#advice from old lady lee? lordy XD

[yoolee]

On experience, consent, and writing fanfiction

Like a thousand years ago I made a post acknowledging that I tend to write the SLBP MC as somewhat inexperienced about physical shenanigans. I HAD MORE THOUGHTS an entire 7 page friggen 3700 word discourse on this subject – aka, experience, consent, writing and fiction and our influences, enjoying what we enjoy, etc.

I literally don’t expect anyone to read or respond to this, it was mostly an exercise in explaining my thoughts to myself (I am a TEXTBOOK INTP y’all, and all that stuff about “people with the INTP personality type tend to share thoughts that are not fully developed, using others as a sounding board for ideas and theories in a debate against themselves rather than as actual conversation partners.” ME.)

And it’s gonna come across weird probably BUT IT WAS USEFUL to me in clarifying stuff in my head and I’m posting it mostly because I can. I know y’all come here for the fics not the thought process and I’m 100% cool with that. Wrote this for my own brain, you can read or wait for the next fic TOTALLY COOL EITHER WAY. ABBREVIATED VERSION:

People have different life experiences and levels of interest and they are all okay! (and Voltage? Maybe mix it up a little XD)

People have different levels of confidence with different people at different times in their lives, and this is all okay!

You deserve to be with someone who goes out of their way to help you feel confident and excited!

You should also do your best to make your partner feel confident and excited, if and when you choose to have one!

GET AND GIVE CONSENT! Always! Multiple times during the process if you sense or hear ANYTHING resembling ‘no’, ‘stop’, or ‘wait’!

USE PROTECTION! When appropriate!

We write, read, and enjoy what we know and what comes easily!

That does not always mean it reflects what would be safe and healthy in the real world, and I think that is 100% okay if you recognize and acknowledge that and don’t normalize it with your writing!

All of this factors in to how yoolee writes MCs and fics in her random-as-hell rambly way of doing things!

·         ALSO I LOVE YOU ALL, carry on.

A LOT OF THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECT:

Writing this with fem!MC because that’s all I have written so far, mileage may vary as that changes. Except on consent, all of the consent, everywhere!

On Experience, and the MC not having much

1.)    It’s something I think is character-specific, and for whatever reason I just tend to write for the ones that this seems more likely for even though it’s not my headcanon for all of them Let’s take Saizo, for example. His POV’s are littered with references to MC’s innocence. Can you be innocent and experienced—YES, YOU CAN, but I’m a lazy writer and also see point 5 below if you want which will explain more about his particular case.  With Yukimura, it’s just funnier if MC is (almost) as clueless as he obviously is and you’ll actually see that I flip around with Shigezane if I ever post my next fic with him, because I can see him with MCs all across the experience/comfort spectrum. And—pro tip—you can slide on that spectrum, folks. You can be inexperienced and confident, experienced and confident, experienced and not confident, and also next time be a little less or more confident, maybe it’s a bad time of week, idk, it depends on your mood and how people have treated you and hormones and other factors. Now, Kojuro’s MC, she feels confident to me and I love that. She is absolutely, in my headcanons, going to pull him into a linen closet, have her way, and not blush overmuch about it. Regardless of her experience level when they start, which is still probably going to be less than his just from an age-and-time-to-get-experience perspective, she is going to throw herself in with enthusiasm and catch up with confidence.  Yasu’s I picture as somewhere in the middle, and, like Yukkin, he and MC are going to be similar in that respect. He’s going to want to initiate sometimes and sometimes he’s going to just need some affection and sweetness and same is true for MC and they are going to muddle the hell of their way through. Inuchiyo’s MC? Inexperienced but not going to be embarrassed about it. If anything, she’s going to tell him he doesn’t tell her she’s pretty often enough. We all know he thinks she is the most gorgeous creature on earth without hyperbole bless you Toshiie you do not get enough love in this fandom some of that may be that REALLY BAD MOMENT in your story and some iffy writing choices all around in that route that I’ll get to on point 3 but I appreciate you recognize what you did and try really, really really hard to make up for it which is why I love you anyway And then we have Masa who I feel like is a very occasional thing. The physical is a small detail in a greater emotional connection, and if I wrote them, the focus would definitely be emotion (Shingen, conversely, would be physical, with emotional highlights either before or after but less pertinent during).

On the idea of experience situated in context:

2.)    It’s also world/story-specific – what I feel like works in SLBP-verse drives me friggin insane in modern-based apps I would NOT write Liar!’s MC the way I write SLBP’s. And I friggin love Liar’s! MC. I SO APPRECIATE when our modern MC’s are not quite as, er, flutteringly virginal?  MC being so works in SLBP for me, in part because—especially as an outsider to Japanese history, to my regret—it feels like fairy-tale and legend and myth to me, and the one-love destiny narrative fits my culturally-indoctrinated feelings about those kinds of stories (thaaaanks Disney). This thing that I write and see in SLBP stories, that sort of makes me feel soft and aww, drives me batshit crazy in games like KBTBB, MLFK, OTBS, BUM, etc etc. Like, real world, modern women have a much wider variety of experience and inexperience than, everyone’s-still-a-virg-by-their-first-real-job. Are some folks? Yes. Are ALL folks? No. Is one better than the other? OF COURSE NOT, I just like variety. THAT SAID I know players of the games skew on the younger side and when I remember that I’m much more okay with keeping MC innocent >>   Speaking of, in general, I tend to picture the SLBP MC as young. Not inappropriately so, but 18-20 (YES, that is YOUNG for the kind of relationship depth we see in these stories) and writing that age being a little insecure and a lot inexperienced is important for yoolee’s sanity and legality.

On consent 3.) SUPER IMPORTANT OLD AUNTIE LEE ADVICE FOLKS, K? (this is where we get a little preachy but hang with me please, I love you) Youngins, the whole 18+ thing is really, truly, not people just trying to be arbitrarily prudish. Please believe me on this. Both the reading-of and the act, there is legitimate and genuine science backing reasons to wait, and you are going to have your whole life to have fun with that if and when you so choose. And regardless, when and if you do choose to do so, it had better be with someone who is 100% willing to wait until you are comfortable, ready, enthusiastic and excited. You deserve that. Anyone who is not, anyone who makes you feel like it’s a condition to your relationship is not good enough for you period and end of story.  AND this goes both ways – don’t pressure your partner, don’t assume based on what media or movie bias tells you is ‘the norm’, and communication is important. If things seem to be headed in that direction and you’re ready, just, check-in and make sure they are too. It’s as simple as ‘are you up for (more/this/etc)’?

If you read my stuff, I hope that you notice that in every fic where the MC says stop, her partner stops. And sometimes even when she doesn’t say it, but expresses some visible or nonverbal hesitation (ie, what is implied to have happened pre-Compliments) there is still a timeout in that moment on the part of her partner. And if you don’t notice that, hopefully it’s because it feels like such a natural and normal part of the flow that it didn’t disrupt your thought process on what you were reading. Why? Because a partner saying ‘stop’ is a clear sign you need to stop and reconfirm consent (yes, you get to change your mind mid-act! Yes, you get to change your mind about something you were comfortable with yesterday and aren’t feeling today! And so does your partner, so you should both be understanding and accepting if there is a ‘stop’ involved or needed) and my feelings that stopping to double-check when you hear stop SHOULD be normal and expected comes out in this sense. What happens in most of my writing? MC gets her moment, decides she’s okay, and they continue. And she deserves that moment. And if she didn’t decide she was okay, fic would have ended.

Is it a little subtle sometimes in my writing? Yes. Saizo in particular will stop but generally doesn’t follow up with verbal affirmation. But I do write with undertones of checking for mutually understood nonverbal signals – verbal is always better, but I do think people (/characters) who have an already committed, longterm and physical relationship are quicker to catch nonverbal go/no-go’s—the consent is still there, just not as loudly spelled out for the reader.

Ironically, the piece of mine where this is most the case is Heights and that is a) my least favorite—and of course it’s my most popular, snrk—and b) one of those cases where I’m writing them as quite a bit of time into this, so there are consent checks, just not straight yes/no questions, BUT DON’T ASSUME IN REAL LIFE OKAY.

Compare Heights (implied, longterm physical and emotional history) with AKoaDK (where it’s clearly spelled out this is definitely a first for a lot of things). In the latter, I think the MC gives consent—nonverbal nodding to questions or requests, or actually explicitly giving a verbal yes or okay—at least FIVE times that I remember off the top of my head in 2000+ words, and that affirmation is important EVERY. TIME. Did you notice? Were you distracted by it? I dunno. Whether you did or were or not, it was there intentionally, and hopefully naturally, because it is that easy to weave in.

On fanfiction and the source material being, well, fiction:

4.)    That said, my preference for how I write is not a dictate on how I think others should, nor is it even 100% relevant to what I, personally, like to read. In other words – I feel like the responsibilities as a CONSUMER of content and a CREATOR of content are different. I have a frankly very guilty fondness for some of the fighting-ends-in-a-bed-or-against-a-wall-with-dubious-consent romance novel storylines, and my actual, personal reading preferences tend to skew to rough and straight up problematic themes. And I’m generally pretty comfortable with saying never feel guilty for the stories you want to read, or the stories you want to tell – fiction is a much safer, healthier way of exploring things that in the real world would not be safe, acceptable, healthy, or okay if it were happening to us or others.

I am also not young and not inexperienced XD soooo I have some perspective going into these stories. I also recognize I, personally, have control issues, and see ‘safe exploration’ above. I do think there is some truth, however, to putting what we want to see in the world into the world as content creators.

And I do think that, when we are inexperienced, what we read does shape our perceptions, even knowing that it’s fluffy escapism. And as much as I may personally enjoy some questionable fiction—and write it, depending on your tastes—which probably comes, in some extent, from the media I consumed and was introduced to before I was personally experienced, in which these behaviors were normalized, I like the idea of adding some content into our small little fandom world that helps, subtly or obviously, normalize stop-means-stop and consent as an easy, casual part of the process. My stories where this is less true I probably won’t put out into the world because even though I know where I’m coming from….meh. Just, I’d rather stick to what I put into the world being the way it is. More on the why of that below.

Even doing this, I’m grateful for writers with different tastes, experiences, perspectives and preferences. The rich variety in this fandom is one of the reasons I love it, and I LOVE seeing these other takes on relationships. It would be boring as heck if everyone wrote like me.

On Lee and her life and how that plays into how she writes MC:

5.)    Some real-world perspective (aka, we write what we know) – getting back to MC degree of confidence I am, overall, incredibly comfy in my body. I’m exactly average for an American girl weight-wise circa 2010, if not distribution-wise, which means quite a bit heavier than your international average.  And I wear a bikini with cheerful and enthusiastic pride, and I’m an ex-ballerina, so I have thought nothing of stripping to my skivvies in thirty seconds with sixteen stagehands around, or getting changed in semi-public places with my 501st friends who are a grab bag of ages and genders. As long as everyone around is 18 or older, I operate on a ‘it’s nothing they haven’t seen before’ scale and I have found that if you don’t make a big deal out of your body and not having clothes on it temporarily, and what it looks like in this state, literally no one else will either. It’s a nasty catch-22 that if you are nervous and fidgety about your muffin-top, and you go out of your way to not draw attention to it, that’s probably exactly what you’re going to do. Own it with confidence and don’t think about it and no one else will either. Not 100% there yet? Fake it until you make it, as they say, and I think you’ll find I’m right, in this case.  Another super cool aspect of that? It’s contagious. I don’t know about guys because I’m not one, but I will never forget being 14 in a bikini for the first time and being nervous and my best friend cussing for the first time saying eff it, let’s do this, I like how we look, and I felt like I owned the world. When you see someone enjoying themselves, not caring what others think, sometimes it’s easier for you to do the same – so hey, you can be an inspiration.

NOW WE GET TO TMI TIME FOLKS . I REALLY, REALLY MEAN THAT. I am literally about to allude to my personal sex life, folks, so move along, ye of younger eyes and/or uninclined to want to know about these things. SO. One very, happily, body-positive, confident yoolee, right?  Right! And yet! I still to this day get nervy as hell being n with my much-taller than and also much more fit than I boyfriend. It’s a little less each time, but still. Now, my body was like this when we started dating, and remains true, so it’s not like my body being what it is could be any kind of surprise to either of us. And nevermind that he tells me I’m beautiful, and amazing (he does, we actually have a rule he is not allowed to compliment me more than three times in a row because it’s embarrassing—yes, he is super sweet and I am insanely lucky) and has from day one, there’s just something about it that frazzles me. I suspect because, day to day, it’s about making myself happy and I have no problem doing that, but when I’m in a relationship, I want him to be happy too, and him saying he is isn’t the same as me KNOWING I am.

Does that make sense?  So yes, I do tend to color MC’s experience with mine here, particularly with some of my character favorites, and there’s some self-insertion here and the canon textual clues to support this always feel like they jump out at me in those stories, even when I blatantly ignore them in others—see Kojuro, above. Also worth noting, boy and I have been together a long time and we still check in, per my last paragraph in the last section. And I’ve said no sometimes, and he has too to certain things. And it’s nbd, we just cuddle and turn on Avengers or something. Life is good with communication, friends.

Triggery stuff And yes, as you can probably infer from my tendency to word vomit on the subject, I have experienced, personally, consent boundary issues on two occasions that ended in nonconsensual encounters. One of them was my first kiss, and some disturbing touching, which was taken from me when I was 13 but a stranger in his forties who followed me at a public event I was volunteering at for four hours, telling me he loved me and how tragic his life was, and was taken in exchange for not stalking me further. The other was jail-time and court-worthy though it didn’t come to that (because of course it didn’t, for other reasons) and the defense offered was directly tied to a perpetuation of media myth (playing hard-to-get, never give up on the dream girl, she’ll love you by the end of the movie, but you were nice to me so I thought) so if it seems like I am putting way too much thought into this, YES. I TOTALLY, COMPLETELY AM but—it does shape how I view this sort of thing—and, specifically, my role in potentially perpetuating ideas in fiction rather more strongly and with more depth than it may have otherwise.

I recognize that both of those encounters, perversely, contribute to the fiction I enjoy in some weird psychological attempt at normalizing what happened in a potentially unhealthy way – I’m sure I’m a textbook case. Because I recognize that, I’m not hard on myself for my preferences. ANYWAY.

These  encounters were also, I want to be clear, blips in my life that have not diminished my present health or happiness in any way—they just shape my perspective rather more immediately than it might have been without them.

OKAY IF YOU SKIPPED YOU CAN COME BACK NOW for a sidenote – I am not a professional writer. What you see on this blog is it. I don’t write for anything else unless it’s for work, and that’s not fiction, it’s training on leadership skills and stuff. I have not written fanfiction since like, the fifth Harry Potter book came out. The BOOK, not the movie. That was 2003. That was eighth grade for me. Good lord. And haven’t written fiction in general since one intro to creative writing class sophomore year of undergrad. I got a chemistry degree, folks, I wrote lab reports not romances (okay that would be such a good blog tagline tho) So I DO lean on that ‘what comes easy to me is what I know’ thing. What I don’t know, I google the heck and a half out of, but that’s much easier with the technical than the emotional. Good writers can summon up believable emotion they have not experienced or doesn’t casually interest them enough to imagine, and I still absolutely need practice with that. This is good for me in that sense, but you will notice that for all my talk of variety up above, I tend to write all emotion experienced in these situations pretty similarly. Gonna work on that.

…………………some day I will learn to express my thoughts succinctly. I have a lot of strong feelings about consent and confidence okay.  OH THAT REMINDS ME.

On BC:

6.)    BIRTH CONTROL  TOO, OKAY?

Okay, this is important and yet I don’t write about it much. BUT USE IT EVEN IF I DON’T WRITE ABOUT IT. Except with Saizo, if Iga can make truth serums they can make BC, fight me on that, and of all the samurai I firmly believe he is the one who will not risk MC get with child without a lot of coming to terms with things first, and if you see the MC drinking anything in my writing with him you can safely assume there’s an important powder in there, and if I don’t write it, IT HAPPENS ANYWAY, Little One being the…ironically obvious exception, but my point is that would not have been an accident, but a very, very calculated decision that he is still probably always worried about.

I also don’t think it has as much place in this narrative and story, because, legitimacy issues aside, preventing one, to me, doesn’t feel like it would be as much of a priority for these characters in a we-are-in-a-warzone-and-I-may-never-see-you-again time and place as it would for, say, the Scandal in the Spotlight protags, who reasonably have regular and easy access to modern, easy prevention and a vested reason for using it, namely that they have a lot going on without screaming babies adding to it.  SO I may not always write it in but you can generally assume that if I write anything modern, there’s some kind of BC whether that’s chemical or an off-screen.

If a couple is in a long-time, monogamous relationship and they are comfortable with and prepared for, financially, emotionally, etc for the possibility of offspring, different story. Otherwise – prevention, peeps. PREVEEEEENTION.

Okay.

I think that’s it.

This has been a stupidly long PSA from someone who overthinks this fanfiction stuff.