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

[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! :)