in which I am greedy
Jun. 11th, 2018 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sciatrixI am tired of soft lesbians. I would not mind them, but they are everything I can find.
Give me hard lesbians: women who have suffered, and women who have caused suffering. Give me survivors. Give me women who know what it is to live in a world that is unforgiving and know how to make love in that world anyway.
Give me broken lesbians: women with scars mental and physical, who are stretching their cut tissue into something functional. Give me women who know what being broken looks like and who know how to put themselves back together again. Give me women who don’t know they are broken and who are trying to fix themselves anyway. Give me women who make bad decisions because they are in pain or never learned how to do better.
Give me experienced lesbians: women who have had sex before and like it (or don’t), women who know what they like and what they don’t, and women who negotiate different opinons on what is good. Give me women who know that they have sensitive nipples (or not) and who prefer stimulation (or not) of different types; give me women with strong opinions about strap-ons, and penetration, and vibration. Give me women who have sex, because that ain’t just something that men do.
Give me conflicting lesbians: give me women whose relationships are imperfect, and messy, and complicated. Give me women who fight about silly things or looming, massive things. Give me women whose relationship is tense sometimes. Give me women who are unhealthy, women who need to break up, and women who have already mentally checked out and are looking for the next place to land.
Give me inexperienced lesbians: give me women who make obvious errors in interpersonal relationships. Give me women who don’t know what they want or how to become acquainted with their bodies. Give me women who don’t know how to be supportive of others, and give me women who don’t know how to care. Give me women who are greedy.
Give me f/f with one lesbian or even no lesbians at all: f/f with bisexual characters, or pansexual characters, or asexual characters. Give me f/f with people who have a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and tastes. Give me f/f with women whose tastes do not match up completely, women who negotiate different orientations or different preferences, and show me how they reach a comfortable medium.
Give me all of these things, because I need them and I want them.
I am tired unto death of soft lesbians. There are only so many iterations on specific well-trod f/f themes that I want to engage in, and soft dollies that sit next to each other and gaze emptily and softly into each other’s eyes is not enough. I want women with personality, with flaws and strengths and sparking character. I want women who step off the page or out of the screen and impress their realness onto my mind. I am greedy for them; I will consume them and roll their lifelike words into my skin.
Why is that so hard to find?
Give me hard lesbians: women who have suffered, and women who have caused suffering. Give me survivors. Give me women who know what it is to live in a world that is unforgiving and know how to make love in that world anyway.
Give me broken lesbians: women with scars mental and physical, who are stretching their cut tissue into something functional. Give me women who know what being broken looks like and who know how to put themselves back together again. Give me women who don’t know they are broken and who are trying to fix themselves anyway. Give me women who make bad decisions because they are in pain or never learned how to do better.
Give me experienced lesbians: women who have had sex before and like it (or don’t), women who know what they like and what they don’t, and women who negotiate different opinons on what is good. Give me women who know that they have sensitive nipples (or not) and who prefer stimulation (or not) of different types; give me women with strong opinions about strap-ons, and penetration, and vibration. Give me women who have sex, because that ain’t just something that men do.
Give me conflicting lesbians: give me women whose relationships are imperfect, and messy, and complicated. Give me women who fight about silly things or looming, massive things. Give me women whose relationship is tense sometimes. Give me women who are unhealthy, women who need to break up, and women who have already mentally checked out and are looking for the next place to land.
Give me inexperienced lesbians: give me women who make obvious errors in interpersonal relationships. Give me women who don’t know what they want or how to become acquainted with their bodies. Give me women who don’t know how to be supportive of others, and give me women who don’t know how to care. Give me women who are greedy.
Give me f/f with one lesbian or even no lesbians at all: f/f with bisexual characters, or pansexual characters, or asexual characters. Give me f/f with people who have a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and tastes. Give me f/f with women whose tastes do not match up completely, women who negotiate different orientations or different preferences, and show me how they reach a comfortable medium.
Give me all of these things, because I need them and I want them.
I am tired unto death of soft lesbians. There are only so many iterations on specific well-trod f/f themes that I want to engage in, and soft dollies that sit next to each other and gaze emptily and softly into each other’s eyes is not enough. I want women with personality, with flaws and strengths and sparking character. I want women who step off the page or out of the screen and impress their realness onto my mind. I am greedy for them; I will consume them and roll their lifelike words into my skin.
Why is that so hard to find?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 08:33 pm (UTC)I hate grim dark fic. I just want more depth than just soft femme fluff? Like, I like femme women, I just want them to have opinions and goals and quirks and weird obsessions and personality. At some point, I am going to actually write up why Aubrey/Chloe is a bulletproof ship from me from the first Pitch Perfect (I need to watch the sequels), and it's not like Aubrey isn't a super femme character. It's just that she is also a perfectionist and wound extremely tightly and bad at identifying what she wants and incredibly competitive, and I love those things about her even as she is a quintessentially femme ambitious woman. Or my delight over Daphne in Ocean's Eleven, who hides behind cluelessness and is bored to tears and has one hell of a mischevious sense of humor. Or GOTG's Mantis, who is a different kind of very femme and very non-combatant and has a spine of steel under it, despite being raised to be afraid.
Pitch Perfect fandom actually made me very sad when I went looking because... it was like the fandom saw Chloe being super into Becca, which is a reading I can get behind, but there didn't seem to be much interest from Becca back and I didn't see much in the way of--of convincing me why there was that interest, or even why something might last long term given Becca's general wariness of emotional vulnerability. For me, the thing that draws me in is vivid personalities with bright contrasts, and it felt so much like the fandom was just softening all of those vivid personalities in order to Give Chloe What She Wants without... really... delving into the places where those personalities can be off-the-wall, or ridiculous, or rub up on one another in such a place as to create conflict that can be resolved, or even working on why exactly these two specific people like each other.
Incidentally, I love established-relationship fic, and this is why--I love stories with characters where the new relationship energy has worn off and now you have to learn to live with each other's rough edges and less-than-wonderful traits and everything else. I love stories about strong personalities learning to make room for one another. And I feel like that is something I see much more clearly shown (not told) in dudeslash, much more of the time.