Menu Close

Tag: boys love

Yaoi, M/M Romance Character Interview: Shannon Sullivan

Christie Gordon 0 Comments

I thought it would be fun to post some “character interviews” from my books and maybe give some further insight to their background and such. First off – Shannon Sullivan, the main character from “A Summer Without Rain.” If you haven’t read the book, here’s a quick blurb and you can access more information here. If you’ve read it, feel free to skip the blurb;)

The picture to the left there is my first character sketch of Shannon. It’s very rough and I used charcoal and paper as the medium, then of course took a photo of it and uploaded it from my camera. The paper this is drawn on is 18×24 inches, so it’s huge! I wanted him to look pensive and a bit shy:) Anyhow, thought anyone reading this might get a kick out of seeing my first impression of him. Maybe I should call this “Behind the Book”, LOL.

Blurb:

In 1920’s Ireland, Shannon understands all too well that the love and hunger he feels for his best friend, Ciaran, is forbidden.  He’s already shunned by his town and emotionally damaged from enduring painful confessions after a male teacher’s molestation at age fourteen.  But when he finds Ciaran in a barn, grieving over the sudden death of his mother, a hasty and desperate embrace shatters an unspoken boundary between them.  Then, Shannon and Ciaran are sent on a journey to Dublin to bring a family heirloom to Ciaran’s aunt.  Along the way, a drunken evening leads to an illicit act in a hotel room, confusing Ciaran and forcing them both down a treacherous path of deceit and desire.  Can love overcome the obstacles of Irish society, the Catholic Church, and political unrest?

So, on with the interview (and yes, we’re back in 1920’s Ireland. Fiction is magic, you know):

Me: I’m sitting here at a small square table in a dark Irish pub called, McFlynne’s Whiskey River, with Shannon Sullivan from “A Summer without Rain”.

Me: *turns to Shannon* Hi, Shannon, it’s great to see you again after what was it, two years now?

Shannon: Almost two years. I’ve been quite busy, you know, in all that time.

Me: Busy doing what?

Shannon: *blushes and looks away* Getting ready for a serious thing with Ciaran.

Me: Serious? What sort of serious thing?

Shannon: *wringing hands* Well, seems we’ve come to a point where just living together in Aunt Iona’s flat isn’t enough. We want our own place, a bloody right place for us. One with thick walls and windows that shut real tight now.

Me: *laughing* So no one hears you having sex?

Shannon: *eyes wide* Christie, I can’t believe you would bloody say that! I thought you were a right decent woman…

Me: I’m the one that wrote all those torrid sex scenes, remember?

Shannon: *blushes again* Right… *he looks up at me with a twinkle in his eye* And I bloody well thank you for that.

Me: Okay, so how are you and Ciaran doing?

Shannon: Ah, he’s all right. I do love the bloody bastard and all, but sometimes he angers me something fierce. *sits forward in his chair* Like the other day, he thought it was a grand idea to write a letter to me ma and da, trying to explain how much their silence over these years pains me. And now they’re coming out from Enfield to see me. Can you bloody believe that? I about shat myself.

Me: *smiling and taking Shannon’s hand* I’m glad they’re finally coming to see you. And you should thank Ciaran for loving you so much that he did that for you. It must have been one hell of a letter to get them to actually come out. It’s got to be  a very tough thing for them to face.

Shannon. Yeah, Aunt Iona and Ciaran’s da say they’ll stand behind me no matter what when they come. But I’m bloody petrified. What if me da tries to have me arrested or sent off to the bloody nuthouse?

Me: Arrested? I don’t think so…

Shannon: But he bloody well could.

Me: I don’t think so.

Shannon: *looks around a moment* I s’pose Aunt Iona and Mr. O’Kelly would put  stop to it.

Me: Don’t worry, Shannon. Ciaran would be the one who’d put a stop to it. You know he’d find a way and I doubt he’d allow your dad to visit knowing that something like that might happen. He loves you and I know he’d do anything for you.

Shannon: *smiles* Yeah, the bloody bastard.

Me: So how’ve you gotten on here in Dublin?

Shannon: Bloody great, actually. I have lots of friends now and even female friends that don’t care so much about me and Ciaran. I guess they’re more like Aunt Iona. See, we all belong to this sort of underground club. One that’s just for people like us, you know, *chuckles* people who like mint ice cream. In fact, that’s what we call it.

Me: Mint ice cream?

Shannon: *sits back and shakes head* No, the Mint Club. Aunt Iona started it before we even came down here the first time. Now it’s all bleedin’ political and stuff.

Me: *smiles* So did you ever learn how to drive a car?

Shannon: *frowns and rubs table surface with fingers* Sort of.

Me: Sort of ? Is that a no? *chuckles*

Shannon: No, that’s a sort of. I bloody hate driving automobiles and I can’t fathom why Ciaran can’t just leave it be.

Me: I got a hint for you, *sits forward* they’re not going away.

Shannon: Ah hell.

And there you have it. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I liked writing it;) Oh, and the picture on the right, there, is the final drawing of Shannon for the book cover. If you click on it, it’ll open up bigger:)

Read more →

Hot Anime Men in the Spotlight

Christie Gordon 2 Comments

Okay, so the question today is, who is your favorite hot anime guy and why?

Off the top of my head I’m thinking about all the Gundam series, starting with Wing and ending with 00, just because I have yet to find a place that is streaming Gundam Unicorn online (but if I find one, I’ll let y’all know.). In Wing, we have Duo, Heero, Trowa, Quatre and Wufei. I think I like Due and Heero most, of course the dude with the long hair and the silent strong type;) I believe they are my favorite yaoi pairing from this series, too. As far as the Gundam Seeds go, I love Kira and Athrun. Kira is just so… well angsty and Athrun is the sensitive type that I wish more dudes had in them. And then of Gundam 00, my favorites are Neil Dylandy (first only to his twin brother Lyle) and Allelujah Haptism. Setsuna, though very angsty, just seems too young to me and I’m sorry, Tieria is really a girl with a male voice, isn’t he? LOL

         

This... is Hugue. O.O

I could name so many, like Kira and L from Death Note, Ichigo and Renji from Bleach(I just recorded the Bleach movies they showed on Adult Swim last night), Cain, Able and Hugue from Trinity Blood(love, love, Hugue), Hagi from Blood +, Amon from Witch Hunter Robin, Cloud and Vincent from Final Fantasy and Edward Elric and Roy Mustang from FMA (you didn’t think I’d forget them, did you?)  and so on.

Let’s get on to why these characters appeal to us. First and foremost for me, artwork in the anime is of utmost importance. I’m thinking Death Note, Blood Trinity, Final Fantasy and Gundam 00 here. I think everything in these series is beautifully drawn, let alone the characters. And they always have cool hair. What’s up withe free flowing, long and gorgeous hair in anime guys? Why can’t real guys look like that? Oh wait, JRockers pretty much do;) I’ve always liked dudes with long hair and I don’t know why. Maybe someday I’ll have to examine this more with a therapist, LOL. But even when I was a teenager, I always went for the dude with the longest hair and bonus if he had dark hair (black preferable). Of course, I dated a lot of musicians (and still do). Hair is my favorite part to draw when I do my own artwork and notice, not many dudes with short hair.

Moving on, how about how these guy’s bodies are drawn? Even the supposed high schoolers have a body to die for. We’re talking muscled hairless chests, six pack abs and long and lean. This is just my type as well. Not only do I like my men to have long hair, but I prefer them to have more of a lean body – none of this muscle bound, I can’t put my arms all the way down, types. And no, I do not like facial hair or a whole lot of chest hair and too bad. I like what I like and it happens to be just what anime dudes look like. Maybe this is why manga and anime appeal much more to me than Marvel Comics and  American cartoons (that was a whole other blog – “What’s up with American Animation?”)

With all the short haired, muscled dudes you see on romance novels and such and the types of guys my friends date (uh, that type), it makes me think that my taste is a little, well, eccentric. Or maybe I’m just out of the closet and there are legions of women who don’t really like the culture-driven, spoon-fed types of guys that are on television and romance novel book covers. Maybe there are hordes of us who really, secretly long for dudes who look like Lockon Stratos and Hugue. I mean, Fabio was pretty popular at one point, right? What happened to all those women? Did they all just go back in their closets?

What do you like and why?

Read more →

Making men pregnant(MPREG) – good fiction, funny or just twisted revenge?

Christie Gordon 15 Comments

Okay let’s weigh in on this one. It seems in fanfiction and slash, making a male character get pregnant is a common occurance (if not, then why is there a category for it and whole communities devoted to it, hmmm?). It’s so prevalent, I’ve even seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where a guy came into the hospital because he was “pregnant”. I have to admit, it was hilarious. But did you know that there is actually a procedure for making a man pregnant with In Vitro Fertilization and  a man named Lee Mingwei did become pregnant? There’s even a website for it: www.malepregnancy.com.  Unfortunately for Lee, the chances of him surviving birth with all his abdominal organs intact are pretty low (if he doesn’t hemorrhage to death).

Enough with the gory details of reality and on to why in the world we want to make our male characters pregnant. Is it because we have some revenge vendetta against men and want to make them experience the pains of pregnancy? I have been pregnant and have kids, so I know all about the poking, prodding, testing and pains that go along with pregnancy. Okay, and the wonderful little moments like the first ultra sound where you get to see your baby inside you and the first time you actually feel them move. It’s pretty cool, all in all. But men…pregnant? The concept lends itself to a host of hilarious situations. So do we enjoy this facet of the M/M genre because of its comedic value? Or how about this, maybe we have a need for our male heroes to have all that hetero couples have – marriage and children. So we let one of them somehow get pregnant and off they go into the world of raising kids and living a “normal” life.

Now I’ve read a few of these mpreg fanfictions and I must say, overall I’m not impressed. And now I’ll admit that I find the concept ridiculous and somewhat retarded, but that’s just me. So in my quest to find out what this is all about, I did do some more reading and I actually found a story that I must say, was believable, had a good plot, was handled very well and had some hilarious moments in it. It was an FMA story on www.fanfiction.net and Roy Mustang, as a result of an alchemy experiment gone awry, ended up pregnant. I wish I could find it again so I could share, but alas, I can’t >.<  What was so great about this story, is the situation of a man being pregnant and also being an officer in the military was handled realistically. And when Roy had to tell Edward his predicament, comedy ensues;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I couldn’t find much with Roy getting pregnant, but OMG, Naraku and Sesshoumoru with Sesshy getting pregnant? Priceless:) And it looks like they already have one baby.

So maybe the bottom line here is, it’s all of the above. We like to see men “tortured” in the way women have over the eons of time, we like to read about funny situations and let’s face it, men dealing with pregnancy is funny and some of these stories, when handled properly, are really good fiction. It’s a difficult thing to write properly, which is why I think there are so many stinkers out there story-wise and why it sometimes gets a bad rap. What do you think?

Read more →