foreheadtittaes:

justaguywitharrows | sistervenom | comicism | foreheadtittaes:

I think my time on Tumblr has kind of changed my opinion of the slash fandom. Not that I ever really gave it much thought before, but I used to think it was sogroundbreaking to view things from a slashy perspective. “This makes sense to meso fuck canon, I’m gonna look for subtext! And I can give logical justification for my pairings because I care about these characters and I know the show better than the actual writers!” To me, slash was just a subset of tinhatting — and boy, do I love tinhatting. There’s something so inherently fun and satisfying about using canon as a loose guideline and “fixing” whatever you think the creators dropped the ball on (or what the networks — and the era, especially in older shows — prevented them from doing, such as non-heteronormative narratives) without imposing those “modifications” on other people. “I know it didn’t really happen… but I don’t care, now it makes more sense to me.” Yay, subjectivity! Yay, imagination! It’s the same reason why I love revisionist fiction.

But now I’m starting to think that not everyone approaches it from this angle, as I thought everyone did, and that for a lot of people on here, slash is just about two hot dudes fucking for the benefit of the slashers’ ovaries (the majority of slashers are straight females. That’s a fact). I’m not saying there are no sensible slashers on Tumblr because there are plenty of people who can both critique and enjoy it and there are plenty of fanfic authors who do manage to get it right… but when ‘gay sex’ becomes synonymous with ‘male homosexual sex’, when ‘clearly they are gay’ really means ‘clearly these two men are gay’, and when a post about preferring gay sons (“I hope I don’t get a straight child! I want a gay son soooooo bad! I can print out some fanfic for them! Isn’t it funny that I’ll know more about their orientation than they do? LOL!1!!!”) as if they’re some sort of accessory gets 3500 notes… well, that… that just reeks of gay male fetishization to me. :/

Yea, there’s always been somewhat of a fetishization feeling that I always got from seeing so many women loving slash so much. It’s like I’m hard pressed to find a gay men who likes and reads and writes and ships gay male characters too.

Read the entire original post—interesting and important stuff.  In the first part, I saw slash fandom as that as well: for personal enjoyment and seeing things that weren’t there and reading into subtext exploring the relationships between characters outside the confines of canon.  But, yeah, it comes to the point of fetishization of people just wanting to write about two attractive people having sex with no real characterization—it could be anyone.  What I like about slash fiction or femslash or any form of fanfiction is being true to the characters.  Just using them as pretty faces to enact sexual fantasies for the (largely straight, cisgendered female) fandom just rubs me the wrong way.

I think there’s a line to be drawn here. I don’t care if straight women, or anybody else really, gets off on men having sex with men. Sometimes I seek out genuinely plot and relationship oriented fic, but other times I just want to read about men fucking and that’s fine too. (Though my perspective, as a queer male, is a bit different). The problem begins when fans begin to fetishize real men who have sex with men or gay culture. Comments about how people hope they have gay children and omgwoudln’tthatbeawesome are what are disturbing. Squealing over actual gay men, (especially face to face!) is disturbing. 

So don’t be ashamed of being turned on by gay male sex, just keep it in the bedroom. It’s never okay okay to fetishize real people. 

And while we’re here. Gay women exist too. And everybody else on the gender and sexuality spectrum. Gay is not synonymous with gay men or with dicks. 

I’m the OP and I just wanted to say thanks for your additional comment because it’s something I didn’t explicitly cover (truthfully, I wasn’t expecting the post to get reblogged as many times as it did) and I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression that I was condemning gratuitous male slash, period, and that fanfic should be there just to “fix” canon and nothing else. What I do take issue with is people — mostly straight women — thinking that fanfic gay sex is an accurate representation of gay sex and that real gay sex exists solely for their pleasure simply because it’s often used that way in fanfic. Or that male homosexual relationships should be put on a pedestal as the ideal form of love (“Gay people are just better omg I wish I was a gay man!!!”)… again, because of fanfic. Like, masturbate to two fake dudes getting it on, whatever, but if you’re using slash fanfic to construct this totally inaccurate, sketchy, oversexualized portrait of gay culture/gay sex in your head just so you can fetishize gay men, then you’re doing it wrong and you need to stop.

#I KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT GAY SEX I READ FANFIC HURRR #IT’S LIKE WHEN PEOPLE THINK PORN IS AN ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF SEX #EXCEPT THIS IS A MORE SPECIFIC VERSION OF THAT

This is a pointless post because I’m editing my sidebar and its information, and I need a tag but I can’t get it to work.

PINEAPPLE.


eta; wow, pointless post really is pointless. I thought I had more stuff in that tag… huh.

And I guess that, by way of wrapping this up, I’m just going to say that everything from this rant, mostly/especially the parts that were explicitly about queer presences in horror fiction … That is all why it kind of depresses me that there’s not that much “outsider” genre fiction. I mean, you see it in some sci-fi and fantasy — like, the more “niche market” stuff (which is an ignorant, COMPLETELY ASININE publishing phrase and I want to set it on fire — but, oh, apparently books with female, or queer, or POC, or trans*, or otherwise non-top of the pyramid protagonists are “niche interests”) … but not so much in horror. And that’s just mind-boggling to me, since the very present, nigh on overwhelming undercurrent of queer and outsider subtext in horror fiction is just setting itself up to be subverted — and in more ways than just having heroes who are Othered by society, clearly defined, and done so in a way that “codes” them in subtextually queer fashions, a la Buffy, Dean, and Sam.

There’s a lot of potential here to take the dominant narrative and break it into little tiny pieces by challenging its heterosexist, cissexist, racist, ableist, etc. assumptions. And truth told, I’m still looking for the ways that I want to do that, but … I don’t want to be the only one, either. Other people have stories that need telling, whether or not they realize that, and I, for one, want to read/hear/see their stories brought to actualization.

And now, I’m getting off my soapbox and going to bed.

Okay, so seriously, some WARNINGS: Once this bit gets going, there’s discussions going all over the place, mostly focused on queer readings of genre fiction, especially horror and especially in reference to Supernatural, and a little bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And … I don’t even know what potential triggers I hit in there. Rape and sexual assault and child abuse and incest, probably/definitely; victimization of people in general, but especially marginalized and oppressed groups; discussions of heterosexism and cissexism that manifest themselves in Othering queer people and putting them into exploitative caricatures and … including quotes from other stuff, this is a little over 8,000 words of predominantly uncensored, rambly and not especially organized thoughts focused on a handful of general themes and inspired by the introduction to the above-named book.

Also, I’m an overly academic little weirdo, but that’s not exactly news, so.

… It’s totally cool that I’m writing little pink longhand scribbles about the opposing ways that Team Free Will is queer-coded and that monsters are queer-coded, and possibly concluding that the queer subtext at several points during Show is vaguely similar or related to the notion that yes, being different and suffering sucks, but the suffering is indicative of some inherent superiority to “normal” people?

… I didn’t phrase that very well. But luckily, I have a convenient source to cite by way of explaining myself:

Read More

Robo!Sam/Vampire!Dean would be really, really hot and play to my kinks in the best/worst possible way, and … oh, God, I want it like burning.

… yes, I’m watching “Live Free Or Twi-Hard” right now while taking notes about queer readings of Supernatural. And yes, this is one of the best nights I’ve had lately. Like, “hello, sense of purpose. Hello, articles and books and piles of things that point out that this is actually a legit investment of my time in the eyes of someone who gets deemed ‘expert’ or ‘worth listening to’ or whatever.”

… seriously, though. I found this one phrase in a few articles I’ve been pawing through — “independent scholar.” As in, “Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle is an independent scholar…” and, “SARAH WATERS: independent scholar / London,” and, “PETA ALLEN SHERA: Independent Scholar.” … This is the prettiest combination of syllables ever. Except maybe the inner music of the words in Middlesex, Mrs. Dalloway, or “The Waste Land.”

… yeah, no, I think “independent scholar” wins by virtue of giving me my new desired title.

… also, oh god, this episode hurts so much in hindsight. The vamps are only turning more vamps because Crowley is playing torture master, trying to hunt down the Alphas and find Purgatory, and the Alphas are building an army so that, when Eve rises, she can lead them to fight against Crowley … who is only playing torture master because he has Cas on his side and they’re working together, and killing the vamps means that Eve’s army has fewer soldiers but Cas gets more souls and alsdsdfhsg. *wibble*

Dean killing Boris: similarities to the average plot of a rape/revenge horror flick. Ponder on these, especially vis a vis how complicated this episode’s going to be to parse out in terms of a queer reading. I might have to just give it its own chapter and go, “Dean’s life hella sucks, but I can put a lot of pretty, academic words down to describe why it sucks and what that means.”

So, I’m poking around JSTOR, gathering up some articles on the outlaw identity in fiction and homosocial desire, and I stumbled upon an article that referenced something written by one of the Sarah Lawrence profs (Julie Abraham, who is brilliant, I’m sure, but it depresses me that she is the entirety of the LGBTAQ+ Studies department, since her classes — from what friends who’ve taken them have told me, and my routine readings of her course descriptions and browsing of the syllabi that people leave sitting around campus hang-outs — are mostly literature courses that happen to be focused on queer theory and works by LGBTAQ+ authors [Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and The Well Of Loneliness seem to be her favorites], rather than other aspects of LGBTAQ+ studies).

And upon seeing her name, I flailed and decided that the article was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOREVER COMMAND-S SAVE IT SAVE IT SAVE IT SAVE IT. … And for context, I’m doing this while hanging out and watching Rachel Ray with my Polish Grandma. And plotting to take extensive notes on most of these articles so I can use them for my Dean/Cas meta, A., and B. … just because. I mean. … I have to take notes on things. I take notes on TV shows just because that’s how I do things. So. As I said: I am such a fucking nerd.

clockworkbard:

rebootingfromstart:

clockworkbard:

rebootingfromstart:

believe-me-im-an-artist:

blaineyoudrivemeinsane:

I don’t know what to take from this information.

TUMBLR PEOPLE ARE FABULOUS

I don’t like heterosexual porn because it’s geared towards heterosexual men and therefore the men in it are usually pretty unattractive, from what I’ve seen….

There’s actually a growing market of heterosexual porn made by and for women, due to the desire for born by women/men who don’t find completely plastic women attractive/people who want both parties to be appealing/people who want some minor amount of quality in their porn/people, really, just people. Forthegirls.com is the only one coming to mind immediately, but it’s a rather classy example.

That said: men in straight porn made in the typical male-centric fashion aren’t universally unattractive (And, to be honest, ‘attractive’ is one of those things that some people have different feelings on). I’ve seen quite a bit of straight porn in which I’ve found the male attractive — in fact, I tend to find porn guys more attractive than porn girls, because the guys strike me as more real, usually, if that makes sense. The guys are not the ‘ideal’ man, no, but the amount of plastic surgery involved in the female side of pornography makes them utterly unattractive in my eyes. That’s why I don’t watch straight porn, usually, because the girls are the ones I find thoroughly unattractive (I think it’s the blown up lips that kills it for me. It just… bothers me.). -shrug-

Hm, true. Possibly it’s the genre I like to watch; I don’t know if you’ve seen much kinky heterosexual porn, but that’s what I tend to favour, and it’s where I’ve seen the instances of pretty woman/not-so-attractive man. Oddly, I’ve also noticed that the women seem to be much more “natural” in the kinky stuff I’ve seen; there are fewer instances of breast implants (at least, obvious ones) and I actually haven’t seen anything that could be termed blown up lips. So maybe it’s a genre thing?

Ah. That’s probably where the disparity comes from. When it comes to sex/porn, I’m so vanilla I’m extract.

I just … don’t really like porn unless it’s in the written word, and even then, I prefer what gets called erotica. “Porn” stories might do it for some people, but … I get thrown on the aesthetics. Same as porn films. Like, “porn” stories are all, “and the cock went here, thrust thrust, tab A into slot B, ram it down, yeah you like it like that don’t you slut,” and I’m just like, “Aside from my major squickage for dirty-talk being done like that, the quality of your writing does nothing to make me hot and I can’t appreciate your so-called images and SHOW, DON’T TELL. GET A PROOFREADER. [insert name here, usually Kurt Hummel, Dean Winchester, or Castiel] IS A CHARACTER NOT JUST A PUNCHING BAG FOR YOUR PROMPT, WHAT IS THIS CHARACTER THINKING AND FEELING AND WHY IS [name here] JUST LAYING BACK AND TAKING IT WHAAAAT.”

And porn films are just so … I can’t even. Hentai anime and manga are slightly more tolerable, but even those are sort of hit-or-miss because most of the time, I don’t find them hot so much as I just end up staring at them and pondering the physics of it, or like, “why does the werewolf’s penis have spikes on it? Do werewolf vaginas have teeth? Are they not really sharp, they just look like it to scare off potential dick-munching predators? But if that’s the case, then why isn’t the werewolf’s penis neon green, like a tree frog or something? And why do the sex-ninjas get punished for falling in love if they tell their lover to pack it up and leave so they can keep their aromantic sex-ninja purity vows? I mean, they’re not purely aromantic in that case, but it shows their commitment to their sex-ninja vows, and doesn’t that count for something?”

Like, the ideas of these things, I’m not opposed to, and I even like a lot of them … I just wish the execution had more work put into it more often than not?

@ Ann Louise: :D!!! … I may have decided that Pistol’s BFFs are squirrels named Sam and Sara because GUESS WHAT MY GODKIDS ARE ACTING LIKE AT THEIR BROTHER’S GRADUATION PARTY.

@ Ignatius: I know, right? My sister adopted a pit in March, she’s one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met (like, she gives Rufus, my favorite English Lit prof’s very sedate, loving Sheltie a run for his money, plays well with my six and nine-year-old godkids, AND my parents let her hang out in their very not dog-proofed house because she’s just that well-behaved) … and the shit my sister got from some of our extended family for adopting a “bad dog like that” is just ridiculous. I mean, my mother is TERRIFIED of dogs and she’s started calling my sister’s her “grand-dog” and being so sweet with her.

… oh, but she’s a pit, so she’s obviously a “bad dog” and a “lawsuit waiting to happen.” Which is one more reason why I kind of want to punch my mom’s sister. :\

@ Rai: I’d say it’s a bit of both, actually. On the one hand, it’s realistic to portray a prestigious private school as more rich, white, and probably Christian, since … a lot of them ARE. I went to a not-very-prestigious or elite private school from 4th grade on and it was STILL mostly rich white kids. And rich as in, “my parents had more than enough money to pay tuition for two kids, and all their bills, and to support my mother’s compulsive clothes-buying and her habit of bribing my sister to do well in school with Gameboys and other expensive stuff, and we never wanted for anything … but there were kids we went to school with whose parents had so much money that we felt poor by comparison.”

And in that way, the realism is a reflection of real-world prejudices (like giving out token scholarships to seem more integrated, barring people from education based on financial factors, etc.).

But that said, if the author makes no commentary on it, then I’d say it also becomes prejudicial on the book’s/author’s part. At least in that they’re being complicit in the same kind of prejudices, possibly that they’re doing the same tokenistic thing that some schools do, and so on.

@ Raine: aw, thank you! <3

And she’ll be really sweet, and generally not a pitbull stereotype.

Just saying.

fuileachd:

amorremanet:

I actually started writing a rant about that yesterday, except the impetus was people who are fans of fanon!Gabriel more than canon!Gabriel and get upset when people write Gabriel as a total douchebag with some redeeming characteristics and a backstory that explains why he is a total douchebag without excusing it, rather than Draco In Leather Pants-ing him like a lot of fic does.

But … I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’m more accustomed to the etiquette for posting fic on LJ than for posting it on tumblr — and I intend to stay that way; in my little bubble of existing, LJ is for fic and other fanworks, and tumblr is for randomly sharing my opinions on things, reblogging pretty pictures, staring at pictures of cats or cupcakes or something, and occasionally uploading things I made in photoshop because photobucket is pissing me off — … but the whole, “no one reads my fic” thing rubs me as kind of whiny?

I mean, I know the feeling. But we are in a BIG fandom, A., and B. our BIG FANDOM has a lot of writers in it, and C., some people have anxiety problems or something that makes them less likely to comment. It’s not like they’re being malicious or anything; they’re just here to read and appreciate and mostly keep to themselves for whatever reason. Also, D. some people, for whatever reason, just have more friends than others — maybe it’s that they go nutty on friending memes and leave comments really often, maybe they write fic that caters to really popular interests or kinks (like, say, fluffy Destiel episode codas where there are cuddles and love and problems get worked through like they’re being dealt with by emotionally aware, responsible adult versions of Dean and Cas), or maybe it’s some other thing. But they have friends, their friends squee — it’s the fic promotion version of, “I’ll tell two people, and they’ll tell two people, and those four people will tell two people each…”

There are a lot of factors to consider and… Bottom line: it’s not like there’s some magic formula you can plug into to make people like your fic more, or to make them comment on it, reblog it, or whatever — sorry, it’s just not going to happen. Yes, there is definitely a problem in this fandom of people not really taking as much of an interest in gen fic as they do in shippy fic, but you get that in pretty much every fandom. I don’t know why it is; I don’t think anybody knows why it is. But you can’t write what you think will be popular or get comments, or even what you “might be better at” (as though that can be quantified and objectively proven), in favor of what you actually want to write — not just “you” as in “I’m talking to you, the SM,” but “you” as in the “general second-person human you.” You have to write what you want to write and what makes you happy or else you’re going to drive yourself up the fucking wall trying to please people, and it’s not going to do anybody any good.

I’ll say one thing, though: thank you, SM, for actually being honest about the fact that you care what people think about your fic and care if it gets comments on it. Despite the fact that you have to write for yourself first and foremost, if you’re writing for publication in any way, whether it’s fanfiction or for a newspaper or a blog or novels or whatever, you’re not doing it just for yourself. And anyone who says so? Is full of crap. Of course we care what people think, and of course we’re writing for people other than ourselves; that’s why we publish it. It’s why we click the “create post” button. It’s why we — at least on LJ — post links to the fic on different appropriate communities, or I guess submit it to different blogs on tumblr, maybe. We want to be read. And pretending like that’s not true is just … really silly, don’t you think?

And yes, it is definitely disheartening to put a lot of time and effort into something that goes basically ignored (like, example from my own repertoire, a Gabriel/Lilith angsty hurt/comfort fic, which two friends commented on and that was it) while something that you wrote in two, three-ish hours and didn’t have beta-read gets tons of comments (a fluffy Dean/Castiel epistolary fic, for instance). But … the only thing I can really say to that is, “tough crap.” That’s life. It’s fandom, and it’s not-fandom; sometimes it happen, sometimes it doesn’t. The only thing you can really do is get used to it.

Posting fics for public consumption is always a recipe for insecurity because yes, it’s true, we will always care what other people think. Not everyone will read it, or like it and let alone love it. But, in the end, the more positive side of the unpopular fanfic (or fanart) is that when SOMEBODY actually saw it, read it, liked it and understood, it will always feel great. And hey, it’s even likelier that you just met a new friend if you engage that random person.

For me, I write to let my own frustrations out (my version of fix-its, or the things I want to read but can never find) and every single time someone else reads it and actually likes it (massive joy if there’s a reblog), even if it’s only just one, I’ll continue to write a sequel (if there is one) for the both of us. Even if it’s just us.

I have more I want to add, but I should be in bed like several hours ago, so … I just bolded the part that I thought was super important and now I should probably sleep. Because I have to go to my cousin’s grad party today and sdfhfgher, lack of sleep.

I actually started writing a rant about that yesterday, except the impetus was people who are fans of fanon!Gabriel more than canon!Gabriel and get upset when people write Gabriel as a total douchebag with some redeeming characteristics and a backstory that explains why he is a total douchebag without excusing it, rather than Draco In Leather Pants-ing him like a lot of fic does.

But … I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’m more accustomed to the etiquette for posting fic on LJ than for posting it on tumblr — and I intend to stay that way; in my little bubble of existing, LJ is for fic and other fanworks, and tumblr is for randomly sharing my opinions on things, reblogging pretty pictures, staring at pictures of cats or cupcakes or something, and occasionally uploading things I made in photoshop because photobucket is pissing me off — … but the whole, “no one reads my fic” thing rubs me as kind of whiny?

I mean, I know the feeling. But we are in a BIG fandom, A., and B. our BIG FANDOM has a lot of writers in it, and C., some people have anxiety problems or something that makes them less likely to comment. It’s not like they’re being malicious or anything; they’re just here to read and appreciate and mostly keep to themselves for whatever reason. Also, D. some people, for whatever reason, just have more friends than others — maybe it’s that they go nutty on friending memes and leave comments really often, maybe they write fic that caters to really popular interests or kinks (like, say, fluffy Destiel episode codas where there are cuddles and love and problems get worked through like they’re being dealt with by emotionally aware, responsible adult versions of Dean and Cas), or maybe it’s some other thing. But they have friends, their friends squee — it’s the fic promotion version of, “I’ll tell two people, and they’ll tell two people, and those four people will tell two people each…”

There are a lot of factors to consider and… Bottom line: it’s not like there’s some magic formula you can plug into to make people like your fic more, or to make them comment on it, reblog it, or whatever — sorry, it’s just not going to happen. Yes, there is definitely a problem in this fandom of people not really taking as much of an interest in gen fic as they do in shippy fic, but you get that in pretty much every fandom. I don’t know why it is; I don’t think anybody knows why it is. But you can’t write what you think will be popular or get comments, or even what you “might be better at” (as though that can be quantified and objectively proven), in favor of what you actually want to write — not just “you” as in “I’m talking to you, the SM,” but “you” as in the “general second-person human you.” You have to write what you want to write and what makes you happy or else you’re going to drive yourself up the fucking wall trying to please people, and it’s not going to do anybody any good.

I’ll say one thing, though: thank you, SM, for actually being honest about the fact that you care what people think about your fic and care if it gets comments on it. Despite the fact that you have to write for yourself first and foremost, if you’re writing for publication in any way, whether it’s fanfiction or for a newspaper or a blog or novels or whatever, you’re not doing it just for yourself. And anyone who says so? Is full of crap. Of course we care what people think, and of course we’re writing for people other than ourselves; that’s why we publish it. It’s why we click the “create post” button. It’s why we — at least on LJ — post links to the fic on different appropriate communities, or I guess submit it to different blogs on tumblr, maybe. We want to be read. And pretending like that’s not true is just … really silly, don’t you think?

And yes, it is definitely disheartening to put a lot of time and effort into something that goes basically ignored (like, example from my own repertoire, a Gabriel/Lilith angsty hurt/comfort fic, which two friends commented on and that was it) while something that you wrote in two, three-ish hours and didn’t have beta-read gets tons of comments (a fluffy Dean/Castiel epistolary fic, for instance). But … the only thing I can really say to that is, “tough crap.” That’s life. It’s fandom, and it’s not-fandom; sometimes it happen, sometimes it doesn’t. The only thing you can really do is get used to it.