Slash meta #3 (and probably final): please discuss!

[thrihyrne]

Thank you so much for those involved thus far! Feel free to ask friends who you think would be interested in sharing their views who may not know me from Eve's housecat and send them on over. All of these posts are public, but you do have to be a registered LJ'er. Women only, however, for this particular article.

My final question, and the crux in some ways of what I think I'll focus on for the article: if you're an R to NC-17 slasher, whether writing, reading, artist, viewer of art, vidder or video viewer, when the characters get intimate with one another, are you strictly a voyeur, do you do a bit of self-insert of a sort into one or both of the characters, or is it a combination? If a combination, does it depend on the pairing/fandom/something else? In other words, are you just watching the men together, or are you putting yourself into the action, but within the body of one or both of them? I'll be very interested to read your comments as this, I think, is what fascinates me the most. And hopefully will be interesting to Filament readers!

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

That makes sense to me also.

I am trying to imagine what directly writing personal erotic fantasies would look/feel like. I think identification is a different kind of activity.

If I were to write a pure and simple wish-fulfillment, self-insertion fantasy, it would probably involve something entirely different. Winter right now sounds good! Or uninterrupted privacy perhaps.

I remember my reaction to the old Schwarzenegger movie "Total Recall" (and no, I am not usually a Schwarzenegger movie fan) where people were able to take a "virtual vacation." Now that was a fantasy so sweet that it almost broke my heart with longing at that period in my life. Working two challenging jobs, with a pain in the ass of an attention-sucking life partner, and two young kids, the idea of checking in for a virtual two-week or longer vacation and only losing a few minutes of real time was a wish fulfillment that trumped the hottest sex for me at that moment. I was also young enough, as was the aforementioned partner, that real life hot sex wasn't that elusive either. It just wasn't enough. Time was the precious unattainable fantasy.

[elfscribe5.livejournal.com]

I am trying to imagine what directly writing personal erotic fantasies would look/feel like.
Yes, that's an interesting approach to thinking about the voyeur vs.self insert type thing. I agree that I was actually trying to write myself into an erotic fantasy, it would not be the same thing as writing any of my characters, whether male or female into a sex scene or any kind of a scene actually. There is not only a degree of removal from self when creating characters, but there is the situation you've set up within the story that helps determine what they do. The characters may have a degree of me in them, certainly they do or I couldn't be creating them, but they are not me. However, now that I think about it, even if I was writing myself into a scene, it would still be myself as a character rather than the totality of who I really am. Huh, convoluted.

The Total Recall fantasy is a potent one. I've often thought of writing a sci fi story in which this is possible. I think many people would never leave the house. LOL.
The whole time factor thing too, going for two weeks mentally and it really only is a few minutes. How disorienting.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

The characters may have a degree of me in them, certainly they do or I couldn't be creating them, but they are not me. However, now that I think about it, even if I was writing myself into a scene, it would still be myself as a character rather than the totality of who I really am. Huh, convoluted.

Convoluted, but I completely understand what you are saying. I used my daughter as a model for a character in a novel (epic-length which is still in progress). As time goes by they move farther apart: 1) my daughter has grown up since then; 2) it was never really my daughter anyway, but only aspects of her, and the plot and the fictional character's choices distance them from one another as well.