rambling Glee metaness

[rm]

So, since this is pretty much "fanfiction problems, film at 11" I'm writing here as opposed to LfT, although maybe a version of this will go on on LfT later?

I am, as we all know, really, really digging the hell out of this Blaine/Kurt thing both in the show and in fandom. And,I'm finding a lot of stuff about how it's presented, both in the show and in fandom, that makes me very happy.

But I'm also finding a lot of landmines, not in terms of "oh god, fandom is so offensive" but in terms of "these are really tricky waters to navigate."

In my own little universe that I'm writing, I've made a lot of stuff hand-wavey and easy, in a way that isn't entirely realistic, but sort of fits with the Glee universe where unlikely crap needs to happen just so crap can happen. We've really got Blaine's dad effectively kicking him out of the house and buying him an apartment? We've really got two eighteen-year-olds shacking up together and it's not a fucking disaster?

Part of me feels a little guilty writing that way, because shit doesn't tend to work out that way. On the other hand, Glee is a fantasy, especially as regards the Kurt/Blaine plot-line, even in canon.

And part of me, having had a weird life -- being queer, going to my ridiculous private school (I cannot emphasize enough how much Dalton reads as exactly like it), being friends with a group of kids who were all fending for ourselves in college in really odd ways and for really odd reasons -- has seen shit like this happen. Lots of parents buying kids apartments just to so make them go away -- and some of those kids were like "okay, so I'll work a couple of jobs and go to school and be an adult and it'll be awesome" and some of those kids were like "shit, I have this great place and no money for dinner so I'll bounce a check at the grocery store to get some groceries because I have no other choices." Lots of completely, completely ridiculous crap went down all the time. Are my Kurt and Blaine based on any of those circumstances? No. Would they have fit in as one more fucked up things going on amongst people I knew when I was 18? yeah.

One of the other things I'm trying to do, even as yes, it's cute and yes it's fluffy is that it's not all hearts and flowers. And not just because Blaine's dad is an asshole. But because college can be weird and isolating, especially if you're not doing it like other people (I lived on campus on and off my first year, having to flee to stay at friends apartments for months at a time, because the school didn't protect me from extreme bullying due to my sexuality; I also worked full-time, and it was all just really _hard_). And I want there to be these little undercurrents of depression in the story, not just because of Blaine's dad (although that topic is coming back in a huge way in the next one), but because I don't think Kurt ever planned to go to conservatory, and it's not maybe what he really wants, but it seems like a bad plan to turn down. And I'm not really sure Blaine's doing what he wants either, but he's smart and well off and got into one of those sorts of schools, and it's reflex. They both miss competing, they both miss being stars in a world they understood, they miss having peers, they are exhausted by playing house, and neither of them were at all ready for this step in their relationship -- they don't have the communication skills, they're still figuring out the sex thing, and when you're on your own at 18 in this way, you're not really allowed to be scared and have doubts because the whole thing collapses if you do. I think it's a hot mess. And it's weighing on Blaine particularly.

Then there are the things that I am finding weird and challenging as a queer reader and queer writer. For one, I finally get in a personal as opposed to abstract way why H/C can be ableist and awful just by it's mere existence, regardless of how well its written. Because hey, this is the homophobia as H/C, fandom! And I'm playing with that a little bit too. And seeing that structure around oppressions I experience makes me able to grok instinctively what I've accepted as true about a lot of H/C in a way I haven't before.

Anyway, sure, I'm queer, and sure I have a personal story that involves really epic horrible homophobia in my life, and we can talk about how honest my desire for this sort of homophobia H/C is, not as a polemic, but as a salving of personal wounds, or as a baddie for a fairytale-structure -- because again Glee is a fantasy -- but I'm still writing and reading in some pretty potentially squicky waters, especially when the basic universe I'm writing in is: here's a lot of hurt, and here's a lot of comfort and all of it is about being gay. How do I make that satisfying for me? Or the reader? Without romanticizing hardship while still romanticizing getting through hardship? I don't fucking know. I think it's why Burt shows up so much though, as he sort of tugs both ends of the H/C mess into some sort of line of reasonableness.

Finally, there's the matter of stereotypes and queerness. One thing I've been excited by in Glee fandom is that at least the stuff I've been reading, really hasn't been turning Kurt into the girl. I can't figure out why, but I'm thrilled beyond measure. Is it that he's feminine enough that people are letting him retain his gender as written on the show? Because I think about the way people make Ianto the girl in a deeply heteronormative way in Torchwood fandom, and that's not happening here.

In fact, if it's happening in fandom anywhere, it's happening about Blaine. Which is super interesting. Because we do have Blaine as this guy who is a leader at his school, and doesn't dress flamboyantly and likes football, but he's also this guy who chats about Vogue covers with his boyfriend. It's a very balanced, mellow image. And I read a ton of stories that both adhere to that, but also play with it in terms of Kurt really having to be the one who takes care of Blaine (who tends to fuck shit up by thinking he's more of an adult than he is). Some of that is adorable (and to be frank, speaks to me, because I seem like the loud, together, in charge sort of person, and Patty really does have to be the soothing voice of reason with me a lot, especially when Ia m overreaching), some of that is written around this sense of Blaine performing his own identity (and gosh, can we talk about his hair and the whole performing WASPness at Dalton when he's not thing?), but some of it is in that style of "we need a w00bie, and it's not Kurt." But when people do that, weird things tend to happen, and more than other fandoms, here I find people writing the gay couple aren't producing texts that seem more like they are about a het couple, but texts that seem more like they are about lesbian couples (if not actually seeming like what they are about what they are supposed to be about, which is the story of two young men). Or something. It's super bizarre, and I haven't figured it all out yet.

Meanwhile, the only fanon I've really noticed consistently: - Blaine is really loud in bed. EVERY STORY (including mine).

Canon thing everyone is obsessed with? Kurt being taller than Blaine. And I am among the guilty. But I chalk that up to the continuing OH MY GOD WHEN IS PATTY (who is taller than me) GOING TO BE HOME? thing.

This fandom is so compelling to me, in part, because it's not behaving in its transformative choices the way I understand fandom to behave. Super exciting. Slightly bizarre. Giant minefield.

Comments

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

And part of me, having had a weird life -- being queer, going to my ridiculous public school, being friends with a group of kids who were all fending for ourselves in college in really odd ways and for really odd reasons -- has seen shit like this happen. Lots of parents buying kids apartments just to so make them go away -- and some of those kids were like "okay, so I'll work a couple of jobs and go to school and be an adult and it'll be awesome" and some of those kids were like "shit, I have this great place and no money for dinner so I'll bounce a check at the grocery store to get some groceries because I have no other choices." Lots of completely, completely ridiculous crap went down all the time. Are my Kurt and Blaine based on any of those circumstances? No. Would they have fit in as one more fucked up thing going on amongst people I knew when I was 18? yeah.

Sorry to quote so much back to you, but this is why it feels real to me. It happened, it happens, it will continue to happen.

I had to google H/C. Heh. Anyway, I think you're approaching Blaine/Kurt as a relationship with relationship issues that all relationships have at one time or another. I mean, if this were a straight couple, it would still be a hot mess. I think you're presenting it very well and it feels like a peek into a life together. It's what life looks like.

I appreciate that you're writing. I look forward to the rest. And I am particulary pleased that Glee has eaten your brain.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Possibly some of the "Kurt is taller than Blaine" thing that's going on is that Chris Colfer GREW SEVERAL INCHES between S1 and S2. It was a little disorienting when we'd been used to Short Kurt to have him come back as Tall Kurt.

And, yeah, I get what you mean about the weirdness of being a young adult and having the playing-house thing thrust upon you by circumstances involving odd stuff around money/not-money and only partial independence from parents. Like that bit in "Reality Bites" about "we can eat gas!" where they leverage the parent-underwritten gas card to get money for groceries.

Oh God H/C as salving of personal wounds, and why writing an Epic Romance for Snape, dear Snape, whose Worst Memory scene was ALL TOO FAMILIAR, was something I NEEDED to do, so that he did not go through life unloved.

I think I am glad that I didn't read much Torchwood fic, because Ianto-as-girl does not mesh with my perception of Ianto-as-Perfect-Boyfriend-template, which for me involves a lot of caretaking behaviors (coffee! break out of carboniteconcrete! THE NEW COAT!) that don't, in my head, negate masculinity. But I'm not sure I *notice* some of the ways in which one partner becomes "the girl," because most of my relationship experience is het.

Anyway, I love the fic, and I love the meta, and more more more more more. *g*

[kproche.livejournal.com]

Canon thing everyone is obsessed with? Kurt being taller than Blaine.

I wonder if it has any common psychosocial (ech. nasty term, but the closest I can come up with) origin with the "height rule" in yaoi? (The convention that holds when drawn in doujinshi, the seme must be drawn as taller than the uke. Even if, in the original source materials, that would not be the case)

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

I actually have wondered if, when they cast Blaine, they were specifically looking for somebody shorter than Chris/Kurt. He's had such a baby face, and the "11-year-old milkmaid" comment in S1 was funny because it was true, and so I do wonder if, when they cast for Blaine, they were looking for somebody who could physically signal the viewer that Kurt's actually not a little boy anymore in an attempt to make his romantic development more easily acceptable. It makes some sense, even if it wasn't deliberate, for fandom to be picking up on that, I think.

This may be a tin-hatty, fannish sort of thought process. That's okay; it wouldn't be the first one I'd had.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have wondered this too, and have left this question hanging for other people to speculate on, because I'm not an anime fan and the little bit of scholarship I've done that includes it doesn't address that at all, so it's like the place where I don't want to say stupid shit.

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

I think that part of why we're getting girlified!Blaine is that fandom has decided that he's something of a fail!bot - he's always got these ideas (confronting Karofsky, "they should just outlaw divorce!", the Gap serenade, talking to Burt about Kurt's sexuality) that are so earnest and so stupid, and it turns him into this deeply flawed but also lovable character that needs some protecting, some care-taking. Kurt is easily the best drawn character on the show, and he has a definite voice (although not so much romantically, and I've been struggling with this post-Original Song, because he was uncharacteristically silent for so much of the forward romantic movement that we got), and it's easy to tap into that and just keep him who he is. Blaine is still a cipher, in a lot of ways. It all plays into the top/bottom sexual politics of the pairing, too, which I can say from having been writing Kurt/Blaine since January is turning into the usual sort of minefield.

I struggled with this last part of the AV!verse because, in that story, the main obstacle is about to be overcome, and they're going to have to make some big decisions about how to go forward, and they react to that in very different ways - Kurt's a pragmatist & a planner, no matter how much he says he likes romance, whereas Blaine is much more likely to take things as they come and respond to them immediately. But I'm afraid putting in a proposal scene (which wasn't, really, but that's how it's being read, and that's fine) is a very, very traditional view on partnership and adulthood and although I think that's appropriate for these characters and where they are in the context of the story, I do worry about it, in terms of realistic expectations for their lives, etc.

It's an interesting time to be writing for this very young couple, considering all of the politics and cultural drift happening, and I also think that's part of why I end up writing so much joy love whee!!! for them, because (a) part of the joy of Blaine was the look on Kurt's face during Teenage Dream; and (b) we live in hope, etc.

Anyway. Not to derail, but this was a thought-provoking post. Looking forward to the next installment! (and someday I will actually comment on the previous ones; I'm notoriously bad about commenting, but they were *lovely*.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you and thank you for this comment.

I am finding it such a stretch to be writing for such young characters. I'm 38 and my partner is twelve years younger than me. Just between she and I there's this huge gap on how we see stuff like marriage and the culture and words we prefer to use for each other and all that stuff. And then when I try to figure out what all this shit is like for someone who is 16 now -- wow, so complicated.

I DEVOURED all of your fic last night. It's so grate. I really appreciated you trying to show us lots of different gay cultures and ways of doing things in how Kurt and Blaine both are dealing with monogamy and sexuality and compromise differently, but ultimately in ways that are honorable and not dangerous, even if some of Kurt's choices may seem a bit edgy to some readers. It really blew me out of the water.

[pineapplechild.livejournal.com]

I want to talk about Blaine and his hair and his performance of WASP, because that was *my entire high school experience*. One of my friends, with whom I watched the entire second series so far and got progressively drunker with while doing so (only way to watch Glee for me) doesn't get why I am babbling so much about this to her.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Right, RIGHT! Like, it's amazing. I first noticed it because of my own unruly hair (which is straightened currently and still curls, but if I leave it alone it actually like Blaine's) and yes, THIS WAS EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AT MY PRIVATE SCHOOL EVER. And I'm so interested in how it still reads, even though the Warblers have been cast pretty diversely and many of them are not making that type of effort to conform that Blaine seems to be.

[pineapplechild.livejournal.com]

Nobody else is feeling the guilt to make up for their gay that Blaine is? I mean, it could be family pressure rather then just the peer social dalton stuff. But then you wouldn't get him so different at the party?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's really, really interesting. And I don't think it's family pressure specifically. I really think it's all Blaine looking for strategies, even if they are strategies of self-erasure.

In the next one of my little fics, I actually have Blaine's mom showing up. And that's sort of weird, because in my head, because of Blaine's whole image thing at school, I keep thinking she's blonde and like all these parents I grew up around. But she's really really not.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

Hey RM.

1) I don't follow Glee at all, but am having a lovely time watching your brain bubbling away on all the meta surrounding the show. It's delightful to see you HAPPY when involved in thinking about a fandom again. :)

2) You've been more quiet about SHERLOCK-related thinky-thoughts, and that being my current obsession, I'm wondering if your paper's going to be anywhere accessible soon? I'd love to read it..

[rm.livejournal.com]

1. Thank you! It's super fun. I love Torchwood of course and all my other stuff, but those things are all complicated and fraught. Glee's sort of weird and complicated and meta too (in part because a lot of what I respond to about it is related to the criticisms I receive of myself as a person for my fannish activities in other fandoms) but right now it's just squeeful and more baggage free than I could have anticipated.

2. The Sherlock paper has been submitted to a collection, but I don't know the status of it yet. I'll let people know if it gets accpeted and if not, I'll be seeking another home for it.

[trillian42.livejournal.com]

... am I weird for never having noticed that Kurt is taller than Blaine?

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Same here! Also icon love!

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see you flesh out your observations on H/C; it is my my huge fandom vice, even when I realize that it is one of the big cliches of fanfic.

I do realize that there is an aspect of being comforted-by-proxy in reading those stories. Fics that go overboard on the H side don't really appeal to me (and I feel kind of voyeuristic reading them), I seem to be drawn more to fics where a character admits vulnerability, and for a lack of a better term, "gets away with it"; they are seen as someone who needs help, and aren't mocked for being "weak" or disappointing the comforting character.

The scenes where Molly in "Sherlock" and Tosh in "Torchwood" get shot down/brushed off when they grit their teeth and speak up cut way to close to me.

[silverkit.livejournal.com]

One thing I've been excited by in Glee fandom is that at least the 455555stuff I've been reading, really hasn't been turning Kurt into the girl. I can't figure out why, but I'm thrilled beyond measure

I had this exact thought when I first jumped into Glee fandom a few months ago.

Do you think any of that is related to the fact that Kurt is taller than Blaine? I have seen in the past in fandoms that the taller one tends to be cast as the 'guy' (To use a phrase that makes me want to stick my head in a bucket of ice water) which I think is a bleed off from a lot of Japanese yaoi.

Actually, in the first part of the season they do a lot to make the height difference between the two of them disappear (Blaine is standing yet Kurt is sitting or they're both sitting or Blaine is on one step, but Kurt is on another). You never notice that Blaine is any shorter than Kurt until Blaine starts to become less of a mentor character.

Because I think about the way people make Ianto the girl in a deeply heteronormative way in Torchwood fandom,
Another thing that makes me want to stick my head in a bucket of ice water.

here I find people writing the gay couple aren't producing texts that seem more like they are about a het couple, but texts that seem more like they are about lesbian couples

Okay that is super interesting-I'm not entirely sure what you mean...but now it's going to be running around in my little head for days.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I am a) really enjoying reading this whole experience thing you're having and b) experiencing some bizarre hybrid of jealousy and joy as a result.

It's funny. One of the things I know about Glee is that one of these two gets bullied enough to need to transfer school. This is almost my life in late middle school/early high school. I was even in honor choirs.

For me, the transfer ultimately didn't happen -- probably a good thing because my only option was a SUPER CONSERVATIVE Baptist school where gender was rigidly enforced and discussing topics like popular music could get one expelled -- but hearing some of this second and third hand is kind of giving me chills.

Also, thinking back to eighteen? Kind of a trip. A scary, weird-ass trip. Dude. My freaking life. Ack.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I cannot wait for you to watch this shit. But it is _hard_. The payoff though is really, really sweet. Sometimes I worry that I look at a little at the Kurt/Blaine storyline and am experiencing apparently what other people saw in Jack/Ianto watching Torchwood although this _is_ supposed to be a central relationship narrative and that wasn't. But... it's really amazing, if you can wade through the other crap (especially the first season, which is seriously WTF in the a lot of places).

I really do think you're going to fucking swoon over this shit though.