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Should a Published Author let on about Their Fanfiction?

Christie Gordon 2 Comments

Harry Potter YaoiI’ve always been a bit bothered by another M/M Romance author’s bit of advice that given to me during a chat. The advice was basically this: Don’t tell anyone you wrote fanfiction.

Now, as an M/M Romance author who got started in this business by writing Fullmetal Alchemist  fanfiction and has used this fact as much as possible to let my fanfiction readers know that – hey, I have some original published stories, too, and  they’re a lot better than the fanfiction stories – I can’t let myself really believe this is good advice. It seems to me if someone likes your fanfiction stories, then they’d probably like your original published stories, which are quite often a hell of a lot more polished and professionally edited. For me, I look at the fanfiction as fun free reads. And I loved writing them. I got to have fun with someone else’s characters and quite frankly, the whole episode taught me a ton about how to write and what readers wanted to read.

And to tell you the truth? I’m proud of my fanfiction stories. Sure, there was a lot of head hopping, typos and the like. But people expect that sort of thing in fanfiction. Sometimes, I almost feel as if there’s a lot more freedom in fanfiction. I can test a few things out and see if I’m wacked for writing something like that or maybe it’s the best idea ever. (I’m liking that term, best XXX ever lately, LOL).

We as published writers need to promote about as much as we need to write good stories and to think we shouldn’t use that avenue of ourselves to promote our work just seems… wrong. I know I’ve read some pretty damn good fiction on fanfiction.net and adultfanfiction.net. So to think that all that literature out there on those sites is bad writing, well, I don’t subscribe to that view. And if you’re a published author and want to write a bit of it for fun, why not? And why not promote it as yours?

What do you think? How do you other authors feel about this issue? And yep, if you look to the right there in my links, you’ll find my fanfiction.net site and can read all my fanfiction stories if you’re so inclined:)

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Live Action Yaoi

Christie Gordon 1 Comment

Tuakumi X Gii Kiss - Takumi-KunSo I’ve noticed lately on YouTube, much to my delight, some Japanese films that appear to be what I’d refer to as “Live Action Yaoi”. Now maybe I’m coming into this phenomenon really late and all you other fangirl and fanboy types have already drooled all over these things, but I’m hoping to see them on Netflix or even Crunchyroll sometime soon;) (If they’re already there, tell me!)

I’ve started watching one called, Soshite, Harukaze ni Sasayaite, or maybe Takumi-Kun Series, I can’t tell what the name is by the video title;) And I’m very intrigued. Sure, it’s a bit mushy as gay movies go, but it’s also very sweet. And if we like yaoi, that’s what we’re looking for, right? This story in particular is based off this shy dude who was molested, I think, by his older brother and is the love interest for your typical very popular dude. They’re in college and share a room – how convenient:) Gee, I think I’ve seen that somewhere before (like in my own book The Obsession, LOL). And so the popular guy, Gii, makes his feelings known and protects Takumi in true yaoi, seme fashion.

It looks like the guys don’t do too much in terms of sex except for a stolen kiss here or there and lots of gushy “I love you’s”. Of course, I can always hope. And as I peruse YouTube, I think I’m seeing a few of these things with a bit more racy content. There’s one called, Pure, that seems to go a bit, ahem, deeper.

Let’s get some discussion going about this – do you like these or yaoi anime better? Where are these coming from – please enlighten me a bit more:) And what’s up with this? Can we petition Netflix and Crunchyroll to show them if they don’t already? If I seem a bit daft with respect to these things, give me a break – I just found them!

And so, here’s the first part of the Takumi-Kun Series (if that’s what it’s called):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF2jpj7R7TI

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Why do the Men in Yaoi not Want Sex?

Christie Gordon 6 Comments

Sakai Ichi Hatsukoi - World's Greatest First Love - YaoiI’m watching this yaoi anime on Crunchyroll (finally, Yaoi on Crunchyroll!), Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi – World’s Greatest First Love, and I realized that in so many Yaoi anime and manga, the guys don’t seem to actually want to have sex, at least the ukes don’t. Why is that? Don’t all men want to have sex all the time? If so, shouldn’t it hold true that in our gay male stories, there’s lots of man sex and they’re loving it?

So, I was putting dishes away, because God knows I have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning;) and I’m thinking to myself about why we as straight women like this sort of thing. I mean, we must, right? Or why would the Yaoi powers that be put this stuff out? And why would we watch it so religiously?

In the typical Yaoi manga or anime, you have these two dudes that are attracted to each other, maybe even confess their love for each other, but invariably one chases after the other for sex (usually the seme), while the other runs from it (usually the uke). Then when the seme actually gets the uke, the uke does the, “Oh, stop… please stop”, thing while at the same time obviously getting off on what the seme’s doing.

My question is – could this be a hold over from the traditional romance story days when the heroine in our romance books loved, but hated, but didn’t want to tarnish her reputation by having sex, but got really hot and bothered by the hero? As women, we’re supposed to make guys chase us, guys we like, but we can’t show them we like them or we won’t get chased. Whew, what a wild game, huh? And what a mess… And this does resemble the typical Yaoi story arc, does it not? Hmmm…

Maybe in these stories, since they’re written largely for a straight female audience, this dynamic exists in order to give some sort of semblance of a traditional male/female role that women recognize immediately. And we eat it up, don’t we? It’s that whole forbidden thing. The “I want you, but I shouldn’t, can’t” thing. The whole reason why we love our Yaoi and M/M Romance – forbidden love.

And so the poor uke has to go on wanting sex with his seme, but pretending like he doesn’t. I wonder, what would happen if we made stories that were more true to gay male life? Would we still devour them so hungrily? What do you like?

And now, the trailer:

 

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