[ SECRET POST #343 ]

[degrees.livejournal.com]

⌈ Secret Post #343 ⌋

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

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Notes:

If I may direct your attention to this poll → HERE

EDIT: I removed a few secrets because it was just brought to my attention (I have a crappy memory) that people are being banned for being flagged for this kind of stuff. SORRY. D:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #049.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, [ 1 2 ] not!secrets, 0 not!fandom [ 1 ] secret revisted/link to fanfiction.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Saturday, December 15th, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here CLOSED.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: 14

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

regarding Japanese smilies: ^_^ is male. ^.^ is usually female, ^^ is a shortened version that can be used by most genders.

Re: 14

[(Anonymous)]

hah hah apparently none of the japanese blogs i read have every heard of this. ^_^ is all over the place on female blogs.

Re: 14

[databomb.livejournal.com]

Okay I see your point but awkjenflawef no offense, but I don't think anyone really pays attention to that? Like, a smiley's a smiley, and the consensus seems to be that most guys don't use smileys much - sparingly, if at all - especially ones like "^_^" that are generally regarded as cute? awkefnlawef not trying to argue anything, but this whole thing about smileys, uh, yeah.

Also I don't think many people use ^.^, girl or guy, everyone just uses ^_^, so even if this gender thing is clear in Japan, it kind of doesn't apply in the English realm where everyone just uses the "male version"?

Re: 14

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I still, however, don't understand why using smilies makes you a bad person or "not a real man." Some of us like to be cute, and most of the time when I use smilies, it's to convey that I'm not mad or that I'm joking or something that the text alone won't.

Re: 14

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn't. It just makes it hard to believe for some people.

Are you saying that if you run across someone saying *giggles* ^_^ kawaii!! you don't assume it's a girl?

Re: 14

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't, since I don't judge gender until someone tells me.

Re: 14

[infringe.livejournal.com]

... I find it hard to believe that you, or anyone else for that matter, don't have first impressions. It's like basic human nature. Even if you say that you don't judge gender at first sight, somewhere, in the back of your mind, a tiny part of you would be nagging and saying that hey, that person must be a girl.

Re: 14

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

Not online. I know, it's weird, but in an online setting, if there's no indicators beyond smilies, I don't read gender until told. Now, if the person's entire profile was pink and purple, if everything they said had a dozen smilies in it, if all their usericons were cutesy things aside from one of a really hot man, I'd assume they were a girl or that Miyavi finally stopped lurking and got an LJ, but there has to be a lot more cues than smilies.

Re: 14

[mercale.livejournal.com]

Just how many males that use smilies do you run into on the internet, pray tell.

Re: 14

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

I've known at least five. . .

Re: 14

[mercale.livejournal.com]

Five... Out of how many males on the internet?

Re: 14

[xreddestinyx.livejournal.com]

I only have a few males on my list, and all of them use smilies (of both the vertical and horizontal type) at least once in a while. :/

It seems to be less of a "girl" thing and more of an "internet" thing. It's just something that helps people get the tone of what you're saying.

Re: 14

[xreddestinyx.livejournal.com]

I never assume gender on the internet at first, either. I'm usually just curious but it's an awkward question to ask so I just wait. XD

Re: 14

[lanjelin.livejournal.com]

Just jumping in to say, I presume everybody on the internet is female until proved otherwise. Yeah, completely irrational, but since fandom is populated mostly by women, it's just turned out that way. It doesn't matter how they write, heh.

(Also, most people I know in RL don't fit gender stereotypes at all, which has helped me in my quest to rid myself of gender sterotype prejudice.)

Re: 14

[eiei.livejournal.com]

I agree with you lol, I can't help it.
I auto thinks guys don't write fanfics and stuff. But this is only for fandoms.

Re: 14

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

I do that with fandom, absolutely - but if I'm on IRC or whatever I always assume whoever I'm talking to is a guy. My nick on IRC is pretty gender-neutral and I always get taken for a guy there. I think most people on IRC assume male-ness. Online gaming is the same way - even if you play a female sprite they assume you're a guy (but they hit on you anyway if your avatar is hot. I mean, WTF, these guys are mostly straight, right?)

It constantly bugs me that fandom is mostly female. I mean, I like it fine, but why is it that way? It drives me nuts thinking about it.

Re: 14

[lanjelin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I meant in fandom, of course. I don't use IRC very often, but when I played WoW I already had the habit, and totally, assumed most people I met were female, haha. I know that most people in online gaming is male, it's just a reflex nowadays.

It constantly bugs me that fandom is mostly female. I mean, I like it fine, but why is it that way? It drives me nuts thinking about it.

This really interests me too. One reason is almost certainly that boys aren't really encouraged to play "quiet" games when they're small (or throughout their lives), like writing and telling stories, while girls always recieve praise when they're sitting quietly in a corner making up stories about their dolls (or whatever), and not making trouble.

So, at least partly a conditioned behaviour, I think.

Also, when they do grow up, the interests that they've been conditioned to have are readily available everywhere. Some of then things found in fandom can't actually be found anywhere else.

Take slash for example. The most popular pairings are between characters who are essentially on the same level. This is very rare in male/female romance, and as women have always been expected to be able to identify with any type of character (as opposed to men, who're expected to only be able to identify with male characters), we can still connect with the romance, while having characters on equal footing.

Then there's the enjoyment of putting male characters in the vulnerable position; making them extreme bottoms/uke. It's not really my kink, but I can enjoy it every now and then. Having a male character crying, having to ba saved, exhibiting all the traditionally "female" attributed in a story can feel very satisfying.

And then, of course, there's the "normal" queer character. That is, a charcter who's gay (or bi, or just not traditionally heterosexual) but is featured in a story that's not about their sexuality. They are heroes in a fantasy/sci-fi/alternative world, and though the stories are mostly about romance, it's the love that's the focus of the story, not the sexuality of the participants.

I mean, just try and find a film, or book, or even a comic that's about a gay chatacter and doesn't focus on AIDS/gaybashing/prejudice/omgTRAUMA.

I think this is why there are so many bi/gay women in fandom. Even though we're mostly writing about male characters, we write about charcters who get to be themselves first, and their sexuality only affects who they fall in love with. Many of us are extremely tired of the gay/bi stereotypes, even the "positive" ones.

Er, sorry for the extreme tl;dr. I'm going to write an essay one day, I think.XD

Re: 14

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I like the tl;dr and I've been wanting to bounce ideas off someone about this.

...I just spent twenty minutes trying to track down statistics on male and female published writers in recent years and I couldn't find satisfactory, non-genre specific stats but - in all the articles I found (which were on SciFi/Fantasy and general interest magazines), men outnumbered women at about three to one. Even if you take, say, the romance genre to balance it out, you're probably not going to go past 50/50, and I think it's safe to say that women don't have more fiction published than men (and these were statistics of recently published work, like in the last couple years or so) While you might make a case for gender-based discrimination in the industry, it doesn't nullify the fact that men also enjoy writing.

So why is fanfic-writing female (almost) across the board? Sure, slash has become tightly linked to fandom, but it's kind of a chicken or the egg situation - is fandom full of slash because it's comprised of women, or is fandom full of women because there's lots of slash?

There's no law saying that what we have to write should always be romance, but fandom is full of it (shippers ahoy!), presumably because that's what women are interested in.

(On a similar track, most doujinshi-ka in Japan are also women - so it's not purely a culturally-related thing.)

Ahem. Anyway, I guess going back to what you said - that fandom has things (like slash) that you don't get in mainstream media. But why wouldn't gay/whatever guys be into reading about non-stereotyped not-focusing-on-gay-issues fic, too? Why just women?

But fandom isn't just about slash, and it's not even just about shipping - the unifying element is the fact that it's derivative. Yeah, sure you can divide it up into slashers and het-shippers and genficcers, but in the end they're all part of 'fandom x'. Orig-stuff exists online, (fictionpress and the like) but it isn't half of the monster (and I mean that in a good way ;D) that fandom is.

And it's not as if mainstream media doesn't have good female characters in it, otherwise we wouldn't be ficcing them! ...although I'm pretty sure the writers in most TV shows, for example, are largely male. Don't quote me on this.

And it's not as if guys don't have their own sort of 'fandom'. The vidding community - like at animemusicvideos.org - is mostly male. There exist plenty of male-dominated forums and fansites for popular media - the one that comes to mind, for me, is Skullknight.net, a Berserk fansite. Mostly what they've got there is an encyclopedia, forums to discuss theories and inanities, forums for photo manips and colourings, etc. There's a bit of fanart and an okeaki board, but the fanart is far outnumbered by the colourings, and of course there is not a fic to be found.

At any rate, it came to me a while ago - and I don't know if I'm way off base or what - but guys in general seem to be the 'ultimate canon-whores'. Guys are interested in the media and what is, but girls are interested in what could be. A guy will draw a fanart of Harry Potter waving his wand around, but a girl will draw him as a skate-punk macking on the goth Draco. (Yes, this is a grand generalization. I still think it stands... kind of.)

Anyway, that was a really tl;dr response that essentially boils down to 'dammit, I don't actually know.'

Re: 14

[mercale.livejournal.com]

First impressions are always made, regardless of one admits to them or not. It is human nature.

Re: 14

[databomb.livejournal.com]

awenfklawef personally, I think it's the combination of the "*giggles*" and the action that the secret is pointing out - I've never seen a guy do it - so uhhh yeah. Not arguing anything, just my two cents! alwkejfnalwkef

Re: 14

[alicornmoon.livejournal.com]

I use ^.^
I have always used it, but then I learned the gender meaning at the same time I learned about the smilies themselfs... So ^.^ it is! It's actually faster than ^_^ to boot ;)

Re: 14

[(Anonymous)]

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Re: 14

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

Read down the thread.

Re: 14

[(Anonymous)]

I was referring to the fact that I didn't think anybody could get that immersed in bullshit semantics.

Re: 14

[enjolras.livejournal.com]

Oh geeeez.