[ SECRET POST #4688 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4688 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #671.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/J8fyRm5.png

[(Anonymous)]

For me, it's not often a self insert-esque thing and more "this is cute" or "this is interesting."
I think this works well describing video games where the character I want to marry isn't always who I'd want the protagonist with.

When it comes to women relationships, I do ship f/f less, but it's because there's often not a lot of meaningful interaction between female characters. This is definitely changing, though.

[(Anonymous)]

This might turn out to be a controversial statement (I honestly have no idea), but I feel like 98% of the time, slash fanfic feminizes the characters, to one degree or another.

Like, I don’t believe there’s one way that all women inherently are and another way that all men inherently are. But there are definitely ways of writing a character that make them come off more traditionally feminine as well as ways that make them come off more traditionally masculine. And IMO the characters in most slash fanfic feel way, way more relatable to me, as a woman, than the majority of male characters, written by men, in original fiction.

The thing is, I kind of get where you’re coming from, in that I often find it hard to relate to original male characters written by men. And every so often I’ll come across a fanfic where the characters are written in a very masculine way and I usually end up back-clicking because I just don’t vibe with them when they’re written that way.

But the majority of the time, I personally find the characters in slash fanfic very relatable - in part because to me they tend to come off as very gender neutral, sometimes even coming across a fair bit “girlier” than I am myself.

All that said, YMMV, and you do you. There’s nothing wrong with your preferences or your reasons for having said preferences.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're right about the feminizing, and I think it happens because women write men the way they wish men would be. And when a man criticizes it because real men aren't like that, my response is, that's on you. Real men could be like that if they weren't taught to be so afraid of being seen as feminine (and if we stopped characterizing those traits as feminine and feminine as bad).

[(Anonymous)]

This has always confused the heck out of me. Why do some people say that they "can't relate" to characters that are a different sex/race/sexual orientation/whatever to them? How do you enjoy fiction at all if you need every character to be like you in order to relate to or empathize with them?

I mean, if that's considered an acceptable excuse, then we shouldn't be condemning white people who say they can't relate to black characters, or men who say they can't relate to female characters, right?

[(Anonymous)]

IDK, there's women out there who are into slash specifically because they DON'T want there to be a woman in the mix that they could relate to.

[(Anonymous)]

i've never understood this either. i don't relate to characters, i like them. bc if i needed to relate to characters in order to be able to enjoy them then there'd be very few characters i'd actually enjoy?

[(Anonymous)]

Please don't compare sexuality to race or sex. Those are all very different things with very different complexities that aren't helped by such reductive comparisons.

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t think it’s about being unable to relate. I think it’s about how easy or difficult it is to relate, and how inclined a person is to make the effort.

Some characters are harder to relate to than others, maybe because their view of the world is quite different from ours, or because how they think and feel is quite different from how we do. In some cases a character may be hard to relate to but we want to make the effort to relate to them. In other cases, maybe we don’t want to make the effort to relate to them. In some cases a character may not even be that hard to relate to but we still don’t want to make the effort to relate to them because we just don’t like them. It’s really a mixed bag.

I also think there’s a difference between not wanting to make much effort to relate to fanfic characters, and never wanting to make any effort to relate to characters in original fiction. And I think there’s a big difference between that, and being actively set against relating to certain types of characters in fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

OP here, I'm not cool with the implication that I'm dehumanizing gay men just because they don't turn me on?

I rhink reading a m/m fic makes me feel like I'm a third party spying on a couple. If it's a m/f or f/f fic I find it much easier to recognize the dynamic from a woman's perspective, so it feels more personal and intimate.

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously. The only character I can think of EVER that I felt like I couldn't relate to AT ALL was the protagonist in a (pretty awful) book, who was demographically the same as me (young straight white woman). Most of my favorites are different than me in at least one way and I have no problems relating to them.

[(Anonymous)]

I know, right? I thought shipping was about liking the potential dynamics between two characters not having to be able to relate to them.

[(Anonymous)]

*puzzled* You mean...you prefer femslash (lesbian pairings)? I feel like if you meant het you would've said so? Femslash flourishes most often in fandoms where there are actually more than two interesting, well written women, who frequently interact, and have a relationship that isn't dependent on their connection to a male character. But the communities are out there.

Or you can "genderswap".

[nightscale]

There's nothing wrong with not jiving with something every else does(or what seems like everyone else), but I can absolutely get how it can be lonely to like something that your friends aren't into.

Saying that, if you're a fan of femslash OP there are several fandoms that have f/f pairings at the centre of them so there is at least something out there for you. There's also het fandoms too, but for both it really does depend on what kind of genre you're into and the types of dynamics you go for(generally het and femslash love their canon-ships, but there are some decent non-canon fandoms of both around).

[(Anonymous)]

I ship both m/m and f/f, but I rarely ship m/f. I'm not really sure why. Most of my ships don't turn me on, but I like exploring their dynamics and I guess it's easier to do that if I feel like I'm a third party observer and m/f ships ruin that distance. Something like that anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

i feel ya op, m/m ships don't do anything for me either. sometimes i'll see a m/m ship and be "oh that's kinda cute i suppose" but m/m ships never spark anything more than that in me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[rosehiptea]

I have a couple of m/m ships but generally I can't relate to them either. I'm not going to say it's because I'm a woman, because clearly lots of women are very into m/m but I just can't get into it myself. These days I'm more into f/f. (I'm also more into admitting I'm not straight, and those two things may not be 100% unrelated.) I think some of my issue is that some relationship dynamics I enjoy don't seem to show up in m/m but it could be I'm just not looking for them because I don't really care that much.

[(Anonymous)]

It’s perfectly valid and fine if slash is just never your flavor.

But for the record, I shipped exclusively het until I was 24 because I just never connected with any slash pairings. At which point I’d been in fandom for about a decade. Then I clicked with a slash pairing and was ALL IN on that pairing for a very long time. And once I’d gotten used to shipping slash with that pairing, I started to have a lot more interest in other slash pairings as well.

So like, it’s not impossible for your tastes to change over time. Even though it’s completely ok if they don’t.

[(Anonymous)]

I ship m/m parings almost exclusively, probably for the same reasons you dislike them. I find male relationships more interesting because I'm not one, so all of it is newer and more exciting even if it's all the same thing. I can't really get into ships with woman in them because I have all those parts, and I just don't find them interesting. I've really only got into het ships very recently.
I'm sick so this probably makes no sense;;

[(Anonymous)]

I ship mostly m/m and m/f. Not to say I don't have ANY f/f ships because I do have a few, and I'll ship anything where I like the characters' chemistry/dynamic, but for whatever reason that usually ends up being ships with at least one guy. It's interesting how everyone's so different!

[(Anonymous)]

Hahahaha same here, a bit different but I would talk about slash pairings and whatever with my slash friends and girlfriends who shipped slash, but after I stopped being friends with them all I started shipping more f/f and enjoying myself and realised how indifferent I was to m/m and that I'd only really used it as a conversation thing for my whole fandom experience. Sometimes it be like that. Luckily I'd only been in fandom for like, what, 7-8 years or something? So it's not so bad. I made some good friends while it lasted. Glad to hear you know yourself OP

[(Anonymous)]

It's about liking the dynamic between two characters, not inserting yourself into it or being "relatable".

You realize men are not a completely different species that makes it impossible to understand their thoughts and emotions?

[(Anonymous)]

I was raised in a really conservative christian house but also had unmonitored internet access. I remember being really anti-m/m pairings, definitely for homophobic "religious" reasons. I was hardline m/f shipper and couldn't understand why fangirls were so into m/m pair's. I also remember I was into some f/f pairs because they seemed harmless. I was a hypocrite.

Things are different now. I ship based on character dynamics and chemistry, not whether it's a relationship I can see myself in.

[(Anonymous)]

I get this. I've a few m/m ships, but it's mostly m/f or f/f for me as well. Partly because I find the m/m dynamics less interesting to me, but also because generally I prefer canon based ships, and there seem to be fewer canon m/m ships in my fandoms.

I can relate to this secret

[(Anonymous)]

Dude, I'm the same. I've been into fandoms for almost two decades now, and there's only two m/m ships I've kinda liked (though the second was more like crack ship). I guess for me it's necessary to have a female character who I can use as a kind of self-insert. I do think m/m action is hot, but I'm not interested in romance between two men. I actually prefer even f/f over m/m.

But it's kinda pity not to be into m/m. Altough lots of it seems to be low quality, I've read some interesting summaries of them, and it makes me think why does no one write f/m like this? Lots of f/m have stereotypical gender roles with male being the protector and female who must be projecte, even if the relationship is seemingly equal.