Meta-ish thoughts

This's going to be kind of rambling and roundabout, and I wouldn't place any kind of money on that I won't offend someone, but I'm going to try and get what I'm thinking about across. And I may well sound arrogant at some points, lumping myself in with people I think of as the best of the fandom, but *shrug* I had great examples to learn from, and am trying to credit them as I try and figure out how my brain got to what I'm thinking about.

In the comments to one of my fics (Slade/Dick actually), someone made a comment that I managed to portray all of Dick's love and need "without removing his masculinity one bit" even as he was very completely owned and possessed, and how cool that was. I kind of blinked at that, and said to myself, "um, I'd hope so" because well, Dick's very much male--very aggressively male at times, even. I couldn't figure out why the comment had been in all-caps--I mean, it was cool, I liked it a lot--but it took me thinking a good bit before I realized that what I'd done maybe was unusual. ( the rest of my thoughts on this )

This is my 2cents and your mileage may vary, but it's why I write my guys the way I do, in fairly blatant flouting of "traditional" views of both gay and straight sexuality. Wait, why'm I surprised, I hate locked gender roles.

By the bye, this was intended to start conversation, please come talk to me!