Steampunk, Victorian and Pirates!

There comes a time in every woman's life, when all she wants to do is put on a dress and pretend to be someone else.

It must be said, that I have these moments more than the average woman.

Halloween is my favorite time of year, hands down. The day where I can wear something that I'm comfortable in, and the residents of Guernsey don't judge, or sneer, or wonder if they should be calling the police because I'm clearly not quite right in the head (because that's how you spot crazy people, apparently).

The aftermath of the meal, mostly consisted of me and my lovely friend Tai, sprinting around St Peter Port to some of the most attractive spots we could find, and snapping pictures of ourselves posing dramatically. In spite of the occasional hiccups of poor light, misbehaving timers, and photobombing men in fluorescent jackets, we had a blast. So much so that we decided that on Sunday, I would dress up in some of my favorite outfits, and we would go take advantage of the lovely Guernsey scenery, and the surprisingly warm weather.

What can I say? Posing is fun!

So in the spirit of sharing, I have cherry picked a few of the better shots from Saturday and Sunday, and compiled them here for your enjoyment. As an aside note (and one doesn't like to boast, but one is going to anyway) but one of my pictures has already been yoinked by my lovely friend Jess, and re-purposed as the cover of her latest novel.

So with that being said, enjoy my latest efforts to be creative!

(what do you mean I'm procrastinating from NaNoWriMo?).

Victorian Halloween

Dress: Made by me

Corset: Corset Story

Steam Explorer

Blouse: Corset Story

Corset: Corset Story

Skirt: Joe Browns

Boots: Joe Browns

Bag: Accessorize

Parasol: Corset Story

Hat: A lovely lady in the dealers room at Ayacon 2013, who's name I don't remember!

(...what do you mean I need a key?)

(Gentlemen! I have a cunning plan...)

(Oh marvelous! My rescue is on time!)

(You are my only hope of escape now, tiny box camera...)

Guernsey Treasure

Hoodie: Faye Tality Couture

(...I could be wrong, but I don't think the treasure is here any more...) 

Sequins and Western Values

I love the statement "I'm just expressing my opinion". It covers all manner of self importance and rudeness. Because the truth is, there's no such thing as "just" expressing your opinion. Nobody speaks about their opinions, especially on a public forum, without at least hoping that someone will be listening and perhaps be tempted to change their own thoughts and feelings based on what you have said. Nowhere is this more true than the internet, which contains more opinions than it does pornography. I open my Facebook page these days and drown in a virtual sea of posts about feminism, race and homophobia from my friends, all of which may be 'just' people's opinions, but are none the less designed to change or influence the way you think about these issues, even if it is just to add a bit more fury to an already blazing fire of passionate feeling.

Presumably this is what Randa Jarrar was thinking when she posted her article titled "Why I can’t stand white belly dancers", which I recently had waved at me by a friend. With such an inflammatory title and scathing dressing down of women who are appropriating Middle Eastern culture to fulfill financial or (heaven forbid) personal gain, I can only assume that the whole purpose of publicly posting this opinion piece, was to make any white belly dancer who read it feel horribly guilty.

And to my shame, it worked.

For about an hour I felt like a criminal. Like the worst kind of racist. I'd stolen a social activity and an art form from another country, one which was clearly loved and adored throughout history, and actively supported the appropriation of it into a country that had no rights to it. To quote one of my favorite critics I'd done what western country's always do - muscled in on another country's territory and fucked everything up. To women like me, Randa feels she can only say “I’m sure there are people who have been unwittingly racist for 15 years. It’s not too late. Find another form of self-expression. Make sure you’re not appropriating someone else’s.”

At the point where I was feeling like the lowest human being alive, my coping strategies kicked in and I started looking at this objectively, by considering my attitudes and motivations, as well as those of my teacher and the ten other regulars in the class I attend. For the sake of all of our self-esteem, I decided that none of us were racist.

Contrary to Randa’s belief, I did not choose to take up belly dancing in an effort to steal a precious gem from Middle Eastern culture, or to propagate racism in any way. I took up belly dancing because I needed something to get me out of the house once a week, because it's a low impact weight-bearing exercise which I was in sore need of, but most of all, because it looked like fun. And it was so diverse! Baladi, Sharqi, Sha abi (and that’s just Egyptian – I haven’t mentioned the other Eastern styles from Turkey or Lebanon, let alone get started on the Western ones). The moment I discovered Gothic Tribal was like coming home. I was so comfortable doing this.

I had never danced before in my life - not even the two years of ballet which all primary school children seem to endure, but which I somehow missed out on - and this was one of the few dance classes on my tiny island that didn't involve a partner in some shape or form. I certainly did not sign up to the class, cackling with fiendish glee at the thought of taking something historic and beautiful from the Middle East, and slapping sequins and western values all over it.

And I certainly am not dancing for the male gaze - my boyfriend of almost five years has seen me do many things, including going on rollercoasters, cooking interesting things with fermented tuna flakes, and vomiting at the side of a road (not all at once - thank the Gods), but he has never seen me dance before. I've only ever performed in groups at workshops, all of which are usually attended solely by other women. Not a single male gaze to be held.

I cannot claim that the west is entirely innocent. We do have a habit of pinching from other cultures, and thrusting our own values back in the guise of 'exchanging'. But there is no need for such hateful shaming - it speaks badly of all of us. Should I feel guilty when I attempt to sing along to my favourite J-Pop because I have no Japanese in my heritage? Should I inform my American friends that they aren't allowed to play soccer because we had it first? If my brother returns from Australia this summer with a pair of Ugg boots, should I ban them from the house, because he's not in their country of origin any longer?

Of course not. That would be really stupid.

We are not thieves. We are students. I study the western take on a Middle Eastern form of dance - I do not behave as if I own it or it belongs to me. I do not claim belly dancing in the name of the west, or in the name of white women. I merely feel fortunate that I am doing an activity which I get enjoyment out of (and happens to do wonderful things for my core muscles in the process). I get the same enjoyment when I eat yakitori or put on a corset.

Randa published her opinion because she feels disgust towards a white woman doing an activity which is an intricate part of culture in the Middle East. The only motivation towards writing something like this, is the hope that someone will read it, and their opinions will change to reflect hers. In this case, it’s written to make white belly dancers feel a sense of shame – to guilt them each time they perform, and to make them stop feeling enjoyment in an activity that they love.

I can say now, honestly and truly, that the only thing that would ever stop me enjoying belly dancing is the attitude of people like Randa, who seem to regard being white as some kind of barrier that means I am unable to do this dance properly, and indeed, I shouldn't even bother trying, because it's an insult to the millions of Middle Eastern women who did it before me. Reading this article left a sour taste in my mouth that no amount of Thai green curry or Indian tea was going to shift.

But doing my first solo performance in Torquay this September might just do the trick.

So I will go to Torquay. I will do the workshops. I will perform something that I love in front of a group of other like-minded women (most of whom will probably be white), and see which emotion wins out – disgust at my appropriation of a piece of Middle Eastern culture, or the rush of pleasure that I get from enjoying myself.

…somehow, I think I know which one is going to win.

A Simple Guide To Fanfiction Research (or How To Write About A Country That Isn’t Your Own)

Oh what trials and treacherous waters we fanfiction readers must endure. Bad plots. Out of characterization. Poor spelling and grammar. Ship-to-ship combat. So many of these are so easily fixable. Engaging plots and sensible character arcs come with practice. To improve spelling and grammar, you read more books, and pay more attention in school. Ship-to-ship combat is not fixable, sadly, and will endure until the apocalypse, along with Nokia phones, Brussels sprouts and the burning hatred everyone feels towards call centres.

Lack of research, however, is something that can be fixed with ease, and yet so very often is not. A lot of fanfiction authors genuinely seem to believe that researching for something that ‘just’ gets posted online is beneath them. I admit, I am not a huge advocate for entire books of research – plotting the evolutional path of your aliens, or the ancestry of your characters right back to the 10^th century seems a little extreme unless it’s relevant to the plot. There is a line where research takes over the story, and that is where you need to reign yourself back in. However, there is nothing wrong with a simple bit of fact checking, even if it is ‘just’ the internet.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re reading a very enjoyable fanfiction, and suddenly a fact just jumps out and bites you? That’s wrong you think to yourself. That’s not how you hack a computer/that’s not how you treat a gunshot wound/that’s not how Japanese high schools work. Valiantly you try to shake the fact off, but it digs its teeth in to your suspension of disbelief and you can’t really get into the story any more.

Maybe I’m just very picky. Maybe I just like researching this kind of stuff. Or maybe I just feel the brunt of it, after ten years of screaming at Harry Potter fanfictions, because British schools like Hogwarts don’t have lockers or prom, and our first year of school isn’t called Kindergarten. But I fail to see why it is so difficult to pop onto Wikipedia (or TVTropes, if you want to make the experience a little more amusing) and just quickly check whether this is true or not. You wouldn’t get away with this in a published novel, so why should your fanfiction suffer through it? Do you not put just as much creativity and love into your fanfiction as you do your original work? Does it not deserve the same respect? At the very least you should consider it practise for when you write an actual novel.

A colleague of mine gave me this wise advice recently. “Never assume – it makes an ass of you and me”. I’ve been on fanfiction for ten years now, and I’ve found that assumptions are the biggest cause of incorrect facts – specifically, since the tendency is for fanfiction writers to write what they know, they assume that other countries and cultures are exactly like theirs at a fundamental level. Some things are obvious – Yu-Gi-Oh writers are usually perfectly aware that the odds of rain in Egypt are practically nonexistent, for example. But some things are less obvious – like why it is sometimes impossible to buy alcohol in modern Egypt, and why in ancient Egypt, the beer was treated more like soup than a beverage.

To that end, I invite my readers to borrow some of my top tips to remember when writing about countries that you have never visited before. It doesn’t take long to find most of these out, thanks to the mighty powers of Google, and you never know – you may learn something interesting in the process.

1. Location, location, location

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, irritates me more than opening a Yu-Gi-Oh/Harry Potter crossover, and reading the following words or a variation thereof. "It was sweltering hot in the London International Airport as travellers hurried their way from flight to flight."

I can tolerate a lot of problems in fanfiction – typos, poorly written sex, abandoning your stories – but this has got to be one of my biggest pet peeves. Gods help you if you then have your characters walk from the airport to the Leaky Cauldron because ‘it only takes ten minutes’ – I am liable to start foaming at the mouth.

Let me explain my problem. There is no such thing as London International Airport. London has six airports (in order of largest to smallest: London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted, London Luton, London City and London Southend). Are your characters flying into Heathrow from Japan? Great – hope they can handle the London Underground through all the jetlag! Are they flying into Gatwick? Excellent! Let’s hope the Gatwick Express is on time, or they won’t get into the centre of London until gone dark! Are they flying into Stansted, Luton, LC or Southend? No they’re not, because those airports are domestic and European flights only, and you’re flying in direct from Japan since we all know that having to change planes is a bitch.

And NONE of these airports are a ten minutes walk away from the Leaky Cauldron – none of these airports are a ten minute train ride away from the Leaky Cauldron! I know that London looks small on a map, especially if you come from the United States, but there is a reason that we have that extensive and well maintained underground system – for the record, it takes about forty five minutes to get from Heathrow to central London by the underground (unless, like my last journey, you get stuck outside South Ealing for thirty three minutes due to a signal failure).

The point I am trying laboriously to get to, is that if you’re going to have your characters visit these places, you need to know a little bit about the lay of the land before you start. Taking your characters to Egypt? Get yourself onto Google maps, pick up the little yellow Street View man, and plonk yourself down into the middle of modern day Cairo. Is it towering skyscrapers or dusty, mud-brick houses? (hint: it’s neither) Sending your characters home to Japan? Google maps has a destination planner – pop the airport and your final destination in, choose your mode of transport, and get an accurate estimated time of journey – you never know, the villain might decide to drop in on them in the middle of their journey. Need a forest in the UK? Switch to the satellite view on Google maps, and look around for a big patch of green (the New Forest is a good one).

Things like this are tiny, but they have the capability to break the reader’s immersion, and they take relatively little time to actually find out. And they mean the world to the readers. There’s nothing like that little warm glow you feel when you read a story, and realise that the author has taken their time to research somewhere that you know so well.

2. Cultural values

Variety is the spice of life. And humans have it in abundance. But from the consumption of most fanfiction set in schools, you could be forgiven for thinking that we all live in America. This of course, isn’t limited to America, and other countries are guilty too – I still have a British brand of aspirin based painkiller being used in the second chapter of my Yu-Gi-Oh!/Harry Potter crossover, even though that scene is set in Japan (oops!).

If you are planning on writing a story based in another country, you need to give yourself a crash course of the everyday lives of people who live there. I did this for many of my duellists in my crossover, even though their appearances were limited. Standard of living. Education levels. Religion. Languages spoken in the area. All of these are important. Are the cast of Yu-Gi-Oh driving cars in your story? No they’re not – because they’re still sixteen/seventeen when the series is going on, and you can’t drive until you’re eighteen in Japan. Have your American characters been arrested in the UK? No, you can’t plead the fifth – you’re not in America any more. Sixteen year old British character with a full time job? No they didn’t drop out – mandatory schooling finishes at sixteen in the UK. Your character from the UAE and your character from Egypt both speak Arabic, so they should be able to understand each other, right? So very wrong!

The one that frustrates me the most is Yu-Gi-Oh slash fics that send their recently married gay couples on honeymoons to Egypt – SUCH A BAD IDEA!

And while I’m on the subject, and it’s fresh in my mind: “What do you mean you’re at work today? It’s Thanksgiving”. RAGE!

This isn’t just anal-ness for the sake of story immersion. At best, a native reading your story may simply shake their heads and move on – at worst, you could grossly offend them. Remember, this is another person’s culture – their life – that you’re describing here. To assume that their way of life is identical to your own, does not convey the respect that they deserve, both as a reader and a representative of their country.

This is one of my favourite aspects of research, because other cultures are fascinating. Don’t skimp on it. You are depriving yourself of an opportunity to learn some wonderful things. Don’t believe me? Pick a country, hop onto Wikipedia, and research some of their cuisine. You learn the most about a culture from their food. If your fanfic is set in Japan, don’t just stop at sushi. Go look up soba, udon, okonomiyaki, miso, tempura, sashimi, katsu, sukiyaki, mochi and doroyaki. Go on. I’ll still be here when you come back.

3. Terminology

As some of you may have grasped by now, I’m British. I speak British English, in a mixed accent, and I am not afraid to shout ‘bollocks!’ if something goes wrong.

But a lot of my characters are not British. They don’t speak British English. They have all sorts of accents. And some of them have some pretty creative curses from their home country that don’t involve male genitalia.

I’ve heard a lot of authors on fanfiction explain over the years that they have Harry Potter characters saying pants or freeway because they, the author, are American and that is how they speak. And I understand that – I really do. Every Japanese character in my crossover speaks British English, in spite of the fact that logically they would have been more likely to learn American English in schools (although since they are using Language Patches created and distributed in the UK, I suppose I can get away with this). But this really shouldn’t be an excuse. If it’s not in a character’s nature to swear during stressful moments, then it shouldn’t be acceptable for them to start using an entirely different form of the language.

This might seem like a silly thing to fuss over, but terminology goes beyond simply remembering to say ‘mobile phone’ instead of ‘cell phone’. This ties into the character’s style of speech, and using the wrong words can heavily impact how the character comes about. Changing a single word can alter tone, meaning and politeness. Japanese is an excellent example of this, where a character’s way of speaking, how they address other people and what kind of respect they afford them, is an intricate part of who they are as a character. Simply using an incorrect suffix or even the wrong tone can instantly change an honest statement to an insult. It is the same when writing all characters.

Terminology might seem unimportant when you’ve got a story to tell, but the way it changes meaning should not be underestimated. It’s the simple act of saying the sentence “can I bum a fag?” to an American and a British person (the former will probably be shocked and appalled, where as the latter is more likely to say “Sorry mate – I don’t smoke”). Familiarise yourself with a few common terms and local language courtesies, for everyone’s sake.

4. Current events

The relevance of this tip depends on whether your fandom is one based off the real world, or an entirely fictional world/planet (e.g. is your fandom Glee, or Game of Thrones?). It does sort of hold true for fictional worlds, but for the purpose of explanation, I’ll be using it to describe stories set in the real world.

To use a topical example, if your characters visit Sierra Leone during 2012, great. If they visit during 2014, not great (if you haven’t heard of Ebola by now, there’s this programme you should start watching – it’s called the News).

It might not seem relevant to your story, but it is important to know what the current events are in the country you’re about to plonk your characters into. Just because a place seems idyllic, doesn’t mean it is – that delightful safari you could be about to send your characters off for, might be in the middle of a war zone for all you know.

This doesn’t just apply to modern settings either. I’ve lost count of the number of Yu-Gi-Oh fics I have read, set in ancient Egypt, which refer to Cairo and Luxor, which isn’t correct at all. These are the modern names for the cities that stand on or near the location of the ancient capitals today, and nobody from ancient Egypt would use them. The correct names are Memphis and Thebes respectively, but which one Atem ruled from depends on whether you’re following manga or dubbed anime, as 3,000 years ago would put him in Thebes, and 5,000 years Memphis.

Dates, advancements, events – all of these are important in building your world. Don’t let them slip by. And you never know – some of these events might provide an interesting backdrop for your story.

Top 10 Fanfiction Authors

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Doing my best not to set the kitchen on fire...

I cannot claim to be talented at everything - quite the opposite. But I was informed a little while ago by the boyfriend that my level of cooking ability left a lot to be desired, and that British food in general was lacking to the pallet of the average American.

I naturally took offence to this - my country may not be France or Japan, but this is not the post-war years, and we do not boil everything any longer. I have never tried kidney or liver before - though I have been told that they are rather tasty when prepared well - and while I do drink tea, 95% of the time, it is herbal. I have my favourite restaurant chains (Nandos and Wagamamas) and I love good pub grub too.

Naturally Craig did not starve while on his visits to the UK - indeed, he discovered a love of Guernsey fudge, and of the toffee éclairs from one of the pastry shops in Winchester - but the offence remained, and I opted to do something about this. So for the last few months, I've been trying my hand at cooking - mostly Japanese food so far, but I may aim to branch out. Either way, I'm cooking, and doing my best to improve. We shall see how much proof I shall be able to churn out in order to prove the boyfriend wrong - that or we shall see how many blog posts it takes before I set the kitchen on fire. One or the other.

Yakitori 

Tonkatsu pork 

Miso baked cod

Cosplay Spotlight: Moltres (Pokemon)

Costume: My fifth cosplay and probably the one I am most proud of. Mearle, Tai and I tossed around the idea of going as Pokemon and eventually settled on the three legendary birds. As phoenixes are my thing, I went with Moltres.

This was my first personal foray into dress patterns. Mearle, Tai and I mashed together two dress patterns (one for the basic shape of the dress, and another for the godets) to achieve the desired effect. We debated the merits of colour, since we wanted to capture the birds without outright copying them. Eventually we decided on golden yellow. The fabric is duchess satin, which was purchased from ebay, and it is by far the most beautiful thing I have ever worked with.

The biggest tasks for this dress was the godets. Once all the pattern pieces were cut out, I bought myself lengths of organza in red, orange and yellow, and cut strips of them out. I then chopped at the edge to give them an uneven look, ruffled them, and stitched them to the dress in alternating patterns to create the effect of flames. This took a week of solid sewing, and strained my shoulder something fierce.

After sewing all the pieces together, Mearle assisted in fitting the dress properly to my body shape, and as we were running out of time, offered to do the bias tape herself. Good thing too, as she did it spectacularly.

As the skirt is heavy, and I usually end up dancing in this outfit, there are no tights under the dress. The shoes are flat red slip ons.

Tai and I have tossed around the idea of making wings (either as actual pieces or just arm accessories). Whether something comes of this remains to be seen.

Make up: Make up usually consists of gold eye shadow, and bronze colours everywhere else, except for red on my lips. Once all three of us have our costumes, we intend to do a shoot with some very dramatic make up indeed. In our first year, Tai had fun painting up and down our arms.

Hair: As Moltres has a fiery crest, I usually tie my hair up in a high ponytail and string red and orange ribbons around it. I may make a hair accessory in the future.

Being Promiscuous in the Oceans of Shipping

So in between seeing my therapist and failing to write more of my crossover, I’m part of a group on facebook for fanfiction writers. As you might imagine, this is a lively group, and interesting topics of discussion frequently pop up. One such topic, was this one which popped up yesterday:

“What do you guys feel about homosexual/yaoi fanfictions? I know its extremely popular to ship two men (even if they are not gay) together, but what do you think?”

Comments and opinions abound, and I was planning on adding my own to the comments section, but I was planning on doing a blog post on my opinions of yaoi, and on my opinions of shipping in general anyway, so this seems like a good prompt with which to start it.

I have an interesting relationship with ships, which, if we’re sticking with the nautical theme here, can be best compared to that of a pirate with a very odd sense of loyalty. While in the seas of Doctor Who for instance, I am in the employ of several ships – the HMS 11/River, the SS Martha/Mickey, The Good Ship Jack/Jenny (the Doctor’s daughter) and the Queen Vastra/Jenny (Flint – there are too many Jenny’s in this fandom!). None of these ships happen to overlap or have a rivalry with one another, so I am able to move between their services, and be paid for both of them.

But then there is the great ocean of Yu-Gi-Oh! and this is where my loyalty vanishes, and I shamelessly play the field like a pirate prostitute. I sleep on the Tendership one day, and the next day, I’ve hopped ship to the Thiefship, or the Angstship. I jump between Peachshipping and Puzzleshippingf freely. I squee when I see Blueshipping on the horizon, but at the sight of some good dirty Puppyshipping will make me drool equally as much – and indeed, if half way through this I spot the flags of Polarshipping in the distance, I’ll dive off the ship and swim for it like the kraken is on my tail. The fact that some of these characters are involved in more than one ship does not deter me. Or to bring this metaphor down to a more understandable conclusion – I have no One True Pairing when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh!

No One True Pairing?! I hear you cry. Surely this is impossible! You must have one ship involving Bakura that you love above all else? How dare you be promiscuous with these characters?! Well I dare. And I do. Because honestly, if you asked me which I love more (Tendershipping, Angstshipping, Thiefshipping or Bronzeshipping), I really wouldn’t be able to tell you. Each appeals to me for a different reason. It depends largely on how the characters are written in the fanfiction, and how the author makes them develop, which brings me nicely onto the subject of my crossover, where pairings have been raising some questions.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat – there are no canon pairings in Yu-Gi-Oh!. I’m sorry, but there aren’t. I laugh in the face of anyone who suggests that they dislike my story because I’m not following canon, because there is no canon. A canon relationship, to me, is a relationship who’s existence is confirmed beyond denial in the work of fiction, or by word of God. And by confirmed beyond denial, I mean either direct physical confirmation or direct verbal confirmation. I’m not talking about significant looks across the room, clutching someone’s hand during a tense moment, or one character heeding a request to show some compassion (yes Silentshippers, I’m looking at you!). I’m talking two characters kissing in a way that leaves no room for doubt. I’m talking a character saying quite definitely to another character “yes, they are a thing now”. Whether that thing is a potential marriage situation or just a fuck-buddy situation doesn’t matter. As long as it’s beyond the point of friendship, and there is definite evidence for it, it’s canon. Otherwise, you’re just speculating.

So when it came to my crossover, I felt that I had a lot of freedom with the shipping. The characters had done a lot of developing in Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls, and I felt that I now had pairings in mind, which would make sense for my characters, given how they had developed over the course of my own writing. So while in Yu-Gi-Oh! canon there’s no hints of any relationship of any sort between Ryou and Malik for instance, I felt that over the course of Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls, that they had grown close enough as friends for them to possibly take the next step into a relationship.

I shall now take cover as my fangirls shriek in joy at this first official confirmation after twenty chapters of solid hint dropping.

But here’s the point guys – I didn’t go into writing Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls with the express intention of making those two characters gay. I went into it intending that they would be friends, because it made sense to me. They were both lonely characters, who’s alter egos had been far from pleasant roommates, and both of whom probably felt that they were the ‘outsiders’ when put next to the Inner Circle of Yugi, Joey, Tristan and Tea. It was natural for me they would band together in the face of what my plot had to throw at them. The fact that they got closer than I anticipated was a surprise to me as well – characters do that. I know I’m writing it, but they genuinely do have wills of their own – just ask Kisara.

Some people might say that there’s no evidence that Ryou and Malik are gay in the canon. And that’s true – there isn’t any evidence to suggest that they are gay. But equally, there’s no evidence to suggest that they are straight. Human beings don’t have a ‘default setting’ when it comes to sexuality. That might sound like a sweeping statement, but I have an upper second class bachelors degree in Media Studies, and I feel that I am qualified to talk about the nature of sexuality in fictional characters because of it. So to that end, on goes my academic cap, as I introduce you to the noted sexologist Alfred Kinsey.

In 1948 and 1953, Kinsey and several other researchers published a series of reports, titled Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female. These reports introduced the idea of a scale of sexual orientation, known as the Kinsey Scale. This scale ranges from 0 to 6, with 0 being individuals who identify as exclusively heterosexual, and 6 being individuals who identify as exclusively homosexual, with all the grey area in between. The scale is a fluid one, with the reports also stating that an individual may be assigned a different position on the scale at different stages of their life – in other words, a person’s sexuality can change over time. This is not to say that it has to change over time, but that the option is certainly there.

There are some arguments against these reports, and obviously Kinsey was writing about real people, and not fictional characters, but I feel that these are a good basis with which to understand sexuality – three quarters of a million copies would suggest that there is something in it.

So, to go back to the original question on the forum, specifically to the point about shipping two men, even if they are not gay, I do not see this as an issue. Because as Kinsey suggests, there is nothing to say that someone who identifies as straight cannot change their mind if the right person comes along, or vice versa. I feel that as long as there is a reasonable arc of character development that supports the creation of this relationship, that there is no harm in a fanfiction author pairing up two characters who have previous shown no homosexual (or heterosexual) inclinations. Sexuality is not a simple matter, and neither are human beings. And nor, by that extension, are the great oceans of shipping. We should feel free to jump from ship to ship, secure in the knowledge that all of your pairings are One True Pairings, and equally as possible as the next.

And now if you will all excuse me, I just saw the SS Adlock sail this way, and I must don the appropriate battle dress before I board. Avert your eyes, ye of a squeamish disposition!