I am so not here for fanfic snobbery. I don’t care if you know it has technical or storytelling flaws. I don’t care if the writing is lazy or choppy or lacks proper world-building. It’s free, made as a hobby, and written by people who (probably) have never been to a writing workshop and may have never written anything longer than a 5k essay. Fanfic already gets shit for not being “good enough” as it is. Don’t be a jerk to your fellow writers and don’t call them lazy or lame to their face. This is exactly the thing that keeps people from trying and improving in the first place. Who gives a shit if it’s not perfect? No one springs from the head of Zeus as a fully fledged writer. We all gotta start somewhere and “somewhere” is usually on the border between Meh-ville and Needs-Work-burg.
I think fandom, as a whole, needs to take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to see things through the eyes of the person they oppose before we attack each other.
Each of us has our own biases, our own baggage, and our own struggles and those things color our interpretation of everything, whether we’re conscious of it or not. The key, in my mind, is being conscious of those biases, acknowledging and accepting them, and then trying to step outside of them and consider the perspective of someone else. I’m not saying you have to agree with the other person, or even that you have to change your mind, all I’m saying is that we need to be more considerate of each other.
Don’t assume malice, and don’t treat everyone who errs as if they’re doing it deliberately to hurt others. Consider the intention, the potential for harm, whether harm was done or not, and react accordingly. You can have an issue with someone or the way they’ve done something but please, for the love of all that is good in the world, consider your reactions. No one deserves to be threatened or harassed. I don’t care what that person has done, if it’s serious enough to get authorities involved, get authorities involved but no one (and I mean no one) deserves to be treated like their life doesn’t matter. We’re so hostile to each other anymore and it leads to this environment where we’re okay with hurting people because they have a bad opinion. It’s okay to be upset, but it’s not okay to take your anger out on another living, breathing person.
I don’t have all the answers for all of fandom’s problems (and boy do we have a lot of them) but it’s not going to hurt us to be just a little more compassionate. I’m tired of seeing people get threats and harassment. I’m tired of seeing people being treated like trash. I’m tired of fandom being a hate mob instead of a place for human connection. We can still talk about issues and problems when we consider there’s a real person on the other end of the screen. It’s the only way we can talk about our issues. The hate needs to end.
Every time I see fans of Ship A struggling to explain why people like Ship B, I’m always just… you could… like… ask people who like Ship B why they like it? And then… believe them when they tell you?
I had to dig a bit to find it, buthere’s a long-ass thread to which I offered my own input (as @rhodanum, my old username) on how the fandom dynamics of F/F changed in the last few years and how purity crusaders hit F/F hard, before moving with all their shouting to M/M (with M/F being either ignored because ‘ewwwww het’ or condemned wholesale for ‘pushing heteronormativity’).
The unyielding influence of purity culture on F/F, particularly on here, is probably the main reason why I ship so very little femslash to begin with, despite being sexually and emotionally attracted to women. To put it bluntly, I’m not interested in the slightest in anodyne, flower-crown fluff or ‘soft lesbian pastel queens of Westeros’, as the OP put it so well (because this is a dynamic that can be seen across all fandoms, not just GoT/ASoIaF). To be clear, I’ve got no issue with people for whom that’s enjoyable, like and produce whatever content floats your boat, you’ll never get any grief from me on that account. My problem is that all too often, this is the only kind of F/F content permitted to exist, with anything else attacked mercilessly. That’s a sure-fire way to drive people away and tank the numbers of F/F fanworks, which is exactly what we’re seeing now.
As for ‘problematic’ F/F suddenly being presented as sparkles and rainbows… I suspect this is a natural consequence of purity culture and of people being dragged through the mud if their fave characters and ships are in any wayunacceptable on here. In this context, people can either abandon their ships, keep on shopping them the same as before (not as easy as someone older, like me, makes it sound, particularly for young people whose entire social circles might be subscribing to purity culture) OR warp the characters and ship to such an extent that they fit Tumblr’s definition of ‘pure.’ Often, this is nothing more than a coat of thin pastel-paint that people slap on so they can be left the bloody hell alone.
The problem with this, as @janiedean pointed out above, is that you end up in the ludicrous situation where something you know is fucked-up in some way or other, is now getting presented as soft and twee and as if there’s nothing wrong whatsoever. Mind, I’m not approaching this from the purity angle, where my issue is that the content is problematic to begin with. My issue is that purity culture and its peddlers are creating the genuinely unhealthy situation where people are sweeping the problematic aspects of something under a paper-thin carpet, instead of working head-on with them and acknowledging them as such. The consensus when I was coming of age in fandom was that you could write and read and enjoy whatever messed-up content you damn well pleased, so long as you never lied to yourself or others about it being messed-up and tried to pass it off as ‘twu-wub’ or whatever else. That is an infinitely more healthy and less dangerous approach to complicated and messy topics than the ‘100% Pure or 100% Problematic’ approach I see these days, with one getting lionized and the other used as an excuse for harassment campaigns. It’s the same principle that’s led to another fandom consensus (tagging appropriately) starting to break down, with people now afraid to tag their works as ‘incest’ or whatever else applicable, because there are individuals trawling those tags looking for creators to harass.
going to talk about Tumblr’s vision of Margaery/Sansa. That stuff could be a very good badwrong ship with Margaery emotionnaly abusive Sansa and all we get is unicorns and rainbows!
HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH ANON AHAHAHAHAHAHAH 100% AGREED I mean I’m not even gonna touch the juvie show which has the exact same problem in the sense that the ff canon ship is EVERYTHING BUT UNPROBLEMATIC but people are all like UNICORNS AND RAINBOWS about it (ew) and that’s why I don’t touch it with a ten foot pole, but the fact that marg/sansa is seen as OMG THE SOFT LESBIAN PASTEL QUEENS OF WESTEROS and then their fans used to go tell sandor/sansa shippers that we sucked because we ship sansa with a guy who abuses her (????)….. hahahaha. god. I think it’s in the top three asoiaf/got notps more for that than for anything else, because usually I’d just dislike it and be done with it but the fact that they’re sold as this amazingly perfect healthy ship just irks me to really, really bad degrees.
and the fun thing is that the one f/f ship I have is **canon** and it’s actually fairly healthy/somewhat fluff (I mean for its canon) but since it’s in DEADWOOD and no one cares about deadwood and according to tumblr it’d be the most problematic show in existence even if I went and wrote them content NO ONE WOULD GIVE A FUCK so I mean… IF ONLY THESE PEOPLE AT LEAST WATCHED CONTENT WITH F/F CANON SHIPS but naaaaaah. *shrug* and the fun thing of all this dumbass debate is that the aforementioned f/f ship has *one* explicit fic on ao3 and *I* wrote it (and it most likely isn’t the best lesbian sex you ever read but hey I tried because those two are my dynamic and I love them) and someone actually podficced it BECAUSE IT WAS THE ONLY ONE so I actually most probably did more for the canon f/f ship than any of the people on that post, but hey, I’m a horrid straight person who only has fetishes and has committed the heinous crime of preferring m/m. whatever.
IF ONLY THESE PEOPLE AT LEAST WATCHED CONTENT WITH F/F CANON SHIPS but naaaaaah
Or they’ll watch content with canon F/F and then howl all the way to the moon about age-gaps or ‘power-imbalances’ or whatever the hell else it’s popular to howl about, because there’s always something that can be problematized, if given enough time and creativity (no, I will never stop being a salty queer European over the shitshow that was CMBYN ‘discourse’).
comes from a place of sexism. I mentioned how people are accustomed to the imagery of men in dark, violent situations; male characters go through this stuff all the time! (Not just in m/m) In contrast, female characters generally aren’t allowed to go through disturbing situations and are certainly not allowed to be the cause of them. It comes back to girls being sweet, soft, and innocent in a way that tumblr often misguidedly perpetuates. (cont.)
The fact is, women are just as dark and disturbing as men bc all our minds work in the same way, and there ARE women abusers and women rapists and, yes, EVEN f/f rape and abuse. It exists in real life, so I think the fact that there is practically NO fictional media portraying it is far more telling than the fact that m/m rape fic exists. In fact, I hate to pull out the survivor card or, but I was raped and abused brutally by another girl as a young teen. I want to read manga & stuff (cont.)
about similar situations, because everyone enjoys reading about characters they can relate to. It was completely disheartening when I was younger to not be able to EVER find a similar situation portrayed. It made me feel like I was some extreme statistical outlier. However, I wasn’t. It is simply that media & fandom & society doesn’t like to show violent, disturbing girls; it’s a way of keeping girls ‘palatable’. If you’ve ever read/watched any f/f content (I’ve read a LOT tbh), a lot of (cont.)
the characters are the same worn-out stereotypes doing the same worn-out things, because variety is not encouraged when it comes to women. It’s literary same-face syndrome. Anyway, I’ve ranted quite a bit. My final point is: social awareness has no law over fiction. However, if you really want to play the social issues card, at least understand what it is you’re talking about. Thanks for putting up with all the asks! -fop.
I don’t have much to add to this because you’ve covered everything so thoroughly. Speaking just from a media standpoint, it’s a shame that we see so few female villains and even when we do, they are usually objectified or their character traits all revolve around seduction and sex. There’s just no variety.
And in the real world, ofc, denying that women can be horrible or punishing them less than men for the same crime is just doing them a disservice. Putting women on a pedestal is harmful too and is especially horrible for the people who suffer abuse at the hands of a woman.
Huh? It may be a generational or cultural thing, but ever since I started getting involved in femslash fandom rape and violence has been the favourite plots, be it subtle, character driven portrayals like Shoujo Kakumei Utena or explicit rape fantasy fanservice like Cross Ange or Valkyrie Drive. Like, favourite plots of porny Sailor Moon fiction is “Sailor Soldiers raped by female villians”. Slash and femslash are exactly the same.
So far as I can tell, it is generational. Femslash used to be very much the same as mslash in the nineties and early 2000s, in terms of darkness and villainy.
However, the recent reactionary backswing to purity politics in fandom which is only just now reaching mslash, completely wiped out all concept of female villains in fandom years ago.
First, let’s look at, as you mentioned, Sailor Moon. Specifically, I am thinking of the once immensely popular (though now rather less so) shipping of Chibi-usa and Hotaru’s villainous forms. Although the villain x villain version of the ship lives on, as does the good x good version, I remember very clearly how popular Mistress 9 x Chibi-Usa fics, art, and fandom activity were.
And in those pairings of a villain and a protagonist, there were extensive studies- both fetishistic and not- of rape, abuse, manipulation, grooming. It was dark, it was violent, it was all over the place.
And we knew, of course, that it was bad. We were shipping villains, after all. We knew what was going on was horrible. BUt it was also engaging, interesting, and in my case, proof that people like me (abuse and rape victims) existed.
These fics were some of the ways I found comfort and catharsis after I was raped, which is why the memory of them sticks so much. And why the stark absence of newer works in the same vein is so easy for me to see.
Fast forward a couple of decades and look at another prominent magical girl series that is rife with opportunity to explore horrible subjects: Madoka Magica.
Here we have a set up that begs for the same treatment: a dark haired, purple themed girl who does horrible, dangerous things out of a misguided, manipulative, dangerous love for a pretty pink innocent.
And yet, any time art and fiction in that vein bubbled up in the (female dominated parts of) the fandom, it led to immense harassment campaigns. People being driven off their sites and rings for daring to suggest that the all-too-canon obsession and pain Homura experiences, and the total lack of consequence for her any action, might lead to the inevitable abuse that, somewhat ironically, was itself canonized in the final movie.
The fights were immense, and they were brief. Within a few months, the shift was well and truly complete. Discussing the dangerous, villainous aspects of Homura’s character was all but illegal. The only way it was acceptable was if you were decrying the entire show as “abuse porn.” Certainly you could not make fic or art on the subject.
It happened with other fandoms too, nearly simultaneously. I remember, for example, the entire Vriska debate in homestuck: another character who was openly and unapologetically awful, and whose awfulness it was not acceptable to explore unless you were spending twice as much energy decrying- loudly, aggressively- how bad she was and how anyone who enjoyed her was also criminally violent.
Personally, I assume it was a manifestation of the increasing social awareness of fandom and tumblr, taking an unfortunate turn.
This purity-obsessed backlash never really hit on male characters, and male/male ships.
Until now.
With female characters and female ships having been driven into submission almost uniformly these days, what’s left is male characters and ships.
Which is where modern anti-shippers come in, screaming not only about how good (how obedient, how cleansed) f/f ships are (because any trace of villainy has been stripped form them for almost a decade), but how anyone who ships filthy, dirty m/m is dangerous and criminal too.
Which is odd, for a group claiming to be socially just, since they… habitually refer to queer ships and criminal and disgusting.
BUt homophobia is cool when you’re using it to punish women authors/artists for not conforming to ever-tightening restrictions on what they are allowed to do and create.
This touches on a TON of my issues with fandom. In order:
I noticed the cleansing of femslash of any ‘impure’ elements over the years. The end-result can be seen clearly on Tumblr, where you see femslash ships and dynamics constantly being referred to in soft, gentle, twee, pastel terms, again and again and again, no matter the ship. More power to people who enjoy that, but the problem is that it’s usually the only sort of presentation you run into because it’s the only sort of presentation allowed to exist without some sort of backlash. Same thing about people going on and on about how ‘perfect’ and how ‘pure’ femslash ships are. It just sets my teeth on edge, not just because it’s a classical manifestation of purity culture in action, but because perfection and purity as tropes bore me to absolute death!
Give me female villain/heroine ships with absolutely nothing gentle about them! Give me female anti-heroines that are as flawed and filled with mistakes and jagged edges as the archetypal male Byronic Heroes, who constantly fuck up and wreck their relationships, because they can’t deal appropriately with emotional intimacy! Give me middle-aged, hard-faced, ruthless lady Generals who have short-term, no-strings-attached relationships with woman after woman after woman in the Legions, because they lost their great love years ago and nothing else comes close. Give me femslash ships with faults, with sharpness, with cruelty, with control, with Stockholm Syndrome, with irredeemable mistakes. Don’t spend all your time trying to cram anodyne flower-crown fluff down my throat, because all it’ll do is just make me tell you to go piss up a rope.
The fact that purity bullshit moved to M/M ships after the F/F contingent was suitably ‘tamed’ isn’t any surprise to me at all. You can see it right now, with the constant shouting about what people are ‘allowed’ to write in the slash fics. Brutality? Violence? Sexual violence? Dark kinks? All of it right out. Until what you’re left with is the same thing as with femslash – an endless parade of ‘this ship is so pure uwuuuu’ and ‘this ship is so healthy uwuuuu’ and ‘this ship is so balanced uwuuuu’ with almost nothing else, unless you’re willing to open yourself to some heavy-duty harassment and denigration. To be clear, my issue isn’t the existence of healthy, balanced ships – I believe in variety being what gives meaning to life and variety also being what makes fandoms interesting. Meaning Cinnamon Roll ships co-existing with much darker ones, without a constant trend to make the latter disappear, by any means necessary, until the former dominates across fandoms.
oh my god… this actually explain so much for me??? about me???
like, i kinda felt like a bad queer for not finding as much enjoyment from f/f fanfics but… this is why. i have trouble finding anything with suitably angtsy/dark/complex/anything other than fluffy content. wow.
A perfect explanation on why I can count on the fingers of one hand the f/f stories that I really like
This reminds me, anyone got any recs for Root/Shaw being a fucked-up, violent, four-alarm dumpster fire? Like, not even talking abuse here. Just fic that revels in them being maladjusted human disasters who enjoy shooting people just a little too much, and spend their first meeting smirking and flirting through an entirely nonconsensual torture scenario.
I mean. Canon alone gets them into so much wild-ass shit. It’d be a shame if fandom didn’t match and surpass it.
There is no higher power, we don’t have secret masters in our main fandom spaces anymore. There’s no regulation for content or of who gets to be a part of the social group.
There’s little need for fandom to financially support our own spaces (we’re not all on private servers and chatrooms), so there’s no equivalent to taxes – we voluntarily pay for things we want collectively, such as ao3 servers and zines
The only organization we have is strictly voluntary. We divide ourselves according to what we want as individuals.
We adhere to rules we agree upon as a group, but it’s still voluntary. Nobody can call the police if you don’t tag something, they can only exclude you from their corner of the collective and try to get others to do the same.
There are also some definite parallels to religious structures in that we have a sacred text, we argue about interpretations and whether the text is actually sacred and what “god” meant by it (and whether god matters), and we divide into what’s basically sects. And the umbrella “group” (for lose definitions of the term) is collectively blamed for what other sects do.
But there is not and can never be a true 1:1 parallel to any organized structure or homogeneous group, because fandom is an elective anarchy. And any discussion or argument about a particular fandom that relies on generalizations about the group being a certain way will eventually break down because fandom is individualistic and elective to an extent that no political identity, religious identity, or social convention-based identity ever can be.
As a consequence of the opt-in nature of fandom, some folks will be blissfully ignorant of the issues and drama of their sect off in a different corner of the internet, but will likely still be held accountable for knowing it if/when they are ever confronted with someone on “the other side”.
It’s sort of like… you go to one church every Sunday because you like the people and you like the pastor. They preach love and acceptance of all people and pray for good things and encourage the congregation to volunteer at the homeless shelter. You then run into someone on Tuesday who demands to know why Christians are such assholes, why they hate so many people and why congregation X has money for a billboard to advertise their church but doesn’t use that money to help the poor and needy. “I don’t know,” you say, “I’m not part of that congregation.” “But you’re still a Christian and they’re Christians so why don’t you do something?” They demand. “It doesn’t work that way,” you say. “And what about the Christians is X country doing terrible things….” and on and on the go. You cannot win. There is no winning. Nothing you do can impress upon this person that just because you’re part of the big umbrella group doesn’t mean you have knowledge or control over anyone else under that umbrella.
We say “you’re responsible for creating your own fandom experience” and honestly, it’s true. YOU are the one who creates a fandom around yourself. You follow only the people you want to follow, engage on only the platforms you want to engage on, read only the fics you want to read, reblog only the content you want to reblog. Every fandom experience is truly unique. There are some things beyond our control (being blocked, getting anons, who interacts with us, ect.) but in someways it’s like a new community (or at least a new perspective of the existing community) is built every time a person “joins” a new fandom.
And one more thing on the structure of fandom… you have to bring your own morals. Unlike a religion, this group isn’t going to encourage being a good person. (Granted, we should all be at that point where being kind is a given but…) There are no consequences for being rude or cruel and in some communities that’s encouraged, as long as you’re being rude and cruel to the right people. You can’t really excommunicate someone from fandom as it is now – they can always make a new identity and come right back. There is no punishment. There is no sin. But there’s also very limited reward. We don’t reward or encourage good behavior, polite disagreements, honest conversations, or simply just leaving people the hell alone. Which, yeah, no one gets a cookie for being a decent person, but when people are getting attention for being mean and attention is the social currency of fandom… we don’t exactly foster a positive environment.
But is there even any way to foster a positive environment when there is no structure? Maybe on a micro level but I don’t see the larger culture changing when there’s no incentive to.
Thanks! 😊 The discussion specifically started between the shipping of Deadpool and Tom Holland’s Spiderman. So I guess the Problematic Thing initially started as age differences in relationships. It’s kind of expanded from there. I’m just trying to say that fiction shouldn’t be policed, and the idea that it “affects reality” isn’t a good reason to control content. Thanks for the blog rec, I’ll check it out!
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, anon. I’ve been super busy this week and I haven’t really had the time to actually sit down and find things for you. I hope that this helps, though.
Cool! Gotcha! (I’m sorry I’m going to be presumptuous and assume you’re American for this one b/c I know American legal stuff and I’m gonna be throwing some supreme court stuff at you.)
So it’s kind of tough to actually give you sources on this topic. A lot of what I’ve found revolves around “media” in general and not fiction specifically. On top of that, things that do study specific media tend to zero in on specific topics (violent video games, romance novels with abusive or borderline abusive male leads, ect) so it’s difficult to actually approach this holistically. Fanfiction on it’s own isn’t really studied as much as I feel it should be, either, so we don’t actually have much in terms of how Problematic topics in fanfic affect those who read them. We don’t actually know how and what about fanfic might influence readers, or in what way, and all we really have at this point in anecdotal evidence which doesn’t really help if you want real sources.
I will say, as just a bit of advice, if you’re arguing with folks on tumblr there’s probably nothing you can say to them that will change their minds if they already have a strong opinion. It doesn’t matter what ship it is, how you write it, or why you write it, if someone is really determined that some kinds of fiction just shouldn’t exist and they’re willing to throw around the “affects reality” argument in order to convince you you’re wrong, they don’t care. A lot of the arguments on tumblr aren’t actually about principles, they’re about ship wars and there’s not a damn thing you can do when it comes to someone’s OTP. It’s worth keeping in mind, too, that anti-censorship is more of a principle than anything else.
First, normalization. If you don’t have a definition of normalization already, here’s a link to the wikipedia article that gives a brief definition of what the term means in a sociological context. It’s important to note, too, that normalization isn’t something that’s done through just one channel, nor is it completely the same in every group that has it’s own culture. (For certain groups of fans it’s considered “normal” to talk about sex and sexuality as honestly and openly as one wants to. This isn’t necessarily “normal” for other groups in other contexts, however.) Normalization is a process.
Second, fiction in general can contribute to normalization of any given thing but it’s not the sole factor. It’s difficult to find sources on this that aren’t either behind a pay wall or very small sample-size wise for just plan fiction. This link might be helpful in illustrating that, while there could be a link between violent media and aggressive behavior, the extent to which violent media actually causes violent behavior is unknown and possibly more complex than we’re equipped to study currently. It also has references to other things that might be helpful to read. Here’s an article on psychology today about the lack of a link between violent video games and violence IRL. Here’s a HuffPo article specifically about whether or not pornography leads to sexual violence (the answer is no according to the article and the study they cite). Because let’s be honest, the folks you’re going to run into are often more concerned about the sexual content of the fanfic and fiction they’re railing against. This article talks about the potential reason we’re drawn to violent media; we like the thrill without the danger.
That psych today article on violent video games includes reference to a Supreme Court decision where the court struck down a California law that barred the sale and rental of violent video games to anyone under 18. I suggest you read the majority opinion on that case because it specifically deals with whether or not limitations should be put on whether or not children should be allowed access to violent media. I would also take a look at the US obscenity laws here . Obscenity laws are more helpful for arguing principles than they are for the normalization arguments because that third clause in the test for whether a piece violates US law specifically takes into account literary, artistic, and political merit. This means that we can often find things absolutely repugnant, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. These laws make the standard in favor of expression and not disgust.
So now here’s the tricky thing – fiction can and does impact the real world. We can be inspired by art to make changes in our world. Seeing someone who looks like you or struggles with the same issues as you do in a fictional world can mean a lot for a lot of people. It can be inspiring or completely disheartening. Fiction can make us more empathetic, too. So yes, fiction does have an impact on us. I mean, we’ve only been telling ourselves stories for as long as we’ve been human so I don’t think it can be stated enough that it’s really a part of who we are as a species. It shapes us and we shape it. The question in my mind, though, is whether art reflects life or life reflects art. I’m of the opinion that it’s both, but we don’t tend to write or depict “problematic” things in our art out of nowhere. A lot of the things folks get bent out of shape about in fanfic happens in real life and they’re worried that somehow fic is going to make it seem “okay” if it’s a) not properly demonized or b) written about at all. (No one really complains that depicting dragons razing villages is going to cause more arson, you know?) However, the evidence doesn’t really seem to support the idea that depicting abnormal or immoral things will encourage abnormal or immoral behavior.
I hope this helped, anon. And I hope you get many hours of enjoyment out of spideypool! Sorry for taking so long, lol.
The concept that only abuse survivors should write about abuse in a fictional setting helps antis achieve their modus operandi of the harassment of other tumblr users. Either they cause emotional distress by outing someone as a survivor and making them talk about their abuse in order to avoid harassment, or the targeted person is now open season for harassment for refusing to comply or not being an abuse victim in the first place.
What’s important is to listen and boost the voices of abuse survivors and help achieve a better understanding of what abuse is and looks like, instead of telling other people they’re not qualified enough to speak on a topic.
If you think someone isn’t qualified enough (and you have the spoons and/or the capability to do so) educate them.
I mean in the end, if you find a person is portraying abuse in a harmfully inaccurate way, it doesn’t really matter what experience they have because they still might need to be educated on what’s what.
so it just feels pointless to make a big deal about who is and isn’t allowed to write about stuff. if they do a bad job they do a bad job and we tell them “you did a bad job”, if they’re famous and therefor highly influential we might write articles and make memes, and then we move on to make our own and/or praise others’ good work instead.
I agree with this. It goes into ‘criticize the work, not the person writing it.’
Yeah, please don’t challenge me with a surprise MCD.
It’s not the “surprise” that’s the problem. It’s that it violates the form.
Romance stories, as currently defined, be they novels, novellas, or short stories, have one inviolable rule: There MUST be a happy ending. If you write a love story between characters that has a tragic ending, it is not a romance story in the accepted sense and should not be labeled as such. You can’t just wrap a fish stick in a chocolate candy wrapper and expect people to be happy when they open it.
I dare ANYONE to say that Romeo and Juliet is a romance instead of a tragedy. 😛
That’s like 90% of the problem exactly. People think they’re the one Special Bean out of the entirety of human history who has written a masterpiece that should be exempt from the standards everyone else has come to expect.
You’re not being groundbreaking. You’re being an ass.
(and they look like igoramuses while doing so)
And those Delusional Special Beans need to drop the “but tv and published books aren’t tagged!”
Motherfucker, there’s a reason I’m reading fanfic on a website with an in-depth tagging system, and not trolling the library or flipping through Netflix.
This whole thing reminds me of the “literary fiction” crap I had to put up with in college. According to the program directors “literary fiction” was the height of writing and while most profs wouldn’t tell you to your face that your were wasting your time and talent by writing romance or scifi it was heavily implied.
But literary fiction is, for the most part, depressing, pedantic crap hell-bent on creating characters no one can like doing boring shit before they ruin the lives of everyone they care about. (Encouraging, I know.) And it’s hard to get attention writing “MarySue and GaryStu Fuck Up Big Time Because They’re Trapped In a Loveless Marriage” for the 1700th time so you’d wind up with edgy 20-somethings writing the same basic thing but this time in a genre. I knew folks who had never picked up a Romance novel in their lives and decided to write “romance” b/c that’s popular, right? They can totally write a depressing love story! See, it’s about how love isn’t enough and two people who care deeply about each other will eventually be torn apart by death and/or infidelity! It’s realistic! Next they’re going to write a fantasy novel where all the magic in the world has been sucked out and the hero is on a quest to restore it only to fail b/c you can’t go back to some mythical past full of hope! See, it’s cutting edge!
It’s cynical is what it is.
If I wanted to read a tragedy, I’d read a tragedy. Sometimes I just want a little hope. Is that such a bad thing to want? I want to see characters I can love fall in love. I want to see them succeed. I want to see happiness. I don’t want to be reminded that life sucks under the guise of “art”. Like, if you want to write it, cool, do that, but don’t sell me a bitter pill while telling me it’s bubblegum. Tag your shit and tag it correctly. Know your genre conventions.
Here is what I have learned via bitter personal experience about fandom over the last 25 years:
It sucks the wet farts out of dead pigeons when the most popular ship is not your ship. (Because you CANNOT GET AWAY FROM IT. And they WON’T SHUT UP. And you CANNOT CONVINCE THEM THAT THEY ARE WRONG FOR SHIPPING IT.) (BatB, Due South)
It is possible for two diametrically opposed interpretations of canon to be equally viable and supportable in canon. (Quantum Leap)
No, really. It is.
There will be people who hate the characters you love the most. And people will love characters you hate. Extolling the fine qualities of the loved character will not convince people who hate that character that they should love him/her and will probably make them hate him/her even more, and telling them how horrible their favorite is will probably only make them love him/her more. (BatB,Due South)
Calling people “monsters” who are “evil” because they like a character you hate is NOT OKAY. (BatB)
Nobody is going to interpret the show the same way you do, even people who agree with you. Some people are going to interpret it in a way that makes you go WTF???? (ALL OF THE SHOWS. ALL. OF. THEM. From here on out.) And sometimes they can support their interpretation in canon.
When it comes to fanfic, one person’s OOC is another person’s perfect characterization. Because EVERYBODY PAYS ATTENTION TO SOME THINGS IN A CHARACTER’S BEHAVIOR AND IGNORES OTHERS.
If you tell somebody, “You’re wrong,” you’d better have something from canon to back you up. And they STILL probably won’t agree with you.
Telling people how they should DO FANDOM because they’re doing it WRONG is just gonna piss them off and probably make them do what they were doing even harder. This especially applies to writing fanfic or making fanart.
And here’s the most important one. Once you make peace with this one, your fandom experience will be much more pleasant: People are gonna ship what they ship, no matter what you say to convince them that they’re wrong to ship it. You cannot bully or shame people out of shipping their ship. Neither can you reason them out of it if they interpret canon differently from you. And the harder you try, the more you sound like white noise to them.
My one issue with the OP is that they are trying to convince others that their ship (the most popular one or others) is capital letters WRONG.
Um…that kinda goes against the rest of the post. Ship and let ship, I say. Yeah, it sucks when people love (and post constantly about) one that you don’t like, but…that’s life, ya’ll. We’re not all going to like the same things.
Me, I skip past the things I have no interest in and let those folks go about their business. If we all did the same thing, fandom would be a much more pleasant place for everyone. 🙂
(I’ve always been a canon BATBer, but don’t have an issue with those who like other pairings. I know the kind of rabid fans you’re talking about, though, and like…calm down folks!)
No, no, the whole POINT is “ship and let ship.” Railing against a ship you don’t like is not going to stop people shipping it. Just let them ship in peace. Don’t tell them they’re wrong or stupid or, God help us, delusional, because it is pointless and fruitless and just generally pisses everybody off.
Also, *hysterical laughter* at telling some of the BatB fans I knew to “calm down.” That sure as fuck didn’t work either.
This is Not a Blog 