Imagine being in a relationship in which you are treated like an equal, consciously and unconsciously, sexually, emotionally, socially, romantically, without being bound by gender expectations, without risk of pregnancy (or having your reproductive rights taken away from you), without feelings of inferiority, without being mistreated or neglected because men don’t understand your body and can’t be bothered to learn how to give you pleasure (or that you even deserve pleasure). Imagine having a reciprocating relationship with someone who knows how to touch you and how to talk to you, who will never abuse you or take away your consent. Imaging feeling powerful, safe, like the default rather than the specific or second-class. Imagine not requiring special handling by awkward, inconsiderate men who were never taught any better. Imagine being allowed to touch and enjoy and indulge without apprehension. Imagine being able to trust your partner. Imagine knowledge and understanding, someone who sees your depths and treats you the way you’d treat yourself if you hadn’t been told from birth that you weren’t worth it.
Girls aren’t “making them gay.”
Girls are fantasizing about being equal.
I have wondering about this in fandom for many years and reading this just made me tear up. I figured this was a big reason, but breaking it down to this extent made me so extremely sad. I realized a long time ago that even if I met the nicest guy in the world, I still have to battle all those things mentioned above. Just being friends is hard. I don’t have a happy history in this area like a lot of women and I have major trust issues with men and I wish somehow that wall could be broken down and we could all truly be seen as equal…as people with value. If you have all of the above with someone of the opposite sex then you are really lucky. See women are expected to give all those things listed above and settle for not getting them in return. I believe it’s a rare thing if you have it returned. Like I said, if I was with the nicest guy in the world I will always doubt myself, think he see’s me as different, talk to me different… Why? Because that’s our experience. This world raises us to believe we are worth absolutely nothing. The idea of being equal is one of our greatest fantasies.
It’s sad that it has to be a fantasy.
It’s totally sad.
But on the other hand, slash writers are some of the most empathetic people I know. And they’re great educators, too, probably in ways they might not expect. A good slash fanfiction writer can help women understand their desires and overcome some of those feelings of shame and worthlessness.
Think about how many girls have learned how to masturbate thanks to slash fanfiction.
Sometimes just knowing that we’re all reading and enjoying the stories is an immense comfort. People will tell you that slash is trash, that fangirls are desperate and pathetic, but ladies telling ladies that they’re allowed is a powerful thing.
Yeah, oh man. This is. Yeah, this is a lot. I especially feel the taboo surrounding female sexuality to the point that even though I’m Pretty Gay myself, I’m uncomfortable with my own sexuality (not as in orientation) and also dealing with the sexuality of other women. Like in some ways, I am always hesitant to appreciate sexiness in women because we are almost never shown female sexuality in a safe, respectful, and equal way and it still freaks me out.
I will never forget — and I wish so *badly* I still had a copy — the essay one of my exes wrote before she gafiated, in which she talked about how the act of writing slash and being part of the slash community in general had allowed her to “write herself back into her body”.
To, essentially, take off some of the blinders and filters western culture had put on her, all the things that had convinced her that, as an “overtall, fat, awkward, anxious, and altogether unattractive” person (she did have some anxiety issues, but none of the rest was true by any measure but all the lies we’ve ALL been told), she deserved neither happiness, nor romance, nor anything resembling sexual parity or satisfaction.
We met through fandom — she later told me she’d been quietly lurking on my mailing lists and around my websites for two years before she ever actually spoke to me — and we had four good years together before our relationship started to fall apart.
And, while not all of our happiness — together and separately — can be laid at the feet of the various slash goddesses, quite a lot of it can be.
Slash wrote *me* back into my body, too — several times, in several ways. Slash connected me to genders I never could’ve imagined, or could’ve imagined being *worth* connecting to in the days before I really understood the possibilities inherent to taking the media I had been given and *transforming* it.
We are *here*, and our pleasure is worth it — our pleasures, plural, are part and parcel of our identities.
And, you know, some of us, after we’ve been writing slash for a good, long while?
Find new ways to express those pleasures when women are there, new ways to understand those aspects of our sexualities — our *identities* — which include *hetero*sexuality.
It’s a journey. A process. A continuum. A spectrum. A *multiverse*.
AAAAAH! Thank you so much @dirtydirtychai !! It’s always a joy when someone’s writing about the psychology of fanfic gets back out into public circulation. We need these essays – they are part of our history and part of our validation.
Thank you 🙂
women deserve sexual pleasure. the fact that this is a controversial statement is at the heart of why slash is so popular with women AND why there’s no shortage of crusaders ready to explain (with horrible enthusiasm) that it ‘shouldn’t’ be.
* who has shipped Spirk since that night in 1967 that Amok Time first aired * and helped storm NBC to keep TOS on the air for a 3rd season * and wrote fanfic way back in the day * and was privileged to be around for the earliest days of fandom, when Leonard used to come to your house if that’s where the fan club was meeting and sit on the sofa with you in that Spock hair cut and eat cake
All of you who are writing TOS/AOS fan fiction and creating fan art now: remember, YOU are the ones shaping the traditions of fandom. You have inherited the kingdom. Bless you for keeping it vibrant, growing, alive. In fifty years, you will be the ones who are remembered for molding it and handing it down to the future. It probably doesn’t feel like now, but you are making history.
Your current addiction to TOS and the feels you get when you contemplate the love between Jim and Spock will be with you for life. It won’t always be in the forefront; you will sometimes go years, sometimes go a decade, without Star Trek being more than a passing thought. But then something will remind you and every consuming feeling you feel right now will come rushing back, every bit as powerful and deep and strong as it is today. All there, right where you left it.
The friendships you make in fandom will be with you for life. Like all friendships, they will wax and wane as the focus of your life shifts over time, but you will always be able to pick up the thread. You will — to give you a hypothetical example — be 77 years old and discover Tumblr and get a rush of Spirk feels after a decade of not giving TOS a thought, and contact your 83-year-old fangirl friend in the nursing home, to whom you haven’t spoken in several years. You will open the conversation with, “So, Jim and Spock love each other and that just makes me so happy.” And your friend in the nursing home will sigh and say, “Yes. They do love each other. It’s such a comfort.”
That look that Jim and Spock give each other, of absolute adoration and acceptance and love? That’s real. It’s rare, but it’s real. One of my greatest joys in life is to see my son and his husband give each other looks like that. Of course I don’t know you; I don’t know your strengths and struggles or your place on the spectrum of gender or anything about your sexuality or what you look like or what your life has taught you to believe about yourself, but I do know this: YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED AND LOOKED AT THE WAY JIM AND SPOCK LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Please don’t accept less than that in your life.
The future of our planet does not seem very hopeful at the moment. But please remember that when Gene created Star Trek, the world was in turmoil and the future seemed very bleak. Star Trek is, was, always shall be about hope. Reach for it. When TOS first aired, we hoped to see some form of a Starfleet on the horizon in our lifetimes. That vision must be passed on to you. Do it. Make the world worthy of launching the human race out into space. CREATE STARFLEET.
You are all creative and funny and amazing. Far more amazing than you know. Be kind to yourselves. Live long and prosper, kids.
Tags are in reference to my first bullet point. Meant as a kudos to your work, but feel free to untag yourself if you don’t want to be linked to my ramblings; I won’t be offended! (Also, this extends to a thousand other artists and writers out there who deserve kudos. tag at will.)
Aren’t you glad that this woman didn’t leave fandom once she graduated college/got a job/got married/had kids?
Do you get it now?
This is so lovely. Dear OP, you’re wonderful.
Where was that one person who was claiming that any “adult” in fandom spaces was inherently damaging to younger fans? They need to read this fifty times and then ask themselves if they really think fandom is better off without people like this and the messages they have for us.
Because I think we feel weaker, more uncertain, and more forsaken without people who’ve lived through these things here to remind us that *you can live through these things*.
For those who don’t remember the Dark Times, at the height of its popularity, Homestuck
had spawned several fan-created AUs that were, themselves, popular
enough that people unconnected to their creators would write fanfic set
in them, cosplay as the AU versions of various characters, and so forth. It
got to the point that some of the most well-established AUs had
separate mini-fandoms made up of folks who’d never actually read Homestuck proper, and were in it just for that AU.
The most prominent example of the type is probably Marchingstuck,
a high school AU in which the Beta kids and Alternian trolls were all members of a school marching band. (The Alpha kids and Beforan trolls don’t feature
because the whole AU lived and died prior to their introduction.) Marchingstuck was so popular that it went recursive and spawned its own fandom project, a Tumblr-hosted fan-fan-comic called Promstuck that ran for six months in the latter half of 2011 and successfully concluded after over 250 pages.
(I was never into Marchingstuck myself, though I did casually follow 4chords for a while.)
Why does this description sound like some kind of post-modern Hitchhiker’s Guide kind of prose?
Trying to explain fringe fandom as a cultural phenomenon in a way that would be comprehensible to a reader who’s coming in with no prior context is just like that. Seriously, try to explain, say, Ke$hastuck in a manner that would make sense to the uninitiated without sounding like an alien anthropologist struggling to make sense of human society in the process.
can we please bring back “in poor taste” as a concept
Because at some point it got folded in under “problematic,” and now every damn thing that has Unfortunate Implications or deals with sensitive topics indelicately enough to raise hackles or gores somebody’s sacred cow is treated as a grave injustice or a threat to society. Online activism culture has lost the vocabulary to express “this deals with touchy stuff in a way many people might find inappropriate, and you should probably avoid it if insensitivity on this subject gets you angry/upset, but it’s not promoting hateful ideas or demeaning people or affecting anything but my opinion of the creator’s sense of tact.”
those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household
don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)
if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO.
seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys
xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.
Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too.
I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.
COMMENT. I don’t care how old it is or how many chapters a reader comments on.
The only thing that might possibly be more flattering is the “I stayed up all night because I couldn’t stop reading” comment.
Yes, please.
YES ALL OF THIS
all of this
Reblogging because readers somehow still have this idea that too many comments/kudos are seen as creepy or stalkery. IT’S NOT. Seriously. Every comment, all of the kudos, they’re greatly, GREATLY appreciated. And knowing that someone liked your work enough to click on your name and go through your other fics and liked those too, even the old stuff you’re kind of self-conscious about, is the greatest feeling a writer can have. So if you like a fic, say something/leave kudos, no matter if it’s the first or fifth fanfic you’ve read in one night from that author.
I LOVE when I get an email where it’s the same name, like a dozen or more times because they went through and read like, /everything I ever wrote/ apparently. It makes me so happy! 😀
Multiple kudos and/or lots of comments are the best thing ever
Not at all creepy. It’s like, they are reading, get to the end, said they liked it, and Prove they liked it because they read another and liked that…
And yes, it’s just as fun to see this with old stories. Maybe even more?
The other thing that is super nice? When someone comments and says, hey, I tried to kudos but I had already kudos’d so I’m commenting to kudos again because I do that ALL THE TIME. I either forgot I’d read this lovely thing and want to kudos again, or I’m doing a re-read of something and I *want* to kudos again. When it happens to me it’s seriously lovely – someone enjoying your stuff enough that they re-read.
reblogged so fast I sprained something
I know for me especially that while writing just for yourself is great, nothing drains me more from writing than not seeing kudos or comments. If you notice in my writing at least, I get the most inspiration when I see people leaving likes, comments, even tags when they reblog (because I look and read them all).
Please please please leave comments, like, kudo, reblog, everything! No writer thinks this is stalkerish and is in fact one of the highest praises we can receive through this medium. It lets us know that you like it and you want more!! Without it, it may possibly mean we may not even continue it. I know I get like that with several of my multi chapter stories.
Don’t feel like leaving something on every little thing? My absolute favorite thing is when people leave notes in my inbox telling me about how much they love my characters, my voice behind canons, just the fact that they say how much they enjoy what I’ve done! I have kept every little note I have ever gotten and once I get my set up my new desk space, I’m going to print them all out and hang them on my wall so I can read them every day. I’m not kidding! This thing fuels us writers!! In this world, fanfiction is probably one of lowest forms of writing. We don’t get paid. Our payment comes from your feedback and the excitement that you have to keep reading!
IT IS NEVER STALKERISH!
IT LETS US KNOW YOU LOVE US AS MUCH AS WE LOVE YOU FOR READING!
“I’m going to print them all out and hang them on my wall so I can read them every day” – Oooh, that’s such a great idea, I might just have to do it too! *g*
And as someone who’s left those strings of comments, and has received them:
1. There is nothing better than an author who knows they’re appreciated. They often get motivation from it! (do be sure to say what you liked- and saying you’re looking forward to the next chapter after is okay, but ‘update’ often scares us writers and gets us stressed- we’ve got soft heart, pelase be gentle with us).
2. It’s a great way to meet new people! Most of my fandom friends I met through commenting on their stories, or them commenting on mine!
3. It inspires us! I can’t remember how may times I got ideas for sequels or new fics I got because this one person commented something that made me tilt my head and go: what if? And I’ve seen the same happen to other writers!
I once got a comment that was basically two readers chatting back and forth about the chapter I’d just posted as they read it. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite that delighted with a response to my fics.
Those times when I get a string of kudos or comments from a person who liked one fic and decided to hit up the rest of my works… Don’t think anything can compare to that, for a writer. This person has stumbled across my fic, and has sallied forth to read all of it! Because they liked it so much!
Why in the world would that be creepy. Or stalkerish. Stalk all our writing, dear readers, and come scream at us about it in the comments or on Tumblr. It’s humbling, leads to squealing on our part and is massively inspiring all at once.
do you ever see someone’s comment about a film/tv show you watch or a book you’ve read and wonder if maybe we all truly live in different realities and the internet is the only commonly shared space which doesn’t change across universes, because it isn’t fucking possible to draw such dumbass conclusions about a thing unless we’ve seen/read different versions of it
I just have such a profound need for best friend to lover AUs when both sides think there is no chance of anything ever happening.
Sharing beds together since they were little kids and never really growing out of that habit even though it now hurts to be that close to each other, knowing it will never be anything more than platonic cuddling.
Each of them being that one person the other goes to to feel better when they’ve had a shit day or date. Bonus if it’s 3am and they spend all night talking.
Neither of them realising how much they act like they are dating/married and getting super flustered or sad when someone asks how long they’ve been together because do you have to remind me of this painful unrequited torment I die a little more of with every passing second?
How much they make each other smile when one of them walks into a room.
Drunk kissing.
Practice kissing.
Going as each other’s dates to everything because it’s “convenient”.
Wearing each other’s pyjamas when staying over somehow becoming more arousing than if the other person was naked.
Having inside jokes and finishing each other’s sentences as casual as anything.
Knowing random medical shit about each other. Bonus if one of them takes an allergic reaction to something and the other one just pulls out some random ass medicine like they carry it around all the time- spoiler: they do-just in case of this exact eventuality.
The heart break of seeing each other with other people but doing their best to see it through with a grin and with as much encouragement as they can muster.
Staring a little too long at each other.
The awkward moment when they reach the age they said they would marry each other if they were still single.
Getting fake married as kids and family members always reminding them about it , maybe going as far as to put on the video of the fake ceremony and giving them knowing looks.
Something happening- a kiss, sleeping together- and getting into an argument about it, scared this is it, this is the end, that they’ve fucked up and just wishing they could talk to each other about it, to their best friend.
Having the best black mail material on each other but ready to pounce on anyone else who so much as dares try black mail their BFF.
Having a song. Having a whole playlist.
Laughing the first time they have sex.
Already having seen each other at their very worst.
Getting to say cheesy things like, “I can’t believe I get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend” or “I know I’m marrying you but…do you think I could still be in charge of your send off party? I’ve been planning this night for ten years and I will not have someone else mess those plans up.”
Even after years of being together, still being in awe of the fact they get to have the one person they thought they’d never get. The person they helped ask other people out. The person they used to give the “you deserve someone who loves you for you” speech to. The person they used to look at and wonder why does it have to be you? The person they look at now and think it could never have been anyone else.
just moving along like everyone else 