fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #340 ]

[ SECRET POST #340 ]

⌈ Secret Post #340 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Posting for Shahni! And early because I've got ~~pseuicide~~ class.

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 150 secrets from Secret Submission Post #049.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 3 4 ] broken links, [ 1 2] not!secrets, 0 not!fandom.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 12th, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The part that's funny is that, you know, hetero stuff is the rule in mainstream culture. So I don't feel a lot of sympathy for those who aren't big on gay dudes. I just feel bad for the lesbians.

But see? A response like that is why it can be frustrating. Het shippers in fandom, who may very well be very supportive of homosexual relations in RL, are held responsible for stuff we had nothing to do with.

So what if hetero is the norm in RL? This is fandom, not RL. We are not allowed to have grievances because our preferred type of ship happens to be popular in mainstream culture?

Well, I don't know, but people tend to look at me oddly if I start ranting about how many heterosexual couples I see walking down the street holding hands and aren't I entitled to not have to wade through all those heterosexual girls to find a nice lesbian...

...How would you like your internets?

Again that's using a RL example, not a fandom one.

And if you did happen to be talking about a fandom with a very popular het ship (canon or not), I'd would wholeheartedly support your right to rant about not being able to find a slash ship, whether I shipped it as well or not.

The difference being that I do not come into any fandom expecting there to be slash. I know enough not to. I not only don't expect it to be a majority, I don't expect it at all.

People who like het come in with expectations. And I don't really care that now you feel disgruntled. Welcome to life. It sucks to be in the minority.

I was trying to draw a parallel-- it affects my life as a whole, but I can't rant about it in RL because people will see me as being entitled, so I suck it up and deal because I'm a minority, disgruntled, though I might be. If I can suck it up and deal every single day of my life, y'all can damn well deal in your funtimes-- especially considering that there certainly is plenty of het/gen in fandom, even if you have to look a bit.

(And I notice no one responded to my assertion that the secrets actually are overwhelmingly gen, not slash.)

I think a lot of times, people don't understand the problem with heteronormativity.

We can't get our fix of "gay is okay and normal and available in various forms in the entertainment media" irl. We can't get it on most tv shows, we can't get it in most books, we don't see it on billboards or TV advertisements or on the bus. We don't see it in the back rows at college classes, and we don't see girls kissing girls goodbye when they go to work or guys picking their boyfriends up after work. Our favorite fandoms actual canons? Generally don't have it. Generally, there's a fuckload of het in those, or a lot of gen, maybe some close friendships.

Where we can get a sight of something we can relate to in entertainment media? Fanworks. It's impossible to go "I didn't use a real world example, so you shouldn't either!" to someone who has next to nothing to relate to in popular entertainment culture. Fandom isn't separate from life; it's an entertainment medium.

So, yeah, if someone who likes het complains that they have some trouble finding it in fandom? I am going to think, knee-jerk, "cry moar", because ... wow, it's not like every channel on TV is showing some form of het shipping 99.5% of the time, right? Pick up a book in the bookstore. What's the chance that whatever you choose to relax with will have at least one het pairing in it? No, it's not fair for the OP to assume they can fairly "resent" it when over real life and broad entertainment media, they have so much there. :/ The OP can still do it! But I'm not gonna think it's fair of them. G-give us a break, let us have one area it's easy to find it in. :x

And this is coming from someone who writes yuri, het, yaoi, and gen, and has been wishing more people'd read her het -- but srsly.

Edited 2007-12-12 05:04 (UTC)

If I didn't have a girlfriend already, I would marry you right the hell now. Because that's it in a nutshell.

And I'm mostly gen/het/yuri with the occasional yaoi crackship.

And if I didn't have one already myself, I'd give a big thumb's up to that. *wg* It's like -- I can understand why people would be hurt if they thought they were being called homophobic! And while I wouldn't do that, I do think a lot of people living a heteronormative life are unaware of all the overtones of their heteronormative life because it's so...normal to them. *wg* I can't find books or tv shows with glbt characters by accident, I generally have to go to the bookstore with author names if I want something like that in my other entertainment media. Having fandom reverse that slightly is... well, I can't feel sorry for them or feel they're justified in resenting it because some of us get that all the time everywhere else in entertainment media. And sure, I'll read and enjoy het novels/tv shows/whatever! Doesn't mean I don't wish I could find more I could, well, relate to because it violates heteronormativity.

All good things. [nods] :D

Word. Not to mention that a lot of the time when you do find GLBT characters in mainstream media, they're so heavily stereotyped that I wish I hadn't found them.

Which is why even though the end of Deathly Hallows sucked IMO, I'm almost willing to forgive JKR for finally doing GLBT right; Dumbledore was a well-developed character first, and a gay man second.

Agreed, Rach!

I honestly don't get why people are bitching about the fact that she "should have" outed Dumbledore in the series itself -- why should she have? The fact that he was gay wasn't a defining character trait and I found that such a relief after so many years of "gay is either absent from or the only defining thing in a character" in entertainment culture.

*applause*

And then there's the fact that you can queer heterosexuality in fanfiction and not make it heteronormative like it is in media...

I think it can be done like that in popular media ...but generally speaking, it's not, because popular media attempts to speak to a broad mass audience, and getting a mass audience is best done by hitting broad, often-repeated points :/

I just wanna say that I <3 you so much right now. xD

We are not allowed to have grievances because our preferred type of ship happens to be popular in mainstream culture?

Ah, now you're catching on.

You may want to think about:
This is fandom, not RL.
in the context of:
our preferred type of ship happens to be popular in mainstream culture
and see what doesn't work logically in there. Just a suggestion.

Fandom is not necessarily the same as mainstream culture. Most fandoms are subcultures and do not necessarily follow the same gender norms as society as a whole (at least not North American society as a whole). Fandom types as a demographic tend to be more liberal and therefore open to a greater number of different types of sexual orientations.

I fail to see the logic problem.

Demographics will vary from fandom to fandom, but that's not the issue. The issue is more about the fact that heteronormativity in real life isn't the same thing as 'shipping fictional characters. Heteronormativity and homonormativity can affect someone's view of characters' relationships, but it's a difference of opinion about the love lives of fictional people, not a system of oppression that affects the real lives of very real people.

This is a tangent on what you two were discussing... because I'm tangenty that way. Hope ya don't mind.

One of the reasons I think there is so much slash in fandom is related directly to the fact there is so little mainstream media to fill that niche.

If I could flip on the boob tube to watch some pretty boys flirting, it would definitely be easier than trying to scour the pit for a readable fic. But, alas, it's not that abundant. So that leaves fanfic as a fun, quick fix. It's a refuge that's not readily available elsewhere.

So yeah, depending on your view, fandom can either be grossly skewed and overrun with too much slash fic...or (if on the other side) it can be seen as a refuge to find things you normally wouldn't be able to find in movies, tv, ads, billboards, magazines, etc...

We're never going to have a show with the two male leads flirting. So we fic it. Yay? :) I'm sorry if that disturbs people but I'm not sure what I can do to address that grievance.

We're never going to have a show with the two male leads flirting. So we fic it. Yay? :)

Yay! :)

I'm sorry if that disturbs people but I'm not sure what I can do to address that grievance.

Actually you don't have to do anything about it. No one is asking anyone to "do anything about it". Both sides just want equal ranting rights ;)

Both sides just want equal ranting rights ;)

But see, this is where I get confused. I haven't seen a rash of slashers ranting about gen/het. What'd I miss?

(And just to ward off anything too goofy, I'm sure people can always come up with a few cuckoos to get righteously indignant over. But getting het up over cuckoos is just, well, cuckoo.) :P

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #340 ]

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