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.

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I see more comments deriding het fans for supposedly feeling persecuted than any of those fans actually saying they feel persecuted, at least in these threads.

Maybe not here, but I see tons of canon pairing fans (especially on tumblr) lamenting the prevalence of slash and all I can think is, "Dude…your pairing is canon. You won. Why are you complaining?"

I mean, they don't HAVE to look at slash or talk about it, but slash fans certainly do have to watch the canon pairing.

I say that because I'm a huge fan of Zuko/Mai and it never bothered me that there were tons of Zutara shippers. Why would it? I can watch an episode and see Zuko kiss Mai and them be cute together. I don't give a crap about the mountains of Zutara fic.

So I don't get why slash shippers bother some canon shippers so much…Like I said, canon shippers have already "won" and it just seems kind of entitled and petty to me to demand that everyone share your opinion.

"Dude…your pairing is canon. You won. Why are you complaining?"
Because the pairing being canon doesn't really mean anything if the stories been told still aren't satisfying.

Why would anyone be a fan of an unsatisfying pairing in the first place, though?

And if they want more fic…again…it just comes across as entitled to demand that other people share your preferences.

Just sit back and enjoy the show.

I didn't say the pairing was unsatisfying? Only that the canon stories being told about them was. Which...kind of makes "sitting back and enjoying it" not possible, and the only person that sounds entitled here is you.

But…why would you like a pairing that's poorly written in the first place?

I just don't understand the concept of liking something that you find unsatisfying.

And…wow…I sound entitled because I think that no one should be able to dictate what others write fic about?

I never said canon fans shouldn't write fic. Just that it's entitled to act as though what others write should be dictated by their preferences.

Because you can like the idea of the pairing, find the chemistry good, like the relationship, but still be unsatisfied by how it was executed in canon? I don't see how that's so hard to grasp.

But why take it out on fandom? If you liked a pairing before they became a couple and then you were disappointed when they became official…well…that's sad but it's not the fandom's job to fix that for you.

That's all I'm saying.

And you can always go back and re-watch those portions of your pairing that you do enjoy in canon with the knowledge that they will get together.

I just don't see why anyone would be upset with slash fans in this case. Shouldn't you be mad at the writers?

Except I don't? I was really only replying the first bit because it was apparently mindboggling to you that someone could like a pairing but dislike how it was handled in canon.

Sometimes canon doesn't completely satisfy and so people turn to fic to explore relationships, things canon left vague, etc. Fix it fic exists for a reason.

Yeah…I can see where that was confusing.

I thought we were talking about general character interactions rather than just the actual part where the couple becomes canon. So I was bit confused as to why, if you found their interactions in general to be unsatisfying, you would ship them in the first place.

I've never really shipped something like that though. Any canon couples that I ship I've always liked their canon relationship and the way it's depicted.

But I can see how (just as an example) a Book 1-4 Harry/Ginny shipper might be disappointed with the canon relationship come Book 6. Which is the point you were trying to make, I suppose.

Just took me a little while to get it.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-08-14 02:30 (UTC) - Expand

Maybe I missed something in the original comment you replied to or in the secret I've already kind of forgotten, but I don't actually see a ton of people doing this thing that you claim.

Well earlier on I did write "Maybe not here, but I see tons of canon pairing fans (especially on tumblr) lamenting the prevalence of slash" which was what my point was about.

It's usually always tumblr. Not really a surprise there.

I've just seen some really nasty stuff -- like one user who tore a fic to shreds and called the author a misogynist because she had tagged it with the canon couple but broke them up. Which, okay, it's frustrating to have that happen. But this was a super long fic (over 100,000 words) and the canon relationship actually took up a good deal of the fic even though it wasn't endgame so I thought it was fair for the author to use the tag.

At the very least, I thought the author getting called a misogynist was way over the line.

"I mean, they don't HAVE to look at slash or talk about it, but slash fans certainly do have to watch the canon pairing."

Kinda hard NOT to look at it when slash fic writers are deliberately mistagging their fic with the canon het ship only to turn around and break up that ship (usually by bashing the female character) so that they can bring out the sausage fest. You want het fans to stop complaining about slash? Then start policing your own damn house.

Dude…it's ridiculously easy to tell when a fic is going to be slash. Just ask AO3 or fanfiction.net to filter out the slash tags. And if you're still worried about it, do a quick CTRL + F search on the fic for character names. If the female character is brought up less than the other male character then it's pretty obvious that it's slash.

I seriously don't understand why people get so mad about this. I've shipped Zuko/Mai for years and I've never had trouble finding fic even though I despise Zutara (which is overwhelmingly more popular). I just get recs from like-minded fans and use those tricks above.

Yeah, the Zutara fans will tag with Mai/Zuko just to break them up, but some people prefer to label their fics by all the content it contains so that they won't get complaints for having scenes at the beginning with the canon couple.

Just ask AO3 or fanfiction.net to filter out the slash tags.

Not gonna work if the fic is mistagged, is it?

I seriously don't understand why people get so mad about this.

You don't understand why someone would get mad about a fic being mistagged? You don't understand why someone would get mad that, in order to make sure that a fic they want to read actually involves the pairing it's tagged for, they have to search the thing for names and compare how often each one crops up?

Do you also not understand why Muslims get mad when people try to trick them into eating pork?

Wow…that comparison to Muslims -- way to make fanfic SRS business.

I honestly don't know what you mean by "Not gonna work if the fic is mistagged is it?" Writers never forget to tag the actual couple in the fic. So when I don't want a Zutara fic, I write "-Katara/Zuko" on AO3 and then on fanfiction.net, I filter Katara out. That alone will get rid of "mislabeled" fics and let me search for my Zuko and Mai fics easily.

I mean goodness, this isn't difficult -- given that Zutara is a noncanon pairing, if I see it in the title or description, I basically ALWAYS assume that it's endgame considering it's a fanon pairing. Why would you ever even open up a fic that has another non-canon pairing in the title?

And I've NEVER seen anyone tag something for JUST Mai/Zuko and then make it Zutara. Even simply because that would result in them getting a lot less hits. People always indicate the noncanon, endgame pairings.

The CTRL + F thing was just my suggestion if you need an extra way to check. But honestly? Filtering out the pairings works 99% of the time.

It just seems silly to me to accuse slashers of misconduct when a lot of people simply use the tag system as an indicator or warning of what's in the fic. Because there are people that want to know ahead of time what they can expect. They aren't doing it to be dicks but because it's important to a lot of people that they know what's coming.

I think a lot depends on the fandom and the writer, to be honest.

I don't have a horse in this particular race, but I've seen a LOT of authors tag their fics mendaciously, I assume to attract more readers. It's really despicable IMO, but I guess they're working on the same principle as spammers: higher volume = more hits/kudos/comments, even if some of the readers who were suckered in get royally pissed off.

I hate the phrase 'sausage fest', it reads degrading to me. I wouldn't say that a gay couple have a 's. fest' or something like that. Maybe it's just me.

It's mean to be degrading, not that anon above would admit to it.

OTOH it does mean I can use 'snausage fest' to refer to any event featuring a lot of dogs.

snausage, rofl.

DA

Ugh, this so much. These were the first experiences I had when I stumbled across slash years ago and it's soured me towards the genre ever since.

Don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to anything else.

I'll tag everything, even if it's mentioned in passing, because I'd rather overtag than undertag. But I'll always say which ship is endgame. Lots of authors do that, if you care to look or ask.

I'll agree that bashing a female character to glorify the m/m pairing is a misogynist cliche, but if you think all slash fics are "sausage fests," you're either reading the wrong fics or have a far higher bar for what constitutes such a thing.

I see more comments deriding het fans for supposedly feeling persecuted than any of those fans actually saying they feel persecuted, at least in these threads.

Well, this.

It reminds me of the handful of the fundamentalist Christians I've met who complain bitterly about folks who supposedly object to (say) being wished a Merry Christmas. I always ask them, "Out of curiosity, have you personally ever met anyone who objected to that? Because I haven't. Ever. And I know lots of non-Christians, and I'm one, and I often wish other non-Christians a Merry Christmas, and I've never known anyone to get offended." So far I haven't met anyone who has actually experienced this 'horror'.

That's FOX New's fault though. Them and their "War on Christmas" and Christians Under Attack segments that they run EVERY year.

It also really depends on where you live.

I had the misfortune to grow up in one of the unhappiest, most conservative, most bigoted places in the United States. I mean, EVERY SINGLE DAY people would write letters to the editor of the newspapers ranting about how feminism, abortion, gay marriage, etc. was "ruining" the country. These people were 100% serious and they resembled every single stereotype of conservatives that liberals have.

It wasn't until I moved to a large city and met some level-headed conservatives that I even realized you could be one without being a raging loon.

So it depends on a lot of things. But those people definitely do exist. Moving to the large city also brought me into contact with some profoundly idiotic liberals as well (conspiracy theorists!).

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