fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3481 ]

[ SECRET POST #3481 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3481 ⌋

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

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[person of interest]

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03.

[Red/Red 2]

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[Evoland 2]

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07. [SPOILERS for Oxenfree]
[WARNING for suicide]

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08. [WARNING for real people death?]

[French politics]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #497.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

#6 has me wondering. Does slash fandom have a lot more dark fics, or a lot darker fics, than femslash fandom? Generally speaking.

I find it to be true esp w/r/t noncon and dubcon which seem to be a staple in everything where two guys exist to be slashed, but what are your experiences?

just from my own personal experiences, I've generally found that to be the case although I've seen a reasonable amount of dark femslash in the Dragon Age fandom. but I haven't perused the femslash in every fandom, of course, so I'm sure other people might have had different experiences

AYRT

True that, I've found dark femslash fic in games and series that were already canonically dark, but mostly only those. It's not like picking up literally any happy anime or any comedy tv series and someone's written a A/B/O rape fic about at least two guys in it.

ayrt

It's not like picking up literally any happy anime or any comedy tv series and someone's written a A/B/O rape fic about at least two guys in it.

yeah, the only femslash example I can think of for that off the top of my head is the Pitch Perfect fandom. I remember there being a lot of angsty/dark Becca/Chloe. I don't think there was an excess of noncon, but I remember seeing more than a few where Becca's dad or Jesse abused and/or raped her (a lot of people hated Jesse for some reason so he was villainized a ton. I thought he was alright)

Yes. But slash also has wayyyyyyy more fic, writers, and readers. It would make sense they would be able to explore less popular themes and genres.

Oh, of course. But you'd think the percentage wise would be more similar. I wasn't talking about raw numbers of fic.

There's *so much* casual h/c for example in slash fandom. I wouldn't even call it "less popular."

Hmm. Or maybe those are just prevelant themes in fandom (particularly juggernaut fandoms), and slash is more common generally (particularly in juggernaut fandoms, again), so it just seems that way?

Um well. For some reason I never want to see my femslash pairings hurt in any way. Slash pairings though I like to tear down to the ground. Which is even more confusing because I tend to see myself more in slash pairings, whereas femslash pairings are always more like writing about friends who I want to be happy.

I have no idea why this is, have never really thought about it until now and am vaguely disturbed by the whole thing.

Absolutely. There's a very self-conscious (and paradoxically, kind of sexist) feeling of "anything goes, the boys can handle it" when it comes to slashfic - ie, the idea that it's fine to subject male characters to all kinds of pain, indignity, rape, humiliation, violence, degradation, harassment, bigotry, etc that completely breaks them down into traumatized trembling sobbing messes because the intrinsic worth and dignity and likability and sympatheticness of the character will not be tarnished by subjecting them to this sort of torment.

But with female characters, it feels like no, it's not okay to subject female characters to rough treatment, unless you do it very carefully, and have very good reasons, and put in lots of qualifiers about how the female character is TOTALLY NOT BROKEN BY THIS SUFFERING or how the torment or violence she is subjected to is carefully tasteful and restrained (or at least full of fade-to-black) and does not contain the bubbling id-y excesses of the abuse male characters can be subjected to.

Weirdly, this is, of course, the EXACT opposite of canon books/movies/TV: where it's okay to subject female characters to all kinds of horrific indignities and humiliations and degradations in great detail and have her react in a believably undignified, emotional, broken fashion, but a ~heroic main male character~ must be subjected to only carefully circumscribed types of violence that preserve his dignity and strength and agency (even if the violence itself is more severe).

I have a theory that we've all been taught that victimizing fictional women or portraying women as evil is so bad that we're doubly reluctant to do it if it's two women involved, and slash is an easy way to soothe the conscience by going well, it's a man that's a victim of an equal, not a man victimizing a woman... so it's okay.

That's sexism, plain and simple.

I mean, I think it's partially a reaction to canon. Personally, if canon will give me my angst or fluff fix, it's the other I'll want to read about.

Fanfic authors: predominantly female.

Canon authors: predominantly male.

There's your answer. We all feel more comfortable breaking and degrading the other. It's safer.

I'm not sure about that, or we'd be breaking a lot more POC instead of fixating on the white person's pain all the time.

Canons I think do it to women because women have a default victim status so it's more shocking to the audience and has a bigger effect if it's the woman that gets victimized. Whereas they might laugh at a male victim or find it ridiculous. Assuming the typical mixed audience.

Fanfic is sadly better about male victims being perceived as victims, but I think avoids making female into victims because its culturally seen as "worse" because women are "weaker" and a lot of us grew up with people pushing for "strong female characters" all the time.

That is an excellent point. I'd never thought about it that way.

It strikes a chord with me, though. I'm just... bored, of female victims. It's so played out. That's why I don't write them. If someone wants one they can turn around and trip over a thousand; I'm not depriving them of anything.

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-16 00:29 (UTC) - Expand

I'm not sure about that, or we'd be breaking a lot more POC instead of fixating on the white person's pain all the time.

I get where you're coming from, but I think you're missing something important. Gender otherness markers and racial otherness markers really don't occupy the same mental space, or function the same psychologically. "Men are beautiful when they suffer" simply isn't the same sentence as "Latinos are beautiful when they suffer", especially not when we're talking about the erotic id.

ayrt

Yeah, that's partly it, but I think it's also that fanfic is a reaction to canon, and fanfic authors are uncomfortable writing fic that's too similar - even superficially too similar - to the male-gaze-y, exploitative violence that is common in a lot of canon works (and even when the violence isn't male-gaze-y and exploitative, it still feels sexist simply because there's so little of that no-holds-barred, emotional, broken-down type of violence against male characters, especially heroic male characters.)

Even though dark/violent and h/c male slashfic can subject male characters to this while also being sympathetic and well-characterized and retain the reader's respect for the character, I feel like people have some sort of unconscious instinctive reaction that if a female character is subjected to this kind of violence, she automatically, magically becomes a sex object and your story becomes misogynistic (because it has some superficial similarities to the misogynistic torture fanservice that's splattered all over mainstream media), no matter how well-characterized and sympathetic the female character is. And people don't even BOTHER to try to do it properly and Make It A Thing.

I understand it, but it's just super frustrating and winds up treating female characters as fragile -- not "character" in the sense of a person who happens to be fictional, like "this fictional human being is fragile", but "character" in the sense of an element of a piece of writing - a "this fictional character is a precarious piece of writing and cannot possibly retain my readers' respect and interest if I let X happen to her."

I guess, but I still see female victim-hood in het fics. A lot. Especially in more heavily male-dominated fandoms. Nobody seems to worry that they've become a sex object (even when they... honestly kind of have). Plus there's such a history of female victimization that even if she is well-characterized and decidedly not a sex object you run the risk of using some other tired trope, like the rape avenger or what have you.

I'm not sure slash fandom's avoidance of female victimization out of fear of perpetuating stereotypes (and thus potentially reinforcing the notion that they're "fragile") is inherently inferior to het or canon's eagerness to have them play the victim's role and avoidance of male victimization, though.

I don't know... in canon I think that, if anything, lesbians get darker treatment than gays (hence the "dead lesbian" trope) and male authors love to have them raped, with plenty of h/c.

But that ties in to my comment above: it's safer to do it to the other, or to experience by proxy, not as self.

Some women do put themselves into the role of the male character getting hurt, it's true (as do some men the woman) but it's not as close to home that way. It's also easier to fantasize about it being somehow sexy or enjoyable when you don't have those parts and don't honestly know better.

Some women do put themselves into the role of the male character getting hurt, it's true (as do some men the woman) but it's not as close to home that way.

I think that's part of it, but more specific: if you're a woman, and it's happening to you-in-the-shoes-of-a-male-character, it's happening to you because of a reason other than your gender, other than "this is what happens to women, because they're women", which is a paranoia that overhangs womens' RL experience so suffocatingly that you can only find catharsis through bad things happening to you if they're not happening because you're a woman.

Like, instead, you are having bad things happen to "you" in the form of a male character you relate to, for reasons like "I am a handsome man" or "I am a member of an oppressed fictional race" or "I am a gay man" or "I am X character who lives in Y situation and has a history of Z types of life experiences" or "I am a cool and important figure in a meaningful and important story and evil people want to do bad things to me" or "I have a fucked-up relationship with a person, but none of the fucked-up-ness has to do with gender dynamics."

Basically, it's do bad things to "me," I love imagining myself in the shoes of someone who is suffering horrible unfair things, but please don't do bad things to be because I am a woman." And it's just very hard for some fans to see ANY female character being subject to ANY violence for ANY reason, no matter how totally unrelated to gender the in-story reason for the violence may be, without seeing the violence as something that is happening to her because she is a woman.

(Similarly, from what I've seen, gay men are not as keen as straight women on violent darkfic where bad things happen to a character specifically because he's a gay man. Same with fans, even female fans, who are racial minorities and violent darkfic where bad things happen to a character because he's a member of a minority race, fictional or otherwise.)

The ubiquity of "it's because you're a woman" social narrative is definitely a factor.

But looking at things like: men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime, growing up with brothers and male friends and seeing just how vulnerable and terrified they can be, how they can be abused by authority figures just as readily, also make me take a dim view of the "female as victim, male as impervious hero" narrative. I'm not just tired of it personally, it's also dumb and unrealistic.

I used to jog at night (now I'm paid to do it during work hours ~~yay~~) because it was cooler out and there was less traffic, and people always acted like I'd grown a third head. Didn't I know that I was going to be mugmurderraped, for sure?! When I pointed out that men are actually much more likely to be assaulted when walking alone, and women are more likely to be assaulted in their own homes by friends and acquaintances, it was a whole sputtering paradigm shift.

The most frightened of violent assault I've ever been was when I was mistaken for a man, walking with a male friend, and a huge group of drunk frat boys came over and threatened to beat us up. They were dead serious, and the only thing that stopped it was an eagle-eyed cop who saw what was brewing and drove up and scattered them.

It's car crashes versus plane crashes. If the plane you're in crashes, there's nothing you can do to defend yourself, so people are terrified of them even though they're much less likely to occur. If the car you're in crashes, you're in control, you can see yourself walking out. So we're not afraid.

If a woman is attacked alone on the street at night, it's a plane crash. We don't imagine there's anything she can do about it. Even if she does fight back, it might only make him angrier... it's terrifying. The only solution is not to fly. Or fly but if you do crash, you were helpless.

If a man is attacked it's a car crash. He's as likely to win as the other guy, and if he doesn't, he failed fight/drive well. That's on him. We can imagine him walking away. It's also pedestrian: happens every day, not worth comment. That plane crash'll be on every channel, though.

Of course, this is bullshit: women are significantly less likely to be raped or murdered by an attacker if they fight back; a much smaller man has about as much chance of beating off a much larger man as a Kia getting T-boned by a semi-trailer - and worse, that man is expecting him to fight back and came prepared, usually with friends, while the one who attacks a woman is often alone and often won't be.

None of this changes the fact that people remain terrified of plane crashes and numb to the multiple orders of magnitude higher traffic deaths.

I still fly, though. And I'm going to write it like it really is.

Holy shit, I love your metaphor. I may steal it. Thank you for thinking about this issue on a real level.

At least in my fandoms, the authors writing femslash are queer women, while the authors writing male slash are all over the board, many of them straight or at least guy leaning women.

It isn't so much that writing bad shit happening to the other is easier. It's that they're intentionally adding stories that they can relate to into canon. They want lesbian relationships in there because they never see them, and they want them to be fluffy because when they DO happen there's that "dead lesbian" trope, or at least "woe is me lesbianism is so HARD" trope.

They want fluff because they frankly never get to see fluff. Whereas women who date men can see that in canon itself. They don't need to insert that because it's already there for them, or in any romance novel they want to pick up. If you want a lesbian romance novel fanfic can be the best way to go because... well frankly a lot of the published work either sucks or is entirely porn. It's just not out there.

Edited 2016-07-16 05:29 (UTC)

This also, I think, is mostly the reason why f/f fandom seems to care approximately 100x more about whether something is canon than m/m fandom.

Well, factor in the fact that lesbians actually had a chance of becoming canon even if the characters in question weren't established as 100% dyke from the outset, that this has been this way for decades (since at least the 90s: see Buffy and DS9) and... gay couples generally don't. Even now.

Sure, people tut-tuted over Korra and Asami (I'm talking people outside of 4chan) but it seems like canon creators perceived that people will lose their minds if men they thought were straight turn out to be bi or gay, and characters that are bi are often straight-washed for the purposes of not upsetting them (see: Constantine).

So yeah, femmeslash fans care about things being canon because they actually do have a chance - albeit slim - of becoming canon. Especially if they rattle enough cages. Slash fans have zero chance, so it doesn't matter to them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3481 ]

TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Re: TW: discussion of possibly triggery themes in fic?

Incoming TEAL DEER and strained metaphor

Re: Incoming TEAL DEER and strained metaphor

I actually think it's way simpler than that.

Re: I actually think it's way simpler than that.

Re: I actually think it's way simpler than that.