Listen to Hester bitch even more about her fandoms!
Fandom tends to be an extremely open-minded place-- especially when it comes to sex. Which I think is on the whole a good thing; so much of the time people irl disapprove of something just because of some notion of it being "inappropriate" that usually has no actual basis. (E.g. the perception that "kink" = "you are a weird and gross person.")
But you know what sucks? (Aside from the obvious part where people take shit that genuinely isn't okay and are all :D :D :D about it....) It sucks when otherwise intelligent people decide that because they write more slash/more kink/more something "edgy" it makes them somehow a better writer than all of THA NORMALZ!1 And I say "otherwise intelligent" because I'm not surprised when people who can't even be bothered to use spellcheck think that their nonsensical fic is automatically cool just because they put kink into it-- but for some reason, it seems like there are a lot of people in fandom who are genuinely smart who buy into this.
All right, so I used to know-- or, more accurately, I used to know of; I've never actually talked to her-- this girl in one of my fandoms. We'll just call her J.; I'm pretty sure that there's only one person on my flist who would know for sure who I'm talking about since she's the one who first ranted about her to me. Anyway, I'm quite sure that there are several in every fandom.
J.'s writing was sort of... average. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination; it just wasn't exactly good either. It was certainly readable. Her subject matter, on the other hand, was just wtf. The problem wasn't the fact that she wrote a lot of noncon fic, it was that she wrote a lot of noncon fic and obviously reveled in the fact that it clearly made her VERY DEEP and probably also A FREE THINKER.
It would have done that if her writing had actually been good instead of average and if she actually had something to say about her subject. Instead it was just really obvious that noncon was her kink but she wanted people that think that she wasn't just being kinky but was instead making an important statement of some sort and generally being a rebel. --This despite the fact that while her writing was competent and she did seem to know what she was talking about, her characterization made no fucking sense and each fic seemed... oddly monotonous. Never before has being locked in a rape dungeon by a crazy semi-demon creature come across as so boring.
Okay, so to recap: J. wrote rape fic and it was bland (and yet also very creepy in an OOC way) rape fic. But that wasn't all. She was very vociferous about her fic, and was clearly very convinced that she was an excellent author.
And, as you might expect, she couldn't take criticism. This is where the broader point of my rant comes in. (God, there is a point behind all this tl;dr. I swear!) When somebody criticized her work, she would respond with a "No, you're wrong" comment of the sort that made it clear that anyone who didn't like her work was uneducated, narrow-minded, etc. I'm sure that in her mind, people were just upset with her for writing about controversial subject matter. It's almost as if the question of whether her fic was actually any good didn't even occur. But being controversial is only any good if you're really saying something with your writing and if you're making the reader feel something.
In other words, I hate the fact that the way fandom is makes it especially easy to people to defend themselves against any criticism just by claiming that their detractors are close-minded homophobes or some similar label. (Because clearly, you're a very special snowflake who is going to usher in great cultural change and all of THA HATERZZZ are lining up to break your great and noble spirit....)
Also, as a side note: it's fine if you want to write noncon because it's important to the plot/themes of your serious fic. And it's fine if you want to write noncon porn because it's your fetish. But, you know, if you claim to be going for the former, I shouldn't be able to tell how HAWT you think your rape scenes are. If you want people to think you're being deep and that you're a serious writer who deals with the big issues, I shouldn't be able to hear you fapping quite so loudly when I read your fic. Just a thought.
I really wish that fandom as a whole would stop acting like someone's being self-consciously avant-garde matters more than whether they actually have any skill.
...The problem for me now is that I really don't want to become that type of person. I have semi-formed plans now for a fairly long (well, long for me, anyway) srs bznss!fic that's set to have one definitely-rape scene and one maybe-rape scene... and aside from the fact that that makes me nervous in its own right because I'm not sure if I know how to write either, I'm now also worried that I'm going to end up being like that about it. And I just. Gah. What do I do? If I ever actually get around to writing this, it really will be the most edgy thing I've ever written... so how do I avoid the appearance of thinking that I'm extremely cool because of it?
But you know what sucks? (Aside from the obvious part where people take shit that genuinely isn't okay and are all :D :D :D about it....) It sucks when otherwise intelligent people decide that because they write more slash/more kink/more something "edgy" it makes them somehow a better writer than all of THA NORMALZ!1 And I say "otherwise intelligent" because I'm not surprised when people who can't even be bothered to use spellcheck think that their nonsensical fic is automatically cool just because they put kink into it-- but for some reason, it seems like there are a lot of people in fandom who are genuinely smart who buy into this.
All right, so I used to know-- or, more accurately, I used to know of; I've never actually talked to her-- this girl in one of my fandoms. We'll just call her J.; I'm pretty sure that there's only one person on my flist who would know for sure who I'm talking about since she's the one who first ranted about her to me. Anyway, I'm quite sure that there are several in every fandom.
J.'s writing was sort of... average. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination; it just wasn't exactly good either. It was certainly readable. Her subject matter, on the other hand, was just wtf. The problem wasn't the fact that she wrote a lot of noncon fic, it was that she wrote a lot of noncon fic and obviously reveled in the fact that it clearly made her VERY DEEP and probably also A FREE THINKER.
It would have done that if her writing had actually been good instead of average and if she actually had something to say about her subject. Instead it was just really obvious that noncon was her kink but she wanted people that think that she wasn't just being kinky but was instead making an important statement of some sort and generally being a rebel. --This despite the fact that while her writing was competent and she did seem to know what she was talking about, her characterization made no fucking sense and each fic seemed... oddly monotonous. Never before has being locked in a rape dungeon by a crazy semi-demon creature come across as so boring.
Okay, so to recap: J. wrote rape fic and it was bland (and yet also very creepy in an OOC way) rape fic. But that wasn't all. She was very vociferous about her fic, and was clearly very convinced that she was an excellent author.
And, as you might expect, she couldn't take criticism. This is where the broader point of my rant comes in. (God, there is a point behind all this tl;dr. I swear!) When somebody criticized her work, she would respond with a "No, you're wrong" comment of the sort that made it clear that anyone who didn't like her work was uneducated, narrow-minded, etc. I'm sure that in her mind, people were just upset with her for writing about controversial subject matter. It's almost as if the question of whether her fic was actually any good didn't even occur. But being controversial is only any good if you're really saying something with your writing and if you're making the reader feel something.
In other words, I hate the fact that the way fandom is makes it especially easy to people to defend themselves against any criticism just by claiming that their detractors are close-minded homophobes or some similar label. (Because clearly, you're a very special snowflake who is going to usher in great cultural change and all of THA HATERZZZ are lining up to break your great and noble spirit....)
Also, as a side note: it's fine if you want to write noncon because it's important to the plot/themes of your serious fic. And it's fine if you want to write noncon porn because it's your fetish. But, you know, if you claim to be going for the former, I shouldn't be able to tell how HAWT you think your rape scenes are. If you want people to think you're being deep and that you're a serious writer who deals with the big issues, I shouldn't be able to hear you fapping quite so loudly when I read your fic. Just a thought.
I really wish that fandom as a whole would stop acting like someone's being self-consciously avant-garde matters more than whether they actually have any skill.
...The problem for me now is that I really don't want to become that type of person. I have semi-formed plans now for a fairly long (well, long for me, anyway) srs bznss!fic that's set to have one definitely-rape scene and one maybe-rape scene... and aside from the fact that that makes me nervous in its own right because I'm not sure if I know how to write either, I'm now also worried that I'm going to end up being like that about it. And I just. Gah. What do I do? If I ever actually get around to writing this, it really will be the most edgy thing I've ever written... so how do I avoid the appearance of thinking that I'm extremely cool because of it?