Fandom: Give Me The Brain

[puddingcat]

Exposition on fanfic, by someone with a brain, here. The post she refers to at the start is this one (both linked with permission; thanks).

In case I need to say this, yes I read and write fanfic, including some levels of smut, and yes I do get offended when included in the sweeping "All Fandom [insert relevant insult here]" statements from outside.

Comments

[xambrius.livejournal.com]

When did fanfic go from being fan-written fiction in general to being fan-written fiction involving explicit narrations of sex encounters?

--
Tim Harris
The Seeker
Time Lord

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

It hasn't "gone from"; it always (afaik) has included smut. The R / NC-17 fics are a small proportion of the whole thing and, in general, are much more likely to be the badly-written bits.

[raggedy-man.livejournal.com]

link away :-)

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

I'm assuming you *don't* think I'm a perve-inna-bad-way, intellectually lacking, etc...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I agree with some of the points, but this was all rendered minor by the "assume all fanfic writers are women with partners", which veered dangerously close to the "assume all women have supportive partners and a selection of loving helpful friends and family" that makes me want to stab people in the head. Stabbing lark_ascending would be impolitic, and possibly bad, though I have met her for a maximum of five seconds at a time in loud places.

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. It's nice for a change to see an argument with logic behind it though, instead of the whole string of conversational terrorism and straw men / ad hominem / diversionary tactics that usually crop up when eitehr side fears they're being out-argued.

[lark-ascending.livejournal.com]

Well, it must be said that 'women with partners' does represent the majority of the fanfic writers I personally know; being female with a partner myself and relatively new to fandom, however, it's also possible that my sample is biased.

But, the example you're taking issue with is not intended as a sweeping generalisation about all fans; it's just a convenient one, and it makes the point in a way that most of my readership should be able to relate to. That's why I included the "let us assume for a moment" line as opposed to just, y'know, assuming; I'm underlining that I've chosen to think that way. Assuming would be proceeding without even commenting on the fact that of *course* all fanfic writers are straight women in long-term relationships, because Everybody Knows That Already™. (And just as an aside I'm also bisexual, so while I may be a woman in a relationship I'm not exactly one of those people who's never even *looked* outside the box ;) )

As for "assume all women have supportive partners and a selection of loving helpful friends and family" - trust me, given the way I grew up and how hard I've had to work to get even close to that situation myself, that's very rarely an assumption I make.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I thought that was quite a clever essay, although it did spark up my own confused ramble about fanfic which is 'why is writing about teenage sexual activity so very wrong - it is something which does happen (and happened a lot at my school) and something that has been covered extensively in fiction already'.

Pre-pubescent sex scenes are creepy, but I never particularly understood why two 15 yr olds bonking is that horrific. And I say this as someone who isn't really a fanfic kinda person.

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Yes. I think that's one of the arguments in the HP w*nk that's mentioned at the start. Although, to be fair to both sides, I can see how it's more worrying that 30-something people like reading about 16 year olds getting off with each other than if fandom were *all* 16 year olds themselves.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

A very intelligent essay. Although it did tend to assume that everyone reading or writing fanfic is going to be female, and I'm sure there must be men out there who enjoy writing and reading the stuff.

But as someone who has only read a little fanfic and is a bit ambivalent about it, I whole-heartedly agree with her conclusion that the best policy is just not to read the stuff if it makes you uncomfortable.

I think the idea that women are sexually interested in scenarios involving gay men can make us straight fellows a little nervous. It's hard to pin down exactly why that is, and I speak as a rare bloke who doesn't get particularly excited at the thought of scenarios involving gay women, so throwing that back at me doesn't work!

Maybe we fear that they're aroused by something we can't provide? I think maybe it just throws us into confusion because it completely contradicts what we're taught (or are conditioned to believe) about the attributes in us women respond to sexually. Surely the more masculine we are, the more attractive we'll be to women? To discover that the exact opposite might be true is kind of terrifying.

[lark-ascending.livejournal.com]

Firstly can I just say I love that userpic? It's superb :)

it did tend to assume that everyone reading or writing fanfic is going to be female

To my knowledge, there are men out there writing fanfic but as far as I can tell they're very much in the minority. I've certainly never knowingly met a male fanfic writer, and when I've run across them in online communities they seem to be famous for being "the male one", IYSWIM. As I said above though I'm not the longest-standing fan in the world, so I could be wrong about that.

I think the idea that women are sexually interested in scenarios involving gay men can make us straight fellows a little nervous. [...] Maybe we fear that they're aroused by something we can't provide?

Well, the one thing a bona fide real-world man can't provide is a completely reality-free, no-strings-attached fantasy man. Right? ;)

Though that's a very interesting point about masculinity and attraction. I think it's possible, in the culture we've got; a lot of "traditional" masculinity (never talks about feelings, permitted to be aggressive, yadda) can be disorienting and isolating for a truly emotional/sensitive/communicative archetypal-woman type girl. Me, I'm not one of those at all, and I'd get sick to death of a girly ooh-let's-process-everything man pretty fast (hell, *women* who do that annoy me). Personally I enjoy male-male fanfic because it gives you some wonderful scope to explore dominance dynamics, power struggles and relationships in which not everything has to be dealt with through blasted talking about it. And the sex isn't always all romantic and gentle either, which is a bonus ;-)

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible, in the culture we've got; a lot of "traditional" masculinity (never talks about feelings, permitted to be aggressive, yadda) can be disorienting and isolating for a truly emotional/sensitive/communicative archetypal-woman type girl.

Yeah, this is something I touched upon a while back in an LJ discussion about why so many straight men have lesbian fantasies. My theory was that because the lesbians aren't going to hypothetically want the man involved at all, there's no pressure on him to be able to perform, so he can just get his jollies by watching. So it's a very safe fantasy. He'll never have to put his money where his mouth is, as it were.

I think the same might be true for women who have fantasies involving gay men. Gay men are perhaps less sexually threatening.

Oooh, and thanks for saying nice things about my userpic! :)

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Surely the more masculine we are...

It's taken a few days to put my reaction to this into words :)

You're assuming (that word again!) that gay men aren't masculine.

I can only talk about the fandoms I'm in (and yes, they're anime / manga, so nearly *everyone* looks like a girl...), but the characters are Most Definitely Masculine. WK is all about assassins, while Saiyuki is the Monkey story - and, even though they've been prettied up, there's still a womanising gambler, a mass-murderer, and a heavy-drinking priest with a Smith & Wesson. Fics that "feminise" characters tend to be slated and not read more than once.

Personally, one attractive, masculine man is good; two are *also* good ;p I'll enjoy plot-what-plot fics if the smut is written well (and it isn't, often, so I stick to a very few authors whose work I know) but otherwise I prefer general, non-slash "what if?" stories, or longer pieces that make some attempt at explaining *how* characters who are straight in canon (subtext aside) end up having a Thang. The best writers can get me hooked on a story even when I don't know the source material.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

You're assuming (that word again!) that gay men aren't masculine.

Maybe the question here is about what defines masculinity?

the characters are Most Definitely Masculine. WK is all about assassins, while Saiyuki is the Monkey story - and, even though they've been prettied up, there's still a womanising gambler, a mass-murderer, and a heavy-drinking priest with a Smith & Wesson.

Seems to me you are assuming (yup sorry, that word again! LOL) that a gay man can't be a heavy-drinking, gambling, mass-murdering assassin! I left out womanising, but if you substitute "promiscuous," it still works.

I think I'm probably falling foul of the fact that I haven't actually read much of the fic being discussed, but I gather the stories mainly feature fantasised gay verions of straight characters being uncharacteristically romantic, emotional and vulnerable. And these (for better or worse) are not generally thought of as very masculine traits.

So the point I was making wasn't really about gay men, but about the way women who enjoy such fic would like us straight men to behave.

[pinkapplejam.livejournal.com]

Aloha! We all have to admit that fandom on the *whole* and not without its exceptions has generally got a bit of a bad rep for itself, to say the least. I'm an anime fan who really can't get on with a lot of the Uk anime fan community [esp. the new gen], and I've been in it for almost a decade and a half. O_o

I've written crappy non-sexxx fanfic in the past (leik, wen I wz at skool), and you may find my LJ statements as of late sweeping, though further delving past my rants about the subject matter of (how you awesomely put it) HP w*nk fans (who think it is perfectly OK to write about Snape doing hideous escapades to a young boy that would get them jailed and then castrated by his cellmates) have been wangsting over the recent LJ hullamalooba, as if nothing that has happened has been sick and wrong.

People writing smutty adult situations = LOL and fine by me! O_o People who write kiddy pr0n = BIG FAT NOOO TA.