so i just googled the phrase “toeing out of his shoes” to make sure it was an actual thing
and the results were:
it’s all fanfiction
which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic
idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick
i wish i knew more about linguistics so i could actually talk about it in an intelligent manner, but yeah i thought that was kinda cool
Ha! Love it!
One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. <3
To me it’s still the quintessential “two dudes doing each other” phrase.
I think different fic communities develop different phrases too! You can (usually) date a mid 00s lj fic (or someone who came of age in that style) by the way questions are posed and answered in the narration, e.g. “And Patrick? Is not okay with this.” and by the way sex scenes are peppered with “and, yeah.” I remember one Frerard fic that did this so much that it became grating, but overall I loved the lj style because it sounded so much like how real people talk.
Another classic phrase: wondering how far down the _ goes. I’ve seen it mostly with freckles, but also with scars, tattoos, and on one memorable occasion, body glitter at a club. Often paired with the realization during sexy times that “yeah, the __ went all they way down.” I’ve seen this SO much in fic and never anywhere else
whoa, i remember reading lj fics with all of those phrases! i also remember a similar thing in teen wolf fics in particular - they often say “and derek was covered in dirt, which. fantastic.” like using “which” as a sentence-ender or at least like sprinkling it throughout the story in ways published books just don’t.
LINGUISTICS!!!! COMMUNITIES CREATING PHRASES AND SLANG AND SHAPING LANGUAGE IN NEW WAYS!!!!!!!
I love this. Though I don’t think of myself as fantastic writer, by any means, I know the way I write was shaped more by fanfiction and than actual novels.
I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.
The coherency isn’t lost, it just marries itself to the reader in a different way. A way that shapes that reader/writer and I find that so beautiful.
FASCINATING
and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?
we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?
I’m sure someone could start researching this even now, with writers like Rainbow Rowell and Naomi Novik who have roots in fandom. (If anyone does this project pleasetell me!) It would be interesting to compare, say, a corpus of a writer’s fanfic with their published fiction (and maybe with a body of their nonfiction, such as their tweets or emails), using the types of author-identification techniques that were used to determine that J.K. Rowling was Robert Galbraith.
In an earlier discussion, Is French fanfic more like written or spoken French?, people mentioned that French fanfic is a bit more literary than one might expect (it generally uses the written-only tense called the passé simple, rather than the spoken-only tense called the passé composé). So it’s not clear to what extent the same would hold for English fic as well – is it just a couple phrases, like “toeing out of his shoes”? Are the google results influenced by the fact that most published books aren’t available in full text online? Or is there broader stuff going on? Sounds like a good thesis project for someone!
recently I read this incredible short story in an antology set in distinct neighborhoods/locations in Nairobi (Nairobi Noir edited by Peter Kimani). Number Sita by Kevin Mwachiro describes a coming of age for a boy growing up in Nairobi–an intimate portrayal of masculinity and sexuality in the urban space of Kilimani, the neighborhood where the narrator has grown up that is now falling prey to gentrification, as well as his past relationship to a lesbian character in his neighborhood that taught him and his friends how to relate to women’s pleasure. the queerness is subtle in what is otherwise a straight male narrator voice, just a glimpse into gender and vulnerability in the context of modern Nairobi.
Kevin Mwachiro is a gay Kenyan author and runs the podcast Nipe Story (Tell Me a Story), where he shares Kenyan/other African short stories in audio format. definitely check them out!
finished my arc of One Last Stop in one night and had to make fanart IMMEDIATLY (preorder it now so that you too can be in sapphic heaven come June 1st)
“Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.”
“My little sister once came home from school when she was in the second grade and asked me, ‘What’s a sanctuary?’ I guess they had been reading about wildlife preserves or the Hunchback of Notre Dame or something.
And it’s funny because no one ever taught me this, and I can’t even remember thinking about it very much, but the answer came flying right out of my mouth, like it had been waiting there since time immemorial.
‘A sanctuary is a place where the door only locks from the inside.’ I looked her in the eyes as I said it, and I could see right away she understood.”
–Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, by Kai Cheng Thom
This book is bringing me so much joy. If you like unreliable narrators, tough femmes, radical resistance of oppressive forces, lipstick, and prose that reads like rough-around-the-edges poetry, this is your new guilty pleasure. Trust me.
happy pride reccing some anti-assimilationist, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist books and texts
BOOKS
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2012)
“Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into "straight-acting dudes hangin’ out,” what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?“
This pamphlet is an attempt to trace the historic rise of an oppression that, as yet, has no commonly agreed name. We are talking here about people who defy the ‘man’-made boundaries of gender.
Transgender Warriors: Making history from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg (1996)
[Leslie Feinberg’s] book celebrated the resistance to transphobia and a vision of trans liberation articulated from the perspective of class struggle. It understood that no liberation from transphobia or any of the divisive and violent oppressions in class society is possible without the transformation of capitalism into socialism.
Stories told of these times make the faggots and their friends weep. The second revolutions made many of the people less poor and a small group of men without color very rich. With craftiness and wit the faggots and their friends are able to live in this time, some in comfort and some in defiance.
Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation edited by Kate Bornstein, and S. Bear Bergman (2010)
Today’s transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being.
Made In India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects by Suparna Bhaskaran (2004)
Made In India explores the making of "queer” and “heterosexual” consciousness and identities in light of economic privatization, global condom enterprises, sexuality-focused NGOs, the Bollywood-ization of beauty contests, and trans/national activism.
That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies For Resisting Assimilation edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2008)
As the growing gay mainstream prioritises the attainment of straight privilege over all else, it drains queer identity of any meaning, relevance or cultural value.
How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm (2021)
Malm argues that sabotage is a logical form of climate activism, and criticizes both pacifism within the climate movement and “climate fatalism” outside it.
On Connection by Kae Tempest (2020)
On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.
Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davies (2003)
If you know anything about Angela Davis—anti-racist activist, Marxist-feminist scholar—you know that her answer to the question posed in the title is “Yes.” This is a short primer on the prison abolition movement
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell
This profound, urgent, beautiful, and necessary book is an invitation to imagine and organize for a less violent and more liberatory world.
Black Marxism by Cedric Johnson (1983)
Influenced by many African American and Black economists and radical thinkers of the 19th century, Robinson creates a historical-critical analysis of Marxism and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The book does not build from nor reiterate Marxist thought, but rather introduces racial analysis to the Marxist tradition.
The Transgender Issue: An Argument For Justice by Shon Faye (2021)
[Shon Faye] provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.
Burn The Binary: selected writings on the politics of being trans, genderqueer, and non-binary by Riki Wilchins (2017)
This single volume offers a selection of Riki’s most penetrating and insightful pieces, as well as the best of two decades of Riki’s online columns for The Advocate never before collected, from “Where Have All the Butches Gone,” to “Attack of the 6-Foot Intersex People”
The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.
“This brings us to the third problem with eschatological framings of the climate crisis: they overlook the fact that for many, the end of the world has already happened. In October last year, Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani woman, mother and leader, wrote a desperate letter to the western world reminding us that for Indigenous peoples, “the fires are raging still”.”
MISC
Manifesto: An Aromantic Manifesto by yingchen and yingtong
There is a space for everyone. A space, a glass of water, and a plug socket.* Chairs and tables and cleaned toilets. So many chairs so that no one is without one.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.
attention british bookworms! want to find a way to buy queer books andsupport indie bookshops? then look no further, and check out gay’s the wordandqueer lit - both have shops (in london and manchester respectively) but they also have great online shops - so please consider supporting them if you can!
Interface is a queer, sci-fi web novel about a world where people evolved bio-electric organs that let them produce current in their bodies and feel electric fields and waves. They use this to communicate and develop technology in an advanced-tech world where three major companies in a governmental alliance vie for power over one another.
The story updates twice a month, and the story is currently progressing through its first major arc, Pt. 1, called, “The Robot.”
The plot revolves around two kids from opposite walks of life in a high-tech world that is all one city divided into sectors. Their lives become entangled when they discover a mysterious robot. Intrigue, tragedy, and hijinks ensue as they delve into the conspiracy.
If you’re curious about the world + characters, you can read about the world a little more here, and the characters here.
Its important to me that the series is as accessible as I’m able to make it. If you struggle with reading, be it ADHD or dyslexia etc, there are still a number of ways you can enjoy the series! Interface is available on sites like RoyalRoad, where you can adjust the webpage to make reading easier for you. Also, the series updates with audio-chapters available on spotify which can also be found from the main site’s table of contents.
Consider checking it out! I’ll leave all the relevant links here, but you can also find them from my main site, iwriterobots.com.
“Gay sex life, unlike straight sex life, is never a private matter. When a man and a woman walk hand in hand, it is their love that they make public. When two men walk hand in hand, it is their sex life that they make public… Our words are acts; our privacy is public. This reality stems from the nature of homophobia.”
—
Rabbi Steven Greenberg
“Wrestling with G-d and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition” (2004)
ALT
