The prevalence of slash in fandom
Sep. 4th, 2014 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11Those of you who pay any attention to fannish channels may have seen the 2014 Archive of Our Own Ship Stats chart. It catalogues this year's hundred most popular relationships written about in stories in that particular fan fiction archive. It discovered, among other things, that making this list are 3 F/F pairings, 3 non-romantic, 23 F/M, and 71 M/M.
Perhaps it shouldn't have, but that surprised me. Not even a third as many straight romances written about as gay ones? I know fan fiction has alway had a ton of queer stuff, but I'm curious what the motivating factor behind that is. Is it that people can't even find queer romance in mainstream media? That might lead me to ask why people don't write original works with queer themes, because CLEARLY there are people who are interested in that. (Is there just as much original queer fiction as queer fan work that is just less visible?) Do they feel like they won't find their audience unless that audience is already hooked by interest in a mainstream property? You don't have to tell me how hard it is to get a new work to find the people who would care about it, but is that indeed why so many queer fan works exist?
I guess the above speculation makes sense. Maybe my real question is why are there so few straight fan works by comparison? Why aren't people writing straight romance in fandom? Are there really so many fewer fans who are interested in it? I have a hard time believing that; properties would not have lots of general success if ONLY the subset interested in queer stuff liked them. And not that you can only write about people like yourself, but are the straight/straight-interested fans less creative? I can't believe that either, creativity has no correlation to sexuality. Do they feel like they get their quota of straight stuff from source material/mainstream media in general and if they want queer stuff find that the only solution is to write it themselves? Hell, as an offshoot of that, why so little femslash? Again, not that you can only write about people like yourself, but aren't there lesbians out there who want to women characters getting together? What about the demographic of authors makes it so that male-male romantic pairings is so overwhelmingly represented?
It stumps me because I don't really relate; I am not a slash fan. I think it's fine if that's your thing, or if it soothes the need for representation or diversity that mainstream media fails to satisfy, but for me personally I tend to not be able to get interested in things that are not compliant with the canon of whatever property I enjoyed enough to seek out fan fiction for. I've written about this issue for me before. I think I must be something of a rarity in this subculture in that when I seek out fanworks, it's because I want MORE of whatever it was I liked about the original. If that is rare, I don't understand why it would be. You enjoy a story, you want more, right? But lately I find myself being, while no less fannish, less and less interested in engaging with fandom. While I don't fault it in any way, I don't really conenct with how it expresses so it's really not so much fun. But I am pretty bemused as to why it works out the way it does.
Perhaps it shouldn't have, but that surprised me. Not even a third as many straight romances written about as gay ones? I know fan fiction has alway had a ton of queer stuff, but I'm curious what the motivating factor behind that is. Is it that people can't even find queer romance in mainstream media? That might lead me to ask why people don't write original works with queer themes, because CLEARLY there are people who are interested in that. (Is there just as much original queer fiction as queer fan work that is just less visible?) Do they feel like they won't find their audience unless that audience is already hooked by interest in a mainstream property? You don't have to tell me how hard it is to get a new work to find the people who would care about it, but is that indeed why so many queer fan works exist?
I guess the above speculation makes sense. Maybe my real question is why are there so few straight fan works by comparison? Why aren't people writing straight romance in fandom? Are there really so many fewer fans who are interested in it? I have a hard time believing that; properties would not have lots of general success if ONLY the subset interested in queer stuff liked them. And not that you can only write about people like yourself, but are the straight/straight-interested fans less creative? I can't believe that either, creativity has no correlation to sexuality. Do they feel like they get their quota of straight stuff from source material/mainstream media in general and if they want queer stuff find that the only solution is to write it themselves? Hell, as an offshoot of that, why so little femslash? Again, not that you can only write about people like yourself, but aren't there lesbians out there who want to women characters getting together? What about the demographic of authors makes it so that male-male romantic pairings is so overwhelmingly represented?
It stumps me because I don't really relate; I am not a slash fan. I think it's fine if that's your thing, or if it soothes the need for representation or diversity that mainstream media fails to satisfy, but for me personally I tend to not be able to get interested in things that are not compliant with the canon of whatever property I enjoyed enough to seek out fan fiction for. I've written about this issue for me before. I think I must be something of a rarity in this subculture in that when I seek out fanworks, it's because I want MORE of whatever it was I liked about the original. If that is rare, I don't understand why it would be. You enjoy a story, you want more, right? But lately I find myself being, while no less fannish, less and less interested in engaging with fandom. While I don't fault it in any way, I don't really conenct with how it expresses so it's really not so much fun. But I am pretty bemused as to why it works out the way it does.
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Date: 2014-09-04 09:00 pm (UTC)but for me personally I tend to not be able to get interested in things that are not compliant with the canon
But of course, heterosexuality is RARELY explicitly stated in your canons. It might be implicit, and it might be a default assumption, but like, just because Jim Kirk's only ever shows with women or aliens who read as women, that doesn't make it inconsistent with canon that he sleeps with men (as well). It means this is not a thing you are shown, but that is a different statement.
Thing is, for real, until the last very few years, showing so much as two men being known to be sleeping together or one man who it is known sleeps with other men (not: kissing, sharing a bed, or engaging in any other relationship-ish activities like shared grocery shopping. Nothing so extreme as that. Just, mentioning that they sometimes or always have sex with other men) was not a thing on TV or in popular media at large unless the viewer was meant to understand this to indicate deviance--and I mean, even now, it's very much the exception (Modern Family comes to mind) to show queerness as: sexy, fun, normal, familial, familiar, loving, mundane, or happy.
Anyway, what I'm saying is, your assertion here, or at least your implication, is that if canon does not show queerness where you see it unquestionably, then queerness is inconsistent with your canon, and I'm saying, no, queerness is merely not mentioned, but this doesn't preclude its existence. I don't know you, so I promise I am not making an assumption that you are close-minded when I say this, but: the lack of mention/representation is effectively a silencing tool, wherein conservative media interests choose not to show something, and then conservative social groups assert that because it is not shown it is either not normal, not-extant, or not OK. When you assert that showing something not currently in the text is inconsistent with what is in the text (even when there is no statement that it is), you are playing into that game, and because of that, it's harmful. Again, I promise I'm making no assumptions about whether you intend for that; I'm telling you that this is a thing, and if you would like not to participate in that harm, then you might consider whether you are stating your position clearly.