Saturday night navel-gazing

[vaznetti]

I wasn't going to update today, but here I am. I hope that everyone else is off doing more interesting things with their Saturday nights.

I followed a link to this rather interesting post about self-insertion fantasies and the use of Mary Sue as a shaming term in fannish discourse (for the record, I have elaborate gen fantasies involving a Mary

Comments

[cofax7]

"slasher" seems like an exclusive identity, constructed in opposition to other kinds of fanfic writers; slashers don't write het, by definition. I suspect this attitude is a sign that I've been in fandom a long time, because I rather doubt that it's really the case these days.

From my experience, it's true for some, but not all. I know many people who write gen, het, and slash interchangeably. Heck, I guess I'm one of those people. But I also know people who identify primarily as slashers, even if they sometimes write gen or het; and people who identify primarily as het writers, and so forth. It's really beginning to not be a good category for writers, even if we still use these categories to talk about writing.

I don't put you in a box other than "interesting angles" and "secondary characters". I never know what to expect from you, other than that it will be interesting and won't be what everyone else in that fandom is writing.

[vaznetti]

I know many people who write gen, het, and slash interchangeably. Heck, I guess I'm one of those people.

Most of the people on my flist fall into this category, I think -- and I suspect that you're right when you say that "slasher" and "het writer" may not be useful categories for many (some? most?) writers. I think that when I entered fandom slash was still a kind of closed community, and that continues to influence me. But to be honest I feel rather cloistered these days -- I have no idea how most other fans see this thing we do.

[jennyo]

Well, it says a lot about my construction of fandom into, "People who get it" and "People who don't" that I think of you as, "one of my people who can write" when I think of your fic.

Like, seriously, my divisions are "down" and "not down" which is kind of a fun if very idiosyncratic version of fandom.

[vaznetti]

Like, seriously, my divisions are "down" and "not down" which is kind of a fun if very idiosyncratic version of fandom.

But probably makes a good deal more sense than anything else -- or at least as much sense. And it avoids putting people in small boxes, and then having to act all surprised when they climb out of them and into some other small box somewhere else.

And thank you!

[thepiratequeen]

I tend to agree with your definition of "slasher" which is probably why I've never considered myself one even though I have as many slash OTPs as het ones. I'm one of those "ships relationships that make sense no matter what the gender" people and that's pretty much how I'd "label" you. My very first OTP of any fandom was Krycek/Mulder and I shipped it before Marita was a part of the show. When she came on the scene I eagerly put her into the equation and refused to see her as a threat to my ship.

And an enthusiastic "Yes!" to denigration of canonical heterosexual relationships to promote preferred pairing being an annoyance. It's been my Number 1 fic pet peeve lately and something I've been chatting about with many fandom friends. I have yet to write a post about it because I can't talk about it too long without ranting.

Btw, I love your icon.

[vaznetti]

Oh, rant away! And thanks -- monanotlisa made it for me.

I do think that the notion that writing slash means you can't write het is not as common as it once was -- as Cofax said, there are plenty of people who go back and forth. (I suspect that the issue of exclusivity has to do with ships as well -- as you say, liking K/Ma doesn't keep you from liking (and writing) M/K as well. It's not an either/or kind of thing, although for some people it clearly is.)

[the_grynne]

Maybe it's because the first stories of yours that I read was "Airs, Waters, Places" (although I can with little effort read Sark/Jack into that) followed by "Lee Shore" -- I don't think of putting you into those categories. Slash, het, gen: it doesn't even register as tertiary to me. More important are writing style, and characterisation. When I see a story by Vaznetti, I think this is going to be good.

[vaznetti]

Well, thank you.

I think it's funny that I think of myself so clearly as a "het writer" when I write all kinds of fiction -- gen, het, slash, whatever. I feel the need to categroize myself, and I'm not sure why.

[musesfool]

I think of you as someone who writes good stories, but if pressed, I'd probably say gen.

I don't self-identify as a slasher, because I find it sometimes tends to go along with certain attitudes I don't embrace, as I also write and love het, and read and occasionally even write gen as well. *g*

[vaznetti]

I don't self-identify as a slasher, because I find it sometimes tends to go along with certain attitudes I don't embrace, as I also write and love het, and read and occasionally even write gen as well.

Gen! How shocking! (heh.) I think it's certainly the case now that there are plenty of people like you, who write slash but don't quite fall into the "slasher" category, at least in its old-fashioned cloistered sense, because basically (as Medie suggested below), they're "writers" before anything else.

Also, thanks!

[musesfool]

Welcome!

Also, I started out as a het writer, and some people still think of me that way, even after I've written many many stories featuring m/m slash. Probably those who aren't in the fandoms in which I've written slash. To XMM people, I'm a Logan/Rogue writer, despite the fact that I haven't been in the fandom for a good two and a half years.

But yes, most of the writers I like I would categorize as writers, not as slashers or hetters or whatever. Though I do find the term bitextual (or tritextual) cute and possibly useful.