Stop Airbrushing My Dudes!

[cimorene]

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?

Comments

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

This isn't an issue for me in band slash since generally people are described as just "sexy" or "attractive", or short or tall. And I can suspend my disbelief with Panic ;)

It irked the hell out of me in the X-files fandom, though. Because if Fox Mulder is in his early forties, yes, let's write him as soft skinned and bright eyed and generally looking like a twelve year old girl.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yes, I find the younger fandoms and RPS fandoms have less problem with this for some reason. It's like airbrushing has gone out of fashion a bit. If so, thank God for small favours.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

HP is pretty bad for it, though. Which...sure, it's just books, so you can imagine them however you want, but I think it's pretty unlikely they're all the hottest people anyone's ever laid eyes on, especially ones like Snape and Draco who are described at least somewhat as not that great. And it's one thing when it's the stuff on FFN by really young authors, where character X comes back from summer vacation with a makeover, which is at least acknowledging they weren't all that to begin with, whereas your typical slash story on LJ often assumes they're drop-dead gorgeous from the get-go.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Oh, agreed. I'd forgotten about that one. I feel it's legit to go with the books - and describe Hermione's bushy hair and buck teeth for example - or to go with the movies, and make Draco clearly based on Tom and Harry on Dan. Or, of course, to go somewhere in between. But Draco being super-muscled and - well- like fanon Draco is just too much. As for Snape... yeah, what can you say about fanon Snape? Nothing but "LOL", pretty much.