sort of completely ridiculous fic rec

Like most people in fandom, I have the fic I like to read, the fic I'll read if I'm really bored, and the stuff that's totally not to my taste that I tend to read out of morbid curiosity, which is how I stumbled on bellinaball's "Weight of the World" and "Weightless."

It's Glee AU wingfic, and I started reading it because I thought it would be terrible. Well, it's not. In fact, it has some of the finest, careful world-building I've seen in fandom, which is particularly remarkable considering the trope in question (it's not, I'll admit, one I have a lot of patience for as a rule).

I am extremely hesitant to spoil these fics, because how the information about what's going on unspools is so fantastic, but you do at least need a few warnings, especially for the first fic, "Weight of the World," which involves slavery and rape on repeat. And if you like Blaine but can otherwise deal with the content? Just grit your teeth and read it, because you need to read it to set up the sequel. This isn't the story that made me fall in love with this world, so the intensity of this rec may not make sense to you while you're reading it. "Weight of the World" is truthfully workmanlike and nearly unremarkable (although I liked it enough to try the sequel), but you need it for the larger journey.

It's the sequel, "Weightless," that's really amazing. It's technically and artistically much stronger. It's where the world-building becomes amazing. The craft is solid and the prose is mostly invisible except when it turns poetic at judicious and appropriate moments. The characterizations (again, with the exception of Blaine who only appears in the first story) are remarkably spot on for a world so strange, and there's a confrontation between Kurt and Rachel after they get smacked with a brick about the desires they once competed over in common that's one of the finest moments I've seen in any fandom.

bellinaball could have made the matter of wings an allegory for queerness and made me hate this story; it's a choice that would have felt nearly unforgivable to me. But no, these are distinct issues in the story that have a few interesting intersections.

There are, in fact, dozens of places where she could have taken a cheaper path in storytelling. It's not, for example, a Kurt/Finn fic, despite what it will seem like at point; the random celebrity cameos actually make sense (one if particularly hilarious, but I refuse to explain until you've read it, and if you're in Glee fandom, you'll get it immediately); and the story skirts around fetishizing immortality and does good work about the importance of death just when you think it won't.

Unlike most stories I deeply love, I'm not in this story anywhere. There's no one I identify with. This story isn't mine. And this story isn't really an allegory for any of mine.

But I will say this: life is filled with shit we should all care about that we don't because we don't have time and because it doesn't involve us directly. My parents never expected to have a gay kid; I never expected to have a chronic illness. The experience of having your politics changed by the randomness of flesh isn't a pleasant one. Watching Kurt wrestle with that in this is what made the story feel so tangibly real, and why I had to flee a Victoria's Secret abruptly the other day (again, when you read the fic, see why and laugh -- until it happens to you too).

I'm so tempted to tell bellinaball that she should file the serial numbers off this thing and use her world building for some original work, but the story is also, ultimately, so tied into the way Glee puts people on display and shows us what shallow assholes most even decent people can be, that I can't imagine divorcing this thing from its source. And, I'd be lying if I said the story didn't need the context of Kurt, beautiful, fragile, strong, misunderstood and often in tears, to make it work.

Also, be sure to download the fanmix. If you can listen to Gary Jules's version of "Mad World" without sobbing now, you won't be able to when this thing is done.

Glee rant about queer teens and PDAs, again

People,

As much as I, too, would like to think Kurt and Blaine kissed in that hall, at that moment:

- Blaine is still freaked out because when he last tried to go to a dance with another guy he got the crap beat out of him
- Kurt has just realized that things at McKinley are as bad as they ever were.
- The school is NOT a safe space, especially when the rest of it is empty -- what seems to give them privacy also puts them at risk if they run into someone else who might be feeling violent.


I cannot emphasize enough how complicated PDAs are for gay teens and gay people in general. I cannot emphasize enough that even though things may seem, and even be, perfectly safe they won't necessarily feel that way to people because of their own experiences with violence or being warned about violence or whatever.

I am 38-years-old. I live in New York City. I have let go of same-sex lovers' hands in public places within the last ten years when I wasn't entirely sure it was safe for us to be holding hands because I didn't know the neighborhood or it was late at night and drunk people make me more wary or whatever. And dudes, New York Fucking City, not a high school in Lima, Ohio.

This is huge mileage may vary territory for everyone. I'm totally okay with your "they kissed in the hall" head-cannon, but really worn out from the "Blaine sucks for not touching Kurt at x, y, or z moment" stuff and the "it's totally safe for them to be kissing!" assumptions and the "it must be evil FOX not giving us more gay kisses" theories.

This is complicated. This is complicated for gay people. This is complicated for US television. It's just complicated.

Please just let it be complicated.

And particularly for my straight readers, please, please, please take a moment to think about what it would be like to always be doing the math and then imagine what it would be like to do that math at 16. When you've already experienced assault. And you have one good thing and you're terrified that if you show affection for that thing in public, it will get it destroyed (and to be extremely fucking clear, by destroyed I mean murdered).

Being out and proud does not stop you from doing the math.