Wtf: Peeve of the Week

[black_sluggard]

Just a random thought before I head off to dream land...

I don't usually have a problem with het (as long as Ryan and Esposito are not involved in it), and who doesn't like a little gen now and then? But what I can't stand, like, at all is when writers of het or gen feel the need to proclaim in their summary (often in OBNOXIOUS CAPITAL LETTERS):

NO SLASH
NOT SLASH
NO SLASHES
JUST BROMANCE
FRIENDSHIP NO GAY STUFF!!

Etc, and etc. God, we get it. I usually assume it's not slash if it's not labled as such. I get that we're the fringe of the fringe in fandom (though within our fringe are fringes still, but I digress).

Please, for the love of God don't do this. I've run across too many stories I'd wanted to read, but just couldn't after I saw that. Do you know why, hypothetical het and gen writers who are about as likely to ever see my journal as I am to dance the polka (once in middle school, never again)?

I get its not your thing. I don't expect everyone to like the shit that I like, but think of it this way: Say you were a fan of both science fiction and fantasy. Would you want to read a sci-fi novel that read "Omg u gais, NO DRAGONS!"? I know if I saw that I would feel like my tastes and the validity of the entire genre were being insulted.

And it just...doesn't lend itself to an attractive or helpful summary anyway.

(brought to you by a Sluggard cheezed off because of a Psych fic that probably had something to do with werewolves, but now we'll never know)

Does anyone else have this issue? Because it kills my appetite for a fic me like finding half a cockroach in the third bite of cereal.

God, I hate FF.net anyway...

Comments

[game-byrd.livejournal.com]

Does it bother me? When I run across it, yes. It was something I used to hold against my previous-fave FFN author Alydia Rackham. Then she heaped on some sexism/misogyny/even-the-warrior-women-need-to-be-protected-by-the-male-heroes and I unfavorited her. Don't get me wrong, she's still an awesome writer, but I don't want to read that shit. It pisses me off. Like you say, kills my appetite like half a cockroach.

Odd tangent - this last Saturday there was a fly buzzing around. I paid it no mind. A while later I took a drink of my lemonade. There was something in it. I spat it out. It was half a fly. Literally. HALF a fly. I was immediately nauseous. OMG! EWWW! I looked in the drink and sure enough, there no 'other half of fly' there.

Anyway, Alydia was very much of the 'slash is wrong unless the characters are canonically gay, and then I simply won't write about them' mentality.

I have to ask though, from my myopic point of view, is slash really a fringe? Like in Heroes, I'd say a good 80-90% of the fics that feature romantic pairings are slash of one flavor or another. (and half of that is written by me - LOL!) But I read an article a few months ago that in the first year of some LJ comm for Supernatural, 30-40% of the fics were Wincest. That was pre-Castiel days, so I figure now that you can count in Destiel and various other angel pairings (and most of the angels we've seen are male), that the slash is even higher. Are we really something uncommon when we're probably more than half the publishing fandom?

I realize FFN has a different breakdown. There it's like 10-20% of the Heroes fic is slash, last time I checked, but I don't read much there these days. Too busy. Too busy writing more slash. :)

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

I am almost as offended by that as the people who actually warn for slash. (Even when they're posting in a slash community! I should fucking well HOPE it's slash in that case!) Both types need a smack upside the head and then some. >:|

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

I have to ask though, from my myopic point of view, is slash really a fringe?

It depends on the fandom. From my personal experience, in Supernatural it's definitely the norm, in Criminal Minds it's probably about 50/50, and in Castle it's the overwhelming minority regardless of where you're looking to find your fic.

[adja999.livejournal.com]

I don't find it offensive all the time. It all depends of the apparent tone.
I know that some people are very allergic to slash, and when someone clearly states in the summary "AU SLASH blah blah" it may just be that they have been flamed before.
I know I've received incendiary comments saying "OMG, you should say it more clearly I need to wash my eyes with bleach"
I have authors I read often that state "AU GEN" or "CANON SLASH" at the very first of each story and I think it's only for it to be 'catchable' at first glance so you can move along if you're not interested.

Now, however, I am offended by things like "This is Dean/Castiel friendship, this is not slash because that's just sick" or "This is slash, so if you don't like don't fucking read"
Whatever the point, it's the tone that matters to me.

But I completely get what you mean. I am NOT a fan of JDM/Jensen or even worse, John/Dean, and I just don't get it, but I don't give a shit if someone likes it. I don't find it stupid or that gross (well, except for the father/son. Eesh.), so I just keep quiet and move along.
I personally very got trolls or haters. I looks so exhausting with absolutely no payoff. You're hating. You're making your stomach ache. Why are you waiting your time? Go make yourself smile instead. Better yet, yourself and someone else. ^^

"Omg u gais, NO DRAGONS!"
Now I think it'll just crack me up. :P

I think FF has increasingly been taken over by PJs. (French geek nickname for kids bellow fourteen that go online in their PJs before going to bed early because mom said so and post shit like "YOu fugly." "Justin Beiber rulz" "ZOMG TITZ!" and troll. And troll.
YOu know the ones.
I'm getting that from the quality of writing and the childish depth of the romances.
Day 1: Meet. Hate each other.
Day 2: Does something cute. Oh, hey, that's cute.
Day 3: OMG I LOVE YOU LETS HAVE SEX
Day 4: That is all.

[adja999.livejournal.com]

I don't warn for slash if my pairing says it all (like say Destiel or Roach) because... duh. If it's Roach friendship, and friendship only, I'll say so, just because I don't like being disapointed myself (you read a story expecting smoochies and you get a friendship. I dunno. Fanfic is my porn, so what? :P).

However, if the main pairing is, say, caskett, and there is slash involved somewhere, just out of caution, I'll warn. In the case of fanfic.
I have recieved angry PMs of people back when I started writting that I should make it clearer there was slash involved "Because that's disgusting bitch."
And it's only fair, in a way. I didn't like being insulted, but maybe I offended someone that really didn't want to stumble onto that.
(for more details, see my comment on the bluggard's entry)

Obviously, though, in a slash comm... I'd hope there was slash. :P

[adja999.livejournal.com]

in Castle it's the overwhelming minority regardless of where you're looking to find your fic.
And that is sad. :(

[game-byrd.livejournal.com]

You know, I think there would be more het fic if there were more strong female protagonists that a female viewer could relate to. I saw the Hunger Games last week and I would totally slash Katniss/Rue. Wait, that's still slash. Well, anyway, I'd put her with some guys, too, but not the two the show was hooking her up with. Those were too straight-forward to be interesting from a writing standpoint. I'd be all Katniss/Cinna or Katniss/Haymitch.

The thing is, uninteresting female characters are a staple of so many TV shows.

[black_sluggard]

Yeah, I guess it really does depend on where you hang out. I started off in Supernatural fandom on FF.net, and I wound up drifting away from there before Castiel ever showed up, so I barely got a chance to see the drift... And now I've read surprisingly little Destiel because there really is so much that it's hard to know where to start/who is good...

*makes a note to hit up some people for reccs later*

When I found LJ I promptly fell into Castle (or burrowed into it), where as coffeebuddha says, slash is greatly outnumbered. In fact, sometimes it really does feel like it's just me and coffeebuddha... Ryan/Esposito is the fandom's redheaded stepchild. :(

I read a lot of Hawaii Five-0 slash now, though mostly because there always seems to be plenty of it... I know AO3 seems to be slanted in slash's favor as well. It's one of the things I really love about it.

[black_sluggard]

I "warn" for slash in my LJ headings, but then I usually use the warnings as a catch-all for general "tags", so I also "warn" for fluff, het, time travel, cheesiness, drunkenness, infodump, "adorability", meta, or whatever other ridiculous thing strikes me. And I do tend to warn specifically for past/brief het when i post in slash communities.

Elsewhere I don't "warn" that something is slash so much as label it as such. Because regardless of whether a story is slash or not, if there are any pairings in a story, unless it's supposed to be a surprise, I feel it is polite to have them identified. And because on FF.net, I figure actually putting "Slash" into the summary discourages the more intelligent non-slash readers and limits the number of "omg ew" comments I might have to deal with.

Because there will always be those readers who don't actually understand the conventions of what the "/" means between two names. God that's another peeve of mine...

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with saying that a story contains slash, but the instant you attach the word 'warn' onto it, I jump to the assumption that the writer considers it potentially offensive and wants to treat it as such. There's a lot of bigotry in the world and I refuse to help perpetuate it by coddling people who are offended by homosexuality. As someone who was sexually assaulted as a child, I warn for things like graphic violence and child abuse. As someone who is bisexual, I refuse to warn for sexual attraction between two people of the same gender.

As far as people attacking writers over slash goes, I consider it their own problem. It's the writer's responsibility to label their fic correctly. If they fail at that, then yes, point it out to them. However, there's still absolutely no excuse for getting nasty just because you've accidentally stumbled across something you don't personally agree with, you know?

I wrote a longer post about it a while ago on my LJ (http://coffeebuddha.livejournal.com/125215.html) but be aware that I was very angry and tired when I wrote that.

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

See, for stuff like that I would just say 'contains' instead of 'warn' in the heading. It serves the same purpose without the negative connotations that a lot of people attach to a warning.

Back when I posted on FFnet a lot, I usually included slash in my summary too unless the fic was clearly labeled at a romance with two males in the character slots. I do think readers have the right to know what they're getting into, and sometimes you just want some good old fashioned friendship fic or het and there's nothing wrong with that. FFnet is so restrictive about stuff like labeling. I like AO3's system SO much more.

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

So very, very sad. :(

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

Apparently they don't need to be interesting as long as they're pretty and thin enough. =P

It's like I saw black_sluggard mention H50. Even with as dominated by slash as that fandom is, it's still really easy to find really good het and femslash fic for Kono, who is all kinds of strong, interesting, and all around kick ass. And then there's the fandom for the Marvel/new Avengers movies. There's so much fic for characters like Pepper Potts and the Black Widow. It's not like these shows don't have templates they can look at for characters that women actually WANT to see on their screens.

[black_sluggard]

Yeah, AO3's format is ♥

My headers tend to get super inflated. I use "Details" for author comments and extra information (when something takes place in relation to the show, possible spoilers, stuff like that), "Disclaimer" for...sometimes really stupid stuff picking my story apart before anyone else can. Black Edelweiss is probably the worst offender. I finally had to snip the header for chapter postings, because the main header got so bloated I really couldn't stand seeing it anywhere but the main "table of contents" post for the fic.

Is it sad that my first mental reaction to the suggestion of "contains" was that it wasn't aesthetically pleasing as "warning"? (idek) Might change it to "Notes" though...

[black_sluggard]

Day 1: Meet. Hate each other.
Day 2: Does something cute. Oh, hey, that's cute.
Day 3: OMG I LOVE YOU LETS HAVE SEX
Day 4: That is all.
Yeah, just...yeah.

Just the other day I praised an author because their romance read like grownups.

[coffeebuddha.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha. Not sad really since writers tend to put a lot of value on the aesthetics of a words. Notes sounds fine to me if you don't like contains.

[adja999.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I get it. I'll warn for graphic sex in any case (though that makes me think I haven't written an het sex scene in ages).
I am bi, too. But what if you loose readers because they were actually GOING for that same sex attraction? I mean, for me, it's not a warning as much as a categorization. I wish I could read everything, but i just can't. So I gotta filter. And usually, I filter through things like 'slash/gen/het', pairings and summary.

However, there's still absolutely no excuse for getting nasty just because you've accidentally stumbled across something you don't personally agree with, you know?
Yes. I completely agree.

I opened your post in a new tab. I'll read it later today or tomorrow. (Thursday is my busiest day of the week. Ending with a flourish by posting the castle newsletter. ^^)

[adja999.livejournal.com]

*hangs self*