Duo =/= fandom's whipping boy! >:(

[jukeboxhound_backup]

Some pet peeves about fandom's interpretation of Duo:

1. Hair that long kept in a constant braid and, in all likelihood, very rarely washed, given the boys' constant firefights...will not fall in a chestnut curtain of shiny.  It will be stiff, knotted, and altogether not worth taking out of its braid unless he's prepared to spend an hour or three grooming.

2. Duo is a street-rat.  This means he is unlikely to be overly concerned with food or tend to spend money on shit unnecessary to the mission - if anyone's going to do that, it would most likely be Quatre, who grew up in the lap of luxury.  As long as he's got his knife and boomsticks, he don't need shit else.

3. I seriously believe he's the least likely to get into a situation in which he's raped.  Heero would be oblivious to the social nuances of a situation. Quatre would be unlikely to even consider the possibility.  Wufei would probably go into the situation anyway believing he could handle himself.  Trowa is more like Duo and probably go OH HEY THOSE GUYS LOOK LIKE THEY WANT SOME SURPRIZ BUTTSECKS, BETTER NOT WALK OVER THERE.

4. ...You really think a kid as traumatized as Duo AND a soldier is going to go OMG HEERO I WUV YOU?  Please.

5.  Maybe it's just me, but I don't see Duo as very willing to be 'uke,' at least in the beginning of a relationship and certainly not for a one-night stand.  He's probably grown up thinking of male penetration as a way to dominate or humiliate.

I dunno, a lot of this is just personal interpretation.  But goddamnit, Duo is not a fuzzy wuzzy woobie.  *huffs*  We need more people, in the way of one brilliant maldoror_gw , to write more anarchist!badass!Duo.

(On a tangent, I admit that Wufei has finally found a place in my heart as my favourite Gundam boy.  He doesn't get enough IC love from fandom.)

Comments

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

I LOVE YOU. THANK YOU. SO MUCH. There are a few authors out there who do Duo brilliantly, but they are darn hard to find. :D

1. The braid thing. OMG YES. I have hair to my butt, and while it's curly as hell and not straight like Duo's seems to be, it always seems ludicrous to me the way his hair is often talked about....

2. Yes. I seem to remember him being quite excited about his food at one point in the series, lol. I think he always appreciates it.

4. Duo is not mushy and lovey-dovey and mushy. I agree. If he'd grown up like a normal kid? Hard to say. But I doubt it.

:D I love this, because Duo and Wufei have always been my two favorite pilots. XD And Maldoror and Sol are the two I've most often see do Duo justice, I think. :D

THANK YOU for writing this. ;)

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

1. My (straight) hair used to be that long, and when I first read that his "fell in a chestnut curtain" or whatever I was like LOLWUT UR DOING IT WRONG.

4. This one author wrote a fic in which Duo found himself in an alternate universe where his doppelganger had essentially traded places with Relena; he was the screeching rich kid and she was pilot 02. I wish I could remember who wrote it...

*pervs on Maldoror* Been some time since I read Sol, I'll need to track her down again and refresh my middle-school memory. (Oh GW, you never get old!)

Is your icon of that one badass chick from Farscape whose name I can't remember?

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

XD Yes, this is Aeryn Sun. I love her for being one of the few badass fighter ladies that actually LOOK like they can kick your ass, and do it convincingly.

4. It's hard to imagine a rich-and-privaliged Duo, but I firmly believe that there is something in the soul that shines through no matter your situation, and makes you YOU whatever happens. Therefore Duo would never be a whiny brat. And, maybe this is just my anti-Relena bias (I admit to it, I do), but I don't see her becoming a pilot. Ever.

Reeeeead Sooooool. Reeeeeeead. *cough*DrumsofHeaven*cough*

http://gwaddiction.com/p.php?title=The+Drums+Of+Heaven&author=Sol+1056&to=&series=&part=&last=&authorpage=Sol.shtml&fic=./sol/drums

PS - Love your Wufei icon. :) He always deserves more love!!

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Aeryn, that's it! (Though I always thought it was spelled 'Erin', of course.) Hee, I loved the way she could tell John what a moron he was being without breaking expression. And that's about all I remember of the series before I start confusing it with Lexx and Andromeda.

4. Using that premise, it'd be interesting to see what someone could come up with, putting the boys in different lives and yet somehow making it still them. I don't think I could do it, but if the right suggestion were breathed in the direction of Maldoror or Sol...

Woot, new fic! I will go read it, thank you. :)

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

*is making pest of self* Ever read "The Edulcoration of Duo Maxwell"? By Mookie? Duo was a rich businessman, and Heero was a prostitute. And he was startlingly in character. XD I know, it sounds crazy, but it WORKED. Gundam fused with Pretty Woman. Who the hell'd have thought? :DDD

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

DUDE I totally remember having read Drums of Heaven like a million years ago, but I reread it anyway, bwahaha. Thanks. :D

...Another Pretty Woman offshoot? I'm sorry, I don't know if I could stomach it, honestly.

And reccing fics hardly makes you a pest. <3

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

XD I read the description and went "WTF REALLY?" But it works. XD Especially considering how hard Heero is to characterize well.

Drums of Heaven = the GW fic I worship above all others. XD Yaoi with a helluva plot - how often do we actually get to SEE that? ;D

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Maldoror's 'Freeport' is still my favorite in the whole fandom. Yaoi, kickass plot, detective!Wufei, politics that's made me consider changing my voter registration, and some hardcore badassery from both him AND Duo. <3

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

Freeport made me love 2x5 when I had never before thought it was possible. I agree, amazing plot as well. :D ....Should we build Mal a shrine? XD

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[gameazel.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you on, well, everything, I guess. Especially re: maldoror, who is insanely awesome. I remember that even after years of being in fandom, I avoided GW fics like the plague due to the, according to most, very Sue!fics and just plain bad writing. However, I came across The Arrangement, started reading without a clue about the characters, and now that's my personal canon. ^__^

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Ha, I remember thinking that the premise of The Arrangement was a fandom recipe for the usual disaster, but...dear god, somehow she MADE IT WORK. O.O It's the only 1x5 fic that hasn't made me rage - in fact I just reread it recently... <3

Man, fandom's treatment of Wufei is a whole other rant! Argh!

[dhrachth.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of those except #5. For most actual gay guys being the bottom doesn't mean being 'the girl' of the relationship. There are plenty of gay guys who really get off on prostate massage and prefer bottoming, but are not at all submissive in bed or out. If getting fucked is what did it for Duo, I think he'd go for it.

However, I can't stand fic where he's the uke and all the clingy, cuddly, teenage-girly behavior that implies. Whichever sexual position Duo took, I can't see him letting anyone else run the show.

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that being a bottom made you 'the girl'. (We seriously need a better term for the submissive in a relationship, because fuck Christ.) But yeah, what I meant is that on the streets where you either sold it or it got taken from you, I can't imagine Duo having positive connotations for it, whatever the broader reality of the position is. And it could include other acts as well, like oral sex or 'being on your knees'. >.> Oh dear, I hope I'm not digging a bigger hole for myself - did that make sense?

Personally I prefer my GW boys to have equal relationships, neither one permanently a 'top' or 'bottom'. :)

[leaf-zelindor.livejournal.com]

I have always <3'ed Wufei, he's very underloved....-pats him- and I agree with ALL of your Duo statements. I usually end up reading AU GW fictions because the rest of them bore me...Bleh, That's a fandom I slid through awfully quickly. Never really got into the fiction much, I just like watching them on the screen.
~Leaf~

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Huh, for me GW was the one fandom I always went to back to, like a particularly exasperating and abusive relationship.

I think the appeal of Wufei is the tragedy, and I don't mean the destruction of L5. Even Heero can adjust to their society, but 05's the type of warrior who was born a few hundred years too late, and the misunderstanding and decline of his culture is way too close to RL examples of what's happening to smaller cultures in the face of globalization.

OR MAYBE I'M THINKING ABOUT THIS TOO HARD, I DUNNO.

[leaf-zelindor.livejournal.com]

I think you have it in a nutshell. XD
I don't have a fandom I always went back to....I don't know why. Haha. Kinda Harry Potter Actually, If i get bored and don't want to lurk on SA i tend to go to read Harry Potter fictions.
-hugs you and licks your poor overworked brain-
~Leaf~

[mya-in-ab.livejournal.com]

Argh!

Can't. Quite. Read. Bottom. Of. Coolio. Wufei. Icon! [straining eyes] Fighter...and then something else.

#3 makes me laugh. ^_^ Yup, Trowa and Duo seem to be the most likely to be wary against those types of situations. ^_^

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

It says IF YOU CAN READ THIS THEN YOU'LL SOON BE FINDING OUT WHY YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU NEVER TO SIT TOO CLOSE TO A SCREEN. ALSO, WUFEI'S MARRIAGE TO MEIRAN WAS JUST A COVER.

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

*twitches* There was this fic I read for the prelims of a GW Novella Challenge about two years ago that pissed me off so badly I could hardly get through the first chapter. The spelling and grammar were decent enough, but it had victim!Duo, girl-to-guy transgendered Duo (which would be fine, but here it wasn't), some ANATOMY: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG, and the most offensive use of gender stereotyping I've ever seen in fandom.

I really wonder about women who write other women like that.

[aikonamika.livejournal.com]

1. On the braid- *pauses, looks over her shoulder, retrieves her own butt-length braid* It takes me half an hour to forty-five minutes on a normal day to completely comb out my hair properly and get rid of all the knots. I can do a much more cursory combing in about ten-fifteen minutes that's enough to pull it into a neater braid, but it still takes time. About 24 hours after I shower it starts to get greasy, but not too badly - I've trained my hair so that I wash it every other day. I've got a friend who has hers trained so that she washes it every third, and once you get it in the proper habit, it will actually adjust the rate at which it gets greasy. But no matter what, going more than three or four days without washing your hair - even in a perfectly clean environment, it will be greasy and nasty.

2. The lack of food he had while growing up probably means that he actually can't eat a lot. I know from experience that not eating large meals for a while shrinks your stomach a little bit as it is, so not eating large meals, and with very large gaps between those cursory meals, means that even if he does have food, he probably won't be pigging down at every available opportunity. Not unless he likes throwing up shortly afterward.

3. Yes. And even if something happened where he was raped and couldn't fight back, I tend to think that he probably would be the least outwardly affected by it, in a sort of (though more serious, and likely much more angry), "Shit happens, let's take out the bastards who did it and get on with life" way.

4. AHAHAHA no.

5. This would depend on how cavalier the attitude toward sex was. Yes, male penetration might be seen as an act of dominance, but there's always the attitude of, "Hey, an orgasm's an orgasm" that I've seen in a couple of male friends. Of course, none of them have had backgrounds anywhere similar to Duo's, so eh. *shrugs*

*digs out her old SDDI pin, dusts it off, and pins it on proudly*

[aikonamika.livejournal.com]

1. Also, I severely doubt that Duo is the sort to carry around several pounds' worth of high-end hair-care products. I mean, really. He's probably used to using soap on his hair if it's necessary, and plain shampoo and conditioner regularly. Not a lot of stuff.

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

You mean a street thief-cum-terrorist isn't going to be hauling around Pantene Pro-V along with his C4 and extra mags? WHAT YOU TALKIN' ABOUT, WILLIS?

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

....We need to start a club, preferably one called I-Have-Long-Hair-And-It's-Damn-Hard-to-Deal-With-And-No-One-Understands-Me. XDDDD

I also totally agree with the fact that Duo'd probably be washing it with soap, unless Deathscythe comes built with a nice shower cubbie by Paul Mitchell. >> Because of this, his hair would probably be in fairly shit condition, as well. XDDD

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/longhairwoes/profile

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

BWAHAHAHA. XD

Wu

[oshii-yume.livejournal.com]

I just don't enjoy the always ranting justice obsessed diamond factory that most authors make Wu Fei out to be.

I try to give most fics a chance but throw to many "Damnit you baka onna's" at me and I am out. OUT!

mmmmmm badass!anarchist!Duo how could anyone not like Maldoror

Re: Wu

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Or too many THIS IS AN INJUSTICE! rants. He only says something to that effect a few times in the series, like how Heero only told Duo to shut up the one time early on. *headdesk* And...what's a proud Chinese guy doing swearing in Japanese anyway?

I know he's a misogynist, but after reading Episode Zero way back when I always thought it (mostly) stemmed from his issues with Meiran and her manner of death. Of course, there's also the whole growing up in a traditional clan thing, but I think his relationship with Meiran only exacerbated it. I mean, he's a fucking scholar - but then again scholars have argued for some fucked up shit over the years, so I suppose that doesn't necessarily preclude anything.

Sally Po is the most kickass GW woman evar.

[canopywalker.livejournal.com]

I DON'T SEE ANY TITS HERE.

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

Isn't there an unspoken rule about trolling your best buddy's journal, dude?

*rolls eyes*

[canopywalker.livejournal.com]

Awww, you know you love trolls. <3

[jukeboxhound.livejournal.com]

:p