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olderthannetfic · 4 years

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It’s International Fanworks Day and also the 30th and final post in this series. If you follow my tumblr, you know that my true fandom isn’t buddy cops or Highlander or any of those things. No, my true fandom is...

WANK

No matter which bitchy piece of fujo-course nonsense you’re looking at on tumblr, no matter which debate about WNGWJLEO or women in slash or fanfiction vs. media you're reblogging, your grandma was having that fight in a zine somewhere in 1985 and at Escapade in the 90s.

Here’s a vid review from 2002:

"History Repeating," [...] was an Amanda vid. In-fucking-credible. Who knew? Who knew I could like Amanda? Who knew there were fresh HL clips I hadn't seen a thousand times before in HL vids? (Of course, as someone pointed out, she had her own spin-off.) This rocked--sharp, fast cutting and pretty, pretty shots, with a hot bisexy vibe running through it. And, you know, people like to say that there's all this self-hating misogyny in fans--you know, that women hate shows about women, hate women characters breaking up the OTP, etc. But when you see a femme-centric vid like this bring down the house, you really have to wonder. Is it misogyny, really, or is just that we usually see a bunch of crap representations of women in media and resist them?

So on the theme of There Is Nothing New Under The Sun, here is a selection of past Escapade panels on gender, representation, and problematicness:

1993 - Anti-Feminism in Slash Fandom (Or, how 'it was never this good with a woman' syndrome... where are the women, and why do we care?)

1995 - Why Lesbians Read Slash - (What's the attraction? Why do they care? Why do they write it?)

1996 - Character Bisexuality: Convenient fiction or character trait? (Is this a good compromise between "We're not gay, we just love each other" and "I was gay all along and just faking it with women"? Or is this too easy? Special mention for the stereotypical bisexual villian who's evil, sexy, and can come on to everyone.)

1996 - Female Heroes: Female Empowerment, or male power in women's bodies? (Give a woman a gun and make her really tough. Wow, cool! yes, or no? Are we celebrating women, or are we merely putting breasts on male action heroes? Heroines under discussion may include (but not be limited to) Sara Connor, Ripley, Vasquez, Thelma & Louise.)

1997 - Gender Astigmatism (The Gender Continuum: in what we read, in what we write, and what we are, there is always a connection with a point on the gender continuum. How do our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" influence our creativity? Where do bisexual characters fit in? (besides there, you dirty-minded person!)

1998 - Xena: Does Girl-Slash Get Us Going? (Xena is the first show with a feminine couple to be really popular. What kind of slash fans are interested? Does gender orientation matter? Or do slash fans love slashy couples regardless of their gender? Can m/m fans be 'converted' to f/f fans?)

1998 - Bastards & the Women Who Love Them (When Methos says, "you live to serve me," any normal '90s woman says, "I don't think so!... or does she? A happy contemplation on the virtues of handsome thugs.)

1998 - Slash: a Continuation of Women's Writing, led by Constance Penley (In case you didn't know, in her recent book NASA/TREK (yes, the slash is intentional), she addressed slash as a continuum of women's writing, combining women's romance, and the male quest romance. Join her for a discussion of slash -- where it was, where it is, where it might be going.)

1998 - The Trauma of Slash Fans in Het Fandoms (Or, what to do when find women doing all that cool, tough-guy stuff you love.)

1999 - Male Slash Fans - Welcome Voice, or Infringement? (Slash is written by women for women — or is it? The Internet has attracted new fans, including the "male slash fan". Who is he? What does he think of what "we" do? Do we care?)

2002 - Femslash (General discussion on female/female slash fiction. If Buffy wanted something cold and hard between her legs, why didn't she just choose silicon?)

2003 - Slash: Feminist political act or really good porn?

2005 - Where have all the lesbians gone? (When some slash lists explicitly state m/m only, where do you go for femslash? Are there any hot femslash couples? Pimp your femslash fandom here, or bemoan the lack of strung female characters in the current conservative social climate.)

2007 - Femslash: The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Femslash. It's a work that makes some of our hearts leap for joy and inspires complete and total disinterset—or even dislike and disdain—in others. Where can we find the good stuff? What makes it good? And what's up with the haters?)

2007 - SGA: The Women of Atlantis (What do we like about how the women of SGA are written and portrayed, and what makes us wince? What do we think about how their issues are being woven into the show's narrative?)

2008 - Gay is Not Slash (...even though slash is sometimes gay. The current argument about m/m romances by women as taking recognition *away* from male gay writers, depends on m/m writing being intended as gay lit. And slash, for one, isn't, even if there can be overlap. What overlaps? What doesn't? What examples do fans like?

2009 - Female Character Stories: Halfamoon, Full Moon or Just Moony (F/f slash, and other stories centered on female characters, are gaining visibility in fandom. Are there things fens will write about women that we won't about men? (Given MPreg, *are* there?) Should f/f be like m/m, or is it unavoidably different?)

2011 - My ***** is Not Ideologically Driven, But is it Homophobic (Slash fandom often sees itself as a mostly liberal community. IDIC, right? But recently there's been a slash backlash: it's anti-feminist, a 'symptom' of internalized misogyny. We're 'erasing' the women characters after all. Is slash homophobic? Does slash fandom appropriate gay culture? Is it awesome and ennobling as it makes us happy in our panties, or is all that self-hatred bubbling just beneath the surface of our porn?)

2012 - Natural Woman (We've lamented the lack of strong, believable female characters (who dress appropriately). But now we have them: Gemma Teller and Audrey Parker; Salt and Haywire; we've got Bechdel-passing women who look like they can throw a punch. Still, most of them are in the sci-fi or action genre, so are we really seeing progress? And what are we doing with them, as fans?)

2012 - Don't Call It a Bromance (It's Just Canon) (TPTB are increasingly aware of slash, and bromance is regular fare on TV canon these days. Does overt bromance make the fic and art hotter or just vanilla? Is there an anti-slash backlash in our shows? Is the emphasis on men's relationships making women disappear? Inquiring minds want to know. If you have answers, theories, or just want to squee, join in the fun!)

2014 - (The End of?) Ladybashing in Slashfic (Slashfic used to regularly feature bashing of female characters. Now, blatant bashing seems less fashionable. If you recognize this trend, let's talk! Were most ladybashing fics ones for juggernaut pairings in megafandoms, or were they everywhere? What's causing the change: more women in leading roles/ensemble casts, fic writers being more conscious to avoid bashing ladies even if they're not their favorites, more willingness to blame show writers' bad writing (instead of the character being just bad/evil/stupid) for bad female characters, or something else entirely?)

2015 - Fifty Shades of Fandom (Fifty Shades of Grey has become the representation of fan fiction in mainstream culture. It’s bad fan fiction, and it’s being used to ridicule women while making millions off women readers and viewers. Can we connect with these women: proto-fans who would love to read, and maybe write, great fan fiction if they found it? Can we use the FSoG phenomenon to expand our community? Does keeping our doors closed and our mouths shut perpetuate both monetization of our fan culture and misogynist scorn?)

2016 - Who Are We? (How do we define ourselves in this age of so many OT3s and team orgy pairings? Does m/m/f count as "slash"? Is slash-only space slipping away? (And would that be bad?) Do m/m and f/f belong together more than they do with m/f? Is "Media Fandom" a valid term any longer? Who are we if we start shipping het?)

2016 - Ladies Loving Ladies. (There would seem to be enough queer women in fandom to write/want more f/f. Do lesbians write f/f, m/m? Both? Do straight women? Or are we still missing the iconic female characters and relationships that create a great slash fandom? Did they figure out the answer to this question at TGIF/F and if so, what is it?)

2016 - By Us For Us (Fic, even kinky slash, is practically mainstream these days. The ebook revolution puts publishing within reach of almost anyone. Sundance hits have been filmed on iPhones. So why aren't fangirls making more media? Or is it happening right under our noses? Is this a place where our women's gift economy does our community a disservice? Discuss what's out there, what we'd like to see, and what's holding us back.)

2017 - LGBTQIA+ in Slash Fandom (Queer fans have always been here. In a subculture often defined as "for" straight women, what do we as fans have to say about non-straight, non-cis, and non-conventional sexuality and gender in fanfiction, in fandom, and in the larger culture?)

2018 - Confronting the Tensions Between Slash and Queer Representation (Slash fandom thrives on homoerotic subtext. Many queer fans are unwilling to settle for this quasi-representation. Part of every slash fandom seems loudly invested in their ship becoming canon. Some are queer fans who want actual textual representation in their favorite shows, and some are fans using queer politics to fight ship wars. Then the “slash is not activism” posts make the rounds. Is slash activism? Is advocating for slash ships in canon the same thing as advocating for queer representation?)

2018 - Representing Slashers (What does "representation" in the media mean to us? We know what more gay or POC representation means, but what about slash fandom, which is largely female and focused on bodies that don't resemble our own? Would better female characters in media better represent us? Or male characters written for a female audience? Come talk about the intersection of slash, personal identity, and media representation.)

2018 - Anonymity in Slash Fandom: Choosing to Hide (Why do the majority of slash fans hide their hobby? Is it fear of blackmail? Embarrassment? Fear of losing employment? How does this affect your happiness? How does this affect your security? What would an ideal world look like? Who would/have you told about your interest in slash? Who would you never, ever, tell?)

2019 - Fandom Post-Slash? (In an era of "ships" and #pairing #tags on Tumblr and AO3, has the "slash" label lost its meaning? Same-gender pairings are as popular as ever and fans still ID pairings with a virgule between the names, but how many fans still call m/m and f/f slash or femslash? How many fans identify as "slashers?" Het and slash were opposing binaries which few fans crossed. Are these barriers breaking down? What purpose has the term "slash" served? Has fandom moved

past it and, if so, what does that mean?)

#escapade 2020 #escapade con #fandom meta #fandom history

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the2020romanceproject · 4 years

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Hey everyone! I am excited to announce my upcoming venture into...

Romance Novels

I don't know romance novels. I've never read romance novels. But I've spent much of the last ten years reading a crapload of (fan)fic, which is usually about romance. I love fic, I write fic, it's one of my favorite genres, and it presumably has some overlap with the commercial romance genre, but I have no idea how. So I'm planning to find out, mostly by reading a bunch of romance in this good ol' year of our Lord 2020.

A few questions I'm hoping to answer:

What are the tropes that tend to show up in the romance genre? Fanfic goes in for all kinds of out-there things like soul bonds, soulmates, de-aging, surprise!baby, mpreg...does romance have any of this? How about less out-there tropes, like friends to lovers, or oh-no-there's-only-one-bed?

Do romance novels look to push different buttons in their readers than fanfic does?

What's the impact of original characters on the genre? I read a lot of fic for canons I don't know, but fanfic in general trades on characters that the readers are already familiar with. How does it change the structure and content of a romantic story to have to introduce your readers to completely new characters every time?

What's the effect of not being able to tag things? Fanfic authors get to tell their readers what to expect, including what relationships to expect, in a more direct way than romance novel writers can, and my impression is that fanfic readers can be more relied upon to read the tags than novel readers can be relied upon to read the back cover (and authors don't usually get to control what's on the back cover anyway).

Are the sex descriptions different? (I feel like probably.)

Are the relationship dynamics different? How does this vary across M/F, M/M, F/F?

Are romance novels more like novels than fanfic is? This sounds like a stupid question, but there are some pretty big differences between your average good piece of fanfiction and your average published novel: fanfic doesn't have to pay as much attention to the background, or build any kind of plot other than the romance (though sometimes it does). Are romance novels like fic in this way, or do they have to build a more robust world?

Is the gaze different? I suspect romance novels are just as female-gaze-y as fanfic is, but does the gaze focus on different things?

Are the politics different? Romance is very different from what it was twenty years ago, but does it have different assumptions and preferences from fandom in terms of dubcon, pronouns, representation, trigger warnings, etc?

And finally:

Do I like romance novels, and do I want to write them?

For the duration of 2020, I plan to read one romance novel or story every week or two and write up a review. I'll be focusing on the romance genre as defined by publishing, and I'll plan to stick to 21st-century stuff. I'll also try to bring in other people's thoughts on the subject when I can find them—but I feel like it's important for me to have some knowledge of the material itself before I delve into the commentary on it.

I'll be starting with some recommendations from friends who love the romance genre. If you have recommendations for me, send them my way! Same if you know of anyone else writing about this topic. I'm sure there are many of them out there.

And now, bring on the heaving bosoms and their modern, feminist equivalents!

#romance novels #fanfiction #fanfic meta

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jack-irallie · 7 years

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s u p e r j a i l (for the fandom ask thing lol)

Hey, cutie

1. My favorite female character would have to Alice. She’s my queen and I would let her pound me into the ground, killing me instantly (also great representation for transgender characters, especially in the episode where she learned that just cause she’s a woman, doesn’t mean she can’t also be tough)

2. Favorite male? Honestly, even though Warden is my husband and Jared is super relatable, I would have to say, Ash. He’s just such a sweet cinnamon roll, and everything about him, from backstory to his personality, is great.

3. My least favorite female character would have to be Mistress. She’s just…well, I did like how she stood up to Stingray/how she was from that time forward. But before she was just a stuck up discount Warden. So pre hippy Mistress then.

4. Okay, so the problem is that even the characters that are morally awful, like the Doctor and Stingray, are really funny. So, they have their own merits for being decent characters at least. How about that guy that almost threw Cancer in the fire? Fuck him

5. OH BOY the ships. They have sailed. My first ship for the show was Warden/Onceler (a classic, one I still love), but right now, as you know, I love warden/Jared. Funny thing is that used to be my notp, but I finally let it consume me and I never looked back (also like a bit of wardencest from time to time)

6. THE TWINS ARE BROTHERS, EVERYONE STOP MAKING THEM DO SEXUAL STUFF ITS GROSS 0/10 DO NOT RECOMMEND

7. Hmmm…well, if Budding of the Warbux didn’t have mpreg it would, without a doubt, be my favorite. But there are some other great ones. Cold Blooded in my favorite in season 1 definitely, season two would have to be Vacation (Warden, Jared, and the Doctor teaming up are the best…but the Grand Prix episode is a close second). Season 3 would have to be Burn Stoolie Burn (soooo cute!!) and season 4 would be the smoking one. I know that’s more than three but whatever.

8. Hmmm the problem is that even an episode with something bad has something good to make it worthwhile. Even though I loved the gay boys golfing and Alice hanging out with Paul, I would have to say the zombie episode. Everything else about it was very bland.

9. “I could make sweet, sweet love to your big bald head, that’s a fantastic idea!”

“It’ll be a gay wedding so grand that even God himself will warm up to the idea!”

That moment where Warden is all bandaged up and Jared tries to cheer him up.

When Warden is coloring (cute!!! My boy)

Oh! When the Twins go to the mall! I love those boys (as brothers lol) They are so cute

Alright, let’s end this reply before it turns into a book. It’s so long haha

#superjail #ask

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anxiousxdreamer · 5 years

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This is gonna get v stream of consciousness so bear with me

I fucking KNEW I needed to see more trans men shit on my dash. I said it ages ago. All the positivity posts I ever see have either nothing to do with me, or don't say anything substantial that I desperately need to hear as a trans man. Or they're nice/important to hear as a bisexual and aromantic person.

So hear me out

For a long time now I've been telling myself that, though I may want representation, I don't really NEED it for a number of reasons. I can get by with headcanons like Peter Parker or Danny Phantom. I don't need to have my struggles genuinely heard, or at least acknowledged that I'm not fucking weird for having them. If I "want" to be a man, and a good one not some asshole who wants to take all the spotlight, then what I really need to do is shut up and let all the other marginalized people get heard, get helped, get loved, get seen.

And they do need those things!

But fuck it I DO TOO.

And it may be selfish of me, maybe I'm just trying to take away other important representation by wanting my own, maybe I'm being just another asshole, maybe I'm ignoring the troubles of other people

But who cares about what my perceived or my actual reasons for wanting to be seen and heard and all that?

There are young, closeted or unknowing trans boys out there RIGHT NOW. Who have NO idea that they are a REAL THING. That they're NORMAL. That they're deserving of just as much love and respect as anyone else. They might not even know being TRANS is a thing, let alone trans MEN. If people like us get represented, then they can finally actually see someone like them!! They can know!!!

So they don't HATE THEMSELVES for thinking there's something WRONG with them.

I grew up thinking I would so much rather be a boy. When I cut my hair super short for the first time, my dad told me I looked like a boy and while I was adamant at the time that there was no way I was one, it didn't stop me from feeling in my bones that that was a GOOD thing. I knew trans men existed at that point, but you wanna know why I even did?

Because one of my friends came out as one

I still hadn't met anyone online, seen anyone on tv or online that was a trans man.

I'd watched Orange is the New Black, I knew about Caitlyn Jenner (I think she was out by then? Can't remember exactly). Trans women existing and being out and in the media but I still??? Hadn't seen a single trans man??? And by that point I hadn't even read headcanons about it.

There was that one woman in SVU who I distinctly remember got put in a man's cell and while my mom agreed with it I didn't like it, and I sort of thought Grell from Black Butler might be a trans woman, but like???? No men on my radar. I got really freaked and squicked out by the idea of men having babies period. (Still don't like mpreg but that's besides the point).

I saw gay men and lesbians and was hit very early on with the idea of being bi from the internet, but shit I never saw a person like me and it SUCKED. ASS. It STILL sucks ass.

I'm just so fucking tired of feeling guilty for wanting even a little representation. I've seen one (1) trans boy and it was a movie all about his family struggling to accept him. I've vaguely heard others exist, but shit man where's the Laverne Cox of trans men, huh?

I don't even know what the point of this post is

And I'm too scared to put it in any of the tags cause someone can and will inevitably yell at me for something I said

See ya

#Dreamer's day #im so tired #so so fucking tired

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