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fiercelydreamedWithin the next couple of weeks, this community will be hosting a festival of gen fanworks featuring sexual and gender minority characters of all tasty flavors -- queer, trans, gay, lesbian, intersex, bisexual, genderqueer, questioning, flamingly ambiguous. In short, the kinds of characters who are often marginalized or erased in fanwork festivals, in mainstream fiction, and in family-friendly tv shows and movies. It's also an opportunity to let these characters get out of the bedroom for once (or the supply closet, or the Canadian shack, or the alien holding cell, or wherever it is they've been having all their please-view-with-discretion fun).
Oh, and please tell the straight characters they can come play, too.
Here's the thing. For many of us who are queer, we're queer all the time. We're queer when we're grocery-shopping. We're trans when we're at the library. We're bisexual when we go on camping trips. We're questioning when we kick ass at kickball tournaments. We're intersex when we face off against our thesis defense committees. We're lesbians when we show up at our straight friends' houses after they've been brutally dumped by some jackass. And we're gay at (and quite possibly for) the dentist.
Drawing a line in the sand between "slash" and "gen" erases the fact that many of us live our daily lives aware of our identities and experiences as queer or genderqueer people. It's not something we only think about when we're falling in love, getting our hearts broken, or getting off. And we, like the queer and genderqueer characters we write, are done being told we can't come to your fan awards, your workplace chili cook-off, your seminary, or your transcontinental backpacking trip. So we're throwing our own, because we're tired of waiting for you to figure out we're the best shortstop who lives on your block.
There's a lot of details I still need to figure out. I'll probably need some advice on how to make this a really good party, and maybe some help getting it up and off the ground. ( Here's what I can tell you about what I'm planning to do with this community: )
Questions, comments, concerns, hell yeahs? Weigh in below.
Oh, and please tell the straight characters they can come play, too.
Here's the thing. For many of us who are queer, we're queer all the time. We're queer when we're grocery-shopping. We're trans when we're at the library. We're bisexual when we go on camping trips. We're questioning when we kick ass at kickball tournaments. We're intersex when we face off against our thesis defense committees. We're lesbians when we show up at our straight friends' houses after they've been brutally dumped by some jackass. And we're gay at (and quite possibly for) the dentist.
Drawing a line in the sand between "slash" and "gen" erases the fact that many of us live our daily lives aware of our identities and experiences as queer or genderqueer people. It's not something we only think about when we're falling in love, getting our hearts broken, or getting off. And we, like the queer and genderqueer characters we write, are done being told we can't come to your fan awards, your workplace chili cook-off, your seminary, or your transcontinental backpacking trip. So we're throwing our own, because we're tired of waiting for you to figure out we're the best shortstop who lives on your block.
There's a lot of details I still need to figure out. I'll probably need some advice on how to make this a really good party, and maybe some help getting it up and off the ground. ( Here's what I can tell you about what I'm planning to do with this community: )
Questions, comments, concerns, hell yeahs? Weigh in below.