fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2437 ]

[ SECRET POST #2437 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2437 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 024 secrets from Secret Submission Post #348.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

honestly i'm just lmao over this thread particularly people making toooons of excuses as to why they don't ship f/f

the arguments just don't make sense to me. straight women saying they don't ship f/f because they're attracted to men and therefore want fic exploring the relationships between two male characters (which is the argument i see the most in these sorts of discussions) makes no sense when paired with the OTHER argument which is that female characters are just ~~~written poorly~~~ (yeah because fandoms NEVER fall over themselves in love of generic angsty backstory white guy no. 45) which stops them from being able to ship women together (?). like, which is it, slash fandom? are you in it for the dick or for the ~~good writing, and why are both options taking you straight back to slashtown?

the thing is, if people's idea of what relationships are worth caring about and exploring in fiction were based on what gender people are attracted to, wouldn't the entirety of literature written by straight males focus on the deep and complex relationships between women? even if they were sexualized and objectified in the way male characters are in fandom by the straight female gaze, that argument would imply that we are, as readers, more interested in reading about the gender we're sexually or romantically attracted to. pick up nearly any work of fiction in the english language by a male author and you'll see that isn't the case; you're going to get a ton of works written about men focusing on them as individuals, their relationships with other men around them, and occasionally their relationships with women (nearly always in a sexual/romantic capacity.)

i feel like everyone needs to just get off their collective high horse and admit that we are socialized, as human beings, to value the narratives of men more highly than we do women. either that, or that you're PURELY in shipping for the porn, in which case why are you even bothering with trying to talk about how there just ~~~~aren't any female characters written well enough for you to enjoy or ~~~isn't any chemistry between women.

not trying to attack specific people in this thread or anything, but jesus. these arguments always go the exact same way and i wish people would stop bothering with flimsy excuses and just admit that a lot of people aren't into femslash because society, shock of shocks, raises women with internalized misogyny issues and glorifies the relationships between men as a superior, infinitely complex thing.

http://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/869286.html?thread=681562790#cmt681562790 What about this reason? You don't address it in your comment

^ I and all the others who agree with that reason and love fics in which the female characters are NOT part of ships because so many canon series make ships a big part of female characters but are tired of seeing ships take over female characters whether it's in het OR f/f, what does that make us?

i didn't address it because it's not one of the primary arguments i see defensive slashers bring up constantly when asked why they don't spend a notable amount of time celebrating f/f pairings, though i have seen it before. i can see where it's coming from, but it also kind of, i don't know, still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth? mostly because it seems weird to think "women in fiction are so often defined by their relationships [99% of the time with men] so i am unable to appreciate shipping involving them in a fictional context ever!" especially when i have never seen a f/f fandom "take over" (your words, not mine) a female character.

imo shipping, as annoying and single-minded as it can be, leads to a greater and more vocal appreciation for the characters involved and for me at least is a lens with which to learn more about the characters involved, so i find it hard to believe that shipping f/f is somehow obscuring a character's awesomeness as an individual, or how enjoying imagining a complex and nuanced romantic/sexual relationship between two women is somehow un-progressive compared to preferring those characters to be strong independent woman who don't need no anybody, so to speak.

what the heck? nobody is making it about being progressive or not besides you. "women in fiction are so often defined by their relationships" and when i want to read fanfiction about women, i want to read fanfiction about women having awesome adventures and not relationships, that has nothing to do with being progressive or not and you are conflating your agenda with what people have literally told you they personally enjoy.

i don't read f/f for that reason. i also don't read het for that reason either. i don't read fics where all the focus is on the badly written broody manly man, either. i like a lot of gen with female leads or female teammates going on awesome adventures and not hooking up. they might need each other but it doesn't have to be in a romantic sense and you get so damn little of women needing anybody in a nonromantic sense that i love seeing it in fanfic.

enjoy the bad taste in your mouth because this is somehow not feminist enough for you. this anon doesn't care.

i'm not operating out of some sense of feminist tumblr social justice crusading, fyi, in case that's what's coming across. i'm a grouchy shipper complaining on the internet because i get tired of seeing people fall for slash ship after slash ship and not paying attention to anything else, and i'm trying to understand why it's what fandoms will jump on in a big way nine times out of ten. never claimed to have any deeper motivation than that.

women in ships and being romantic and shippy is like the default in het everywhere, so i'm less interested in it

this comment was where i pulled the observation of being (un-)progressive from, btw. you're probably right, i might have been projecting a bit, but this whole discussion is about gender relations so to say that i'm "conflating my agenda" ("my agenda" basically being "why doesn't anyone care about my awesome ships goddammit" not like, "rah rah misandry," for the record) in a conversation about gender is a bit questionable. people play liberal olympics every-fucking-where in fandom (and on f!s) so it's not completely out of left field, and the comment read to me like its author was trying to defend their preference of slash as some pseudo-feminist action, whether or not that's what the author actually intended.

but i do think it's valuable to actually have an honest conversation about shit like this rather than just having it be an echo chamber for people to repeat the same arguments that always come up. i may be totally off base in my points, i'm not a trained professional in internet infighting, but i think there are legitimate questions to be asked about why situations like the OP's secret happen all the time.

the core of what i'm wondering is like: i go into mainstream media, and most shows revolve around dudes. i go into fandom, and fandom's tastes revolve around dudes. what gives, man. what factors are at work here.

I don't have the time to address everything you said here, but about the part where straight women just find m/m hotter and also claim that the female characters are less interesting.

Now I'm a straight women with pretty much zero sexual interest in women. Per default, I ship m/m because I find it waaay hotter. I admit freely that I will ship ridiculously unimportant minor characters even if they're written poorly. Why? Because they're hot and I'm very willing to give that pairing a shot.

When it comes to het, I'm pickier. Because I generally find het less appealing than m/m, so "woah two hot dudes with chemistry" can get me to ship something, but "hot dude and hot girl with chemistry" is not enough to get me invested. That's why I only ship het when I love the female and the male character a lot and find their relationship intriguing.

You can look at it that way. Imagine that you REALLY REALLY LOVE CHOCOLATE CAKE and sort of like lemon cake. You will eat even mediocre chocolate cake because you looooooooooove chocolate cake in all its forms. However, it takes really excellent lemon cake to make you like lemon cake. It's like that with many straight women - slash is their chocolate cake, het is their lemon cake.

Yes, this is perfect.

but no one is talking about het... this secret was about femslash...?

and i realize this is the case! it makes sense, from a logical perspective, that people will enjoy imagining two characters banging whom they are attracted to. it's when people start pulling out a whole bunch of other excuses about how women aren't "written well" or "don't have enough chemistry with each other" or "women in fiction never have complex relationships with each other enough to fuel shipping" or "there aren't likable enough female characters for me to get attached" when, like you said, you (and many others i'm sure) "will ship ridiculously unimportant minor characters even if they're written poorly." like, i just find it really hard to believe the so-called lack of interesting female characters or characters who have chemistry (the presence of female characters in media, by the way, can always be improved but is definitely overstated by fandom at the current time) is fueling the extreme disproportional representation of m/m in a world where clint/coulson is a hugely popular pairing, you know? like if ship it because you get off to it, just say it. no shame. it's when people start hiding behind bs defensive arguments over the comparative ~deep compelling romantic possibilities of their slash ships that don't exist between female characters~ that i start rolling my eyes

this reply might make minimal sense because im too tired to proofread

DA

You keep assuming that all people who think women are written badly also go on to ship things like Clint/Coulson. Why? I do believe a lot of women are written to be pretty flat in a lot of badly written series. I do not ship Clint/Coulson because there's nothing there to ship. Some of us do have the same standards for all characters. If you don't you're a hypocrite, but stop making it sound like all people who say one must also say the other just because they like slash.

Just... what the fuck is this, where in this thread did anybody go "female characters are poorly written but mmm-mmm I love me some Clint/Coulson?" The large large majority are simply giving their reasons why they don't like femslash and you are the one assuming everything about their preference in slash ships???

SA

The anon you're replying to isn't even touching on how characters are written or chemistry or anything, only saying they are less interesting to her. So ??? where do you see "female characters are badly written but I am a hypocrite and like Clint/Coulson" in this thread?

The anon you're replying to isn't even touching on how characters are written or chemistry or anything

umm

-> "woah two hot dudes with chemistry" can get me to ship something, but "hot dude and hot girl with chemistry" is not enough to get me invested.

so like, apart from how you apparently didn't read ayrt's comment, i used clint/coulson as an example because ayrt said "ridiculously unimportant minor characters even if they're written poorly" and someone else in the thread had mentioned clint/coulson, which isn't exactly the same seeing as they're not quite minor characters and i don't know enough to comment on how well they're written, but is a ship founded entirely on the thought process of "this doesn't make sense really but it's hot and cute!!!" and is also a well known example of a nonsensical yet popular slash ship similar to what ayrt was describing. i started talking about poorly written female characters because ayrt mentioned shipping poorly written male characters (and not doing the same for female characters.) i'm not pulling this shit from thin air.

Your logic is flawed in so many places. It's also funny how you keep trying to shame female slashers because they have a preference for their smut.

ayrt

I feel the same about het and femslash, I should have mentioned that instead of just saying het, sorry.

It's not only excuses, though. What people mean when they say that those women aren't written well is that they aren't written well ENOUGH to make people overcome their original preference for slash over het or femslash. As I said, it takes AMAZING female characters with AMAZING chemistry for me to go like "oh, I don't really find femslash (or het) hot, but this is just too interesting, I'm going to read it anyway." And we unfortunately live in a world where there are relatively few shows/movies/books that focus heavily on relationships with women. A lot of female characters out there are are more likely to have meaningful relationships with men, which easily explains why there's a lot more het than femslash out there.

Also, not ALL popular slash ships are like Clint/Coulson and have about zero canon basis. A lot of popular slash ships are actually about two men who have very intense, meaningful relationships in canon (both Dean/Cas and Dean/Sam from Supernatural come to mind - whether you ship it or not, you can't really deny that they have EXTREMELY close, complicated relationships). So it's not all "lol two hot dudes I want them to bang".

Your argument seems to be that people who do not enjoy femslash do so because they are socialized to prefer stories centered around men, and that their claimed reasons for not enjoying femslash - that they are basically interested in shipping things concerning people that they are attracted to, and that they find female stories poorly written and unsatisfying - conflict and so are illegitimate rationalization. This is reasonable enough, and I think it's true that they do conflict, but I think there is another alternative to your explanation: the second claim is an illegitimate rationalization, and the first claim is basically true.

In regard to your argument about the centuries of fiction written by men not centered around stories of f/f love - I think that the reasons for that are complicated, and have a lot to do with history and circumstance, and also I think that fanfiction is a fairly narrow subset of written works generally and people don't generally look for the same things there that they do in literature generally.

Even though a large portion of people upthread are lesbians - and yes a lot of fandoms don't have enough girls and you need to get over that.

how about YOU get off your highhorse and stop demanding people ship femslash in the way YOU approve.

Maybe that IS their reasons and you're the one seeing it as an excuse? You're dismissing it all as excuses and handwaving and trying to demand that people admit to being sexist or whatever because of their reasons for not shipping enough femslash for you. you're the one with the issues here, demanding everyone appease you for using the usual arguments because maybe, MAYBE, those are their arguments! So how about instead of your stupid dismisive attitude and "no your reasons suck and your reasons are instead this" you suck it up and accept that those are people's reasons.

and yes, i ship femslash, no i don't ship it right now because a) my current fandoms have little girls because the genre sucks at having more than one girl, b) my smut kinks are not sexy with girls (noncon) and c) i really really like girls but most femslash fucking sucks so I don't even bother looking anymore and d) is not your stupid internal misogyny argument

i don't know how to respond to this because i'm not sure what exactly you're accusing me of here but

stop demanding people ship femslash in the way YOU approve

i think you missed the point. i'm not demanding people ship femslash the way i personally want. i'm demanding people ship femslash. at all. or at least look REALLY hard at the reasons why they don't, rather than throwing around the exact same contradictory arguments time after time.

also
> most femslash fucking sucks
> most fanfiction fucking sucks
fixed it 4 u

judgy mcjudgerson

You probably won't read this (I'm always late, therefore usually ignored here) but I have to tell you how much I like your "main statement", and how much I disagree with your reasoning.

"we are socialized, as human beings, to value the narratives of men more highly than we do women"

I absolutely agree with this statement. It's very unfortunate, but I believe this will change.

However, I don't really get your first paragraph. Why should fandom, as in a "diverse group of people sharing a (sometimes just slightly) more than average interest in one specific movie/book/tv-show/other form of media" have a single one specific reason to like anything? "Liking men" and "not having enough women to ship/choose from" [I ignored the "well-written" criteria, I don't really believe in "not well-written women", for me that translates to "not well-written source material"] are the most common reasons, but individual fans can have different reasons. (And I strongly suspect that "liking men" and "ending up with fandoms where there's only one woman in the main cast" somehow correlates.)

So, answering your question (like, which is it, slash fandom?): for lot of us "this", and for another lot of us "that", and for some of us "both" (because that exists too), and for some of us "neither", because we have our very own specific reasons; and for even more of us a third option we would never ever ever admit, and for *even* more of us, it's your reason I agreed above, but we don't realize it, and some of these reasons peacefully coexists in our mind. And I really don't get how the what this is not evident.

(For me it's a big dose of "I like men", a little smaller dose of "not enough women", a very big dose of "the women are rarely written in those particular situations/relationships I like to base my ships on, and when they are, they are paired with men and I end up shipping het... again" (and this is one part where your statement about male-centric narration comes into play), and there's even a small dose of "oh, it's just habit by now", unfortunately there's a smaller and smaller and smaller dose of internalised misogyny, and there are other smaller, often fandom/pairing-specific reasons not worth mentioning.)

tl!dr: You have a valid observation about one possible reason, but that doesn't mean that everybody in fandom has the same reason, doesn't matter how utterly/beautifully/world-clarifyingly logical it is.

If you look at fandom on the internet as a whole (and not just those bits that have been carved out as niches by a self-selected sample of people who are largely m/m friendly) you'll see that interest in f/f pairings amongst men is equal to or higher than interest in m/m is amongst women. Look at profic written by women and you'll see that - proportionally speaking - there isn't actually all that much m/m.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2437 ]

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