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Stop Airbrushing My Dudes!
Fic peeves: you know how most people look sort of normal? Of course there's a bell-curve of normal, and movie stars don't map out along the bell curve and tv stars don't either. Some shows are eerie to watch because everyone's really attractive.
But: blockbuster movies do that more than your average weekly primetime show. I mean, yeah, Emily Deschanel and all the women on the CSIs and all the women in the Stargate shows are... pretty hot. But nobody's perfect even so, and there's a wide sample of dudes on tv who are downright funny-looking.
Even when you're in love with someone, and are perfectly convinced that their crooked little nose or their funny lantern-jaw are perfect and would be inferior if they looked more average, you are not under the illusion that these things are perfect. And especially if they're pudgy you're unlikely to think their abdomens look like a washboard, okay.
It's not an insult to say that Blair Sandburg, Duncan MacLeod and Methos, Bodie and Doyle, Starsky and Hutch, etc look knobbly, lopsided, dopey, unibrowed, soft around the middle, or a bit cross-eyed if it's true and it certainly doesn't mean they're not slashy. I mean, it's not like people from all along the bell curve don't fall in love and hook up and have all sorts of sexual preferences!
So, you know, it really, severely throws me out of a story if a pov character who doesn't seem to be unreliable in other aspects, and has a firm grip on reality, suddenly starts saying that someone's hairless when they're hairy, tall when they're average, flawlessly or classically handsome when they're squinty and lopsided or knobbly or hawk-nosed or unibrowed (they might be extraordinarily handsome, of course. Just not classically or flawlessly so), or amber-eyed when their eyes are incontrovertibly green or hazel, or green-eyed when their eyes are brown, or golden-haired when they're a brunette, or milky-pale when they're kind of pleasantly tanned and olive.
I mean, you're not blind, and your readers aren't either. If you have to recast the show in your head, or airbrush the hell out of everything like stretchmarks and love handles on a swimsuit model, before you can get off on the characters getting off - well, okay. I think it's sad, but I can't do anything about it. But what in Bob's name makes you think it's a good idea to change random easily observable visual facts about canon in your fanfiction?
But: blockbuster movies do that more than your average weekly primetime show. I mean, yeah, Emily Deschanel and all the women on the CSIs and all the women in the Stargate shows are... pretty hot. But nobody's perfect even so, and there's a wide sample of dudes on tv who are downright funny-looking.
Even when you're in love with someone, and are perfectly convinced that their crooked little nose or their funny lantern-jaw are perfect and would be inferior if they looked more average, you are not under the illusion that these things are perfect. And especially if they're pudgy you're unlikely to think their abdomens look like a washboard, okay.
It's not an insult to say that Blair Sandburg, Duncan MacLeod and Methos, Bodie and Doyle, Starsky and Hutch, etc look knobbly, lopsided, dopey, unibrowed, soft around the middle, or a bit cross-eyed if it's true and it certainly doesn't mean they're not slashy. I mean, it's not like people from all along the bell curve don't fall in love and hook up and have all sorts of sexual preferences!
So, you know, it really, severely throws me out of a story if a pov character who doesn't seem to be unreliable in other aspects, and has a firm grip on reality, suddenly starts saying that someone's hairless when they're hairy, tall when they're average, flawlessly or classically handsome when they're squinty and lopsided or knobbly or hawk-nosed or unibrowed (they might be extraordinarily handsome, of course. Just not classically or flawlessly so), or amber-eyed when their eyes are incontrovertibly green or hazel, or green-eyed when their eyes are brown, or golden-haired when they're a brunette, or milky-pale when they're kind of pleasantly tanned and olive.
I mean, you're not blind, and your readers aren't either. If you have to recast the show in your head, or airbrush the hell out of everything like stretchmarks and love handles on a swimsuit model, before you can get off on the characters getting off - well, okay. I think it's sad, but I can't do anything about it. But what in Bob's name makes you think it's a good idea to change random easily observable visual facts about canon in your fanfiction?
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Enough said on the subject of Rodney's physique. ~.^
DragonLady
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(here from metafandom)
I always think... "Have you ever tried a princess carry?" Unless you're lifting someone a lot smaller than you, your arms give out pretty fast. You ever notice how mothers rest their kids on their hips, or how firemen sling rescuees over their shoulders? It's because that's how you don't kill your arms.
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Funny story- I actually have tried to carry some one that way. Back when I was young, and still lifting weights. Picture 160lb female carrying 170 lb male friend. I made it about 5 steps and then my knees went and we both went down.
Anyway, this, I assume, is one of the practical reasons hollywood insists on thin-bordering-on -anorexic leading ladies. And I'm impressed almost everytime some poor leading man has to heft even these relative light weights, since I know they have to do it multiple times to get the take during filming. I guess it supposed to demonstrate what big strong men they are, and as a female I'm supposed to admire/desire/value this trait. And then that romantic image gets pulled into fanfic.
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And firemen carries are uncomfortable for the person being carried, and consequently unromantic. But I don't get the fetish about carrying people.
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I second the baffled on that one. The only slash pairing -- and I mean the only, and that is a "barely" only -- that could get away with that sort of thing is Ronon/Zelenka because Ronon is so Paul-Bunyan-brawny and Zelenka is so, um, well, not (even Lorne is taller, though it's only by an inch or so).
This isn't technically "airbrushing" but it is "girlifying," but there was this one Rodney/Radek fic where Radek said something along the lines of, "I share one kiss and a bed and you think I'll just roll over and spread them" to which Rodney replied in all sincerity that what he meant/was after was "cuddling and kissing, you know, touch."
Words fail me. This is Rodney -- remember all the stuff with Sam? Like, oh, say, the vid where he felt the need to exposit on how he masturbated to her image (granted, he was pretty sleep deprived), but still, "no sex" are you freaking kidding me?
DragonLady
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