fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2780 ]

[ SECRET POST #2780 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2780 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #397.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Honestly, I think this is just a case of where people read things differently.

Me? I NEVER imagine myself in the scenario. Why would I? There's no guarantee that any of the characters would like me and I'm not part of their universe. Plus, what I love in shipping is the interactions between the two characters themselves. Why would I want to put myself in there?

I've observed that a lot of het shippers seem to self-insert with the female character and that's something I never understood. How can you be a fan of a character if you're using her as a placeholder for yourself?

It just seems like she's just a means to an end -- that end being the reader imagining herself hooking up with a hot guy.

I don't know. I'm sorry if this comes off as accusatory, but it's something that bothers me because slashers are so often accused of ignoring or treating female characters horribly. But I don't really see how self-interserting or "picturing yourself in it" is any better truthfully.

(Mind you, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I just don't see how it's more "respectful" of female characters than what slashers do.)

For the record I don't "replace" female characters with myself and that's an insultingly simplified way to put it! Female characters provide me with a comfortable familiarity and a solid starting point to understand what they're feeling and experiencing. I need to reach a pretty intimate level of connection with fictional people to geniunely care about them. Maybe some of you don't, but I do.

I guess I don't understand what you mean by "picture myself in it" then.

Do you mean a threesome?

It was just a really odd turn of phrase that stuck out to me because the last thing I do in fic is put myself into it or picture myself in it. I'm in it for the characters and their interactions with each other.

Again the whole point was familiarity. I enjoy the familiarity.
When a female character interacts with a male character, I know exactly what it's like to be that girl, in that moment, because there's a good chance I've experienced the same situation myself. It adds a good helping of realism to the story when it reminds me of my own life.

Entire stories, successful books and movies and tv-series, have been written with this concept in mind. Audience loves characters that resemble themselves. Honestly I can't believe I need to spell this out to someone.

I guess I just can't identify with that at all. Someone's genitals just don't matter to me that much.

My thought process is more: would I react the same way as this character? And if I don't, can I understand why (given their backstory) they would react in such a way? Are the things that are important to this character also important to me? How does the way character A interacts with character B facilitate their relationship?

The presence or absence of a vagina, on its own, is basically a nonissue to me.

I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just something that I don't feel is worth considering.

Genitals =/= gender, it's 2014 and you should be well aware of that, and by that notion I've gotten too tired of your argument to tackle it any further.

You said "female" characters, not women.

Sorry -- biologist here, so I tend to think of "female" in terms of genitalia. "Women" though is a different story.

Not sure why you're responding just to tell me that you're tired of my arguments. But okay. Hey ship what you want to ship -- I'm not saying you're a better or worse person for it.

I made the point originally because I wanted to critique the notion that het is inherently better for female characters. Which, in my opinion, isn't true IF the female character is only being used as a self-insert.

But to each their own.

DA

I agree with you 100%.

When a female character interacts with a male character, I know exactly what it's like to be that girl, in that moment, because there's a good chance I've experienced the same situation myself.

I don't get this at all. I have no idea what it's like to be that woman (or girl, I guess), beyond what the narrative is telling me, because women are individuals with different lives and different experiences. I guess I know what it's like to be a woman in general, but that's about it unless the character shares other traits with me.

But then, I don't read fiction looking for relatablity, so maybe that's my problem.

When a female character interacts with a male character, I know exactly what it's like to be that girl, in that moment

This is exactly why I don't enjoy reading het in general, though. The female characters tend not to react or act like me at all, so there's this total cognitive dissonance and I can't get into the story at all. It's actually why I prefer slash.

I don't go out of my way to look for porn but I find m/f where the man is attractive and the woman is badass to be hot. I don't self-insert at all because imagining myself with the man does nothing for me - I can't even imagine what he'd look or feel like irl but uhhh that's because all of my fandom crushes are animated OOPS but anyway I just happen to like that setup? some straight women like gay porn. some like het. we're all different and we can be wired differently for what turns us on.

but it's something that bothers me because slashers are so often accused of ignoring or treating female characters horribly.

Some of them do but not all. it depends on a lot of things. if all they want to do is write/read porn and m/m turns them on, I understand why they do it. but if they write long complex fics with female characters in important roles but then write them badly and downplay their importance, or pretend they don't exist when it wouldn't make sense for them not to be there, then yeah, that's kinda crappy

I'm the same way, anon. I don't get the idea of self-inserting yourself onto a character or into a universe at all and in fact I find it rather creepy. I don't care how much I like a character, I'm not them and they're not me and so their thoughts and actions and experiences are something entirely separate from my own that I'm viewing through the lens of the canon. I like the character as a character, not as a stand-in for myself.

An anon below mentioned knowing exactly what it's like to be that female character, but... that still doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know what it's like. I'm not that character. I can understand their emotions and why they react the way they do but I would never say I understand what it's like to be that character because I can't.

It just kind of blurs IC/OOC lines to me and crosses into creepy territory.

See, I don't even mind that het fans self-insert in some cases (to each their own I suppose).

But I really hate how it seems like slashers get stereotyped as horny fangirls who just want to watch guys fuck or who are hating on and ignoring the female characters while the het fans are treating female characters "right" by including them in the pairing.

But…if you self-insert, you're basically scooping out that woman's brains and identity and turning her into an empty shell so that you can use her to project your desire for the male character. And I don't see how that's respectful at all. It's not wrong -- a lot of fic is about fantasy, after all.

But it doesn't make you better than slashers or more considerate of female characters either.

And it frustrates me that this idea seems so prevalent among certain parts of fandom.

That's part of why I find it creepy, really. You're making that character into something that is no longer themselves just so that you can project onto them - turning them into a blank slate, in a sense. But that isn't what they are. They're a character with their own motivations and emotions and goals and you're erasing all of that.

People who do that claim to love female characters but what they really love isn't the character, it's the opportunity to self-insert onto that character.

I feel like you guys have taken this in a completely weird and absurd direction.

I like reading porn that involves women because I know what it feels like to be a woman having sex, so it's hotter to me than porn that doesn't involve women. I'm not projecting my desire for the male character; half of the time, I personally wouldn't want to be with the male character. On top of that, I also go for femslash, so there's often not even a male character to desire. It's just easier for me to relate to female sexual pleasure than male sexual pleasure, and so it turns me on more.

That's, honestly, what most people are talking about. You're taking a very, very extreme view, and it kinda strikes me as disingenuous, because relating to a character is nowhere near comparable to stripping a character of her identity.

It's not about porn. Like I said, I don't see anything wrong with preferring het fiction or relating to it more (I ship lots of het ships myself).

No, my post was more about how some shippers get on slashers' case for "ignoring" or "erasing" female characters and then act as though they are treating female characters right and respectfully.

And I think that's bull considering the number of het fics that are just using the female character as a proxy to get into a male character's pants.

That's not to say it's ALL het fic mind you or that slashers don't bash female characters (because some do).

But I think the contention that het inherently treats female characters better than slash needs to die. Because when I see those self-insert fics, I don't think it's respectful at all. In fact, in some ways, I think it's worse than just ignoring the female character (the way slashers do) because the author s destroying her personality to use her as a conduit.

Note that this isn't ALL het fics -- I'm specifically talking about self-insert fics and why their popularity means I have a problem with people who contend that slash inherently treats women worse. I think it's really a case by case basis.

I agree totally.

I would read a lot more het fics if the female characters didn't come across so often as a rather creepy self-insertion by the writer so they can get with the hot guy.

Now I think of it, out of hundreds of het fics I've read, only a handful didn't do this. I've pretty much been put off het fanfics entirely by now, sad to say.

Slash is usually much better for treating the characters as actual people.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2780 ]

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