After having read one too many author profiles...
When reading "I'm an X, so I don't write Y" in someone's profile or introduction, does anyone else have a hard time not inferring that the person in question would totally read and write Y if only they could be convinced that it wasn't unethical?
(Especially when you-the-reader are an X and do write Y, for a sufficiently broad definition of X.)
It also seems a little disingenuous.
After all, there are any number of things in fanfiction that I don't write. This is because I have no interest in them and/or I don't see them in the case in question. (When I'm interested in Y but don't see it, I may read other people's Y, usually in the context of AUs, but will seldom get an idea to write it for myself.)
Whether or not I'm an X has very little to do with whether or not I see Y, unless Y is something that persons who are X are predisposed to go looking for.
If I think Y is unethical, I'm unlikely to be interested in a story that glorifies Y; if Y is something I'm actively squicked by, I'll go a great distance in the other direction to avoid it. But, unless I'm trying to persuade other people to share my views, I don't really have any business coming out with them unless asked; the most that's appropriate in an introduction, as near as I can tell, is to say "I'm not interested in Y" and at least imply that my stories therefore won't contain it.
Especially when, in describing a story of mine, I could either say "There is no Y in this story" or "This is a Z story." ESPECIALLY on sites such as ff.net, where there's a character count for the metadata and it's usually shorter to say what it is than what it isn't.
And X still probably has little to do with it. In fact, I expect I'd actively turn off some readers if I put up something on my page saying "I have Asperger's Syndrome, so I won't write teacher-student romantic relationships" or "I'm a Christian, so I write happy nontraditional families in the hope that others may see that marriage properly entered into is a sacrament for the two or three or four people therein, whatever gender they might happen to be, and try to treat the characters I'm borrowing or have made up for spackle in a way that reminds others that we are all brothers and sisters in that great bond that all mankind shares." (Heh. Could that last be any more patronizing? Maybe if I figured out some way to imply that I was undeniably writing nontraditional families from a relentlessly traditional family perspective, or something.) At least the X and Y in the latter example actually have something to do with each other.
Seriously. I'd expect the profiles to at least point people to their blog, so the readers could choose whether or not to read writerly babbling.
After all, now and then you do want to know what sort of pairings you can expect out of an writer, or whether they only do gen, or what, and it is nice to have that available as long as it isn't smacking you in the face.
But if, say, I was going to try to tell people what to expect out of me, it'd take up a lot of lines, especially as it varies by fandom. Rather a lot. There are some fandoms for which I ship the canon pairings hard; there are some for which I only write gen; there are some where I ship non-canonical pairings... and of those latter, some fandoms I only ship het in, some I only ship slash or femslash, some I ship both or all three, and of all of them there are fandoms where I ship the non-canon pairings as a replacement for the canon pairings and fandoms where I ship some non-canon pairings as an adjunct to the canon ones. Also there are a number of fandoms where I'm involved enough to ship but love the canon in such a way that I've never particularly felt the urge to read or write fanfiction.
For fandoms where I do read and/or write fanfiction, I have a number of OTPs (one per fandom; that O has to mean something), a few OT3s, and a couple of OTFs, where that last letter stands for "friendship." Occasionally I may read something where an OTF turns romantic or sexual, but more likely than not it'll be an AU; it's not that I think any two given people will love each other less for wanting each other, but I do think it cheapens friendship to imply that its deeper forms can only occur in the context of love-with-wanting. (Not that any one friendship-turned-relationship would imply that; but when they all do, it's hard not to so infer, and everyone draws the lines of "This one, but not this one" differently. One of my OTFs may be your all-time OTP, and one of your OTFs may be a pairing I ship, and we can still read and perhaps beta each other's gen and discuss the nature of the characters in question's relationships with third parties.)
If anyone wants to know, I'll be happy to talk to them; but most of my mailing lists have gone very quiet, and it's not as if people are clamoring round my metaphorical door here. Maybe I should join some more communities.
(Especially when you-the-reader are an X and do write Y, for a sufficiently broad definition of X.)
It also seems a little disingenuous.
After all, there are any number of things in fanfiction that I don't write. This is because I have no interest in them and/or I don't see them in the case in question. (When I'm interested in Y but don't see it, I may read other people's Y, usually in the context of AUs, but will seldom get an idea to write it for myself.)
Whether or not I'm an X has very little to do with whether or not I see Y, unless Y is something that persons who are X are predisposed to go looking for.
If I think Y is unethical, I'm unlikely to be interested in a story that glorifies Y; if Y is something I'm actively squicked by, I'll go a great distance in the other direction to avoid it. But, unless I'm trying to persuade other people to share my views, I don't really have any business coming out with them unless asked; the most that's appropriate in an introduction, as near as I can tell, is to say "I'm not interested in Y" and at least imply that my stories therefore won't contain it.
Especially when, in describing a story of mine, I could either say "There is no Y in this story" or "This is a Z story." ESPECIALLY on sites such as ff.net, where there's a character count for the metadata and it's usually shorter to say what it is than what it isn't.
And X still probably has little to do with it. In fact, I expect I'd actively turn off some readers if I put up something on my page saying "I have Asperger's Syndrome, so I won't write teacher-student romantic relationships" or "I'm a Christian, so I write happy nontraditional families in the hope that others may see that marriage properly entered into is a sacrament for the two or three or four people therein, whatever gender they might happen to be, and try to treat the characters I'm borrowing or have made up for spackle in a way that reminds others that we are all brothers and sisters in that great bond that all mankind shares." (Heh. Could that last be any more patronizing? Maybe if I figured out some way to imply that I was undeniably writing nontraditional families from a relentlessly traditional family perspective, or something.) At least the X and Y in the latter example actually have something to do with each other.
Seriously. I'd expect the profiles to at least point people to their blog, so the readers could choose whether or not to read writerly babbling.
After all, now and then you do want to know what sort of pairings you can expect out of an writer, or whether they only do gen, or what, and it is nice to have that available as long as it isn't smacking you in the face.
But if, say, I was going to try to tell people what to expect out of me, it'd take up a lot of lines, especially as it varies by fandom. Rather a lot. There are some fandoms for which I ship the canon pairings hard; there are some for which I only write gen; there are some where I ship non-canonical pairings... and of those latter, some fandoms I only ship het in, some I only ship slash or femslash, some I ship both or all three, and of all of them there are fandoms where I ship the non-canon pairings as a replacement for the canon pairings and fandoms where I ship some non-canon pairings as an adjunct to the canon ones. Also there are a number of fandoms where I'm involved enough to ship but love the canon in such a way that I've never particularly felt the urge to read or write fanfiction.
For fandoms where I do read and/or write fanfiction, I have a number of OTPs (one per fandom; that O has to mean something), a few OT3s, and a couple of OTFs, where that last letter stands for "friendship." Occasionally I may read something where an OTF turns romantic or sexual, but more likely than not it'll be an AU; it's not that I think any two given people will love each other less for wanting each other, but I do think it cheapens friendship to imply that its deeper forms can only occur in the context of love-with-wanting. (Not that any one friendship-turned-relationship would imply that; but when they all do, it's hard not to so infer, and everyone draws the lines of "This one, but not this one" differently. One of my OTFs may be your all-time OTP, and one of your OTFs may be a pairing I ship, and we can still read and perhaps beta each other's gen and discuss the nature of the characters in question's relationships with third parties.)
If anyone wants to know, I'll be happy to talk to them; but most of my mailing lists have gone very quiet, and it's not as if people are clamoring round my metaphorical door here. Maybe I should join some more communities.