it wrong that my first thought was 'god, now I kind of want to lick him'?

I'd love to check out the real thing!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

They really should have the bazaars at holiday time. IIRC, you guys don't really have a "tourist season" do you? Like, you get your tourists sort of whenever. So yeah, that's silly of them, as this is when people want all that kind of shit.

I love that you are this big Owen fan and hadn't heard that gossip-column name for him during that whole Kate Hudson thing. And you kind of wanted to lick him before that, so don't even. :p

I will unearth your address, as I know it's still in my email, and send it along!

Okay, so I've been reading too much metafandom, right? And what I've gleaned is that (1) slash is porn written for women by women (2) that deals with the unappealing, male-created female characters, who aren't really women, by eliminating them (3) and allows women to write themselves into less problematic bodies (4) that might be men fucking other men, but aren't actually gay, and so anything gay men might have to say about it is interesting but ultimately unimportant (5) and therefore allows women to erase the power differentials inherent in het relationships in a patriarchal society and write a truly equal relationship.

But (1) Some slash is written by men, and read by men. And some het can be said to be porn written for women by women. (2) That's fine, but can we agree that it's a problematic--a reaction to a situation that ultimately reinforces the situation by being just as dismissive of the female characters as the projected male creator is? How about trying to fix them? How about demanding better ones? (3) I don't want to be in a less problematic body, either in terms of race or gender or object-preference. In fact, my way of writing myself INTO the canon is to reject the white straight boys. There's a long tradition of this, is there not? (4) Taking the slash out of the homosexual context feels just as problematic as 3 because it takes all the societal issues out of the relationship and makes it a magical ideal. (5) My god, do you really think that all the power issues within a heterosexual relationship are one sided and gender based? Also, given that this is a heteronormative society, where nearly all parents of now-adults are hets (or were at the time of birth/adoption) don't you think that homos as well as hets have the male/female ideal relationshp baggage just as bad? They have to do just as much negotiation of gender, just in a different context. Stuff like that makes me wonder if these people know any real gay couples, until I remember point 4. Never mind that you can certainly write about het couples making the same negotiations.

What worries me in all this is the thought that the only way to remove all the societal biases and get to a relationship ideal is to make everyone straight white males, and then have them fuck each other without being gay. But that doesn't seem particularly subversive of the patriarchy; that seems to be reinforcing it in massive ways. (Not that het is subversive, either, but at least it doesn't think it is.) It makes me uncomfortable that there are so many who feel such a desperate need to "escape" the female, as if it is a problematic; I think this is where the charge of misogyny that slash is sometimes burdened with comes from.

In the end I actually think that het and slash aren't really all that different, and that the key difference in fandom is really between canon shippers and extra-canon shippers. That seems to be a much deeper dividing line. Reinforcing the false dichotomy of het v. slash just serves to highlight a non-difference about which we can argue endlessly without getting anyplace.

And also? The next person who asks a "why" question gets a knuckle sandwich.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I love that you are this big Owen fan and hadn't heard that gossip-column name for him during that whole Kate Hudson thing. And you kind of wanted to lick him before that, so don't even. :p

*afraid to know* HEE. Yeah, I went off gossip columns a year or so ago. I used to read Ted at E! Online, but all of a sudden one day I thought, wow, why do I care which celebrities are breaking up or having affairs or getting wasted? I couldn't come up with a good answer. :P Sounds like I got out just in time!

I do remember reading all kinds of stuff before that implied Owen is a great big ol' scoundrally possibly kinky dog, but, you know, I don't want to lick the actual guy. Just the fictional guy. :D Cos he's hawt.

I will unearth your address, as I know it's still in my email, and send it along!

Wheeeeee!!!

In the end I actually think that het and slash aren't really all that different, and that the key difference in fandom is really between canon shippers and extra-canon shippers. That seems to be a much deeper dividing line.

I tend to agree with this. I also tend to think that most of the time, when somebody is trying to validate a position which says that slash isn't about gay people/is about erasing power differentials/bladiblah, what they're doing is trying not to admit that they read and write slashy stuff because it's, like, really fun and hawt and stuff and they just want their man/man sexin' or shmoop without having to think too deeply about it. And in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody is shallow about something, so, whatever. Have fun, kids. It just gets stupid when they try to play it off as something more meaningful and righteous than it actually is.

Qualifying statement: I know I shouldn't make generalizations like that, and I'm sure I'd have to admit that some people do have valid whatevers for liking their whatever, because I'm a freaking Libra and I'm incapable of not at least granting that there are two sides to whatever argument. But. Yeah. Anyway.