sing poets and sing singers at the alter of the straight

[frith_in_thorns]

There is a growing prevalence at the moment for Neal/Diana fic. This upsets me a lot, and I'm going to talk about why.

Disclaimer: I am not censoring anyone (since I am not a government entity, it would be literally impossible for me to do so). It is everyone's personal choice to write what they write. I am just trying to explain why this

Comments

[sahiya]

Okay, this is my last comment on the subject, mostly because I am now home from vacation and getting slammed by RL and I just don't have the bandwidth anymore.

Saying that you don't like something is fine. Where I draw a line, and where your post really got under my skin, is when you basically asked people not to write it. And yeah, okay, you say that's not what you're doing, but you sure went out of your way to make people feel bad for writing it/having written it/wanting to write it. The guilt trip at the end of the post is what really tipped me over the edge and made me kind of angry, especially since not everyone feels the way that you do. Not everyone who's queer feels like that pairing necessarily, by its very existence, invalidates them in some way. I don't. And in fact, I can envision a form of Neal/Diana that might actually validate my own experience (not that I've ever slept with anyone as pretty as Neal, but that's not the point).

There is plenty in fandom that I object to. There are people in fandom whose take on characters (such as Sara) I don't like. There are comms that I feel are unfriendly to Sara. I consider Tumblr a hotbed of negativity and misogyny. I avoid reading these people and going to those comms and using Tumblr because I don't like any of it. I used to pick arguments with people, but I don't anymore, because a) I don't see it doing much good and it seriously raised my blood pressure, and b) they have the right to their fandom experience, just as much as I do. You have every right not to like a pairing and to avoid it, and if you want to write meta and say why you find something problematic, by all means, go for it. Where I think you went over the edge was in asking people not to write it at all. At this point in my fannish experience, I would not say, "Please don't write Sara this way, it hurts my feelings" (even if it might be true). I just wouldn't read that fic.

Basically, at this point, I have a "live and let live" approach to fandom. I don't yuck other people's yums, even if I find those yums kind of yucky. If someone wanted to write Diana as always-straight - well, I would raise my eyebrows pretty hardcore about it, and if I knew the person I might talk to them about why they wrote the fic and what they were trying to do with it, and see if they understood why it was problematic (and if I didn't know the person, I wouldn't read the story at all, probably). But I would never say, point blank, "don't write this, it's wrong" which is how I interpreted this post.