Thank you for the apology. Please don't spam anyone else in the future.
Look, one of the fun things about fanfiction and fanart is that we can explore different ideas about characters. We can write "what if they didn't meet in the same way as they did in the books?" or "what if they were all vampires?" or "what might happen in the future, long after the books are over?"
So if you find some fic or art that really goes against the way you see the characters (and that includes my art, which didn't have any sex toys, it was just G-rated young women being in love), you have to be able to think, "maybe this person is just imagining a different version of the characters from the one I like. That's not wrong or bad, it's just not for me, so I'll go look at something else instead."
And saying things like "these gay people are wonderful and I love them, but I'm offended by what they do" IS homophobic. If you think something is good and wholesome between a man and a woman, but you suddenly get upset and judgmental if the genders are switched, for no reason other than the people being the same gender? That's the definition of homophobia.
I don't know the gay married couple in your life, but I bet there's a good chance their view is "he's a good, bright kid, and his heart's in the right place, so eventually he'll figure out that there's nothing offensive about our relationship or our love. Because we care about him, we can be friendly and be patient until he gets there."
Thank you so much for accepting the apology anyways. I'm not gay at all I'm straight so I find no man sexy. The only thing I find sexy is women. Even as a young boy I loved girls. By the way I'm currently working on an Oz story involving a Vampire named Sir. Damien you may like it although it has some religious themes in it. And Dorothy and Ozma aren't an item. Instead Dorothy is with Ojo of all characters. Thoughts?
Listen, I already figured you were straight based on your comments, you didn't need to say so...and "re-stating how straight you are in 5 different ways in a row" actually makes it less convincing. (People don't usually get that insistent unless they're secretly some type of LGBTQ, and are nervous about being found out.) You only need to say it once -- and even then, only if somebody asks.
Your fic idea sounds not wrong or bad, it's just not for me, and I'll look at something else instead!
They care about each other very deeply in the books, which even go so far as to have lines like these (from The Road to Oz):
"Everything about Ozma attracted one, and she inspired love and the sweetest affection rather than awe or ordinary admiration. Dorothy threw her arms around her little friend and hugged and kissed her rapturously."
And illustrations like this one -- sitting side-by-side, faces bent toward each other, gazing into each other's eyes, Dorothy's hand resting on Ozma's leg:
So even just looking at canon, without adding any romantic fan-interpretation: they're very dear to each other, very affectionate, and very physically comfortable with each other.
Oh, hey, one more important canon thing: Ozma's unusual gender background. That's very relatable to the LGBTQ community -- obviously to trans people, who have the experience of "being raised as one gender but were secretly a different one all along," and also to other gay/bi people, who often have the experience of "can sense from an early age that we don't fit typical gender roles, identify with any characters who break/subvert/expose the problems with gender roles." Even though it's a fantasy situation, not exactly the same as anything in the real world, we're inclined to see Ozma as One Of Us.
(Dorothy, meanwhile, has been an icon for LGBTQ people ever since Dorothy Garland stepped out into Technicolor.)
And it makes perfect sense that Ozma and Dorothy would get close. They're both brave and determined, like adventures, have a strong sense of justice, have similar histories of being held prisoner by a witch before escaping with the help of friends. Ozma understands Dorothy well enough to know she would enjoy "being sent a whole book's worth of adventure just as a birthday invitation."
They're always looking out for each other and rescuing each other -- Ozma gets Dorothy out of Lurline's prison, they set up a regular check-in procedure so Ozma can save Dorothy from a distance in the fourth book, Dorothy goes on a rescue quest in Lost Princess. Ozma basically rewrites her country's immigration law so Dorothy and family can move in with her. When citizens come to the Emerald City needing help on a quest, as in Patchwork Girl, Ozma usually sends Dorothy with them as her trusted representative.
When neither of them is on a specific mission, they're usually together, and delighted about it. There's a lovely scene in Tin Woodman where Nick and the Scarecrow are the ones on a quest, and they drop in briefly on Dorothy and Ozma, who are just hanging out and having a great time.
Neither of them ever gets anybody else as a love interest. To be fair, Baum wasn't interested much in writing romance at all, but it comes up occasionally -- the Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girl clearly have a spark, for instance, or the Rose Princess and Private Files. But Dorothy and Ozma aren't even shown getting a crush on anyone, let alone getting closer to anyone else than they are to each other.
(Note: this doesn't mean I have a problem with anyone who wants to ship them with other characters! It's just one of the reasons those ships don't appeal to me in the same way.)
More generally, I like ships between characters from very different backgrounds, who have to work through cultural differences in the process of getting to know each other, and ultimately have a stronger/closer relationship as a result of that work.
This comes up a little bit in the books, and fanfiction has the room to explore and expand on it more. Baum's focus was mostly on fairyland culture, but the readers can spend more time talking about Earth -- this fic here is just one of the stories that explores it. Whether we get into serious concepts like "it's much harder to be a same-sex couple in Kansas," or stick to lighthearted ones like "Dorothy introduces the first Roomba to Oz."
And hey, it doesn't hurt that Dorothy and Ozma would make a very pretty, very cute couple. Which makes the fanart a lot of fun to draw.
(Since you've gone through my DA gallery -- and that was before Yuletide authors were revealed, so this fic wasn't under my username yet -- you already know that my shippy art portrays them as teenagers-to-young-adults. In poses that are romantic, but usually no more explicit than the canon art linked above.)
If I had time to reread the whole series, I could probably make this comment twice as long, by pointing out lots of little specific Dorothy+Ozma moments I like! But I don't have that much time, and this is plenty long already, so the general overview will have to do.
Sorry to disagree with you, but I'm more of a fan of their relationship being a close sisterly friendship as opposed to homosexual. Besides, if Dorothy and Ozma grew up they wouldn't be the Dorothy and Ozma we know. Things were different then it is now it really was common for little girls to exchange kisses and such without any thought given to it. Besides if there was really LGBT subtext in those books. They wouldn't even be published knowing how LGBT wasn't accepted yet even though they were still gay people that existed.
Look, again, I already got that you don't ship it! You don't need to tell me. And you don't need to defend it to me, either -- I wasn't trying to argue that *you* should ship it, just answering your question, which was about why *I* ship it. It's perfectly normal for different people to like different pairings.
Characters don't need to have canon romantic subtext to be shipped. You yourself are writing a fic that ships Dorothy and Ojo. Some people ship characters who've never met in canon. Sometimes they ship characters who aren't even from the same series! Fanfiction is about what the fan thinks would make a fun or interesting story. Sometimes that's exactly in-line with what the original author would've written, but it doesn't have to be.
It's true that Baum, like all writers, was a product of the time and the culture that he lived in. He's progressive in some ways (he was a major supporter of women's rights), but not all (there are a couple of racist stereotypes/caricatures in his books). Fic writers in 2020 aren't required to stick to "pretending LGBT people don't exist" just because that was normal when the books were written in the 1900's, any more than we need to stick to "some characters will be offensive racial caricatures" because *that* was normal in the 1900's.
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ErinPtah Sat 02 Jan 2021 06:46PM UTC
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