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

[cimness.livejournal.com]

WORD. And the size/height one is the strangest of all when you're talking about tv, where you can, you know, look at the guys standing side-by-side. In the Pros I honestly thought Bodie being "huge" and "lumbering" meant he was like, taller, when in fact, I think the guys are pretty much the same height to within half an inch, and only a size or two apart around the middle.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Bodie? Lumbering? Bodie is all spivvy and a wearer of smart jackets. He's practically *urbane*. There's nothing in the least bit lumbering about Bodie. Or Doyle for that matter, even though Doyle at least had vaguely lumberjacky clothing choices.

Back in the day I think we used to girlify Doyle slightly (I say this not in terms of fic but in terms of teenage girl viewing practices) because he had lovely curls and played the guitar and had moments of great sensitivity. But in actual fact he was a violent little Brummie shit most of the time. *swoons*

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

I remember a story--title and author thankfully forgotten--where Doyle was--well, hopefully he was undercover--dressed as a woman, and apparently he made a drop-dead, *gorgeous* femme who turned the head of every male in sight.

Yeah, right. :-)

Picture that face with make-up. He'd make a butt-ugly woman. :-)