So I feel VERY out of place here adding myself to the discussion... but I want to haha. I read your post and the majority of the comments (okay all of them but I was skimming sort of).
I... I've been mainly involved in fanfiction only through fanfiction.net still. I enjoy that site and it works for me. I have only ever read your fics, MissGoalie75, on this livejournal site and like 1 tumblr fic. I use tumblr for other things and don't really use livejournal. :P
And I'm still a vidder and fanvideo watcher more than I am a fanfic person, although I love fanfic and have been reading more of it than ever this past year I think and writing quite a bit too.
I gravitate toward the "gen" stuff, I think. Both in fanvideos and fanfiction, both in my own creations and in stuff I really love watching/reading. If gen = platonic, then YES. That's what I love.
Why do I love it? Because a) it's underdone/under-appreciated and I think that is part of the appeal for me. I like being unique. And I like variety. And so things that are done 50 million times can get boring for me much easier than something that's rare. But also I love it because b) I have very little personal experience with romance, and although it scares me I am grappling with the possibility that I am asexual (but I know I'm heteroromantic, I just don't know if I'm heterosexual) but c) I have plenty of platonic experience in my own life.
One of the biggest problems with non-romantic bonds in fanvideo form is that it is so much easier to find love songs that really don't quite work for platonic relationships. Or that even if they'd work for platonic stuff, they're clearly meant to be romantic - or at least assumed to be. Because when making a fanvideo you have to work with what fandom provides combined with what songs exist in your own mental library (or in some cases, your own physical library of music, although most people can illegally download any song in the world for free pretty easily nowadays and most people aren't morally opposed to it, it seems).
Still, you find in the fanvideo world that platonic relationships are fairly rarely vidded. I mean even I am guilty of perpetuating that trend. Thinking about my Gilmore Girls vidding, I've made like 15 videos that are 100% about the romantic ship Rory/Jess, maybe 6? about the romantic ship Luke/Lorelai, and literally only 2 videos about the platonic mother/daughter relationship of Rory/Lorelai, which is the main relationship really focused on by that show. I loved them and would vid them more, but it's tricky... it's easier to vid a romantic couple that you've SEEN VIDDED so many times, plus easier to find songs that fit them, etc. Even though I've seen Lorelai/Rory vidded tons of times over the years, I've seen romantic ships like Luke/Lorelai and Rory/Jess vidded way more.
And I think that translates to fics as well. While it is fun to write about any character or relationship on a show that you like, platonic or not, I think a lot of people feel compelled to imitate what they've seen already - like it's weird to write for a character that you've never read any fics about before. It's harder to know whether you're in-character or not because you don't have these other written fanworks to compare to it or something. And also you have less motivation to memorize all of their scenes too. When everyone in the fandom - or in fandom in general, as does seem to be true - is obsessed with only romantic ships, that is all people end up being exposed to.
I think the main problem is probably what you guys all hit on already though - that people want their work to be appreciated. It sucks to write something new and get ZERO reviews because it's for a fandom no one knows or despite the fact that it's within a popular fandom, it's for a platonic "ship" that no one is searching for. In fact, for an unpopular fandom, you might get attention regardless of what you write - platonic relationships maybe just as much as romantic ones, etc. But for something like Glee, where the amount of fics out there is overwhelming, everyone narrows their search down and just decides they're interested in the romances without even realizing what they're dismissing.
You also mentioned the idea that it's harder to know the "goal" of a platonic relationship fic. I think to some degree that's true on TV shows too. Without a first kiss... or "getting back together"... or marriage... or babies as a goal, people aren't sure what the point of their story should be lol. Better writers realize that writing the same old thing gets boring anyway and even their romantic fics probably have more unique goals. But since for a platonic fic the goal is always gonna be more unique, it's more daunting for every single writer.
Just my thoughts.
If I look through what I've written though, I'm someone who has written mainly platonic stuff. Sometimes some romance is in the background of my fics but it doesn't mean I'm categorizing a Blaine/Sam friendship fic under Klaine. No it means I'm using the canon fact that Klaine is something on Blaine's mind as part of his character when writing something that I do actually categorize under Blaine/Sam. Not that I've written for any of those 3 characters. :P That was just an example. But I am planning on writing a platonic Santana/Karofsky fic soon and I've read quite a few of them before and they usually follow that trend - Brittana and/or Kurtofsky is the background romance mentioned but the fics I've read are under the right categorization of Santana/Karofsky platonic friendship.
I was also thinking about mixed gendered friendships as well - like with The OC, for example, you get plenty of Summer and Marissa and Ryan and Seth, but rarely do you see Summer+Ryan or Marissa+Seth, and with this re-watch I'm doing at the moment, it's rather sad because boys and girls CAN be friends without any romantic connotation, but lol TV doesn't give us that.
I think the problem with having romance in the background is that writers aren't necessarily keeping them in the background, if that makes sense. So many of my Glee friendship fics include the fact that Blaine is in a relationship with Kurt and loves him because that's canon. But there's something more beyond the fact that Blaine is dating Kurt. It's about Blaine's relationship with this other person and it's about having something that doesn't involve his romantic relationship, which is really fucking hard to find when it comes to Blaine fics because of the way he was written into the show.
Yeah shows way too rarely give us platonic male/female friendships, especially where both are heterosexual, and there is no hint of romance. The O.C. was guilty of that and some shows are better than others but really Gilmore Girls was just as bad - Lane ended up very romantically involved with two of her 4 opposite sex band-mates as opposed to successfully just having a platonic bond with them and she didn't seem at all close to Brian or Gil... Rory and Lorelai were not close (platonic) friends with any guys except Rory/Marty and maybe Lorelai/Michel but Marty was completely in love with her and Michel... they weren't that close AND he was gay. None of the characters seemed to have close friendships like that with an opposite sex friend, from what I can remember. To some degree it is realistic, from an early age girls are socially conditioned into only hanging out with other girls and boys with boys and there is the complicated nature of when there is a potential for romance one or both people might fall for the other, but... it also is nice to explore the idea of someone being already in a committed romantic relationship and then becoming close friends with someone else of the opposite sex without any hint of an "emotional affair" or worse more obvious cheating. It is nice to explore the idea of being able to be friends with some of your classmates or co-workers and not have crushes on all of them lol.
I think with Glee it gets EVEN MORE complicated because yeah, of the way Blaine and so many characters are written onto the show.
You're desperate for people to add to the friendships that the show doesn't do justice. But the show provides SO LITTLE that people don't have anything to even start with. A side character like Tina has as her biggest plots storylines involving her romances - with Artie, then Mike, then I guess Blaine. There's also a tiny bit of other stuff - annoyance at not getting enough solos, and they make it clear she's close friends with Mercedes. But they don't give her character much substance so it's hard for people to want to write about Tina with a character she's never had a real conversation with on screen, or worse a character never on screen like her parents. :P I think that definitely is part of it.
Oh yeah Lane did get romantically involved with half her bandmates sigh.
The only instance I think of in Gilmore Girls that was boy+girl without any romance is Paris+Jess for about five seconds :C One day I'll write that friendship fic. But yeah GG was pretty awful with that, probably one of the worst since everyone had to fall in love with Rory.
That's definitely a reason - and it's even worse with the newbies on Glee because they're really not individuals like the original batch of kids.
I think Luke & Sookie had some nice moments too haha, Sookie totally supported Luke/Lorelai and they were both chefs.
I did fall hard for Marley out of the newbies though. I think it might be partially because Melissa Benoist's beauty has me captivated though. :P I'm not sure.
If you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here for you, by the way. I thought I was possibly asexual for a while given my lack of interest in having a relationship for a really long time (at least in relation to my peers), so I understand a little bit about it.
That's really interesting about fanvidding though - most music other there is romantic, so it has to be difficult making platonic videos with that kind of ~romantic music accompanying it. I know when I listen to songs I immediately think of my personal ships and very rarely do I consider the friendships i like.
like it's weird to write for a character that you've never read any fics about before. It's harder to know whether you're in-character or not because you don't have these other written fanworks to compare to it or something.
I was thinking about this for a while and I totally understand what you mean - I know I've tended to read fics in the fandom before jumping in, although with Glee I couldn't find what I wanted to write and just decided to write it anyway. And for me, I've always written more Glee fic than I've read, so I trusted my own characterization based on the canon given to me, so confidence could be an issue at play?
But for something like Glee, where the amount of fics out there is overwhelming, everyone narrows their search down and just decides they're interested in the romances without even realizing what they're dismissing.
You hit the nail on the head - I'm guilty as fuck for this way back when I was in the HP fandom and narrowed down what I wanted based on Lily/James + the Marauders, so I missed out SO MUCH just because I was overwhelmed and found one thing that I liked and didn't branch out until years later.
And yeah I understand that with Harry Potter. There's too much out there and you just find what you like and don't even consider the rest because seriously that fandom has 50 million characters. :P And it's basically true for Glee too. ;)
I... I've been mainly involved in fanfiction only through fanfiction.net still. I enjoy that site and it works for me. I have only ever read your fics, MissGoalie75, on this livejournal site and like 1 tumblr fic. I use tumblr for other things and don't really use livejournal. :P
And I'm still a vidder and fanvideo watcher more than I am a fanfic person, although I love fanfic and have been reading more of it than ever this past year I think and writing quite a bit too.
I gravitate toward the "gen" stuff, I think. Both in fanvideos and fanfiction, both in my own creations and in stuff I really love watching/reading. If gen = platonic, then YES. That's what I love.
Why do I love it? Because a) it's underdone/under-appreciated and I think that is part of the appeal for me. I like being unique. And I like variety. And so things that are done 50 million times can get boring for me much easier than something that's rare. But also I love it because b) I have very little personal experience with romance, and although it scares me I am grappling with the possibility that I am asexual (but I know I'm heteroromantic, I just don't know if I'm heterosexual) but c) I have plenty of platonic experience in my own life.
One of the biggest problems with non-romantic bonds in fanvideo form is that it is so much easier to find love songs that really don't quite work for platonic relationships. Or that even if they'd work for platonic stuff, they're clearly meant to be romantic - or at least assumed to be. Because when making a fanvideo you have to work with what fandom provides combined with what songs exist in your own mental library (or in some cases, your own physical library of music, although most people can illegally download any song in the world for free pretty easily nowadays and most people aren't morally opposed to it, it seems).
Still, you find in the fanvideo world that platonic relationships are fairly rarely vidded. I mean even I am guilty of perpetuating that trend. Thinking about my Gilmore Girls vidding, I've made like 15 videos that are 100% about the romantic ship Rory/Jess, maybe 6? about the romantic ship Luke/Lorelai, and literally only 2 videos about the platonic mother/daughter relationship of Rory/Lorelai, which is the main relationship really focused on by that show. I loved them and would vid them more, but it's tricky... it's easier to vid a romantic couple that you've SEEN VIDDED so many times, plus easier to find songs that fit them, etc. Even though I've seen Lorelai/Rory vidded tons of times over the years, I've seen romantic ships like Luke/Lorelai and Rory/Jess vidded way more.
And I think that translates to fics as well. While it is fun to write about any character or relationship on a show that you like, platonic or not, I think a lot of people feel compelled to imitate what they've seen already - like it's weird to write for a character that you've never read any fics about before. It's harder to know whether you're in-character or not because you don't have these other written fanworks to compare to it or something. And also you have less motivation to memorize all of their scenes too. When everyone in the fandom - or in fandom in general, as does seem to be true - is obsessed with only romantic ships, that is all people end up being exposed to.
I think the main problem is probably what you guys all hit on already though - that people want their work to be appreciated. It sucks to write something new and get ZERO reviews because it's for a fandom no one knows or despite the fact that it's within a popular fandom, it's for a platonic "ship" that no one is searching for. In fact, for an unpopular fandom, you might get attention regardless of what you write - platonic relationships maybe just as much as romantic ones, etc. But for something like Glee, where the amount of fics out there is overwhelming, everyone narrows their search down and just decides they're interested in the romances without even realizing what they're dismissing.
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Just my thoughts.
If I look through what I've written though, I'm someone who has written mainly platonic stuff. Sometimes some romance is in the background of my fics but it doesn't mean I'm categorizing a Blaine/Sam friendship fic under Klaine. No it means I'm using the canon fact that Klaine is something on Blaine's mind as part of his character when writing something that I do actually categorize under Blaine/Sam. Not that I've written for any of those 3 characters. :P That was just an example. But I am planning on writing a platonic Santana/Karofsky fic soon and I've read quite a few of them before and they usually follow that trend - Brittana and/or Kurtofsky is the background romance mentioned but the fics I've read are under the right categorization of Santana/Karofsky platonic friendship.
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I think the problem with having romance in the background is that writers aren't necessarily keeping them in the background, if that makes sense. So many of my Glee friendship fics include the fact that Blaine is in a relationship with Kurt and loves him because that's canon. But there's something more beyond the fact that Blaine is dating Kurt. It's about Blaine's relationship with this other person and it's about having something that doesn't involve his romantic relationship, which is really fucking hard to find when it comes to Blaine fics because of the way he was written into the show.
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I think with Glee it gets EVEN MORE complicated because yeah, of the way Blaine and so many characters are written onto the show.
You're desperate for people to add to the friendships that the show doesn't do justice. But the show provides SO LITTLE that people don't have anything to even start with. A side character like Tina has as her biggest plots storylines involving her romances - with Artie, then Mike, then I guess Blaine. There's also a tiny bit of other stuff - annoyance at not getting enough solos, and they make it clear she's close friends with Mercedes. But they don't give her character much substance so it's hard for people to want to write about Tina with a character she's never had a real conversation with on screen, or worse a character never on screen like her parents. :P I think that definitely is part of it.
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The only instance I think of in Gilmore Girls that was boy+girl without any romance is Paris+Jess for about five seconds :C One day I'll write that friendship fic. But yeah GG was pretty awful with that, probably one of the worst since everyone had to fall in love with Rory.
That's definitely a reason - and it's even worse with the newbies on Glee because they're really not individuals like the original batch of kids.
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I did fall hard for Marley out of the newbies though. I think it might be partially because Melissa Benoist's beauty has me captivated though. :P I'm not sure.
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That's really interesting about fanvidding though - most music other there is romantic, so it has to be difficult making platonic videos with that kind of ~romantic music accompanying it. I know when I listen to songs I immediately think of my personal ships and very rarely do I consider the friendships i like.
like it's weird to write for a character that you've never read any fics about before. It's harder to know whether you're in-character or not because you don't have these other written fanworks to compare to it or something.
I was thinking about this for a while and I totally understand what you mean - I know I've tended to read fics in the fandom before jumping in, although with Glee I couldn't find what I wanted to write and just decided to write it anyway. And for me, I've always written more Glee fic than I've read, so I trusted my own characterization based on the canon given to me, so confidence could be an issue at play?
But for something like Glee, where the amount of fics out there is overwhelming, everyone narrows their search down and just decides they're interested in the romances without even realizing what they're dismissing.
You hit the nail on the head - I'm guilty as fuck for this way back when I was in the HP fandom and narrowed down what I wanted based on Lily/James + the Marauders, so I missed out SO MUCH just because I was overwhelmed and found one thing that I liked and didn't branch out until years later.
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