What's on your m/m wishlist for 2013?

So here's a sort of a wishlist for 2013, things I'd like to see more of in m/m, and things I'd like to see a lot less of as well. 

Dub-con. I do love me some dub-con. Blackmail stories are really doing it for me at the moment. I love the power games at play there, but I've yet to find one I really love-love. Any recommendations are welcome! 

Puppy play. Hot, cute, and at the same time weirdly humiliating...or so I thought. So often puppy play involves the big nasty Dom getting his rocks off by humiliating his sub, the the puppy play becomes -- and this may be the point, I guess -- dehumanising. The problem with dehumanising a character though, is that pretty soon I stop giving a damn about him. M/m needs more sweet puppy play...but J.A. Rock and I have got some of that covered... :) 

Humiliation. No apologies, I love it. But, like with the puppy play, it's a fine line. Cross it into dehumanisation, and you've lost me. 

Age play. Sometimes creepy, sometimes awesome. I want to read more of the awesome, please. 

More drag queens! But only if we also get to see what happens once the make-up comes off. 

Frat boys. Because they're young, cute, and a completely foreign species to me. We don't have frats in Australia, so all my working knowledges comes from movies and TV. So I basically know nothing. 

ANGST! MORE ANGST! I do love a book that puts me through emotional hell. As a writer, I'm a sadist. As a reader, I'm a total masochist. But it's totally subjective. A book that makes you cry might just make me roll my eyes and wish every character hurried up and died. And vice versa. Everyone's taste is different, which is what makes comparing opinions so much fun. 

And now for the things I'd like to see less of. 

I'd like to see less insta-love, but that's always been a pet peeve of mine. 

I'd also like to see less of what's become a staple in m/m -- the solo shower jerk-off. Now admittedly I have one of these in one of my WIPs, but ever since it was brought to my attention how common it is (thanks, Ami!) it's going to go. 

And while we're on cliches, why are so many Doms multimillionaires who do nothing else but hang out in mysterious sex clubs? Seriously guys, you don't get to be a multimillionaire without at least occasionally going to work. This year, I'd like to see more Doms with real jobs and mortgages, who have to stop off on the way home from the mysterious sex club to buy milk. 

And I hate -- and will always hate -- when a Dom is a Dom because he was abused, abandoned or unloved as a child. Or, worse, when a sub is a sub because he was abused, abandoned, or unloved as a child. Not every kink needs a nasty psychological trigger, and not every scene is a therapy session. Sometimes you just need what you need. It really can be as simple as that. 

What would you like to see more of in m/m? And what really annoys the hell out of you? 

Gay For You?

Some of my favourite stories are Gay For You. I like the idea that friendship (or, even better, total animosity) can be so intense that it might take you in an unexpected direction. I like the angst of a good Gay For You, in that a character is usually totally blindsided by his or her own desires. 

Source

But here's what I don't like: the crazy idea that another person can somehow make you gay. 

That's crap. What another person can do is give you the courage to explore a part of yourself you might have had on lockdown most of your life, but you cannot catch Teh Gay. 

Sexuality, gender and identity are weird, slippery fishes. Tricky to catch, impossible to pin down, always on the move. (Okay, now I'm thinking I could have picked a better analogy than fish, but it's late and I'm tired. And earlier I watched a program that had fish in it.) The point I'm making -- I think -- is that Gay For You is only half the story. And if you read a lot of romance, it's usually the only half of the story you get to see because a big Happily Ever After descends and there are rainbows and unicorns and puppies and bubbles. 

(I mentioned it was late and I'm tired, didn't I?) 

Okay, so here's an example. 

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Max. And he had a best friend called Paul. And one day Max looked at Paul and thought things that he'd never thought before. These new, unsettling thoughts began with kisses, and ended somewhere Max had never imagined he'd go. 

But he did, and it was good, and it was Love. 

The End. 

That's where romance drops the curtain. Except what if five years down the track Max finds out that Paul screwed around? Or what if Paul gets a job on the other side of the country? Or what if Paul is killed in a car accident? What if, for whatever reason, the man that Max was gay for is no longer in his life? 

Does Gay For You still hold? Does Max magically no longer enjoy sleeping with men? Suddenly he's straight again? Of course he's not. 

I don't believe there is such a thing as Gay For You in real life. I believe there is Out For You, it's just that in romance it's difficult to spot hidden under all those happy endings.