[ SECRET POST #5888 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5888 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 41 secrets from Secret Submission Post #843.
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]

06. https://i.imgur.com/vh1M53m.png

[(Anonymous)]

Same, and the reason at least for me is simple, OP. It's because in specificidentitylabel-fic, just like in realworldpolitics-fic or charactersarerandomlyrealworldreligious-fic, are invariably characters and plot are being used as vehicles to promote the author's thoughts on some issue, not a story being told because the author loves the characters in their own right.

It doesn't matter which side or angle the author takes and it doesn't matter whether or not I agree with the author's stances. Even if I 100% agree with what the author thinks, the fact that characters are just hollow mouthpieces for an author agenda, often a modern-day-specific agenda with terms that don't match the characters' original circumstances, world, or time period at all, makes the story itself invariably sub-par at best, because the priority and focus are not on character or story.

"But anon," you might protest. "There are plenty of stories that coincidentally show author stances that I wouldn't call specificidentitylabel-fic!" and I would reply that you are correct, but if you "wouldn't call it specificidentitylabel-fic" it's by definition outside the scope of what we are talking about. An story in which everyone is a pirate in warring factions with high seas drama in the age of sail and also one character happens to be what we in modern day would call nonbinary is probably not going to be referred to as "The Nonbinary Sam Fic" because that's not the focus at all, nor does the story revolve around that point. If it's egregious enough to be labeled a label-fic, it's already in its own category.

[(Anonymous)]

Totally agree with all of this: there's a big difference between 'fic about a character dealing with a thing that clearly aligns with specificidentitylabel' and 'fic about specificidentitylabel through the paper-thin guise of a character'.

I believe the term is "issuefic" (i.e., a fic that is more about a specific issue, identity, etc, than it is about anything else).

[(Anonymous)]

Well said!

[tabaqui]

You hit the nail on the head, Anon.

[(Anonymous)]

Fully agree with you

[(Anonymous)]

Well said, Anon.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes!
Great comment

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe because often those fics feel more like the author inserted themselves and their experiences into the character in a way that still makes it feel like the character? At least in my experience that's often the problem. I'm very much here for some character changes/additions/headcanons and sometimes even tweaking some personality stuff if it's a very different from canon AU, but they're often written in a way that feels like someone else completely. (Not judging the authors, it's just not something I like in fic)

SA who is apparently to tired to type

[(Anonymous)]

*that DOESN'T still make it feel like the character

[(Anonymous)]

Same.

As soon as an author starts tagging 'Character A Is X', I don't even bother clicking in. Invariably, those sorts of tags are shorthand for "this is a fic about X, and the author might as well have picked any other character in any other fandom for all that it has to do with A".

All the more so because most of my fandoms are fantasy or fantasy-adjacent, where those terms would not exist and make zero sense anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

They wanted to write a story that would fit better on fictionmania or shifti, but didn't want to admit to being a fictionmania or shifti type of writer.

[(Anonymous)]

Same. That's why I cannot read a friend's fics even if I love the character A because I feel they're using it more like an "alter-ego" or "self insert" than the character's personality on their own. I know that's why AUs are for, but you can sense is not Character A at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Ouch.

I tend to tag 'Character A is X' and had no idea-- but that would explain why I get people asking "How is A even X in this story?", because... I'm just using canon traits as a basis and it's not the plot of the fic, and they were looking for an issuefic.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. Not "strongly agreed" that I want to read fic of characters that act like me. Strongly agreed, though, that "labeling" characters' issues sucks big time.

[(Anonymous)]

same but with my identity and diagnosis. There is just more comfort when it's dealt with indirectly?

[(Anonymous)]

As a trans, gay, autistic guy, I have written favorite characters as trans and gay and autistic... but like, I HATE the way a lot of other writers do it! You can't slap the current 'most correct' way of being X onto a character who grew up in a specific environment/historical era/fantasy universe and have it feel true! You can't throw in a bunch of things that are counter to who the character is!

If I write a character as autistic it's because I've seen relatable autistic traits in them-- and so I write about those things. I don't give them stuff off a checklist, because that's bad writing. Established characters HAVE established traits, if they didn't already feel autistic (or potentially queer), I wouldn't want to read/write about that.

But there are so many fics where like... a character being trans means they fit some idealized version of transitioning that wouldn't be probable or even possible in the canon setting, where the author didn't bother to think about what being trans was like in the past even though we have records of what life was like and how people transitioned and how they were talked about and treated (for contemporary historical fandoms, stuff set anywhere from 20-80 years ago where there are documented lives of trans people and social groups, but the process and the language around it were NOT what they are today). Or where a character being autistic means they suddenly behave very differently from in canon, have a weighted blanket, etc...

I get not wanting to read ANY fic about those identities when you run into fics that only show ONE way of being any given thing, and it isn't something that feels true to you as a reader OR to the character.

[scissorsevered]

I see this issue especially with making characters trans. I really cannot stand it when people write characters from media taking place in a time prior to when trans people were generally accepted and then just make everyone magically accepting. Obviously I'm not saying that trans people didn't exist prior to the past 10 years, but acting like this character in the 1980s is a transman and everyone is cool with it doesn't make sense.

[(Anonymous)]

Like, there were DEFINITELY periods within recent history where being trans was more accepted than it is now, we're seeing a big upswing there, but it also wasn't as openly UNDERSTOOD, and in the 1980s, the way transitioning was talked about and the way it was handled was radically different from today. But I NEVER see those realities talked about.

Like, when I write a character from the 80s as a trans man-- as I sometimes do-- for starters, neither he nor anybody else says 'trans'. I try to strike a balance between the language of the time and words younger readers would find shocking or offensive (which is an argument I don't have the energy for when I'm trying to enjoy fanfic writing), maybe talk around naming it overtly. He doesn't have a binder, any packing he does is of the stuffed sock variety, surgery was generally for people who had the means to come out *after* having had it...

For me, the thing about being queer and autistic is, one of my lifelong hyperfixations has been queer history in general and the 1980s moreso within that. So it's why I am drawn to those stories, but also why it takes me RIGHT out of it if all the dialogue sounds like a lecture written by a modern teenager, or if there are just a couple major ahistorical details. Like... you don't have to use the word 'transsexual' (even though trans people did and DO) or write about unsafe binding methods, but the slightest bit of research would make a difference.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never been interested in those headcanons either, but it's because, in my experience, the author has the character go on a long, Wikipedia-like explanation of what it means to be ace or trans or whatever. Stuff like that takes me right out of the story.

[scissorsevered]

It's like they feel the need to justify making the character trans to avoid seeming like they're "fetishizing" trans people or whatever. Fanfic isn't activism. If you want to make a male character trans, make him trans. No need to go into this entire rant in order to seem like you're doing the "correct" way of writing a trans character.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh god yes I can't stand it.
I've read fics where characters had also full conversations with labels. For example character A saying "I've met people like you, they called ace blah blah". MOTHERFUCKER WE ARE IN A FANTASY 19TH CENTURY WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT

Still I am all for some headcanons that thrive on canon character traits. This person isn't going to have romantic feeling or this one isn't going to have sex, or this one has a lot of pain days and this guy knows suspiciously a lot about periods. I am all for headcanons. Just please write it in naturally.
/end rambling

[(Anonymous)]

Hard same, OP! I just scroll past those tags.

[pantswarrior]

...I can kind of go both ways on this, because like the secret above, some people actually seek out stories where character is explicitly [identity], and I'd kind of like to tag my stuff that has headcanons where I consciously write characters that way so they can find it.

On the other hand, as noted, a lot of stuff tagged with identity labels tends to be the author's views on that identity, or the story is all about finding that right label or whatever, and that's... not what I'm writing.

I was going to tag one smut fic I wrote last year with "tell me you're demi without actually saying you're demi" as a lighthearted way of noting I had a demisexual character in there but it wasn't like they actually used the word or that it was ABOUT being demisexual... A friend talked me out of it more or less for this reason. :P

I wish there was a way to please everyone. But I just don't think that's possible.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed with comments above. More often than not, those stories are driven by the author's agenda and/or personal experience, and they have very little, if anything, to do with the CHARACTER's actual experience/personality/identity or the setting/plot. Obviously those stories can be written and read by people who like or need them for whatever reason, but I will pass, thanks.