My thoughts on yaoi, let me show you them

[calenlily]

I'm really not a slash fan, never have been. My opinion on it is firmly Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is Okay - not, I hasten to say, that I think slash is a kink (I'm so not stepping onto that minefield), just in the sense that people have varying tastes. I love het. And I actually kind of like femmeslash, it's just m/m that doesn't do it

Comments

[calenlily]

Looooong comment/rant/ramble-thing makes me happy. <3

I've seen a lot of slashers who seem to assume that a) het pairings and b) canon pairings are BORING and HOMOPHOBIC and WORKING FOR THE MAN, as if authors and actors are like some tinfoil-hatted paranoiac's idea of the government - they're hiding the TRUTH from us because they're too SCARED TO ADMIT IT! AAARGH!
Yeah, that's right, it's all a huge conspiracy. We're just writing these pairings to spitefully deprive people of the slashy truth, regardless of what we actually like. [/sarcasm] Glod, I don't know whether to die laughing or be all sad and disturbed. Why must people consider fandom such srs bsns?

I know a few other people who feel like that about fictional women. I have trouble comprehending it, since it's so outside my experience, but that's all very well and cool. Funny how different peoples' minds work.

[thistlerose]

I'm pretty sure that there are many people who enjoy slash, and yet are subconsciously or even consciously homophobic.

I've bumped into some of them. Pretty hypocritical. O_o

[calenlily]

Oh yes, I'm very aware of both types. (Hypocrisy FTL!) It's just a common enough accusation that I felt the need to address it.

[thistlerose]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, bb. ♥ It means a lot

[calenlily]

<3

Thinking characters would make an interesting couple is what all shipping should be based on, I think. And there are different types of characters that appeal to different people, and I wish more people could just understand that instead of ascribing whatever kind of motives to people whose tastes run differently. Eh, whatever, fandom being wanky is nothing new, I just get frustrated sometimes.

I agree with you on the implications of "subtext". Especially when people then go on to claim the creators or actors or whoever are lying or keeping something from them if they deny it. It tends to reek of entitlement.

OMG, some days I just want to scream about "get your misogyny out of my fandom!" But there are also a respectable number of authors writing BAMF!girls, and that gives me hope, and there are some many awesome girls in various canons that keep running through my head, so I'm just going to keep doing my own little part to increase the femmelove in fandom.

[thistlerose]

I ... yeah. Honestly, sometimes the gender politics of fandom remind me of high school - or worse, junior high. We're still hating on the women because they're competition for the men - even though, in fandom, none of them are even real! It doesn't make sense, but I swear, the attitudes are the same sometimes. I have many, many rants on this subject myself. :P

[hellaweasels]

*applause*
Nicely worded.

[I was surprised to find that you weren't into slash. But I am all for the femmeslash. Which is oddly enough what most of my original fiction is. ;)
I do have a few het couples I ship but those are mostly canon.]

[calenlily]

Heh, thanks!

I won't lie, your femmeslash is a significant part of the reason I friended you. (Well, that and you just had such interesting different ideas for Pern.) ...Oddly enough, an awful lot of my original fic ends up being femmeslash too, often without my really meaning it to.

[hellaweasels]

Awww. *blushes* I've never gotten friended for my writing before. :) (Haha, I suppose that's one way of putting it.)
Oh, well, I mean most of femmeslash to be femmeslash. :)