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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?
no subject
Ha, I hear you. I had so many weird fannish interactions with people during s7 when I would say that I thought Nick Brendon still looked good, and there was just so much disparaging of his weight gain that was more evident end of s6 and in s7. Still, on Ats I think David Boreanaz got worse criticism during the last season of Angel for weight gain. Never mind the poor guy had a bum knee that had to be operated on, and so of course he gained weight in the interim while he had to be less active.
You know, there is one fic I know of focusing *on* Xander's weight gain, kind of a h/c in which Spike basically instigates Xander's loss of confidence over how he looks and then helps to build it up once they become romantically involved. It is one of the very few fics I know of which does such a thing -- if you're at all interested, here's the info: Going Soft (http://sinandcinnamon.livejournal.com/6984.html) by
no subject
And yes, I had wondered whether the addiction issues figured in, and on what timeline. It's odd but I guess I just wasn't tuned into the fandom at the time enough to read boards or hear the crit (which is probably good, as I would've been tearing off people's heads left and right).
Just in terms of Angel vs. Xander, while it seems reasonable that Xander should change (because, y'know, human), the vampire thing suggests an unchanging body (which can make any change seem all the weirder), though of course anyone looking at Spike over the course of Buffy and Angel has to notice that Spike changed as well.
In terms of rationalizing or explaining it, I'd be happy to see someone arguing that somehow, vampires' bodies change in relation to blood supply (though much hand-waving has to be done there).
But for the humans (and I haven't yet read that story you linked to) my first impulse is to say that I'd rather it not become a h/c issue, because that's making too much of it--pathologizing it rather than accepting the mutability of the human body as a part of human life.