Soon, this place is gonna be a party, and you're all invited.

[fiercelydreamed]

Within 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.

- I'll probably put up a few discussion posts, to help generate ideas for how to structure this festival or come up with prompts for those who want them, but I'm not planning on hosting intense debate or discussion here. That's already happening elsewhere, and frankly, I'm personally just not looking for it. I'm going with the premise that queer and genderqueer characters are just as welcome in gen fanworks as straight characters. If you want to argue about it, I respectfully ask that you choose another forum to do so.

- There are mirror communities on LJ and Dreamwidth. They probably won't be fully redundant, and I'm working on a good weigh to report the activities at the primary community on the secondary community.

- The type of fanworks and time frame will be relatively unstructured and as inclusive as possible. I'd like everyone who's interested to be able to come play. If you've already got ideas, feel free to get cracking, because I'm pretty sure they'll be able to find a home here.

- What "gen" means for the purpose of this festival has yet to be determined. Please feel free to comment if you've got a definition you like.

Questions, comments, concerns, hell yeahs? Weigh in below.

Comments

[theleaveswant]

Fantastic--this is about the best policy and political foundation I could have imagined! I seriously want to hug you now.