Thorn Wilde

Interestingly, I've just been having this very conversation, sort of, on Facebook, in a comment thread for an article about women getting cosmetic labiaplasty, and I made the very point that women and gay men are so much more likely to have body image issues severe enough to make severe changes to their body. Basically, the ones with a beauty standard to live up to. Not that straight men haven't got standards that society at large expects them to live up to, but they're somehow subtler. They're not thrown in their faces every day, the moment they walk out the door, the minute they step into a supermarket and see the magazine racks. This means that straight guys don't get it. I had a guy tell me today: '[...]we CHOOSE to consume and absorb these products and images.' No, we don't. We have no choice. The images are there, wherever we look, and we can't just not look. As for the products, when all products are advertised with the same beauty standard (i.e. fashion) we haven't really got the choice of 'voting with our wallets', as they like to put it. They're almost all the same. And if you're not especially wealthy, often you haven't got that option even if there is a difference. I've been thinking a lot about why this is. Why is it that women and gay men are so exposed to these kinds of body image issues, and to objectification at large? My own pet theory puts it down to porn. In straight porn, men barely even feature. That is to say, they're not what you're supposed to look like. The only criteria for appearing in straight porn if you're a man is a reasonably big dick, and even that doesn't feature much. Almost the entire focus is on the woman, and out of pornography came trends like brazilian waxing, breast implants, and a bunch of other things that have eventually come into the mainstream beauty standard for women. In gay porn, finally the focus is on the lads (and this would probably be why straight women enjoy it so much; you get to actually see the guys and they're hot), and now there are suddenly standards. They're supposed to have muscles (lean ones if they're skinny twinks, bulky ones if they're older and more macho), well groomed, and don't get me started on anal bleaching... Now men are objectified too. Gay men, specifically. And this escapes into the mainstream as well, even among gay guys who don't watch a lot of porn, though it is encouraged in a lot of gay circles. That's what makes the pressure as ridiculously bad on gay men as it is on women, because even though the media and the advertising side of it is smaller (since gay men are a smaller demographic), the pornographic objectification is entirely in the mainstream. Not saying people shouldn't watch porn... Actually, I'm not really sure what I'm saying, other than that we should cut ourselves, and each other, some slack. It's easy to get caught up in the whole thing, to feel like we need to live up to these ridiculous expectations, and to tease others when they don't. But I think the moment we stop and think about it, we all realise how stupid that is. As long as you're healthy, it shouldn't matter whether you live up to some beauty standard or another. That kind of superficial thinking won't make you happy. Learning to love yourself will.

You have the entire Internet at your fingertips, darling. Why wait?

She really isn't, though. She even released her second adult novel under a pseudonym, but some idiot went and spilled on Twitter or something like that, which was a shitty thing to do.

She does, as Adam pointed out, have a point in that the publishing industry will fawn over any big name. After all, they're trying to make money. However, this is hardly the fault of any of those big names.

I still highly disagree that The Musketeers is trash TV, and I mostly watch it for Peter Capaldi's amazing performance as the cardinal, but I will admit that there's some serious eye candy on that show.

Personally, I think it depends on body type and build. Like, I think skinny guys look better in board shorts. I also think heavier built guys look better in board shorts. The happy medium (athletic and lean) looks good in speedos, though. As with everything else, it's just a case of dressing for your body type. Also, I think more women should wear board shorts. They do make them for girls too, and I think it looks great.

Well, in my opinion, Goodkind could easily have stopped after Faith of the Fallen, because The Pillars of Creation was just dead boring.

If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It Are there no limits to people's pettiness? I think not, given Lynn Shepherd's frankly astoundingly jealous and sad post in the HuffPo blog regarding how J.K. Rowling has 'had her turn' writing fiction for adults, and she should let someone else have a go. Shepherd admits that she herself hasn't read the Harry Potter books, but that she thinks it's 'a shame' that adults are reading them when there are, 'so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds'. She goes on to say that Rowling should lay down her pen or stick to children's books because she's clogging the market so other writers can't get their work through. Shepherd starts the article with a disclaimer, so people will understand that this isn't just 'sour grapes', but she could have fooled me. I haven't read The Casual Vacancy or The Cuckoo's Calling, but I do know that the Harry Potter series got me and my entire generation reading. That's no mean feat, and I think Rowling's deserved her moments in the sun. It is a fact that big best sellers draw readers to book shops, and once they're there they browse, and they come away with lesser known books that they end up loving. Me buying book X doesn't make it less likely that I'll buy book Y, rather the opposite. Reading is an addiction. Once you start, you just want more. Aside from that, writing something like this is extremely unprofessional. A bit of envy of other people's successes when you're struggling in the same field is unavoidable, but spelling it out like this is really just petty. Please, you guys, let's make a pact never to get like this.

This made me sad.

Oh, my, that's a loooong time... Well done, Mark! Keep writing and being awesome!

I'm so glad I have my tiny little macbook air. It's great for travelling, I always take it with me. That and my external hard drive, with all my entertainment on it. I'm never bored on holiday.

Craig is a very complicated character, and he's not, shall we say, especially rational. Nick's mum's attempted suicide will probably have major repercussions for Nick for a long time, poor dear. Thank you so much for reading and leaving reviews!

Nick is tougher than he seems. Dave is... confused at this point. He's starting to come to terms with himself and where he's actually at and what he wants.

Poor Dave. I don't think he quite knew what to think regarding his own feelings.

Yeah. Linda's a piece of work. Hopefully she'll learn with age to be a nicer person.

Welcome, Jason! The submit button is in the left hand menu on the Stories page, under the headline Story Actions.

I've been writing since I knew how to, but I got deeply into fanfic when I was about 13 or 14. I was reading on FanFiction.Net at the time, and was amusing myself with the character options and soon stumbled across Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy. I've always been one for the Romeo & Juliet type of stories, so I started reading lots of Harry/Draco and eventually tried my hand at writing some. From there it only took a couple of months before I realised that my imagination stretched too far beyond the frames of pre-established worlds and characters, and I started writing Nemesis. This was before I had any sort of proper understanding of my own sexuality or anything like that. I knew I liked girls and I knew I liked boys and I wasn't sure what that made me at all. I also knew that I didn't really feel comfortable with the gender role that society was trying to give me. I didn't know what that meant either. I guess I still don't, not really. Anyway, in the years to come I continued writing M/M stories, I kept at the fanfic, and tried to finish Nemesis, but it never felt right. I think I rewrote it from the beginning at least twice. Then, almost a year ago now, I started seriously focusing on it again, and spent Camp NaNoWriMo doing the final rewrite. I started posting it to ArchiveOfOurOwn.Org, where one of my readers recommended a story on GA to me; I believe it was Circle's Dan's Conundrum. So I popped my head in here, read a bit, poked around the forums and thought, yes, I could live here. So I moved, and I am still happy about this decision.

It's 9pm, I have had tasty vegetarian bolognese, and am chillin' on the couch, poking about on the net. Magpie's out, so I have the place to myself.

You'll have to get her to teach you the recipes so you can cook for yourself.

10:57pm. Lying on the couch and staring at my computer screen. Today has been an unproductive day.

Lol! No, that would be grams. I do not understand your strange American measurements. My blog is metric only. Maybe I should post a disclaimer...

Heartbreaking!

Erm... Grow is a verb. Grow, grows, growing, grew, has grown, will grow... 'What are you growing?' 'Oh, I'm growing tomatoes!' I think 'growing readership' is perfectly fine, because in order to increase one's readership one has to nurture it. Grow it.

I see what you're saying, but it's not like we can expect Tyler Posey to have extensively read Sterek fic, nor can we expect him to understand how fandom sometimes works. Now, the way he phrased himself was definitely disrespectful and he should probably have thought a bit more carefully before he spoke, but that doesn't make him inherently a bad person, or any less of an actor. I mean, Jack Nicholson is a notorious douchebag, but I still love his acting.