Happiness day 4: queerlygen

It makes me happy when people respond to things they don't like in fandom in positive ways like hosting a ficathon. It also makes me happy when people write gen fic about queer people. Thus, I'm doubly excited about queerlygen, a new community on Dreamwidth. If you're not doing the Dth thing, you can friend queerlygen on LJ where I think at least mod announcement posts will be mirrored. Here's an excerpt from the mission statement by fiercelydreamed:

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.

At first I was a little confused seeing as how lgbtfest already exists and its fics are mostly gen, but for one thing lgbtfest is really popular and tends to fill up, so there's certainly room to have another similar thing at a different time of year. And also I think the focus will be slightly different, since lgbtfest fics tend to be about being lgbt (a lot of stories about characters coming to terms with their identity or coming out to family and friends), and maybe queerlygen will be about more of a variety of experiences including adventure plots, and both fests will be awesome.

And now I shall rec some queer gen fics that I've enjoyed, some of which I've recced here before:

• One & Only by baylorsr
  LotR, Frodo and Merry
  This is maybe the first gay gen fic I ever read. baylorsr got all kinds of ridiculous criticism for suggesting (in a PG-rated fic) that Frodo could be gay, but this is really a lovely sad Frodo and Merry friendship story. I love the idea that Merry is as good a hobbit as he is because of lessons he learned from Frodo when he was growing up.



• Padding Around by hanarobi
  Lotrips, Elijah and his mom
  I think it was at the moot in March a group of us were talking about our first fics and hanarobi said her first fic was one none of us had ever read, but I remembered this as one of the first Lotrips fics I'd read. I think there's a nice "this is a gay couple and not just a slashed couple" vibe in hanarobi's Dom/Elijah wingfic series Wing Development too.



• Out of the Cupboard Under the Stairs by magnetic_pole
  Harry Potter, Harry
  schemingreader recced this fic about Harry coming out to his friends on magnetic_pole's birthday a couple years ago and that was how I became aware of her, and now we are friends and I love reading her posts, so I know she is also excited about queerlygen. I have shown this fic to real life friends as an example of how cool fanfic can be and they agreed with me that it was charming and great.



• Constructing Selves by nevermindirah
  Torchwood, Toshiko
  This was part of lgbtfest 2008. I remember at the time I read it I was sort of flailing trying to figure out what I wanted from fandom and where I should be, and I wrote to Claudia that what I really wanted to read was genfic about lesbians of color "and LotR fandom is SO not doing that for me." OTOH it's distressing that this is the only fic about a woman or a PoC on my little list here. :( But anyway, this fic is great because it's so in character for Toshiko, that her reaction to realizing she isn't straight is to do research. :)



• The Circle Game by carolinecrane
  Saved!, Dean
  This was a quiet little fic from last year's Yuletide that didn't get as much attention as it deserved, in my opinion. Dean realizing he's gay sets the events of Saved! in motion but then he's not around for most of the movie, having been sent off to Mercy House to be cured. I love that this fic puts him back in the center and keeps the movie's spirit of questioning received knowledge and of good people helping each other out even when they disagree.



• And now, a self-rec!
  Nine Steps in a Circle by me!
  Little Miss Sunshine, Frank and Dwayne
  This was my main fic for Yuletide last year. It's mostly about an uncle teaching his nephew how to write while both of them are thinking about what they want to do with their lives, and also the main character is gay.

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Speaking of fic recs (including self-recs), we're doing fics set in Lothlórien this month at lotr_fic_recs. There haven't been any recs yet and I'm a little embarrassed because the only one I can think of is a noncon with some questionable grammar and use of apostrophes. I will probably rec it because I think it's hot, but I should also try to think of something more respectable to go with it.