Shame, Fanfic, Original fic and Identity - you know, just your usual Saturday post

[zoemathemata]

As anyone who reads my fanfic knows, I write slash. I like to write it, I like to read it. I love the pairings and the relationships and fanfiction REALLY revived my interest in writing at a time I thought I might not get it back

Comments

[qthelights]

I think a lot of us go through this.. for what it's worth, i've found that it isn't necessarily a blanket shame. For instance, I'm not at all ashamed with people knowing about it if I know that they're open towards sexuality. So while I might feel ashamed at telling someone (or having them find out) if I'd only just met them, or did not know how they would perceive the 'porn' aspect of fic, if I know they like that sort of thing, or don't judge it, then i'm happy to ramble on about my writing it, without shame.

Er, so what i'm trying to say is that I think it has more to do with society's reaction to sexual material than it does with us being ashamed at writing it. If people are okay with it, we aren't ashamed at all, if they aren't, then we fall back into that upbringing of sex=taboo.

[zoemathemata]

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT POINT - like I'm only worried if they have a negative reaction! Otherwise I'm like "Hey! you're okay with this kind of stuff? CHECK MY WRITING OUT!!!"

and it's almost like I wish I could hand out a questionnaire first to gauge their reaction and then tell or not tell them.

[qthelights]

right? which in some ways is just manners. No one wants to bring up any subject if the person they're talking to might be upset by it.

There's also a generational fandom aspect to it.. I don't know if you remember when SPN did the first meta episode with the fan convention ep and there was a whole lot of wank that went on, but one of the points was that people who'd been fans for ages, especially when fandom was secret, were terrified, because if their sig others or families found out they wrote gay sex the ramifications could be huge and devastating. and then there was the other, mainly younger side of fandom that was all, this is amazing they're showing us and fandom is mainstream now, my boyfriend is my beta reader, duh...

i fall in between those two extremes I suspect, I've been in fandom for a long time now.. but i got in when the internet started, so it was already starting to go mainstream, albeit slowly.

[zoemathemata]

I have tentatively tried to bring up my fanfic with one of my sisters and she was NOT receptive. She was okay with the gen stuff but I mentioned that "some people" really saw a connection between Dean and Cas and wrote fic for that and there was this LONG PAUSE and then she was like "ew"

So there sailed that boat.

however! My other sister is a shade more liberal and I've recently brought it up with her and she's like "hey if that's what you like, that's cool"

so possibly success??

[qthelights]

My sister and I used to read Hanson fic together. Talk about SHAME. I think because I wanted to get her into fandom and that's what she was into at the time. I think she still reads fanfic now - though I don't know what fandoms..

But I mentioned slash to her the other day and she claimed she didn't know what it was.. and i had a slashy TW pic on my phone and got a funny look from her so.. yeah, leaving that one there.

Mind you, the cat is a little bit out of the bag given my thesis had a whole chapter on slash and I banned my parents from reading 50 shades..

[sgamadison]

When one of my friends found out I wrote slash, she said for her it was on an eeww! level akin to necrophilia. Another found out I was writing original stories and was very happy for me until she found out what *kind* of stories--and then she dropped the friendship like a hot rock. Both of them would have been *fine* if I was writing sexy het fic--it is the homoerotic element they couldn't handle.

So yeah, I'm not comfortable talking about it. Mostly because it has the potential to have severe ramifications for me as a professional. I do know of one schoolteacher/author who was fired when it became known that she wrote M/M romance. Thank goodness I'm self-employed. My last contract actually had a 'moral turpitude' clause, in which I could be fired for undefined acts that were not 'moral'. *eyeroll*