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anarcoqueer1994 · 5 years ago

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Friendly Neighbor Spiderma(e)n

Okay I have been working crazy overtime so I haVe been MIA but I did this little dabble based on an idea from @kippens-a-goodman. Its rough but I needed to write something that wasn't work related. Hope yall like it.

Also small content warning for homophobic language.

"Cy, we have to…"

"You are going to get in trouble. Or what if one of those crazy bigots hurt you?" Cyrus replies as he sits in the front seat of his boyfriend's jeep, ignoring the protests from Marty and Jonah in the back.

They were pulled over in a parking lot a few blocks from the street preacher and his few dozen crazy followers who earlier today screamed at Cyrus as he walked by sporting a small rainbow pin on his sweater. It was right on Mainstreet. He isn't even quite sure why the preacher was looking at him enough to notice. But he did and the words that left his mouth were horrid and soul crushing.

God will punish faggots.

Repent before it's too late.

You will burn.

Cyrus didn't respond. He was alone and afraid to interact. He couldn't believe people still believed this stuff in 2019. So he just walked by and didn't stop walking until he got to his house.

He wanted to call Andi and Buffy to tell them what happened but didn't. He knew that they were with Amber and Libby doing some spa weekend and he didn't want to ruin that for them. But he wanted to tell someone. He didn't want to tell TJ because he knew for sure his boyfriend would overreact and get himself in trouble. Marty was really only his friend because of mutual friends, so calling him was not really an option. That led him to calling Jonah and venting to him. Jonah listened and Cyrus ended up feeling a little better.

That was until an hour later when he heard a familiar honk from outside his house. He peeked his head out the window to see TJ's jeep parked in front. The blonde jock looked like he was hiding anger underneath a fake smile. Marty and Jonah were sitting in the back. All three boys were wearing Spiderman costumes sans the masks that he could see sitting next to them on the seats. There was also a bag in between the boys in the back. They all sported pride pins on the front of their suits. TJ yelled out to him, "Well, come on. Get in, Underdog."

And that's how they ended up here in the parking lot of a hardware store a few blocks from the bigots. Jonah had not gotten the part about not telling TJ. So when he told him, TJ had a plan. They had gotten these Spiderman suits a few months ago for a Costco prank that ended up going terribly wrong. Now TJ wanted them to use them to get some payback.

They were going to go silly string the preacher and his cringy supporters dressed as your friendly neighborhood Spidermen. Cyrus though was terrified of something bad happening to people he cares about all for his sake. He looks around, first at TJ and then at his friends in the back before saying. "Guys, I'm fine. Please don't do all of this for me.

"Cyrus…" TJ said softly. Turning to face the brunette in the passenger seat. "I don't think I can just sit by and do nothing when that homophobic...asshole... had the nerve to say those things to you. I love you so much Cy…" He places his hand on Cyrus' cheek.

"We are your friends, Cy-guy." Jonah adds from the backseat.

"Yea, plus if it happened to you, it could happen to any other LGBT person in town."Marty says.

Cyrus whispers "That's why I'm worried. People know you and Teej are trans. Plus he's gay…" He motions to his blonde basket player. "And Jonah, your bi. People have seen you and Reed together. This is not a safe situation for any of you." Cyrus' voice is riddled with anxiety.

"Underdog, thank you for being worried...but we are doing this. We got masks and we will get out there if it gets bad. I promise. Now I got one more Spiderman suit if you wanna come." TJ offers.

Cyrus looks away, out the window and doesn't say anything. He terrified to face those people. TJ lets out a small sigh "Okay then. Stay here. We will be back, sweetie."

Cyrus hears the door open and and then shut. After a few moments he looks over to see the dumbass trio,now masked, walking away from the car, silly string in hand. He knows their destination is a few blocks over where that hateful man is "preaching."

Cyrus looks back down. He feels like such a coward. He felt so scared when he had been shouted at and harrassed. Yea the guy wasn't violent, but he could of been. Or his dozen or so supporters. Violence against queer folks is not uncommon and lately people seem to have become more open with their hateful opinions. That's why he didn't want his friends to go. But they did.

And he didn't. He just let them go and wasn't even brave enough to come with. Suddenly any fear he had was overtaken with guilt. He loved TJ so much and he should be there supporting him. So after 5 minutes, he gets out of the car and rushes towards Mainstreet.

When he gets there, it takes him a moment to absorb the chaos that was unfolding. TJ, Marty, and Jonah were running around wildly spraying the preacher and the rest of the bigots with a seemingly endless supply of silly string. He can tell which one is TJ, he is the tallest. Crowds of people gathered around to witness the events.

Suddenly his heart drops. The preacher seems to be coming right up to TJ, screaming, undeterred from the silly string. Cyrus can make out bits of what he is saying.

"Are you one of those faggots?" Do you want to go to hell? That is where you are going?" The bigoted old man screamed, holding the Bible up as some kind of sheild.

Cyrus keeps his eyes fixated on TJ. He can tell by the sudden stiffness of his movements, the man's terrible words get to him even if he couldn't see his face under the mask. He talks a big game, but he knows how insecure TJ could be.This causes Cyrus' blood to feel like it is about to boil over. Nobody gets to make the love of his life feel that bad. It clicks to him why TJ was so adamant about doing this today. He really loves Cyrus.

So he confidently (well as confidently as he can) pushes through the crowd of onlookers and walks towards the man and TJ. TJ has his back to him so he doesn't see him coming. Cyrus puts on his best Mary Jane Watson attitude and calls out to TJ. "Hey Tiger." He grins.

TJ turns around at the sound of the familiar face. Now it feels like no one else is around them. Cyrus closes the gap and let's TJ rest his arms around his waist. He whispers to the shorter boy. "You came...you are not even covering your face." The preacher makes a fake gagging sound from behind them as the other two boys continue to cause chaos around them.

"Don't need to, as long as I have my friendly neighborhood Spiderman to protect me." With that, he does something bold. He rolls up the bottom of TJ's mask revealing his mouth. He gently places both hands on either side TJ's face before leaning in for a soft kiss, that is promptly returned.

As they kiss, they hear the preacher and his followers making hateful comments but they are soon covered up by the cheers of the larger crowd of supporters.

After a few moments, they break apart at the sound of Marty's voice saying "Let's go!" They must have finally run out of the string. So TJ grabs Cyrus' hand and pulls him after their friends, all laughing the entire run back to the car.

Once they were safely back in TJ's car, they demask. TJ smiles "I'm so proud of you Cy…"

"Right back at you, Tiger." Cyrus decides Mary Jane is on to something with Tiger because he likes using the nickname, especially since it is causing his boyfriend to blush like crazy.

The next day, they meet up with Amber, Libby, Andi, and Buffy at the Spoon to catch up after the girls' spa day. When they get there though the girls are all quiet, like they were dying to ask something.

Cyrus finally breaks the silence. "What is with you guys?

Buffy smirks and pulls a folded up newspaper out of her bag. She sets it on the table. "Care to explain?"

It was from this morning and plastered on the front was a large black and white picture of Cyrus and TJ kissing (though the top part of TJ's mask is covering most his face) surrounded by angry protesters and excited supporters a like. In the background you see Jonah and Marty in their suits spraying the protesters. The headline reads "Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman(s)takes Down a Bigot."

A smile stretched across all their faces. TJ says "Its a long story." As he intertwined his fingers with Cyrus'.

#andi mack #tyrus #dumbass trio #Jeed mention bc Im a problem #tj trans #marty trans #tj kippen #cyrus goodman #Marty from the party #jonah beck

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concretelygay · 4 years ago

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I’m Not Sure I Understand Protests

So there was a Back the Blue, Pro Trump Rally in my town. I was encouraged to show support of the counter protest. I couldn’t make myself stand outside just feet away from folks not wearing masks, so I decided to make two signs and drive around the block a few times. It was silly and pathetic compared to the real protestors but it will all I could muster.

During the drive, I went around 5 times, I was terrified. A person on the speaker shouted my license plate number and said I support terrorist and pedofiles, and not to get in my Lyft. (Aside-I drove Lyft for 3 months 2 years ago and I leave the stickers on mostly to rebel against my parents because they didn’t want me driving Lyft). So I was feeling scared and then I was feeling so sad. Because the worst part of watching these people jeer at my neighbors and friends. Was that the Trump supporters were humans. I just wanted to talk to them and I didn’t know how. I wanted them to be in masks so I could walk over and say hi. I want them to put away the loud speaker so I could have one one one conversation. I wanted to join their group and get to know them. But that felt unacceptable to think or feel. So I drove and drove for about 20 mins I drove slowly around the block. And it felt like nothing. I think I have done more good for this world walking down the block than I did on that drive. It honestly felt pointless on both sides. What were they trying to do? What were we trying to do? I don’t get the point and I want to so badly. How does screaming at each other from across the street do anything? I don’t understand. I want to know why they like Trump so much. I want to know it from their perspective. They were people that if I saw out of this context I would feel more comfortable with than the people on counter protest side. They looked like people who would attend my churches I’ve attended. They looked like my neighbors. They looked like my friends. I don’t understand what we anyone on those blocks wanted. I read one post that said the goal was to make them feel unwelcome. I guess I didn’t want them there like that. But I don’t want them to go away, I want them to change. I want them to see what their leader is doing and dislike it. Or at least I want them to think critically about their leader.

Look I know you aren’t supposed to have sympathy for people who are so openly against things like Black Lives Matter, Masks, basic Human rights. But I can’t not look at a person and see that they are a person. To see that they feel things like I do and not want to add to their pain. Now I know the counter argument is do I put that much effort into the pain of Black people, Indigenous people, or People of Color. No, I haven’t. I am just starting to put more effort into learning how to be in community with those communities. But who is supposed to put effort into the Trump supporters. I present masculine, I have a beard, I’m white, I have deep voice, I am educated, I come from wealth, I am Christian, at this point I’m even in a straight passing relationship, I will never have to worry about a visual or an audio of me negatively affecting me. So why shouldn’t I spend time with these people. Why shouldn’t I get to know them and try to change their mind? I don’t have the right answers. I know I’m wrong about protests. I know that protests are not pointless. I know that there are a lot of reasons to take to the streets that I can’t understand. I know that there are things I am doing in this very writing that will negatively impact the world and hurt the healing of others. But I am writing this for me. I need to work through this. I’m not going to tag, this on social media other than here, but I am going to post it publically. I am not going to hide my faults. Because I think that contributes to the issues. I am not perfect. I do not get this world we are living in.

I want to be in community with Trump supporters and those who think I support terrorist because I had sign that says “Trump politics makes people unsafe”. I know that for many that makes me a part of the problem and probably truly makes me a part of the problem. I also want to DEFUND THE POLICE. I also do not believe that Trump should get to do some of things he has been doing (sending military to cities, bolster Columbus Day for political gain, inspire White Supremacists without at least claiming it wasn’t intentional, inciting hate). I also think there should be term limits, a universal wage, universal health care, universal mental health care, universal access to food, climate change regulation, a massive focus on how to empower the generations of Black people that are still suffering from slavery, a focus on creating jobs while still automating as much as possible, a shift away from capitalism, a shift away from the protestant church, gay/trans/lesbian/bi/and other sexual minorities should be able to raise children in all states, and that the American military is largely out of control.

But I know that me feeling sympathetic and like I want to reach out to the Trump supporters in my town is probably on the wrong side of history. I hope I figure out how to let go of the blocks that are so stuck in me that sees people and wants to reach out a hand no matter what they are doing. And I think this is even more so with white people. I think I want them not to disagree with me. I want them not to scare people. I want them not to make me look bad. I want them not be afraid and angry. I want them to see things the way I see them. I don’t want their views to be my views. I don’t want their president. I want to heal with them. I want them to stop doing what they are doing. I want I want I want. I need to do better. Many people need to do better. Gosh I wish we were fighting about straws. I need to not worry about others. I need to heal myself. Why am I so upset over this rally? Why am I so ashamed? Is that telling me to do more next time? Is that telling me not to go? Is that telling me that I’m doing something wrong? That I am wrong? I know why I am sad. I am sad because I believe that many of the ideas that have been running this country since its inception are immoral and hurt people. From it’s bad to be a sensitive unique snowflake to people who are in pain should say their pain in a super calm way or their pain is invalid and not worthy of my help to police or bust mentality. All of these things make be sad. I don’t enjoy living in a society that supports these things. But I like my home. And I like people who believe these ideas. But it’s my belief that they might not have explored these different ideas. That statement is too prideful. Let’s reverse it. I don’t know why someone would support those ideas that I don’t like. I’ve tried to explore the reasons and I don’t agree. I don’t know why we can’t see it similarly or the same or even talk about it. How can nice people, kind hearted people not help me understand their perspective? Why? Why does it feel like they don’t want to listen to mine.

So I decided fuck it I’m gonna try to find the person who was yelling at me. So I went to Pioneer Valley Massachusetts For Trump 2020 and posted this:

Local Amherst person here. I drove past your demonstration a few times. I think this will probably get deleted because we don't share the same views, but as I was driving I really wished there was a way we could actually talk to one another instead of being so against and separate. Maybe I should have gotten out the car, but my partner asked me not to because of COVID. If the person saying he wants to have a debate into a mega phone actually does tell him to message me. I hope one day I can learn more about you all and your individual lives. Because at this moment I think I am missing something important. Though I don't support you cause I do want to understand more people as people. Hope one day that will come fruition. Best, "The Lyft driver who supports terrorists" (I think that's who I was)

So overall. I don’t get how standing on either side of the street does anything. How waving a flag and yelling and showing signs does anything. I don’t get any of it. I want to do the work to understand but I don’t know where to start. I guess I will google about protests and get back to you.

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jixiani · 5 years ago

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In defense of fanfiction

I’ve been thinking about fanfiction lately, (really I’ve been thinking that I should really be taking some of this time to write more, but that’s another post) AO3 just had their yearly fundraiser so of course the old discourse over the site and its history was dragged up again and then Sarah had brought it up this morning and well, I have a lot of strong feelings on the subject. Let’s start with a little personal background: I have been reading and writing fanfic since the late 90’s. It started out as something silly my best friend introduced me to and we would sit in her mother’s computer room and giggle over ‘speculative fan fictions’ and participate on months-long roleplay scenarios on chat boards and take turns passing notebooks full of handwritten stories back and forth which were every bit as terrible as you’d think two 14-year-old girls could come up with. Unfortunately, we were in the Vampire Chronicles fandom so we had a front-row seat for the Anne Rice and her lawyer's debacle that will from here on out be referred to as “The Dark Times”. We watched our friends’ work get pulled, our RP sites close down, we feared that we’d get a cease and desist letter, we hid our notebooks and dreamed up our stories exclusively verbally. I was deeply ashamed of my secret love of fanfic for years. I kept writing, but I kept it secret, I kept reading it but would never admit to it. Fanfiction was something shameful, taboo, some terrible sin akin to watching porn, and not the good socially acceptable kind of porn. But time moved on and fandom moved on and fanfiction started to be more acceptable. I joined Fanfiction.net, I wrote some stuff on Livejournal (although I still kept it set to private). I read A LOT of fanfiction, jumping fandoms, and leaving reviews. People I admired came out as liking and writing fanfiction. Of course, then the purges hit. Strikethrough and the like. I’m not going to get into that here, because that’s a rant all its own. Anyway, those were also some dark days as fandom searched for somewhere to land. I stumbled over Archive of our own a few years ago and I aggressively support them whenever I can because they fight for the fandom. Now I speak out in defense of fanfiction whenever possible. I’ve attended panels at conventions about fanfiction, I support and share posts about it from my favorite authors, I let everyone know that I’m proud of my fanfic (although I still don’t post it, that’s because I tend not to finish things and I don't’ want to get someone excited for something I know I’m going to abandon in a month, not because I’m ashamed.). So let’s talk over some points because Sarah brought up a good point today. Why is fanfiction such a shameful thing in the fandom community, and in the writing community? One of the people on my friends list who I admire and is a professional, published author once rolled their eyes and scoffed when I said that I wanted to go to the fanfiction panel at a convention. Yet, no other facet of fandom is treated this way. I brought this up on Sarah’s post and I’m going to reiterate it here. Fan artists are not scoffed at, people flock to their tables in artist’s alley. Fan-made comics and doujinshi have led to careers writing and drawing comics and scripts for the same series their fanwork was based on. No professional costumer or prop maker sneers at cosplayers, in fact, there are now professional cosplayers. Fans wait in line for hours to watch masquerade skits at conventions. Fan-dubs like Dragonball Z Abridged and Nescaflowne are hugely popular and have led to professional voice acting gigs and production studios. But if an author dares to mention that they got their start in fanfiction? The horror, the outrage, the hate mail. Yet so much of our media could arguably be called fanfiction. Dante’s Inferno? John Milton’s Paradise Lost? The Aeneid? Classics? Yes. Fanfiction? Also yes. Joyce’s Ulysses is just an AU of the Odyssey. Anything written about or based on myths? Anything involving King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Shakespear...Oh you can cry adaptation all you want. Let’s face it if it’s written by some old white guy it’s literature and a classic and an innovative reimagining but really it’s just fanfic and it’s everywhere. West Side Story is a fanfic of a fanfic since Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet off a poem by a similar name. My Fair Lady? Pygmalion AU. Hamilton? Real Person Song Fic! 50 Shades series, Mortal Instruments, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, hell there are literally hundreds of published Jane Austen fanfictions. John Gardner’s Grendel is a retelling of Beowolf. The Wiz, Wicked and the rest of Gregory Maguire’s books? The Wizard of Oz doesn’t enter public domain until 2035. The Magnificent Seven? Kurosawa called and he wants his seven samurai back, he’d also like to reclaim Yojimbo from A Fist Full of Dollars. Speaking of tv, how about Black Sails? It’s a fanfiction prequel to Treasure Island. Any comic book not written by the original creator. Any book series based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, etc. I could go on all day. So why is it, when so much of our popular culture consists of what basically boils down to fanfiction, that fanfiction is seen as a shameful indulgence, as “cheating”, as trash?Part of it boils down to sex. Read any article that brings up fanfiction and there will invariably be a line where the author distances themself by saying something along the lines of they don’t personally read it, or how slash fic isn’t their thing but to each their own. (Both quotes from some of the sites I pulled the above list from) A lot of people seem to think that fanfiction is just porn, and while yes there is some fanfiction that is porn and some of it is very good, the same can be said for regular fiction as well. People don’t blush and giggle over Lord of the Rings, yet when I say that I’ve read fanfic that’s longer than Tolkien’s trilogy I may as well be talking about how I read Aragorn/Boromir slash fic regardless of what the actual subject matter was. Yes, there’s sex in fanfiction. A lot of it is gay sex. You can read Lolita in school but Harry Potter fanfic? Gasp, think of the children! Even if that fanfic happens to be about what if Petunia loved Harry like a son instead of pushing him away and neglecting him. There is some really fantastic fan fiction out there. Some of it has sex, some of it doesn't. Some of it deals with queer characters and experiences, some of it doesn’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with erotica and it’s an entirely separate issue. Not every fanfiction is a 50 Shades-eque erotic rewrite of Twilight, and even if they were, so what? A lot of fanfiction has to do with wish fulfillment. You want to know what happens next, or what would happen if this had happened instead, or if there was this character. You want to see someone like you in your favorite fandom. I had wanted to adventure with Bilbo when I was a kid. I wanted to go on adventures and fight and ride dinosaurs. These desires don’t go away just because we grow up. I got into roleplay and larp and gaming because I still enjoy make-believe. I write for a lot of the same reasons. Everyone wants to be the main character. Fanfiction gives you that chance. You can write yourself into a story, you can write someone that’s like you, you can write someone that’s nothing like you but what you want to be. So, let’s discuss our old friend Mary Sue. She gets trotted out as an example every time someone brings up fanfiction (or any uppity female character ever). Mary Sue was born in the 60’s. She is an actual character from a Star Trek Original Series fanfiction. Yes, fanfiction existed in the 60’s. Mary Sue was the brightest and prettiest girl to come out of Starfleet, she managed to be in all the right places at the right times to save the ship and capture the heart of Spock. Self insert fics and Mary Sues are at the heart of why we should be terribly ashamed of our fanfiction habit. Except, what was Luke Skywalker if not George Lucas’ self insert Marty Stu? There are countless male characters that are as bad or worse than your typical Mary sue and they are never called out for it. Seanan brought this up in a post once about her character October Daye, her editor had said that the character was too competent, too cool, and that it was unrealistic and she should tone it down. She had him replace the character’s name with “Harry Dresden” and reread the story and suddenly it was fine. There are a great many articles and essays about our friend Mary Sue and I implore you to read some of them. She is not the enemy we make her out to be. Fanfiction, on the rare occasion that it is accepted, is seen as some sort of training wheels, or baby’s first writing. It’s amateurish, it’s juvenile, it’s just not very good. If we are not ashamed of it, then it’s expected that we are only using it as a starting point to hone our writing and move on to professional published works. It’s either that or something terribly self-indulgent that should be kept to ourselves. Some fanfic writers do go on to become “real” writers. Seanan McGuire has always been very open about how her agent first approached her after reading some of her Buffy/Faith fanfiction. Some “real” writers also write fanfiction. Neil Gaiman won a Hugo for his Chronicles of Narnia Fanfic. Ursula Vernon and Mercedes Lackey write fanfiction in their spare time. Some fanfiction writers never become published authors, not everyone wants to. Some are happy to have a dozen 150k fics about their favorite fandom, or maybe just one 500k epic, some, myself included, may only have one short fic posted somewhere. There is nothing that says that you have to use your hobby to turn a profit. (By the way, for reference, War and Peace is 561,304 words, Dune is 187,240 words, you cannot make the argument that fanfic writers don’t put time into their craft when they have more words than Tolstoy under their belt.)Some of the ‘training wheels’ analogy is true. Fanfic is a terrific gateway to writing. It teaches pacing, plot, character development, how to take criticism. If I ever do write something professionally I will not be nearly as afraid of the red pen as I am of bad reviews. Anonymous readers are the most ruthless critics. May the literary gods preserve you from ever having your fanfic read aloud as an example of how terrible and ‘cringy’ fanfiction can be. There is a lot of fanfiction out there that is written by teenage girls, and it reads like it was written by a teenage girl, but the only way to get better at something is to practice. Fanfiction allows budding writers to do that. There are no rules, no one standing at the gates to bar entry, and entire communities of people willing to give advice and commentary. Sometimes it’s less helpful than harmful, but there is something about posting a new fic and waiting for that first ‘like’ or ‘kudos’ or a review. There’s something to be said for instant gratification. I have read a lot of really terrible fanfic. I have slogged through stuff that would make Mary Sue herself cringe. I have read about the ½ vampire, ½ werewolf, ½ fairy long lost princess. I have read grammar that would make your eyes bleed. Not all of it has been confined to fan works. I have read fanwork that has had me convulsing with silent laughter to the point that I wondered if I would die. Dialog that was ten times better than anything I had read in a professional novel. Fanfiction should not be judged by its worst offenders. We don’t hold Dune to the same standard as Twilight. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not terrible and cringy because 50 Shades of Grey overuses the phrase “Oh my.” There is some absolutely terrible fanfic out there and there is some pretty terrible published fic as well, but we don’t hold that against most novelists, so why do we hold it against fanfiction writers?I guess that brings us to the elephant in the fandom. Sexism. Fanfiction has historically been something written by and for young women and there is nothing more shameful than something liked by a young woman. Boybands? The color pink? Horse Girl books and Sparkly Vampires? Society hates them. We mock them. It is not acceptable to enjoy them. Sound familiar? How many times is something considered cool until a woman decides that she likes it? We as a society hate women and hate the things they enjoy and we hate teenage girls the most. Think of how much people hated selfies and duckface and instagram. How much hate was directed at Britney Spears, One Direction, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber? Whether it has a basis in something or not, we hate them, we make jokes, we share the memes. We write them off as having no substance, as being stupid, not worth our time. Belittling of teenage girls for their interests and fandoms isn't a new phenomenon. Remember Mary Sue? Not only that, but a lot of fanfiction is gay. Women and gays are still the punchline to a lot of jokes and we can’t ignore that that plays a big part in people’s hatred of fanfiction, even if it’s not on purpose. Fanfiction has always been a bastion for people that couldn’t find stories about them in popular fiction. A lot of mainstream main characters are straight guys. A lot of fanfiction main characters are young women or gay men. Now, I admit that I’m oversimplifying this, and especially in recent years as it is becoming safer for people to come out as other genders and queer and as having mental illness or not being neurotypical, you are seeing more of that reflected in the fanfiction community. I don’t want anyone to think that I am purposefully leaving anyone out of this. The fanfiction community has not always been so great at being inclusive of people of color or transgender, it’s getting better, but I’m not going to stand here and pretend we’ve always been perfect. In the last several years I’ve seen a lot more inclusion. As I said, fanfiction has always been a home to the “Other”, as that expands to include more individuals so too does the community. Fanfics provide us with a place to work through issues and present perspectives that we don’t get to see anywhere else, without having to create an entire world from scratch. It’s accessible to everyone. I’ve spent the better part of an afternoon researching and writing this. I hope that I was at least partially coherent and I got you to at least take a look at why you feel the way you feel about fanfiction. I’m not sure if I exactly got across the points I was trying for, there’s a lot more eloquent, well thought out arguments out there from more knowledgeable people. Check out Seanan McGuire, she’s got a lot to say on the subject.

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mtwy · 8 years ago

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Rolling Stone

USA November 22nd 1984

The singer doesn’t have to thank any lucky stars for her newborn success. She’s been planning this baby for a long time. Madonna and I are face to face at a corner table at Evelyne’s, a cacophonous but spiffily appointed French restaurant in the heart of New York’s most newly gentrified neighborhood, the East Village. Things are changing rapidly in this part of town. Its Ukrainian meeting halls and no-frills eateries are under siege from the upscale crowd invading with their asparagus ferns and health-club memberships. Although in transition, many of the neighborhood’s blocks still have the same seediness they had when the teenaged Madonna Ciccone first plopped herself down in her own digs.

“The first apartment I ever had all by myself,” she recalls between sips of Campari, “was on Fourth Street and Avenue B, and it was my pride and joy, because it was the worst possible neighborhood I could ever live in.” Back then she was a struggling dancer, the girl from the University of Michigan who was “dying for attention – but the right kind, you know?” She has gotten it. Her sirenlike voice and ultrasultry video presence have yanked her from downtown obscurity. She has notched two Top Ten singles, “Borderline” and “Lucky Star,” and her album, Madonna, has gone platinum and is still high on the charts after a more than forty-week run, postponing the release of the already recorded follow-up LP, Like a Virgin, itself as chock-full of hits as its predecessor. Consider Madonna, though, and it’s easy to drift away from her songs and prattle instead about her videos. They have practically rediscovered what it means to project raw sex appeal: feverish tugging on her dress in “Burning Up,” as if she couldn’t wait to tear the garment off her body; her pouty-lipped antics for “Borderline”; and the upfront eroticism of “Lucky Star,” her breasts and bottom thrust at the camera, index finger teasingly tucked into her mouth. Still, her most important bodily part has been her naked tummy, exposed by her two-piece outfits, the curve of it oscillating through male minds everywhere. Now Madonna has a spacious loft in even-tonier SoHo, a movie deal (she’s currently making Desperately Seeking Susan for Orion Pictures), and an expanse of money and stardom winging her way. Which is why she can glance out the window of this restaurant and say, “Feels great to come back to this neighborhood and know I’m not as poor as everyone else.” That rub you the wrong way? Too bad – that’s her style. She’s in the same sans-midriff getup featured in her videos, but in person, she doesn’t adopt the coyly fetching approach you might anticipate. This is a woman who saves her sex-bomb act for the times when the meter’s running. And don’t let her oft-flashed “Boy Toy” belt buckle fool you. The men who have gotten close to her – tough guys a lot of them – have gotten their hearts broken as often as not. Throughout her life, there has been one guiding emotion: ambition. “I think most people who meet me know that that’s the kind of person I am,” she says. “It comes down to doing what you have to do for your career. I think most people who are attracted to me understand that, and they just have to take that under consideration.” Some have; some haven’t and have lived to regret it. “You’d think that if you went out with someone in the music business that they’d be more understanding,” she says, “but people are the same wherever you go. Everybody wants to be paid more attention to.” Madonna Louise Ciccone – she was named after her mother – had plenty of attention early in her life. Born in Bay City, Michigan, twenty-four years ago to a Chrysler engineer and his wife, she was the eldest daughter in a family of six: Daddy’s little girl. But her world shattered when she was six, as her mother succumbed to a long bout with cancer. The tragedy brought her yet closer to her father, and there have been few women in her life ever since. “I really felt like I was the main female of the house,” she remembers. “There was no woman between us, no mother.” Her little world altered just as dramatically when Madonna was eight, on the night her father announced to the family that he was going to marry the woman who had been the family’s housekeeper. Madonna was shocked. “It was hard to accept her as an authority figure and also accept her as being the new number-one female in my father’s life. My father wanted us to call her Mom, not her first name. I remember it being really hard for me to get the word mother out of my mouth. It was really painful.”

“I hated the fact that my mother was taken away, and I’m sure I took a lot of that out on my stepmother.” Perhaps smarting from what she took for rejection by her father, Madonna threw herself into the world of the fantastic. In eighth grade, she appeared in her first movie, a Super-8 project directed by a classmate, in which an egg was fried on her stomach (even then he knew). She watched old movies at revival houses. She acted in plays at the series of Catholic high schools that she attended. She danced to Motown hits in backyards. Indeed it was dance that became the consuming passion of her adolescent life. She’d take all her classes early so she could leave school and head into the big city to take yet more classes. She saw world-famous companies whenever they came through town. And her ballet teacher became what she calls “my introduction to glamour and sophistication.” He showed his charge a world she didn’t know existed. “He used to take me to all the gay discotheques in downtown Detroit. Men were doing poppers and going crazy. They were all dressed really well and were more free about themselves than all the blockhead football players I met in high school.” Rigid, but with a sense of humor, he became Madonna’s first mentor: “He made me push myself,” she says. By all accounts, she was a wonderfully talented terpsichorean, and he thought she could make it big. “He was constantly putting all that stuff about New York in my ear. I was hesitant, and my father and everyone was against it, but he really said, ‘Go for it.'” Boasting a solid grade-point average in addition to her dancing skills, Madonna graduated from Rochester Adams High School in 1976 and won herself a scholarship to the University of Michigan dance department. Once there, the seventeen-year-old Madonna – no less luscious in a short, spiky, black hairdo – pored through poems by Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath (“any really depressed women”) and attempted to wreak all manner of havoc in her hoity-toity ballet classes. One former classmate of Madonna’s recalls a grim plié exercise – deep knee bends with the stomach held in and the posture perfect – that dissolved when Madonna emitted a huge belch. Or the hot day when the lissome lass moaned what a drag it was to have to take class in leotards, and why couldn’t she just wear a bra? “I was a real ham,” she says, chortling. “I did everything I could to get attention and be the opposite of everyone else. I’d rip my leotards and wear teeny little safety pins. And I’d run my tights. I could have gone to a nightclub right after class.” That’s exactly where she wound up one night: the Blue Frogge, the U of M’s pastiest preppie disco. She was dancing away – engulfed in right-assed white boys doing their John Travolta imitations – when around the corner came this black waiter. “He was real cute,” she recalls. “Someone all soulful and funky looking you couldn’t help but notice. First time in my life I asked a guy to buy me a drink.” And he did. The guy she’d picked up was a musician named Steve Bray, and he would eventually change her life. Bray – witty, sophisticated, cool – was a drummer in an R&B band that did the lounge circuit. Madonna became a regular fixture at their gigs. “She wasn’t really a musician back then; she was just dancing,” says Bray today. Aside from her beauty, Bray recalls being captivated by the veritable aura around this feisty, footloose female. It was unmistakably the aura of ambition. “She stood out, quite. Her energy was really apparent. What direction she should put that energy in hadn’t been settled, but it was definitely there.” “Those were good days,” Madonna recalls. “But I knew my stay at Michigan was short-term. To me, I was just fine-tuning my technique.” After five semesters, she turned her back on her four-year free ride and headed for New York City. Steve? Oh, yeah. “Looking back, I think that I probably did make him feel kind of bad, but I was really insensitive in those days. I was totally self-absorbed.” It wouldn’t be the last time. Every item ever written about Madonna touts her membership in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Not so. Soon after her arrival in New York, she apparently won a work-study scholarship and was later asked to take classes with the troupe’s third company, which is a little like getting a tryout for the sub-junior-varsity team. Still, it was her first encounter with people who were as driven as she. “I thought I was in a production of Fame,” she giggles. “Everyone was Hispanic or black, and everyone wanted to be a star.” Madonna was not to the minors born. She left Ailey after a few months and hooked up with Pearl Lang, a former Martha Graham star whose style Madonna describes as “a lot of pain and angst.” This was not a match made in heaven, and she left the company soon after. Living a hand-to-mouth existence in the city and continuing to ignore the pleas of her father that she cease this silly business and finish college, Madonna started scanning the trades for less limiting work: parts where she would not only dance but sing. And that’s when she met Dan Gilroy. He wasn’t drop-dead hip like the other guys she’d known; he was an affable, self-effacing fellow from Queens. He and his brother, Ed, were both musicians and had rented out an abandoned synagogue in Corona, Queens, where they lived and rehearsed. Madonna and Dan met at a party and hit it off – she spent a couple of nights at the synagogue. “He stuck a guitar in my hand and tuned it to an open chord so that I could strum,” she remembers. “That really clicked something off in my brain.” She cut back to only one dance class a day. While the relationship was still in its infancy, however, Madonna was given what seemed like the chance of a lifetime; to go to Paris and do background singing and dancing for Patrick Hernandez, a disco lunk who had lucked into a “worldwide hit” with the forgettable “Born to Be Alive.” She would be given a beautiful apartment, a maid, a voice coach, people to guide her career. “I was in seventh heaven.” she remembers. “I kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe it. Somebody noticed me.'” In Paris, everything was as promised, but she wasn’t happy. “I was like the poor little rich girl,” she recalls. The guidance was a joke. No one would talk to her in English. They said they wanted to turn her into the next Edith Piaf, but how could they if she hadn’t written anything? She felt lonely, miserable and confined. “Once again I was forced into the role of enfant terrible. All I wanted to do was make trouble, because they stuck me in an environment that didn’t allow me to be free.” So she’d order three desserts in a fancy restaurant and skip the entree. She took up with a Vietnamese kid with a motorcycle. She went to Tunisia with the Hernandez tour, club-hopped with some lively locals and went swimming in a one-piece body stocking. You see, she just wanted to be noticed. Of course, there was still this guy in Queens, batting out letters to his loved one. “He was my saving grace,” she says. “His letters were so funny. He’d paint a picture of an American flag and write over it, like it was from the president, ‘We miss you. You must return to America.’ He really made me feel good.” A walloping case of pneumonia persuaded her to come back. As soon as she hit stateside, she rang the synagogue. She spent the better part of a year there, writing songs for the first time and learning how to play a variety of instruments. “My intensive musical training,” she says with a sigh. “It was one of the happiest times of my life. I really felt loved. Sometimes I’d write sad songs and he’d sit there and cry. Very sweet.” In that nurturing atmosphere, Madonna and the brothers Gilroy started a band called the Breakfast Club, with fellow ex-dancer Angie Smit on bass and Madonna on drums. They would rehearse every day there; Madonna had yet to move in with her beau. “I stayed there so much, but I hadn’t really moved there yet, and I remember when I said, ‘Can I just live here, Dan?’ And he said. ‘Well, we have to ask Ed.’ And I said, ‘Ed! You have to ask Ed?'” The Gilroys had been honing their musical skills for a number of years, but simple craft is not the surest way to success in the music business, and Madonna had something that was more useful: moxie. Dan Gilroy recalls it well. “She’d be up in the morning, a quick cup of coffee, then right to the phones, calling up everybody – everybody. Everyone from [local record dealer] Bleecker Bob’s to potential management. Anything and everything.” “I was just a lot more goal oriented and commercial minded than they were,” says Madonna. “I just took over in the sense that I said, ‘What do you know? Teach it to me.’ I took advantage of the situation. I wanted to know everything they knew, because I knew I could make it work to my benefit.” Cold words? Perhaps. She knew what to do. “Immediately, when I started working with them, I started thinking record deals, making records and doing shows and stuff like that. And, of course, most of the people you have to deal with are men, and I think I just was naturally more charming to these horny old businessmen than Dan and Ed Gilroy.” As Madonna herself realizes, Dan Gilroy “had created a monster. I was always thinking in my mind, ‘I want to be a singer in this group, too.’ And they didn’t need another singer.” Dan found himself torn between his girlfriend – who wanted to sing more, who wanted the band to use her songs – and his brother, Ed. After a year, Madonna announced her intention to return to Manhattan and pursue a singing career. The romance – and the instructional period – were over. “I knew that with that kind of drive and devotion to getting ahead something had to happen.” Gilroy says. Was she more talented than her confreres? “No, she didn’t strike me as . . . well, she was fun, you know? She’d be working at this design thing that I was doing and she would kind of break into a dance in the middle of the day. An incredible attention getter. So that’s got to tell you something.” Yes, but given the tensions, was Dan glad to see her go? “Well, no,” he says. “I missed her very much.” He had taken her in and had taught her the skills she needed, and now she was leaving him. Most of the time she hadn’t even had to work a day job. “Ah, well, I was doing a job anyway, so having her there was just a bonus,” says Dan. “It was fun. It was a good year. And besides,” he jokes, “I have a palimony suit now, you know? Marvin Mitchelson, where are you? Of course, he doesn’t win too many of those, does he?” Back in the big city once more, Madonna quickly summoned a ragtag band around her. Good fortune struck in the form of a telephone call from her old Michigan boyfriend, drummer Steve Bray – he was coming to New York. “I found out that, oddly enough, she needed a drummer,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘Fine, I’ll be there next week.'” “He was a lifesaver,” says Madonna. “I wasn’t a good enough musician to be screaming at the band about how badly they were playing.” Times were very lean as they began working together, playing and writing songs. They moved themselves, their equipment and personal belongings into the Music Building, a garment-center structure that had been converted into twelve floors of rehearsal rooms. It housed the cream – if you can call it that – of the post-New Wave scene in New York. Nervus Rex was there, and so were the Dance and the System. “I thought they were all lazy,” says Madonna of that scene. “I felt a lot of affection for them, but I thought that only a handful of people were going to get out of that building to any success.” Bray notes that Madonna was not exactly the most popular person on the scene. “I think there was a lot of resentment of someone who’s obviously got that special something. There are so many musicians out there, but there are only a few who really have that charisma. The community out there kind of, I think, frowned on her about that. She had trouble making friends.” It didn’t matter much to Madonna, who felt that most of the groups there wanted only to hit it big among their pals. She wanted to be big nationwide, and the scene didn’t approve of such a desire. “It was like living in a commune,” agrees Bray, “very close-minded thinking – if you’re good in New York, if you can get regular jobs at CBGB’s or at Danceteria, that’s fine, you’ve made it. And that’s definitely not the case.” Her band changed names like socks: first they were the Millionaires, then Modern Dance and finally Emmy, after a nickname that Dan Gilroy had given Madonna. (“I wanted just Madonna,” says she. “Steve thought that was disgusting.”) By any name, it was a hard-rocking outfit that was continually beset by snafus, especially when it came to guitarists. “She was playing really raucous rock & roll, really influenced by the Pretenders and the Police,” says Bray with a sigh. “She used to really belt. If we’d found that right guitar player, I think that’s when things would have taken off … but there are so many horrible guitar players in New York, and we seemed to get them all.” The money was too short, and the band finally split up. Meanwhile, a manager heard a demo that Madonna had put together (it was an early version of “Burning Up”) and signed her up. As part of the deal, she was put on salary and moved out of the Music Building, ending up in spacious digs on New York’s Upper West Side. Madonna was quick to pull Bray onto the gravy train. Her new band – called Madonna – started playing the circuit yet again. Madonna’s notion of music, however, was starting to change. It was the heyday of urban contemporary radio in New York, and Madonna was captivated by the funky sounds emanating from boom-boxes all over town. She started writing material in that vein, but the band and her manager hated it. “They weren’t used to that kind of stuff, and I’d agreed with my manager to do rock, but my heart wasn’t really in it.” She would rehearse rock & roll with her band, then stay behind with Bray and record funkier stuff. There were fights, arguments, the band was pissed off. She’d come so far; how could she turn back now? But … “I finally said, ‘Forget it, I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to have to start all over.'” And so she did, with the loyal Bray once more at her side. During the day, she and Bray would write songs; at night, she’d hit the clubs: Friday night at the Roxy; other nights at Danceteria, the offical home for white hipsters with itchy feet and a sense of humor. It was fun, sure, but it was also a way to press the flesh, to work the room, to bounce up into the deejay’s booth, lay a cozy rap on him and slap a tape into his hand. At Danceteria, she caught the eye of Mark Kamins, a widely respected club deejay with ties to record companies. “She was one of my dancers, you could say,” says Kamins. “There was a crowd out there that came every Saturday night to dance.” Did he know she had other ambitions? “Hey, everybody does at a nightclub, but she was special.” He was impressed enough with what he saw to hit on the young woman now and then. She gave him a copy of her vaunted funk demo, a recording she and Bray had made that included a song called “Everybody.” “I was flirting with him,” she admits. Kamins and she started dating. He listened to the record and liked it. He put the song on at the club – just a four-track demo! – and people danced to it. He went into the studio with her and produced an improved version. And he went to Sire Records and single-handedly got her signed to a deal. Bray was jubilant – at last he’d get to produce Madonna for real. What he didn’t know was that Madonna had promised Kamins that in exchange for his work on her behalf he would get to produce her debut album. Executives at Sire and its parent company, Warner Bros., had already given their okay. Madonna, however, had a surprise for them both. Neither Kamins nor Bray would be producing Madonna. The job instead fell to former Stephanie Mills producer Reggie Lucas. Why? “I was really scared,” she says. “I thought I had been given a golden egg. In my mind, I thought, ‘Okay, Mark can produce the album and Steve can play the instruments.’ Uh-uh – Steve wanted to produce. “It was really awful, but I just didn’t trust him enough.” The pair had a bitter falling out. “Steve didn’t believe in the ethics of the situation.” “It was very hard to accept,” he says today. And what about Kamins? “Similarly, I didn’t think that Mark was ready to do a whole album.” Kamins got the word, not from the woman who had promised him, but from Sire. “Sure, I was hurt,” he says gruffly. “But I still had a royalty coming from the record.” Madonna was still performing, but not with a band. Instead she’d hop onstage at dance clubs and sing to backing tracks or lip-sync, enlivening her performances with the sort of lusty dancing that has now become her trademark. That’s where Lucas – unaware of the intrigue that had preceded him – first saw his newest act. “I wanted to push her in a pop direction,” he recalls. “She was a little more oriented toward the disco thing, but I thought she had appeal to a general market. It’s funny about that thing with Kamins. The same thing that happened to him pretty much happened to me on her second record, when they had Nile Rodgers.” And the rest was history, though it was a history that was a long time in the making. The LP’s first single. “Holiday,” was not an immediate success, but Madonna was content. “All I said was, ‘I know this record is good, and one of these days Warner Bros. and the rest of them are going to figure it out.'” It’s likely that her videos were the breakthrough, as Madonna perfectly merged her dance training with her knowledge of the randier things in life. How did she manage to put across such seething sexuality where so many have tried and failed? “I think that has to do with them not being in touch with that aspect of their personality. They say, ‘Well, I have to do a video now, and a pop star has to come on sexually, so how do I do that?’ instead of being in touch with that part of their self to begin with. I’ve been in touch with that aspect of my personality since I was five.” Keeping her in touch with that side of her personality off the set these days is master mixer John “Jellybean” Benitez. The pair met during one of Madonna’s stints at the Fun House, the disco where Jellybean first earned his reputation. They have stayed together for the past year and a half, but Madonna flinches at the suggestion that this is her most stable relationship. “Why does it seem like that?” she queries before giving a throaty laugh. “We’ve had our ups and downs, let’s not fool anybody.” Still, the relationship was serious enough for Madonna to bring him home and meet her parents. Why has Jellybean held on where so many have fallen by the wayside? Would you believe ambition? “We both started to move at the same pace,” says Jellybean. “My career has exploded within the industry, and hers has exploded on a consumer basis. We’re both very career oriented, very goal oriented.” Which may mean that the relationship is safe . . . at least for the time being. Our dinner is finished. Along the way, Madonna has coolly sussed out the room for us: Yes, that’s Rudolf of Danceteria in the corner with his girlfriend, Diane Brill. You know, she usually seems like she’s strapped in her clothes, don’t you think? Madonna’s been all but unnoticed, but that’s okay. In your hometown, coolness is its own reward. Elsewhere her influence is becoming pervasive. The Madonna clones are ratting their hair, putting on rosaries and baring their bellies from coast to coast. It is an indication of the peculiar state of pop stardom these days that Madonna has gotten only the most fleeting glimpses of her own fame. She hasn’t toured – won’t, in fact, until next year – hasn’t performed live in a long time. She hasn’t even left New York a lot. She can count on one hand the numbers of times she’s been mobbed. For now, the buzz of recognition is still easily dealt with, even on a trip uptown to Danceteria. “It’s like going back to my high school,” she coos in the cab, and her arrival does bring out that exact mix of admiration, excess cordiality and what-are-you-doing-here puzzlement. She gets a hug from graffiti artist Keith Haring and is kissed on the mouth by a nearly endless series of hepcats. (“Gotta be careful who you kiss on the mouth these days,” she says, wiping her lips.) There’s no gawking, no crush of unknowns, no autographs requested, but her presence clearly delights everyone else who’s there. She’s an unqualified success. But did she exploit people to get there? “I think that a lot of people do feel exploited by her,” says Dan Gilroy. “But then again everyone’s got so many expectations about a relationship with her. She’s very intense immediately with somebody, very friendly. Perhaps people feel, ‘This is what our relationship is about,’ and then if there is any cooling of that, it’s taken to be a rejection.” And what’s the final tally? In addition to reaping a chunk of royalties from Madonna and for the one song he produced on it, Mark Kamins says that his affiliation with her has given his career a shot in the arm. Reggie Lucas is inundated with projects. Steve Bray eventually patched it up with Madonna – “the relationship’s too old to have something like that stand in its way” – and shares writing credit with her on four of her new album’s songs. And Dan and Ed Gilroy of the Breakfast Club (whose first LP is due early next year) were able to find a new drummer to replace Madonna: Steve Bray, who has the final word on those whom Madonna has touched. “Exploited? People say that, but that’s resentment of someone who’s got the drive. It seems like you’re leaving people behind or you’re stepping on them, and the fact is that you’re moving and they’re not. She doesn’t try to be that polite. She doesn’t care if she ruffles someone’s feathers.” True, Madonna? She smiles. “C’est vrai.”

#1984 #rollingstone #magazines #thevirginera

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