Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: I have, like, a treatise in my head that I want to write about the intersection of TF fiction, heteronormativity and queer revolutionary politics, but I doubt it will ever see the light of day. Maybe it’ll be Wes’s crowning achievement at some point in my old age, when all of this shit finally makes sense to me.
If anything, however, I would say that the politics of most of the queer fiction I see is suuuuper disappointing. Oh man, I bought “Dream Daddy, a Dad Dating Simulator” and I can’t help but feel super fucking irritated at the implicit heteronormative shit embedded all the way through that thing. I mean, it goes beyond the fact that you are literally a “dad” dating other “dads” (It makes the game safer, I think, to a mass audience, to know that whatever happens in it can’t possibly be too revolutionary–after all, they all have families to worry about, right?) to the entire structure of the dates themselves.
***FUCKING SPOILERS***
Like, can we fucking talk about Robert here? The storyline that seems like it could actually be sex positive shuts down the entire possibility of the story arc if you hook up with him during the intro. Fucking punishment for sex on the first date, fuck you Game Grumps. I’ll fuck if I fucking want to, and that doesn’t mean I’m treating Robert as a fucking object, you piece of shit narrative. In fact, the entire Robert-Mary-Joseph-You love/hate quad is so fucking dysfunctional and anti-queer I can’t even handle it.
*Calms down somewhat*
Brian’s hot, sure, whatever. The point is, TF fiction, especially TF fiction which assumes an entire shift in world (and I definitely count “Dream Daddy” in this category–the notion of a world where a bunch of dads openly date one another is still a fucking radical change compared to real life, even if the game butchers it) can appear so radical on the surface, but that only serves to make the internal hetero logic of these stories stand out even brighter on the surface.
Without being too cruel, this was my primary issue with @anothermeekone‘s story a few months back, called “Queer Happenings”. You have this radical cult, a god demanding a complete shift in the nature of reproduction, love, self-determination, physical form and agency…and then the story ends with two of the characters wanting to get married.
*Rips hair out*
Meek, you put in so much effort here! Can we expand our imaginations beyond marriage please!
Most of this criticism can be leveled back at me, of course. I struggled with these concerns, or proto-questions to these concerns, a lot when I was writing City of Bears, and these remain the chief reason why that story has remained on the back burner for so long now. What does a queer world even look like? If we break the monotony of hetero-monogamy then what can society even look like? Without women, what does reproduction even look like? Is a queer society necessarily a society dying, and is that a good thing?
I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but it’s frustrating to me that a lot of other writers haven’t even bothered to notice these questions exist. Dream Daddy is only ever going to be a completely safe simulation. Imagining it *actually* occurring is terrifying. As a simulation, a queer world can always be just a joke. Instead, most of my friends are probably going to end up losing their health insurance this week, and I’m going to be left crying myself to sleep.
Nihilism? Yeah, I got fucking nihilism. I got more nihilism than anything else. You know what? Despite all my reservations though, I’m still glad things like “Dream Daddy” exist. I loved reading Meek’s story, even if I howled in rage at the ending. I miss the guy I was, writing City of Bears. I really, really miss having hope, because that’s what all of those stories require–they need hope to exist. I don’t really know where my hope went–maybe it’ll come back someday. But until then I’m stuck wrestling with this shit all the same.
Bracken's Corner 