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terajk1. lightgetsin 's essay Do I Do It For You?: Service Kink and Disability (found via ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
access_fandom ) is a thing of joy and nourishing tastiness. Among other things, it hits on things about my "foot/shoe fetish" fill for kink_bingo that I'm struggling with and gives me new angles to look at the whole thing. Plenty of great things about independence/dependence/interdependence here, which are things I think about a lot.
2. I really want to do something with Andrew McGahan's novel Praise/the film based on it for my "drugs/aphrodisiacs" square forkink_bingo. (It won the Australian/Vogel Award.) But the picspam of the movie-of-the-book isn't working out. (*Shakes fist at director John Curran for shooting everything at a distance, which makes absolute artistic sense but ARGH*) I have many complicated, murky feelings about Praise, including the warm-fuzzies because it gave me a clue as to what my sexual orientation was. The male lead, Gordon, is the very picture of Generation X ennui--he's unmotivated about everything, including sex. When the girl he's hooked up with/his girlfriend Cynthia asks him if he likes sex (she does, a lot) he says basically, "Eh, not really," and I went: "I don't know what I am, but it's whatever Gordon is." (I...may be slightly embarrassed that my first exposure to asexuality was Gordon Buchanan.)
Anyway, when Gordon and Cynthia aren't having sex (which Gordon does, even though he doesn't care for it in general), they're smoking/drinking/shooting heroin, etc. They genuinely care for each other, but they aren't compatible at all and their relationship is very dysfunctional/doomed. Gordon has asthma and Cynthia has severe eczema (yes, "two disabled people TOGETHER in a sexual relationship" was what sold me on the book--*facepalm*) so they also take prescribed drugs, which blends into the other drugs they're doing. Gordon smokes cigarettes after asthma attacks because "Believe it or not, it actually helps"; Cynthia takes cortisone shots at one point and develops steroid-induced psychiatric symptoms--and then their relationship tips from extremely dysfunctional to physically abusive. (My feelings, they are COMPLICATED, OK?)
Despite being two people who trigger each other just by existing, I don't think I can write Gordon and Cynthia properly because COMPLICATED FEELINGS and they ultimately don't go together at all. Also I am an American asexual without any sexual experience who has never smoked/drank/done illicit drugs and has never been to Australia, much less Brisbane. Unlike, say, writing Japanese characters from something that's been translated into American English, where I know I'm not writing them in the language they're actually speaking but I can get a handle on their translated speech patterns, Gordon and Cynthia speak Australian English. And I don't know enough about Australian slang/speech patterns to write them properly. (Most hilariously, once during sex Cynthia mentions her fanny and I was all: "Wait: they're having anal sex?" and I think I'd finished the book before I realized my mistake.) So, no, you don't want me writing Cynthia/Gordon banter.
Plus, I have trouble thinking of writing any Praise fic outside of Gordon's first-person POV, as his distant, unmotivated, apathetic and poetic viewpoint frames the entire thing. And his voice is very unique. But Bore-don is also the WORST PROTAGONIST EVER, since if you looked up the word "apathy" in the dictionary you'd find his damn picture. I'm surely underestimating poor Gordon, but seriously. He is so "enh, I don't care" that I can't bring myself to read the prequel novel 1988, which takes place before he meets Cynthia so she's not there to balance him out/move the plot forward.
lightgetsin 's essay Do I Do It For You?: Service Kink and Disability (found via access_fandom ) is a thing of joy and nourishing tastiness. Among other things, it hits on things about my "foot/shoe fetish" fill for kink_bingo that I'm struggling with and gives me new angles to look at the whole thing. Plenty of great things about independence/dependence/interdependence here, which are things I think about a lot.2. I really want to do something with Andrew McGahan's novel Praise/the film based on it for my "drugs/aphrodisiacs" square for
kink_bingo. (It won the Australian/Vogel Award.) But the picspam of the movie-of-the-book isn't working out. (*Shakes fist at director John Curran for shooting everything at a distance, which makes absolute artistic sense but ARGH*) I have many complicated, murky feelings about Praise, including the warm-fuzzies because it gave me a clue as to what my sexual orientation was. The male lead, Gordon, is the very picture of Generation X ennui--he's unmotivated about everything, including sex. When the girl he's hooked up with/his girlfriend Cynthia asks him if he likes sex (she does, a lot) he says basically, "Eh, not really," and I went: "I don't know what I am, but it's whatever Gordon is." (I...may be slightly embarrassed that my first exposure to asexuality was Gordon Buchanan.)Anyway, when Gordon and Cynthia aren't having sex (which Gordon does, even though he doesn't care for it in general), they're smoking/drinking/shooting heroin, etc. They genuinely care for each other, but they aren't compatible at all and their relationship is very dysfunctional/doomed. Gordon has asthma and Cynthia has severe eczema (yes, "two disabled people TOGETHER in a sexual relationship" was what sold me on the book--*facepalm*) so they also take prescribed drugs, which blends into the other drugs they're doing. Gordon smokes cigarettes after asthma attacks because "Believe it or not, it actually helps"; Cynthia takes cortisone shots at one point and develops steroid-induced psychiatric symptoms--and then their relationship tips from extremely dysfunctional to physically abusive. (My feelings, they are COMPLICATED, OK?)
Despite being two people who trigger each other just by existing, I don't think I can write Gordon and Cynthia properly because COMPLICATED FEELINGS and they ultimately don't go together at all. Also I am an American asexual without any sexual experience who has never smoked/drank/done illicit drugs and has never been to Australia, much less Brisbane. Unlike, say, writing Japanese characters from something that's been translated into American English, where I know I'm not writing them in the language they're actually speaking but I can get a handle on their translated speech patterns, Gordon and Cynthia speak Australian English. And I don't know enough about Australian slang/speech patterns to write them properly. (Most hilariously, once during sex Cynthia mentions her fanny and I was all: "Wait: they're having anal sex?" and I think I'd finished the book before I realized my mistake.) So, no, you don't want me writing Cynthia/Gordon banter.
Plus, I have trouble thinking of writing any Praise fic outside of Gordon's first-person POV, as his distant, unmotivated, apathetic and poetic viewpoint frames the entire thing. And his voice is very unique. But Bore-don is also the WORST PROTAGONIST EVER, since if you looked up the word "apathy" in the dictionary you'd find his damn picture. I'm surely underestimating poor Gordon, but seriously. He is so "enh, I don't care" that I can't bring myself to read the prequel novel 1988, which takes place before he meets Cynthia so she's not there to balance him out/move the plot forward.
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Date: 2012-07-10 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 01:30 am (UTC)ETA: I just thought of a story scenario GOD HELP ME.
Also...SHIRTLESS GEORGE TAKEI! *eee!*