#phan stuff

Handling number 1, the negotiation of privacy, can be tricky but I feel like if you aren’t harassing them to reveal the actual real-life minutia of their relationship/personal life and you aren’t speculating for ‘proof’ of something they aren’t comfortable sharing then it’s pretty cool beans.

I know dnp aren’t characters so this is where it gets a little murky. But the dnp in my stories aren’t the same dnp I watch in the videos. I feel like if I were to try and make the characters in my story actually be them and tell the ‘truth,’ I would be overstepping my bounds into their personal relationship. (At the same time I don’t and will not excuse all action to the defense of “it’s just fiction!!” when I know these are people are real and cannot be excused as fiction.)

Handling number 2, the age old question of mlm fetishization. The next part is really long so:

TLDR, a lot of fic is written by and for queer people to feel represented, seen, and serve as a stepping stone for their own self acceptance and cognitive normalisation. Seeing yourself in something and reproducing your own imagination of what a healthy, queer relationship is like can be liberating. While representation is one thing, using fic as sexual exploration for personal discovery is another that can easily slip into danger territory for personal fantasy and satisfaction.

Long version: I’ve only strongly shipped and written within the phandom but have casually shipped a range of relationships. Unfortunately, in the past mlm outweighed wlw pairs. BEFORE YOU YELL, LET ME TELL YOU WHY.

As a POC departing from the heteronormative, I supremely repressed a lot of things to the point of confusion and uncertainty. Do I like her or do I just want to be her? Is this feeling of violent discomfort with my body a response to the hyper-sexualization of women or do I not feel at home here at all? What does gender and sexuality even mean????

Being a cis, thin, white gay male was (and is) a more accepted image of queerness in mainstream society. So, subtle mlm shipping sort of became the outlet for which I could engage in LGBT+ without pointing to myself and going, ME ME ME. I was basically like:

While I now ship wlw relationships a lot more, I used to avoid them in fear of what it would say about me. All the same, I feel guilty that I used these representations of gay men to assert my existence somehow while denying my sweet wlws. I’m sorry Sapphic gods, I wish I could take it all back. I take accountability for my fear based oppression and internal hatred which I projected onto you. 

I also acknowledge what a pity it is that LGBT people (including myself) feel guilty for consuming queer media because of the blanket assumption of fetishization. 

But,,, fetishization does exist and writing sex in fic is ,,,, trickyy.

Something I always wonder is if dnp were a straight couple, would I have any qualms about writing sex. The answer for the most part is no (excluding my hang-ups about privacy and what is acceptable for rpf and sex).

HOWEVER, the historical and political context around these issues mean that in order to treat these situations with equity, sometimes they can’t be treated as the exact same thing. There is a long history of hyper-sexualizing the LGBT community and using this for fantasy. It gets even more complicated when we’re writing about people’s real-liferelationships. (When sexual representation and discovering sexuality turns to gratification for individual pleasure then it’s yikes)

YET, sex is a thing and making it more of a taboo in our puritanical society is not helpful either. People have sex and it can function as an important part of a relationship for couples who do engage in such activities. It should be normalized instead of clouded in shame and impurity.

My rule of thumb is, if it seems to fit naturally in the story and relationship dynamic, then it can sometimes aid in showing important aspects of the story/character. Example, my fic currently has sex because one main themes is about exploring sexuality and discovering new parts of yourself in relation to a queer relationship. But (maybe you’ve noticed), I’ve been abbreviating these scenes lately as I don’t feel they are serving the purpose I intended. Sometimes I think maybe I previously made them full length in fear that no one would read my story without it – when in reality, maybe a shortened version could’ve served it’s purpose as well??? But maybe it wouldn’t. Who knows.