It's been a while since I wrote some tl;dr fandom meta...
OK, I'm bored out of my brains AGAIN so I'm going to spam with a little fandom-based essay (not really a rant, since it's not angry enough IMO) that's been knocking around my head for a while. I'm posting it here and not at fandom_discuss or fandom_rant because this subject tends to generate more wank than AlMiles during Jensen Ackles' Smallville audition. I'm trusting you, my dear flist, to stay wank-free and, should you feel the need, to carry on a civil discussion. Seeing as I've friended both het fans and slashers, responses might be varied.
Why does het fic get such a bad rap?
This is not going to be one of those het-vs-slash circle-jerks (at least I hope not). This is partially in defense of het; partially just me wondering why it gets such a bad rap in fandom. So I'm going to take on the (unflattering) generalizations most commonly thrown at het fic and why I'm genuinely bewildered (and honestly, more than a little annoyed) by them.
1. Het is boring.
Well, I guess this depends what you're reading the fic for. If you're looking for some quick and dirty word pr0n, and you're put off by girly parts, I suppose this is a valid personal opinion. But it's just that--a personal opinion. It's unfair to tar an entire genre of fic with the same brush b/c of a personal preference. Some het fans read fic for more than the pr0n. Some of us are intrigued by the actual relationship between the characters. If I wanted nameless, faceless pr0n, I wouldn't bother with fanfic and would just watch/read the stuff at your average XXX site. I read het fic because that particular pairing intrigues me. When I write sex scenes, they're not just there for titillation. They should be like any other scene--they should move the story forward, reveal a different aspect of these characters' relationship, and be unique to the characters involved. If you can take the same sex scene and substitute different characters' names, then that's just bad fic. That's not because it's het--if you could do that to a slash sex scene I'd say that same thing. And that is boring.
DISCLAIMER: Before you slashers start pelting me with hot-pink vibrators, I'm not saying y'all just want nameless, faceless pr0n. The stuff I said above about the characterization and relationships can be applied to slash fic as well. That discussion is not specific to any particular genre of fic--that was my point. "Boring" is a quality of badly-written fic, period--not specifically slash or het.
2. There are more crappy het fics than slash fics.
Now, I rarely peruse slash archives, but it's my impression that there are more het fics online, period. And I figure, the more fic there is, the more likely it is that most of it will be bad. But news flash--fanfic in general is bad. Perhaps in small, relatively obscure fandoms, it's easier to find the diamonds in the rough. But when a fandom is as big as say, HP or the Whedonverse, good luck.
Furthermore, if people who make this claim are going by large unregulated archives like say, The Pit of Voles, what do you expect? True, the HP section of the Pit seems dominated by bad teenybopper het (although I've seen several bad teeny slash fics as well). But generally, het appeals to a broader audience. This doesn't mean it's better. It just means there's more of it. So of course it will appear that there are more bad het fics. But the ratio of goodfic::badfic is probably roughly the same in both slash and het.
So I'm making the same claim for het that you can make for slash--if you want good fic, don't go looking at FFnet or AFFnet unless you want to lose all faith in humanity. There are many great het fics at smaller, less well-known archives. I find good het fic almost exclusively through rec lists or word of mouth. I almost never find it just perusing an archive. And the het fics I do find are verrryy good.
3. Het is for 14-yr-olds and bored housewives.
So I suppose every slash fan is hipper than the casts of FRIENDS, Sex in the City, and ummm... some other show about hot single people put together?
... OK, that was bitchy. But I couldn't resist. At 28, single, and not completely unfortunate-looking, I resent being called a teenybopper or bored housewife b/c I happen to like my fic with girly bits.
I don't really see any basis for this except stereotyping. Yes, het writers exist who meet those criteria. Slash writers exist who meet those criteria. This is the internet. If we all led fabulous, exciting, worthy-of-our-own-reality-show lives, why the hell would be writing fic about someone else's characters on livejournal?
4. Het is something I can get every day; slash is exciting/unusual.
OK, first off... as a non-slutty single girl not in a relationship, no, I can't get het every day. Well, I could but not unless I wanted to out-ho Ginny Weasley and Martha Jones Paris Hilton and Lindsay Blohan put together. And umm... what does this have to do with fic? Fanfic is not masturbation (OK, there are some who can argue with me about that). Going back to point #1, I'm reading it more for a good story than to get my jollies off. I just like a good story, period--whether it involves het or slash, that doesn't change the quality of the writing.
Which leads to my next point. Slash is to fanfic what funky alternative bands are to the music scene. Everyone's sick of the top 40 shit already, so they shun it and instead listen to obscure bands no one's ever heard of. But, like music, alternative =/= quality. There are plenty of shitty alternative bands whose stuff makes my ears bleed every bit as much as the worst Top 40 stuff. This is not to say that all slash fics suck... far from it. I'm just saying that they're capable of sucking as much as het fics are.
5. Het fics = romance novels.
I think this perception is a lot of what feeds into #3, because that's the stereotype about those Mills&Boon serials you see at the grocery store. And for the most part that's true. But again, it's an assumption based on little evidence. Het fics are no more like romance novels than slash fics are. Either way, if the fic is about a romantic/physical relationship between two characters, that would make it... ummm... a romance. The fact that one involves two guys as opposed to a guy and a girl doesn't change that. It might not be as poorly-written as those Mills&Boon novels, but it's still a romance.
Furthermore--and this applies to any pairing fic, het or slash--the main plot need not necessarily be romance. It could be a dark fic in which the relationship is anything but romantic. Not all het fics are wish-fulfillment fantasies for the lovelorn. Many of them can be quite depressing. They don't all end in Character A marrying Character C (heh!) and having 2.5 children and a yellow lab. Many of them are simply about examining the characters themselves and the dynamic between them--not necessarily about falling in loff.
So here endeth my essay, b/c I am boring myself and want to go do something else already. I sincerely hope I didn't offend anyone... that was not my intention. I will admit I do find some of the above statements offensive, but the last thing I want is to do the same thing to slashers that I feel some of them do to het fans.
Why does het fic get such a bad rap?
This is not going to be one of those het-vs-slash circle-jerks (at least I hope not). This is partially in defense of het; partially just me wondering why it gets such a bad rap in fandom. So I'm going to take on the (unflattering) generalizations most commonly thrown at het fic and why I'm genuinely bewildered (and honestly, more than a little annoyed) by them.
1. Het is boring.
Well, I guess this depends what you're reading the fic for. If you're looking for some quick and dirty word pr0n, and you're put off by girly parts, I suppose this is a valid personal opinion. But it's just that--a personal opinion. It's unfair to tar an entire genre of fic with the same brush b/c of a personal preference. Some het fans read fic for more than the pr0n. Some of us are intrigued by the actual relationship between the characters. If I wanted nameless, faceless pr0n, I wouldn't bother with fanfic and would just watch/read the stuff at your average XXX site. I read het fic because that particular pairing intrigues me. When I write sex scenes, they're not just there for titillation. They should be like any other scene--they should move the story forward, reveal a different aspect of these characters' relationship, and be unique to the characters involved. If you can take the same sex scene and substitute different characters' names, then that's just bad fic. That's not because it's het--if you could do that to a slash sex scene I'd say that same thing. And that is boring.
DISCLAIMER: Before you slashers start pelting me with hot-pink vibrators, I'm not saying y'all just want nameless, faceless pr0n. The stuff I said above about the characterization and relationships can be applied to slash fic as well. That discussion is not specific to any particular genre of fic--that was my point. "Boring" is a quality of badly-written fic, period--not specifically slash or het.
2. There are more crappy het fics than slash fics.
Now, I rarely peruse slash archives, but it's my impression that there are more het fics online, period. And I figure, the more fic there is, the more likely it is that most of it will be bad. But news flash--fanfic in general is bad. Perhaps in small, relatively obscure fandoms, it's easier to find the diamonds in the rough. But when a fandom is as big as say, HP or the Whedonverse, good luck.
Furthermore, if people who make this claim are going by large unregulated archives like say, The Pit of Voles, what do you expect? True, the HP section of the Pit seems dominated by bad teenybopper het (although I've seen several bad teeny slash fics as well). But generally, het appeals to a broader audience. This doesn't mean it's better. It just means there's more of it. So of course it will appear that there are more bad het fics. But the ratio of goodfic::badfic is probably roughly the same in both slash and het.
So I'm making the same claim for het that you can make for slash--if you want good fic, don't go looking at FFnet or AFFnet unless you want to lose all faith in humanity. There are many great het fics at smaller, less well-known archives. I find good het fic almost exclusively through rec lists or word of mouth. I almost never find it just perusing an archive. And the het fics I do find are verrryy good.
3. Het is for 14-yr-olds and bored housewives.
So I suppose every slash fan is hipper than the casts of FRIENDS, Sex in the City, and ummm... some other show about hot single people put together?
... OK, that was bitchy. But I couldn't resist. At 28, single, and not completely unfortunate-looking, I resent being called a teenybopper or bored housewife b/c I happen to like my fic with girly bits.
I don't really see any basis for this except stereotyping. Yes, het writers exist who meet those criteria. Slash writers exist who meet those criteria. This is the internet. If we all led fabulous, exciting, worthy-of-our-own-reality-show lives, why the hell would be writing fic about someone else's characters on livejournal?
4. Het is something I can get every day; slash is exciting/unusual.
OK, first off... as a non-slutty single girl not in a relationship, no, I can't get het every day. Well, I could but not unless I wanted to out-ho Ginny Weasley and Martha Jones Paris Hilton and Lindsay Blohan put together. And umm... what does this have to do with fic? Fanfic is not masturbation (OK, there are some who can argue with me about that). Going back to point #1, I'm reading it more for a good story than to get my jollies off. I just like a good story, period--whether it involves het or slash, that doesn't change the quality of the writing.
Which leads to my next point. Slash is to fanfic what funky alternative bands are to the music scene. Everyone's sick of the top 40 shit already, so they shun it and instead listen to obscure bands no one's ever heard of. But, like music, alternative =/= quality. There are plenty of shitty alternative bands whose stuff makes my ears bleed every bit as much as the worst Top 40 stuff. This is not to say that all slash fics suck... far from it. I'm just saying that they're capable of sucking as much as het fics are.
5. Het fics = romance novels.
I think this perception is a lot of what feeds into #3, because that's the stereotype about those Mills&Boon serials you see at the grocery store. And for the most part that's true. But again, it's an assumption based on little evidence. Het fics are no more like romance novels than slash fics are. Either way, if the fic is about a romantic/physical relationship between two characters, that would make it... ummm... a romance. The fact that one involves two guys as opposed to a guy and a girl doesn't change that. It might not be as poorly-written as those Mills&Boon novels, but it's still a romance.
Furthermore--and this applies to any pairing fic, het or slash--the main plot need not necessarily be romance. It could be a dark fic in which the relationship is anything but romantic. Not all het fics are wish-fulfillment fantasies for the lovelorn. Many of them can be quite depressing. They don't all end in Character A marrying Character C (heh!) and having 2.5 children and a yellow lab. Many of them are simply about examining the characters themselves and the dynamic between them--not necessarily about falling in loff.
So here endeth my essay, b/c I am boring myself and want to go do something else already. I sincerely hope I didn't offend anyone... that was not my intention. I will admit I do find some of the above statements offensive, but the last thing I want is to do the same thing to slashers that I feel some of them do to het fans.