[LMB] Re: Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Rachel Ganz wrote:

> Isn't one of the difficulties about having young children
> (especially for women) that it is much more difficult to
> believe "the world well lost for love". You must either
> sacrifice your lover to your child(ren) or you child(ren) to
> your lover. Even if it's only a question of how you're going to
> spend your Saturday night. It's possible, but it's a lot more
> complicated.

Yes.  But the only reason this is not a problem in slash is that
so many male leads in adventure stories are single people who
have never had children.  Gay men in the real world often have
children, because even people who are exclusively gay once they
realise their preference often try heterosexuality out first
(there is a lot of pressure to do so) and some of them actively
want children and go to a good deal of trouble to get them,
regardless of their favourite flavour of sex or romance.
Children aren't and never have been exclusively a female problem;
what's changed is that we no longer live in a world where it's
thought that they *should* be one, so the "I must get a woman to
take care of my kids" flavour of romance story is less popular,
and the "I will find a way to stick two guys in a romance story
with kids even if I have to resort to MPREG" flavour is more so.

I've read some very amusing slash stories about characters who
canonically have kids, but whose heterosexual relationships were
more-or-less over in canon, or which ended because of the gay
relationship.  I don't read MPREG (male pregnancy) but I don't
like pregnancy in stories much anyway.  Just not something I
personally want to read about much, at least not if the author's
going into all the Messy Biological Details, and MPREG authors
always do.

> And the fictional children are often inordinately well-balanced
> and well-behaved, with only the occasional cute moments of
> embarrassment.

Well, a lot of times this is because children in romances are
really there as a plot device and the story is not about them, so
they show up when the writer wants them to.  In real life if you
have children they are around all the time, but most stories are
not much like real life.

> I've wondered how well Nicky would actually cope with his
> mother's remarriage - to someone who might have murdered his
> father, no matter what Gregor says. Maybe there's a later plot,
> where he turns against Miles, and possibly even attempts to do
> nasty things to the twins.

It really all depends upon how he felt about Tien.  Not all
children are as intensely loyal to both parents in every case as
the world would have you believe.  I prefer my stepmother to my
mother because she is a) a better mom; b) not a b*tch or a drunk
and c) cares more about ME than her fantasy of me.  It is
entirely possible that Nikki prefers Miles to his memories of
Tien.  I have never, ever, ever not loved my stepmother more than
I ever loved my mother.  NEVER.

> But that is a side issue. And fiction is fiction. The attaction
> of opposties, and the attraction of hate is a well-trodden
> trope (tropes are squashed all over the place). If one lets
> sexual attraction creep into all the areas where friendship
> stood before, you have yet another set of complications to deal
> with.

But nobody does that, either as a writer or as a human being.

People really can't choose not to be sexually attracted; they
either are, or they aren't.  And just because one is sexually
attracted to one friend (or enemy), doesn't mean one is to all of
them.  For that matter you can be basically gay or straight and
yet find yourself wildly attracted to a single solitary member of
your non-preferred gender and end up involved with them.  As much
as I hate the "I'm not gay I just love YOU" trope in older slash
stories, that was my second husband--he was gay as Christmas
apparel, he just loved me.  It didn't work out for us, but
sometimes it does.

Many heterosexual romances are about friendships, or emnities,
that turn sexual.  Nobody uses this as a justification to say
that romance writers disrespect friendship.  Of course just as
some people want to see all same sex friends as buddies, forever
and always, some people refuse to believe men and women can be
friends without a sexual tension.  But that's not true either.

> And it seems that there is some huge biological wall that once
> you have penetrated it, it is a long and dangerous trip back to
> the lands of friendship. Why, I don't know. In my experience,
> once you have been to bed with someone, of either sex, it is
> very difficult to remain friends. But maybe I've never gone to
> bed with the right people.

In general, that's true for most people, which is why it's a
really bad idea to have sex with a long-time friend unless you
and they are sure of the feelings--if it goes wrong, it will take
a long, long time to repair the friendship (I've done it, but in
both cases it took years).

OTOH, one of the problems for me is that if the platonic love is
very deep and the sexual attraction insufficiently strong, I
never get to the point in a friendship-turned-sexual where I am
"in love" and can or am willing to forsake all others; and this
would be okay, except that I do poly very badly, because I *want*
to be willing to forsake all others and when that person comes
along, people Get Hurt.

~malfoy :)
****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley