fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6978 ]

I'm a bi guy, I found fandom when I was in middle school and came across slash shipping fanvids, started reading fic and questioning my sexuality not long after. I've been posting on f!s for over a decade. I know there are a few men who post here now and again, and was curious about your fandom habits if anyone wants to respond to one or more of these questions. Also if anyone (not just guys) has questions for me feel free to respond with those.

1. If you read m/m fic, do you prefer it to non-fandom m/m stories?

2. Do you write m/m fic yourself?

3. What's your experience been in majority-women slash fandoms?

4. How does m/m fic relate to your sexuality? Pure fantasy, something you read for representation, helped you explore sexuality, etc?

5. Any tropes you'd personally want to see more or less of?

My answers (THREAD OP)

1. I like both
2. Yes, I've written fic since I was very young and I still do as a fun hobby, rarely post it though
3. Good for the most part, sometimes I feel a bit out of place or like my tastes don't match what's popular in the fandom at all, but that's not a problem unique to men. When I was younger in anime fandoms I had some weird experiences with being objectified and feeling alienated by homophobic things people would say, that is thankfully less common these days though of course rude and homophobic people are still out there
4. I see it as a way to explore fantasies and nothing too serious. I definitely like it when a fic captures something that feels true to life though, it makes it more enjoyable for me. And it did help me figure out I was bi, LOL
5. Not really, there's so much great fic out there to choose from :)

1. yes
2. yes
3. fine? if a bit too caught up attacking each other trying to protect our imaginary feelings. e.g. idk any men for real offended that fictional top/bottoms in slash conform to extremely standard generic popular daddy/twink shit, except women. tropes are tropes until someone tries to apply them irl to real people but they aren't doing that
4. as fantasy as any het or f/f is
5. ironically, explicitly 'fixed' ships or characters e.g. tops that have considered or tried it and explicitly don't like to bottom and bottoms that outright refuse to top. make the characters have preferences and talk about it, as opposed to wordlessly falling into some kind of default that just so happens to perfectly match up between ships. make it not perfectly match up sometimes

to add to 5, 'explicitly neither and not into anal' is very underutilized

OP

I find it funny when slash written by women is criticized for being unrealistic when men certainly aren't writing realistic slash stories either. Most stories are written to be a fantasy regardless of the author.

Regarding 5, I don't mind this typically cause I see it as another expression of fantasies, but I do LOVE fics that get into the character preferences and dynamics more, it makes it more interesting.

AYRT

oh. i realize i was unclear re: response to want more-or-less of. to clarify i want to see more fixed ships that discuss that in character and have in character preferences. and to occasionally run into the conversation of

'hey u a bottom?'
'no, not into that at all sry'
'oh uh... ok, cool, ig we're not compatible then'

even happening offhand. like that's something you have to talk about and it never seems to happen in fic, even if in the end the preferences always match up

and yeah i look at extremely popular daddy/twink gay porn and are like sooooo why are women upset with each other about doing the same thing that gay stuff for gay men is doing? relax, friends. this is just a popular dynamic

Not a dude but to me it's always come across to me as most of the women complaining about this knowing very few queer men in their actual lives(if any), because my queer guy friends irl who I've talked to about fanfic and things like top/bottom stuff legit do not even slightly think having a set preference for a ship was weird or remotely dipping into being 'problematic'. Like yeah don't be weird about gay dudes irl, but if you prefer a set dynamic between a fictional pair of characters? Cool, whatever, have fun.

And as another anon has said: beefy dude!top/twink!bottom is a popular queer dude trope in the community so it's really funny that women are policing themselves over that when gay dudes like it themselves lol. Of course there's also a market for the beefy dude getting fucked as well, because gay dudes are not a monolith either and everyone likes different things, so write what you personally like and have fun!

additional possibly relevant stats

age: mid 30s
years in fandom: 20ish
orientation: asexual/queer

answers

1. If you read m/m fic, do you prefer it to non-fandom m/m stories?

uhhhh. hard to say/it depends? like I have various m/m published novels I enjoyed as much as m/m fic I liked, but I only know those novels because I liked the authors' fandom works and just kinda followed them over to their real world stuff. and other m/m novels that started life as original fic published like a web serial on LJ... is that non-random? I don't think you can draw a straight line and say that if something got the tradpub treatment it's not 'fandom' linked, but it definitely isn't fanfic.

ALSO like. which fandom what kind of work etc. it gets messy when you consider like webnovels/webseries/webcomics which are all also 'fandom' without being fanfic, and all those fandoms are different and also I have preferences (yaoi fandom and bara fandom and chinese webnovel fandom and korean webcomic/webnovel fandom are all different and that's before we even get into like wattpad overlap...)

TLDR not fic doesn't mean not fandom, and even within fandom there's huge differences and people can like some and really dislike others, this question is bad and hard to answer

2. Do you write m/m fic yourself?

yes

3. What's your experience been in majority-women slash fandoms?

fine? I don't think it really matters, and TBH 'do the people participating identify as women' is also a bit questionable because at least in my teens those were majority-girl/teen spaces and like 'guys' and 'women' (a pretty adult term) would both have been equally rare to find. that said I AM aware slash fandom (as we are using the term) in general is women, and... eh, still fine? to me slash or creative fandom is not a women/female centric space as much as a space that pointedly doesn't really care what bits you have as much as what you do with the bits of the characters in your fic or whatever.

I don't think there ever really was any 'oh no I am AM MAN in AN WOMANS space' moment or anything since I have pretty much always been some kind of queer and also asexual forever, so majority-women slash fandom where people shipped other people but did not personally engage actually felt MORE of a match than like... majority male fandoms for gay stuff (see: bara) where some kind of sexual attraction to the men involved seemed to be assumed.

4. How does m/m fic relate to your sexuality? Pure fantasy, something you read for representation, helped you explore sexuality, etc?

COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT it's great I actually enjoy it specifically because there is zero link to me. I will say I get actively squicked (showing my age here) by Character/Reader fics even if the reader is written as male... actually even MORE if the reader is written as male, it's hugely offputting to me. I also get irritated when I feel like authors are trying too hard to add representation into their fics (ask me about racebending Harry Potter characters... or better yet, don't) and nothing aggravates me as much as like people trying to write m/m but one of the characters is asexual!!! and it ALWAYS has to be made a point of for some stupid reason. the more the m/ms in a fic approach any sort of resemblance to me the further I want to be away from it.

5. Any tropes you'd personally want to see more or less of?

uhhhh... top/bottom stuff where it IS fixed but not with the usual assumptions I guess? I read a story once that was pretty generic otherwise with BigStrong McGuyMan and DarkWaif EvilTwig in a ship, and then when the time came for Sex TM, McGuyMan was like OF COURSE I WILL BOTTOM, I HAVE DONE RESEARCH, YOU ARE FAR TOO WEAK AND SKINNY TO TAKE IT UP THE ASS which was a) funny and b) notably rare, most of the time if the more dom-ly guy is bottoming it's a big huge deal or vulnerability or whatever and that's just so boring and stereotypical.

also ughhh I get so bored with people doing kink by the numbers and like establishing safewords, like it's fanfic!! give me more insane unsafe dubiouslyconsensual shit, if not in fiction then where? I also think it's deeply annoying when characters have weirdly modern sensibilities and conceptions of gender and sexuality in fantasy or period settings because none of that is new or interesting at ALL.

DA

I swear I could have written #5 myself. Absolutely agree.

AYART

Haha I have like an entire rant locked and loaded (I have many rants locked and loaded, I am a hater at heart) about how a lot of this stems from many fic writers simply not getting or understanding at all how to write from a dominant perspective or wanting to self insert into the subbottom role which is like FINE when it's oneshot smutty ravishment fantasy (the most common) but kind of falls apart the moment you try to extend it beyond that.

Not even an issue in slash fandom alone, I read a fair bit of romance and this also happens, like... if I want to read a sub fantasy it is so so easy, but dom fantasies from dom perspectives are close to nonexistent, EVEN in kinky fic spaces, and even when they do exist it's never like 'very noob confused dom' or 'embarrassed awkward giant sadist'.

Noob/confused *top* is common enough, but... that's just like 'standard femdom dynamic and once again lacking an interesting dom perspective'.

different anon from above

part of why I enjoy the BL genre more than the het genre is that they every so often have dom/'seme' perspectives that are characters in themselves and not love interest vehicles for the real MC. it seems proportionately more common than in het romance works anyway

if I try to think of my favorite ones they're all top-POV, dom-POV, or both if it's a dom bottom

OP

Thanks for your thoughtful answers, I was honestly going back and forth over whether to add more detail to the first question because of the issues you mentioned, but ended up leaving it short. I guess when I say I like non fandom m/m stories, I mean I like stuff in men's S&M magazines and short story collections at the leather shop. But yeah the question leaves out a lot of nuance and also leaves out many different kinds of fandom content, I probably would agree that there isn't a strict distinction between fandom and non-fandom writing.

yeah it's just weird and also something that changed over the past few decades as well; fandom and fandom writers have gone more mainstream... I still remember the big fuss with Cassandra Claire (who I still refuse to read out of spite), but these days there's like MULTIPLE het romance novels that started life as Dramione fanfics. but it does get messy when you also consider that the average (mode) reader of romance is female, and the vast, vast majority of fanfic is also romance, and you can to some extent also propose that a lot of fanfic is filling in a gap for romance works that could not have been tradpubbed due to... uh, gay. to what extent is fanfic fandom transformative work versus catering to an underserved audience is something much more academic people than I have written on, I'm just a shitposter.

the funny thing is I have honestly taken a good look at, as you put it, 'men's S&M magazines and short story collections at the leather shop' and have also gone into historical stuff (see: Victorian erotica, it's hilarious) and... that is like explicitly and extremely Not My Thing for the most part because I am tremendously asexual. Like I actually read Gengoroh Tagame for the plot/kink and also because I really do think he's a very creative artist, but I avoid 'bara in general' for the same reasons I avoid gay porn in general, lesbian porn in general, het porn in general, and frankly, the majority of porn in general.

pretty often when you have guys who are into guys making sexy stuff for other guys to get off to there IS gonna be that element of... presuming the viewer is into it? or that the viewer is sexually attracted to or desires either to be the person involved or to be DOING stuff to the person involved. any work of porn and/or erotica that tries to involve its viewer or takes that sort of viewpoint is about as offputting to me as, I assume, making a gay guy watch very standard PIV porn would be.

I will say cishet romance generally ALSO has that self insert or 'you should find this sexy man hot' assumption I also don't care for lol. leaving m/m slash fandom where the point is that the guys are into each OTHER and you the author/reader are irrelevant is the best place to avoid all that.

ayrt

I think how I relate to my sexuality and m/m is nearly opposite as yours, I totally understand what you're saying about bara but for me that's part of the appeal (Gengoroh Tagame draws SUCH hot bears!), while erotica that is more about another type of interest without that immediate physical lust often leaves me cold and bored, though I can still enjoy the plot or character building and I read all kinds of stuff. I am really attracted to men and masculinity so I best love works that reflect that feeling personally, and reflect my interest in gay S&M. I appreciate you explaining what you enjoy in m/m, it's really interesting.

lol yeah like, lots of different types of relationships in fandom and ways to engage with, and that's the fun and appeal of it to me! I basically don't read or enjoy anything that is very... raw or physical or lust...y, but I DO enjoy writing it as a sort of challenge/control thing. can I take characters and settings and dynamics that shouldn't work and that people don't care for, then force people to be affected and frustratedly horny about it (and then curse me out after)? men, women, whatever, I just like puzzles, and these are fun ones. slash readers are usually a bit more open to experimenting or reading stuff outside their usual diet, and when I had more time in the past I used to be pretty active on kink fics and the like.

anyway, fun question, also fun to see other people's answers! I will say the way I interact with fandom stuff is also not likely common, as far as I know, and what you do may be a more typical expression or experience. small sample size though lol

Red/green/yellow traffic light system in fantasy settings takes me out SO BAD lmao. Like what are we doing here? These people are not likely to know anything about kink and are going to be engaging in somewhat iffy rough sex so please just roll with it.

But I saw a post once which summed it up for me where some people use kink to substitute for the characters having a personality in smut stuff and tbh I think that's pretty accurate. If you've got a good grasp on the characters vanilla sex can be real fucking steamy, adding kink just because isn't an automatic 'this is good button' and more often than not for me it's the opposite.

1) I generally prefer m/m fic because I'm not a big romance reader outside of fanfic-- I think it's great that more m/m romance is available, and I ABSOLUTELY recommend the original work of Johannes Evans, I've got a physical copy of his Heart of Stone and it's my Vampire Chronicles. But like... with fic, there's that built-in hook of knowing the characters and setting.

2) Oh, yeah. I've been writing slash fic since... well, I don't know, but I remember the transition from writing het fic to slash fic happened BEFORE I knew I was gay.

3) Mostly positive. Surprised but delighted by the number of older lesbians that kept some of those fandoms alive, but also like... for some women, reading and writing and discussing gay stories was a gateway to acting as an ally for real queer people. There are times when things are... less than realistic, but it's not like I knew too much about that when I was younger.

4) All of the above. The smut is pure fantasy and I like it that way! But, reading slash fic was the first place I found open representation, growing up in the 90s and figuring out my sexuality through the early aughts, and to this day, it's the place where that representation doesn't have to be sanitized or censored. And, yes, writing definitely helped me explore and understand my own sexuality.

5) I'm kind of bored of mafia AU personally-- in one of the fandoms I used to be active in, it was wildly popular but led to fics that were wildly OOC, so now I just am not interested (and I've written about characters who were canonically mafia, so the issue isn't the mafia part!). I don't want there to BE less of the trope, necessarily, I just don't personally want to see it. I always want more friends/partners to lovers.

lol mafia au overuse reminds me of old days of naruto fandom where all the characters were just stand ins for whatever popular au trope of the day

OP

Love your answer to number 3, I'm very grateful to the women in fandom who kept slash zines going and shared fic and art long before livejournal! Mafia AU has been really popular for awhile now, I wonder if it will stay that way or another trend will pop up soon.

good topic!

1. yes, I don't actually read og lit featuring any romance at all (if you don't count Watson's marriage in the original Holmes stories). fic? here for the slash gimme.

2. used to, haven't had a good idea in almost 10 years but my last 5 slashfics have been some of my highest-rated on AO3

3. they're really enthusiastic and usually in a complimentary way that stokes the ego and provides further plot bunnies, but there's the downside of attempting to insert themselves into the fic somehow, be it through "ideas" (gurl the fic was complete 15 years ago your new idea is not needed or wanted) or just the way they talk about which character bottoms giving the idea that they imprint on the bottom. Yikes on bikes.

4. I just read porn to get my motor running, I'm old and tired and I no longer give a flying fuck about the ships.

5. really would just love to see IC honesty; I hate when the bottom is written/drawn small waify twinky tiny girly uwu and the top is urgh grunt giant cro-magnon man thrust pound. If two dudes are here to get it on and they're canonly the same height, similar build, kind of snarky to each other to fuel the sexual tension, GIVE ME THAT. Give me canon appearance and personality and figure out how those canon traits would lend to the scene and the pairing. Don't change the characters into paper doll tropes or I'm out.

[ SECRET POST #6978 ]

Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

sure if anyone is interested lmao

additional possibly relevant stats

answers

1. If you read m/m fic, do you prefer it to non-fandom m/m stories?

2. Do you write m/m fic yourself?

3. What's your experience been in majority-women slash fandoms?

4. How does m/m fic relate to your sexuality? Pure fantasy, something you read for representation, helped you explore sexuality, etc?

5. Any tropes you'd personally want to see more or less of?

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: sure if anyone is interested lmao

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash

Re: Guys who enjoy slash