Fandom things

[sholio]

... so I went and signed up for avengersfest, since Agent Carter is an option. I'm not entirely sure what the state of the fest is right now, because ... there was a notice two days ago that the mod was going to be closing signups? And then signups don't seem to have been closed? So maybe you can still sign up but I'm not sure. (I mean, this isn't meant to be mod-pokery, it's just that I hadn't mentioned this because I didn't think you could still sign up, but it's possible that you might be able to.)

I've mostly managed to talk myself out of signing up for genex, a gen relationship exchange. (Signups close July 23.) On the one hand - gen relationship exchange! That is totally my thing! But the dates are really NOT the best considering my current travel plans; it's bad enough I'm going to need to turn in my Avengers Fest assignment by Sept. 10, but Genex fics are due on Sept. 3, which would give me just a couple of weeks to write both of them when I get back in August. Genex also requires at least 3 different fandoms requested and 4 offered, and while I can do it, I'm not sure how enthusiastically I can do it.

(Plus there's my rather conflicted relationship with gen, of late. I feel like it's probably ridiculous to spend too much time fretting over whether writing gen is ethical, or I should say whether writing the kind of smarmy friendship stuff I like to write is ethical ... but I do worry about it, and while I am absolutely not going to beat myself up for writing a little idfic from time to time, I probably don't need to sign up for a ficathon that's going to encourage me to write even more of it.)

Today's my last day at home before I'm gone for a week and a half, then back for a couple of days, then gone again for almost three weeks. I feel as if I should be using my last day at home more usefully, but aside from proofing Kismet book files (AMAZON, PLZ STOP MAKING ME RE-UPLOAD THESE STUPID ENORMOUS FILES XD) I don't really have anything left to do urgently, and I kinda just want to chill online and maybe write another h/c bingo square.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Just putting a word in in favour of smarmy gen, so long as the smarm part doesn't have an implication of "We just love each other but are NOT GAY because that would be icky." Which I have not seen from you thus far.

Because honestly, I have a huge kink in regards to platonic affection, probably more so than my fondness for OTPS (if not much more).

[sholio]

I'm glad it doesn't come across that way, at least! I do think a lot of what I write is somewhat queerbaity (or shipteasy for the F/M stuff), and I really don't know a way around that, because platonic affection is what I kink on. Still, I don't really want to beat myself up about it, and I wasn't looking for reassurance or anything; I'm just making an increasing effort to keep the really smarmy stuff in overtly romantic fic, and write the gen a little less so.

[muccamukk]

I totally see what you're saying, and I also get the backlash against smarm as so much of it really was homophobic (esp in the '90s), but it still makes me sad to hear that.

I 100% don't see anything wrong with writing smarm sometimes and shippy h/c sometimes, and whatever one wants sometimes. I don't find it at all queerbaity if other stories ship it, it can be F&M, and the fic is labelled as not ship fic. If that's your kink, it's your kink. I write tentacles sometimes :D

[alatefeline]

>> I do think a lot of what I write is somewhat queerbaity (or shipteasy for the F/M stuff), and I really don't know a way around that <<

First off, I would use the term shiptease-y for all of it, personally.

Next… I can see why people want to read sexual tension into something that’s gen in canon. It’s one of the major impulses that makes fanfic happen. But! It’s equally valid to want to read sexual tension OUT of something that’s sexual in canon. Defaulting everything intense to sexual attraction is absurdly biased towards sexual people, and tends to drag in a bunch more problematic patriarchal tropes too.

Choosing to write gen definitely doesn’t get rid of tension, per se. Asking “what if” and saying “there is such chemistry here for …” and saying, oh, okay, I gotta see these characters invent something / solve a mystery / win a war / PREVENT a war / etc together is just as fertile ground for creativity.

I can see why an author would worry about doing a bait-and-switch if they are writing less of ANY trope than is prevalent in their genre and yet doing something apparently similar to the standard set-ups for said trope. But, what about the bait-and-switch inflicted on everyone who has ever read a really good solid friendship developing and then watched as it acquired sex and romance and lost the plot and characterization that was initially appealing? Honestly, I find gen with intense relationships and 3D characters really refreshing.

[recessional]

I literally had to read this comment before I could even imagine what the hell the problem with smarmy gen could possibly BE.

[rachelmanija]

Same here. You're talking what used to be called "romantic friendship," right? Like Anne and Diana in Anne of Green Gables or Julie and Maddie in Code Name Verity, where the relationship has sort of a romantic feeling but it's platonic because it just is, not because one person is pining and one isn't interested? I don't see anything wrong with that so long as there isn't any "but actual gay sex is GROSS" which you obviously wouldn't do (and which those books don't do, either. The relationships are what they are.)

Not to get into Tumblr-esque gradations of all human emotions and relationships, but I've had those sorts of relationships in RL. I've also had equally intense friendships that were not romantic, though it's a little hard to explain what the difference was other than "it felt different." Anyway, not everything is about sexual feelings, both in real life and in fiction. I like reading about intense non-sexual relationships. Especially because that's gotten comparatively rare in fandom, and I miss it.

If it's just plain intense friendship gen, I don't see any issue at all with it and I don't even get what the issues would hypothetically be.

[muccamukk]

See my comment below, as to it mostly being a history issue, but I just really love smarm/romantic friendship/intense gen. I love romance too, but there's something about not having sex involved that just touches my joyous heart, and contents me to the bone. I really, really love it.

(Though most of my rl experiences with that level of friendship have involved at least some pining on my part, alas.)

[muccamukk]

It's very strongly associated with wanting the emotional impact of romance, but being too homophobic to actually write an m/m romance. As someone who read the ENTIRE Sentinel Gen archive back in the day, I will say that that's... not without justification, especially back in the day, but even still now. Especially over on non-AO3 archives (AO3 being slash dominated).

So I very much get people not wanting to touch at least the term Smarm, and by extension emotional-heightened h/c gen.

[recessional]

I believe you, but it's also a totally alien context to my time in fandom.

I'm also coming from the end of being ace-spectrum and with intense friendships, so there's a certain amount of "fuck you" that really, really rises to my throat at this point. (Not at you, but at the attitude.) Buuut this certainly wouldn't be the first time one aspect of my identity gets thrown under the bus by people claiming to champion the other, so I'm not surprised.

[alatefeline]

>> Because honestly, I have a huge kink in regards to platonic affection, <<

I really really enjoy reading stories with lots of platonic affection. The Team Family, the True Companions, the Best Buddies, the Blood Siblings … those tropes are what makes fiction *work* for me. I didn’t start to grok any kind of romance or sexytimes until I was about 20, but I was reading books - primarily books written for adults - where people *were important to each other* from the age of 7 onwards. Caring, conflict, and teamwork are what makes fiction more interesting to me than nonfiction. If it isn’t about people interacting, why would it be a story?

When it comes to depicting specifically pairs (or trios or, I guess, really really intense small groups - the bigger the group the harder it is to pull off the internal one-to-one relationships instead of one-to-all) of people who always have each other’s backs, I am equally happy to see shipping, or platonic-life-partner shipping, or friendship-ing. Because to me what matters is the LOVE, not whether it is defined as romantic or sexual.

But! I am a VERY WEIRD person. I have never in my life really UNDERSTOOD exclusive relationships, gender roles, or the divide between friendship and romance. … I have never understood the difference between wanting to be around someone and make them happy, and wanting to cuddle them, and wanting to do more than cuddle if it’s mutually agreeable. I’m fine with setting a hard line if something is unwanted by the other party (or unethical), but I have literally never had a dear friend and equal who I wouldn’t be willing to kiss? And yet been completely fine with not kissing - okay, that’s not true, I have pined sometimes, but it’s never been MORE important than the friendship. And my one current life partner and I would still be together if sex were no longer a part of our relationship.

So when it comes to fic … I tend to ship OTEveryone for literally EVERY cast of characters I like, and yet not CARE much who is sleeping with who. Any sub-pairing from there is fine as long as no character has to have dirt dumped on them for that to happen. One might object that that isn’t the same as wanting to see more ‘intense friendship’, that is shipping which happens to be equally at home in the sexual, romantic-but-not-sexual, and qp-but-not-romantic-or-sexual
categories. And my response is, “Did I not just explain that I literally cannot tell the difference?”

[brightknightie]

The idea that gen could be unethical is upsetting.

I see from the other posts here that I'm lacking the larger context of a current backlash of some kind. Apparently, this current backlash advocates that deep friendship must necessarily equal romance, and that any story that posits a deep friendship that is not romantic is therefore necessarily bigoted?

It's so incredibly lonely to be told that -- even in fanfic, even in fandom -- there's no worth in any human relation but romance and sex, that being a friend or sibling or neighbor or coworker or caregiver is the dross of life next to the gold of romance and sex.

That no friendship can be true.

[nenya_kanadka]

(followed muccamukk over here :))

I see from the other posts here that I'm lacking the larger context of a current backlash of some kind.

Yeah, it's basically a backlash against all the "No Homo!" stuff. Kind of like how there's nothing wrong with buddy-cop bromances, but it's easy to get sick to death of all the "they have ALL the feelings for each other....EXCEPT anything gay, because ew gross!" approach that sometimes goes with it. That happens a lot in canons, and happened a lot in early slash fandom. So some people kind of have their antennae up for that "intense-feelings-that-edge-riiiiiight-up-to-queer-romance-and-then-backpedalling" thing, because they've been burned before.

So that's the context.

But I completely agree with you that friendships with no romantic component, or friendships that could be read either way in fandom but have non-romance/non-sexual fic written about them, are no less valid and real and important than ones that are about sex and romance. I mean, in the real world, most of us love lots of people we aren't fucking and don't want to fuck! Love them intensely, even. In life-changing ways and stuff.

Friendships can totally be true, just as friendships.

(It's just that in our homophobic world, the existence of true friendships has been used to deny the existence of f/f and m/m love. So sometimes people are wary. Meanwhile, intense platonic no-fucking m&f friendships are rare as hen's teeth...another side of the same coin.)

tl;dr Sholio should write whatever she wants, 'cause there is room in this wide world for ALL the shades of different kinds of love, and also 'cause I trust that she's not doing it because ew gay cooties. <3

[muccamukk]

Hello, stranger!

I think it's very difficult to explain how hostile a lot of the smarm people were to queer fans back then. Like it really was gen/canon het = good and pure, and slash = Sodom and Gomorrah, with archives banning slash, and at the same time holding up this really, really intense co-dependant m/m friendship as The Best Ever (complete with gay villains who would show up and rape [insert woobie here] so that they might be comforted later). And I read a loooooooot of that fic because I wanted that emotional kick from the h/c, but sometimes one did rather want a shower after.

(And if I had a dollar for every smarm fic I read that had someone assuming the friends were gay, and them saying something like, "No, we're more than that to each other? Homosexuality shall not sully the purity of our love!" I could retire to a lighthouse in Canada)

When I was first researching the term Romantic Friendship in its 19th-century context, I immediately ran into a chippy gay history website rightly pointing out that we have very little idea if any of those friends were in fact also lovers, and rolling the whole thing into "friendship" was very seriously covering up a lot of genuine queer history. This was in like 2004, so it's not a new argument :D

[nenya_kanadka]

Hullo stranger! I hope you get to retire to a lighthouse in Canada someday! :D

And yeah--I haven't read nearly as much of oldschool smarm as you have, but that's exactly the trouble. (And admittedly did put me off some of the older stuff...though I'd probably still have read it if I hadn't also at the time had newer stuff where people were allowed to be queer.)

That said...it's the no homo ("no, we are MORE to each other than gay lovers!" oh fuck off, lol) that's the problem, not the intense friendships themselves.

And honestly a lot of the time when I say "I ship it!" I mean "I want them to have many feelings about each other and a lot of hugging!" (Of course, the other half of the time, I mean "The porn would be hot, IDGAF whether they love each other," and then there's the sweet spot where they have feels AND smut, and that's probably the point where I start calling it an OTP.)

Other things I want in life: Very gay characters who love each other deeply, are actively queer, but are not fucking each other in this story. Niche interest, but definitely a real thing that happens and is important. Goes with that whole "Is this character the only queer person they know?" thing.

[recessional]

And if I had a dollar for every smarm fic I read that had someone assuming the friends were gay, and them saying something like, "No, we're more than that to each other? Homosexuality shall not sully the purity of our love!" I could retire to a lighthouse in Canada

And see THAT is what I'd call queerbaiting? And would make me want to stab people. (DOES make me want to stab people. Happens ALL THE TIME and makes me want to stab people.)

The thing is, it's also something I've heard from real life people about their real life non-sexual but intense relationship (either het or same sex, actually), and from them it often comes from a place of having sexual readings of their relationship forced on them by other people CONSTANTLY. But for them it's not a one-time statement they then move blithely on from, it's a constant scraping annoyance of the world perpetually devaluing their friendship in favour of a sexual one (or their sexual relationships with OTHER people).

So in self-defense, they start framing their nonsexual relationship as purer/better/more holy/whatever than sexual ones. Which as you can imagine in the case of m/m and f/f friendships mixes with homophobia in ugly ways! (Meanwhile everyone just pretends the m/f version of this doesn't exist.)

But as nenya_kanadka points out, the existence of these relationships, or fundamentally telling stories about them, isn't the problem, any more than the existence of cases where bisexual people end up with opposite-sex partners is the problem. The PROBLEM is the other crap.

The thing is, treating it like the relationships/stories inherently are the problem is in and of itself an act of erasure and sometimes active harm? So if one is worried about the ethics of a thing, that is ALSO an ethical concern.

Just to make life difficult.

[xparrot]

--coming in from the lj side, found this discussion fascinating and wanted to throw in, my experience with "smarm" was confusing, because when I first got online and into fic in the mid '90s, my first fandom was X-files, and I was a hardcore noromo Mulder-Scully fangirl. As in, I ate up every angsty codependent love-fest between them, as long as it didn't touch on that icky romance stuff. And "noromo" was a thing that caused intense debates and ship/anti-shipwars.

So when I moved into the "smarm" fandoms with the male-male relationships, the homophobic aspect of it wasn't immediately apparent to me; it just looked like the same arguments as before.

[sholio]

Apologies for touching a nerve. I seem to have done that with a number of people; the perils of rattling off a post while packing to leave, touching on something I'd been thinking about but not posting about, and not considering the ramifications of it ...

Anyway, it's a certain kind of gen I'm thinking of, the kind with a particular intensity of emotion that's normally associated with romance. There are those who say that you actually are writing romance in those cases, just fooling yourself and/or being deceptive with the reader about what it really is, and I didn't used to believe that, but these days I wonder if I'm the one who's wrong.

[lunabee34]

This has been a fascinating discussion.

I can totally see why you don't want to write We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other. I hate that trope while acknowledging its place in slash history (and also while acknowledging that I have read my share of Old School Slash and smarm that employs this trope, some of which I liked at the time).

But I don't think I've ever read anything you've written that has even a whiff of WNGWJLEO.

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you don't mind a long-time lurker butting in anonymously, but I have some really intense feelings about this issue.

I spent a lot of my childhood low-key worried that I was in love with my brother. It feels ridiculous to type that out now, but at the time, I was really afraid. Because I loved and admired my brother SO MUCH, and all I wanted was to make him LIKE ME AS MUCH AS I LIKED HIM, and I spent hours constructing elaborate h/c fantasies, and . . . I knew that you were supposed to love your family, but I didn't know if you were allowed to long for emotional intimacy with them. Then I discovered fanfic, and smarm (back in the days it was called such!) and gen h/c, and it was this exhilarating moment of liberation and recognition, because somebody else loved the same way I did.

I realize that I've phrased this kind of like a coming-out story, and I apologize for that; I am a totally boring cishet girl. I don't claim to have suffered any kind of oppression, and I absolutely understand why some other fans loathe queerbaiting so much, and are so sensitive to any hints of it.

But this is why genfic means so, so much to me (including yours! you’re one of my favorite authors btw), and why I get so frustrated at the suggestion that people who like it are just slashers in denial. It’s why I will defend even ridiculously over-the-top smarm. Because that is me. No, I’ve never sobbed in someone’s arms while huddling for warmth, hiding in a cave after escaping a werewolf torture dungeon. But the . . . I guess you could say, the "emotional vocabulary" of smarmy gen is the best way I’ve ever found to describe how I feel about my family and friends. And I am real. The way I love is real. So I don't think that writing that way is some sort of unhealthy indulgence that needs to be excused.

(I read this over five times after writing it, and still wasn't sure how the tone was coming across, so I just want to make it clear: I'm not mad about this! I think it's really great that you're pondering all the ramifications of your writing! It's just that I really feel strongly about this and I wanted to share my own personal experience with gen, since sometimes I get the depressing feeling that it's not a very common experience.)

[sholio]

No no, I'm really glad you dropped in to say something!! Thank you! <3 And sorry for taking so long to respond; I've been on vacation, and I did read this comment right before I left, but didn't have the time and brain to come up with a response. However, it was very useful food for thought, and I'm glad this comment was percolating in the back of my brain during my offline time (which I spent, in part, thinking about this issue).

Especially what you said about that "click!" of recognition, that feeling of finding out you're not the only one. I've heard people talk about having that happen with slash, but for me, it was discovering gen h/c that did it -- exactly what you're talking about, that reassuring feeling that you're not the only one who feels that way and has those kinds of fantasies. (I used to fantasize that way about my family and friends, too.) And I have had really extraordinary bonding experiences with my friends -- not huddling in a cave for warmth or pulling them out of plane wrecks, but my writing reflects what I value, and one of the things I value most are close relationships with other people that aren't about sex.

I don't know if you'll come back to read this, but I hope you do, because your comment gave me a lot of helpful and useful things to think about, so I'm very glad you posted it. <3 And your tone is absolutely fine; I felt that you were very thoughtful and expressed your points well!

[alatefeline]

>> Anyway, it's a certain kind of gen I'm thinking of, the kind with a particular intensity of emotion that's normally associated with romance. There are those who say that you actually are writing romance in those cases, just fooling yourself and/or being deceptive with the reader about what it really is, and I didn't used to believe that, but these days I wonder if I'm the one who's wrong. <<

You decide for yourself. But I very firmly believe that human experience is incredibly varied, and that friendship can be at least as powerful as romance without being the same thing. Anyone arguing THAT has conflated romance and love, in my opinion. One can love one’s kids enough to die for them, and that isn’t a friendship or anything else, either! One can love an idea, a group, a cause, a feeling, a hope. A person. People. Oneself. Love is COMPLICATED.

>> Especially what you said about that "click!" of recognition, that feeling of finding out you're not the only one. I've heard people talk about having that happen with slash, but for me, it was discovering gen h/c that did it -- exactly what you're talking about, that reassuring feeling that you're not the only one who feels that way and has those kinds of fantasies. <<

Don’t ever deny your own inner truth to yourself because other people are shaming you for it. Even if they are shaming you with the language of progress and freedom. That click? That’s the truth. Your truth. Which is not the same as mine or someone else’s. We need to let you do you. And if we feel like that’s one of our flavors of fun, great, and if not, we can always click away.

[(Anonymous)]

I did come back to read this, and thank you! I'm glad my comment was helpful ^_^

[overzelos]

I know this discussion is several months old, but I just want to thank you for having it, Sholio. Because as another person on the ace spectrum, this is totally me, right down to the casual multishipping romance/sexual-wise but intense undying love for the gen/(chosen) family/etc. I understand why the perceived queerbaiting has blowback, but I like to feel like fandom is big enough for everyone. recessional's experience is basically mine, blowback and all, only they articulated it better.

So yeah. Thanks. :)

[sholio]

Thank YOU for commenting! <3 I have been thinking about this a lot since I posted this, and am trying to let go of my inhibitions/worries and just feel good about liking what I like, and writing what I write -- because, damn it, fandom is big enough for everyone, and no one should have to feel excluded. And I really like to think that I might be able to make other people feel a little more included, and a little better about their own narrative kinks and fantasies, by being open about mine and not letting people make me feel ashamed of them.

[overzelos]

I've been tailing you on and off (oy, that sounds creepy) since you started writing MCU and I still remember talking with you in the avengersgen comm. So let me just say I'm really, really glad you write what you write, here. <3