fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6009 ]

[ SECRET POST #6009 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6009 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 29 secrets from Secret Submission Post #859.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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Every time I go on tumblr, I'm struck by how little I'm interested in men compared to other women.

I definitely am interested in them. I even married one. But my gods! Some days it seems my entire feed is thirst, and women forgiving men every little thing. A male character can commit the most heinous of crimes, and if he's even just slightly physically attractive, there will be long treatises excusing said crimes, and lambasting any characters (particularly female ones!) who dare to say, "your behavior is troublesome."

I come away feeling like I just can't relate to any of these people. Whether a male character is physically attractive has absolutely no bearing on how I feel about him, and I'm more likely to "side" with female characters. I find that I completely disagree with the common criticism that female characters are poorly written; in fact, in my experience, the best written ones are the ones most likely to be hated, because they push back against the male characters.

I'm not really sure where this is going. I think mainly I've been realizing that my attraction to men is super muted compared to other women, because the only way I can explain what I see is that, when they've got the hots for a dude, they go blind to his faults, and dislike anyone who dares to point them out.

I don't know if I've ever gone as far as writing paragraphs excusing the behavior of my hot villain fave, but I can attest the thirst is real, and it's especially real when there are no men IRL that I find myself attracted to or going out with, etc. I cannot speak for everyone, of course, but I'd I was more present online and active in fandom, I'd probably have a dedicated Tumblr or something to each of if my faves. I have enjoyed the pages and fic lists others have made on Tumblr, because nothing's more fun than enjoying the same hot fave with others who understand how badly you want that character. And so you read fic, you write fic, and you squee! Probably other things too!

Maybe everyone you're running into is that thirsty! Maybe your attraction is in fact muted. But what is even the "normal" level to begin with? Maybe we're all just extra on that fandom dick specifically because it doesn't exist irl, and will only exist as we imagine it to --as a writer and reader, we're having control over this character and how he treats the other half or your stand in. Who knows!

Does being extra on fandom dick have to involve hating women though? It just seems so toxic and patriarchal.

AYRT

Oh, sorry, definitely glossed over that part! It might for some? When I first got into fic (12-14 years old) I would read fics with my fave that definitely had character bashing -- particularly the female character that could be the romantic interest. In the very beginning I was down for it because I too disliked the female character because I did not identify with her, rather I saw her as a threat, a contender for the love of my fave, and how dare she?! Again, I was about 13, and drinking the patriarchal punch.

Again, I can't speak for anyone but myself, but well into later, any female character that stood as a possible romantic rival got that treatment. Later of course, I got over that, and I just don't write the characters I don't like in the story. No need for the hate. I write the Black Widow as Cap's bff because she's cool! Peggy was dope, but she's in the past! No need to hate.

But sometimes, I still get that small creeping feeling of "that bitch is gonna steal my man". And the basis of that is insecurity, awareness that these two characters have a deeper relationship or attraction than what I could write (if I was doing a self insert, would the MC like me). And it's territorial and possessive. It's toxic. It's fear the MC would never reciprocate the way he does with the female character in question. My fave is mine and I'm not going to share. It's not hating all the female characters, just the ones that stand in "my" way from being with the MC. Does that make sense? As a kid, I hated Bela from Supernatural because she and Dean had chemistry, because she was cool and badass. And I wasn't (I was a kid lol), and so I disliked her because she was what I wanted to be and what I wasn't. Now, of course, I'm like she's a badass, and when they killed her off (I saw it later) I was bummed out. It's a mixture of jealous and immaturity and insecurity that leads to this toxic behavior, IME.

DA

See ... as a villain-fan also, I'd put to you that women are often used as the Voice of Conventional Morality in stories. The ones making a disapproving face and angsting about the innocent victims and clamoring for our guys to be punished for their transgressions are overwhelmingly likely to be women. I've never hesitated to rake a man over the coals, when they're cast in that role (including the main heroes), but patriarchy has given us the shitty stereotype that the ones who are supposed to voice the conscience of society are women.

And it's presented as a binary - you have good, healthy girls that disapprove of villainy, juxtaposed against us degenerates who are disparaged explicitly for FAILING to disapprove of villainy. All that sneering talk about how "girls love bad boys" is literally society speaking out of both sides of its mouth. Because when it's not holding forth about women being so much kinder, more moral, and more likely to hear the pain of the downtrodden and crusade against injustice, it's pretending the only reason we could possibly respond positively to villains is because they make us wet. It can take serious work to maintain cordial relations in fandom when "the hero's female fans are doing it right, while the villain's fans are setting themselves up to have abusive relationships" is what passes for social commentary from canon creators. I really appreciate that the people writing manga and anime largely refuse to make moral pronouncements this. But I'm fed up to the teeth with it from American creators.

In my case it's never been about feeling threatened by onscreen women, per se. A lot of the time I would love it if there was some character who would voice the sorts of things I feel like saying and be there for my faves when otherwise they have to make do alone. Emotionally or literally. But ... it's not one content creator in a hundred in the US who can do that with a female character in a way that I feel represented, as opposed to dragged onscreen to be ridiculed. Like, "look at this stuuuupid girl with her stupid crush, even the object of her affections is disgusted with her!" You know? Solidly supportive, functional relationships are a rarity for villains anyway, but more so still if their dragon is female. The last one I can think of that was even sort of like that was the dynamic between Magneto and Mystique in the X-Men movies. But if more women were being represented like that, I think you'd find that a lot of villain fans would love them and write them and respond so much more positively to the fact that they exist than to these piles of in-canon girls who are either there to oppose the villain or there to be exploited by him.

You really do curate your own experience. Like, sure, I've seen people try to excuse crimes to make a (almost always male) character a poor little meowmeow, but it's just an indicator of who to block, so I'm more likely to get people on my dash who love a character, both male and female, BECAUSE of the crimes. Crimes for everyone!

Yeah-- you can also wind up with a dash where it's female characters who are forgiven every little thing!

I kid a little, but yeah, it's all about dash curation. And there will always be villain fans (for villains of all genders, mind), so if it bothers you, unfollow away!

Curating your experience is a thing.

As for myself I didn’t marry a man, am asexual and have always been impartial to men in ways most of my peers couldnt relate. Because of that, you described exactly how I felt in the days of pre-SNS fandom, when “BNF” crews dominated fansites, mailing communities, forums. A lot of thirsting everywhere. A LOT of it. And I feel like older women who have been in fandom since those days tend to be like that even now, but that’s just a feeling. And that’s nice I mean, pretty sure our grandmas couldn’t do that because “a proper wife in the 50s!!” or whatever, so power to girls (and gay men?) thirsting over men in fandom spaces. But being a millennial I had the freedom to think “whew, that’s too much” and feel the exact opposite.

The good part is we are now free to curate our fandom experiences in huge SNS and thats what I do!

What is SNS?

I think it's Social Networking Sites?

Yep!

I've curated my experience so much that my dash is mostly full by people thirsting after women. And I am ace with aesthetic attraction mostly to men, so this is funny.

Let's switch follower lists because I have the complete opposite problem from you lmao. And so do a lot of the people on my follower list, if they're to be believed, because not only do they fawn over women and hate men for breathing, they moan about everyone else on Tumblr for fawning over problematic men and hating flawless women.

Personally I'm not too inclined to believe them though. In no fandom space I go in do I ever see anyone falling in love with all the men they hate (it's not just the typical Snape/Loki/Kylo Ren, it's characters even those guys' fans hate) and if they peep a word about not liking a woman very much, God help them. Unless it's a white woman they're shitting on to prop up a WOC. Then they're encouraged. If you're cool with that you'd love my dash, my timeline, and my YouTube and Instagram recommendeds. Wew.

And I don't understand the influence of attraction in any of this because I'm extremely aroace, but objectively I don't think women are as beautiful as they think or men are as hideous. Everyone is the same boring flavor of human being, lookswise at least.

Do you have my list, anon?
Also not to get into wankfest, but I blocked every tag with certain white singer who according to some of people is flawless angel lesbian. And still I somehow see gushing posts about her. At this point I would take Kylo fans instead.

AYRT

I wouldn't like that very much, either! I'm sure it would turn my complaint into, "boy, I really don't like women as much as everyone else seems to..."

DA

But you actually made me laugh, here. Same, anon.

I think it's another form of socialized patriarchy we impose upon ourselves and others.

I think women are raised to believe their power lies in the man they support so we play out that role by picking our fave guy and we just love and defend him like the loyal wife we're supposed to be. If we can prove to be the perfect wife we have won womanhood and therefore feel superior to all the other women out there.

That's a really basic breakdown of what I think drives so much of this back and forth and taking things a bit too seriously/far when it comes to stanning A Guy.

And some women IRL do that with the people in their lives. Sad to see relatives be awful to others all in service to their husband/boyfriend (who is usually a POS).

Nah, I kinda disagree. I came across the wikipedia page about Amelia Dyer the other day (who's been cited as possibly the most prolific, successful serial killer in history) and it's haunting stuff. We perennially have Jack the Ripper again, in incarnation whatever, with new actor whoever, while I'd literally never heard of this woman. She would make a great villain protagonist, and she's incredibly rooted in a historical period when infanticide was a lot more common because abortion was illegal and the English state apparatus had rolled back its laws on child support for fathers of illegitimate children. So this sinister and quite possibly mentally ill lady literally made her living from young working women who paid her a lump sum, expecting her to give the poor baby they would be fired if anyone knew they'd given birth to a good life, and instead of raising them, she would strangle the infants and dump them in the river. No one knows exactly how many she killed, the estimate hovers around a stunning 400, but this was the extreme form of a known crime in that time period in England: "baby-farming."

And apparently we can't have fictionalized accounts of that because the canon creators are too busy rehashing the stories of villains who are men.

But really, no one knows the scope of what women would stan if they had it. While what keeps being made (and remade) is incredibly narrow.

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[ SECRET POST #6009 ]

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