General Catch up

[erastes]

I’ve had an interesting exchange over on a GLBT reading blog which I didn’t know about before, someone asked “what makes a gay movie a gay movie” and I said that for me the main characters have to be gay but it doesn’t have to be about their sexuality and so many films are. The poster disagreed and said that a story about a person coming to terms with their brother being gay – even if the gay character never appears on screen – would be a gay movie. No, that would be a straight movie exploring gay themes.

In my mind, anyway. Your mileage may certainly differ. But as a gay person that scenario described to me as a gay film would annoy me when I found it was all about straight reaction. I also found it interesting the way that historical films were not really counted as being relevant to today’s issues (because eek—they so are) and the way she said Dumbledore was a main character in Harry Potter. Er, no.

Very snowy today at Dad’s but it’s all gone from my area. Sadness. As usual much of the country has been covered – it was minus 18(!!!!) in parts of Wales overnight.

Been using the glasses without the occlusion for driving over the last couple of days now and it’s proved to me that it’s practice, I think, that’s going to push my eyes back into submission. Using the occlusion is like a crutch, and I don’t think the right eye is ever going to come right unless I make it. Still no good for PC work for which I need the glasses, but I’m managing to read without glasses at all. I absolutely refuse to be handicapped like this for ever.

I’ve started to do some reviews (non-historical) for TLA and got my first two books – the first one is an utter joy. I’ll let you know when the reviews go up.

That’s about it. Other than the above, I have been mainly assassinatin’.

 

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Comments

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I'm wiped out. I've been committing fictional genocide. Butchering 2 million people in a week's time has left my main character a little drained.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

He's been a busy boy!

[cerisaye.livejournal.com]

Well, I agree with your definition of what makes a 'gay' movie, i.e. the main character/s should be gay, though, like you, I am happiest when sexuality isn't the focus of the story, so the character/s are about more than who they choose to sleep with.

We're snowed in here, along the Clyde coast from Glasgow!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I saw the snow you have there - very impressive!

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that the eyes are responding to practice :) What's TLA?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you dear - it's here:

http://www.tlavideo.com/

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Ooh, what a great place to work for! I'll look forward to your reviews.

[suebrownstories.livejournal.com]

I write gay erotica mainly, but one of my stories took a deviation and became bi/gay fiction, rather than erotica, because the focus wasn't the sex, but the exploration of the main character's sexuality.

I would like to think of it as a story where the sex was the least important thing but the love and development of the relationship was there.

Which rambling leads me back to thinking that one gay character does not gay fiction make.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I agree, and I'm sure most people would. It seems rather obvious to me! Thanks dear!

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting question for me, as I'm having to think about how to categorise the story I'm currently writing. It's not primarily crime fiction, even though my protagonist is investigating a crime, and having LGB (no T yet, but you never know!) central characters in it doesn't automatically make it gay fiction. I hate to say it, but I think I'm writing mainstream women's fiction in the sense that the story is about a woman's journey of discovery, and the fact that one of her discoveries relates to sexuality and another relates to a crime are somewhat incidental.

Does that make sense? and more importantly does it give any clues about how to answer the original question?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Trouble is that a lot of this is new, even though-obviously, gay fiction is not new, nor even gay romance. The mainstream publishers are going to have to decide whether they tag their books with gay content if the main character happens to be gay, like Lord John for example - I wouldn't call them "gay books" even though his sexuality does colour everything he thinks and the way he behaves even with friends.

I dislike all these desperate measures of A BOOK MUST HAVE SOME KIND OF LABEL. In English libraries we have stuffs and shelves and shelves of FICTION.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

I hate labels with a passion. I just want to write a story, but it seems there has to be a specific slant put on the story (or at least the blurb) depending on whether one is writing a story about a female protagonist who just happens to be solving a crime, or a crime story where the investigator just happens to be female.

And this story most definitely isn't erotica, even though it looks like it's going to have more sexually-themed scenes than anything else I've ever tried to write.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

OH - you'll love this then. I spotted this on a website yesterday and my brain exploded.

A writer friend is faced with turning a suspense plot with women's fiction elements into women's fiction with suspense elements. If you read both, you'll probably have some sense of how the emphasis will change from physical threat to emotional threat, from perhaps the danger being mostly in the future (implied threat of physical harm that might happen) to maybe something that happened in the past (some hidden problem that is currently causing conflict, whether recognized or not).

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the post that got me thinking, along with Charlie's comment when we were lunching about whether this was something I wanted to go mainstream with (via an agent and all that).

To be honest, regardless of that blog post, I'm just writing a story and letting it evolve into the genre it wants to be (which seems to be women's fiction for some reason, but then three of the four main characters -- four out of five if you count the missing Julia -- do happen to be women).

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

...because we all know women are incapable of coping with physical threats and can only handle emotions.

Yeah, that's why Xena, Warrior Princess was such a long-running hit. God forbid women start thinking of themselves as capable of dealing effectively with physical threats.

[gaedhal.livejournal.com]

I believe book sellers (and publishers, too) have
fallen for the Hollywood idea that everything has
to be described in about four words because the
general public is so stupid they can't grasp
anything more complex. And if one of those words
is "gay" then it gets dumped into a niche, no matter
what the other issues may be.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

All very true.

So my story blurb needs to be 'can $protagonist turn her back on what everyone expects of her to do what she really wants and find true happiness?' rather than 'should $protagonist choose the woman who obviously loves her over her dull, undemonstrative husband?' if I'm to avoid it being niche-marketed? ;-)

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

We have over a foot of the stuff and thunder and lightening at the same time last night. It was amazing.

I'm sitting here worried our guttering is going to drop off. Two whole gutters have fallen off this morning in our street with the weight of the snow. :/

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Dad's is full of the stuff and there's next to nothing here, it's very odd. And of course when i'm over there, I worry about all the snow he's getting and whether I'll be able to get home - i leave early and find there's no snow outside of his town!

[liebesdammerung.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about gay movies. I think 'gay movies' are the ones made about and for gays. Hopefully by gays, too. Or at least, with gay people consulted. And it is nice to have a movie that isn't just about the character's struggle with sexuality. That's been done, I find.