Oh! Outrage!

[redbrunja]

If you tagged your fic 'Steve/Darcy' AND 'pre-slash' I can fucking guarantee, you are DOING SOMETHING TERRIBLY WRONG.

(Do not even get me started on my hatred of the tag 'pre-slash.')

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't feel like I can comment too much on the fetishization aspects of slash because I personally don't like it so very much. I feel like I can't be honest about it, if that makes sense? But I do hear you that how as a queer woman (which I think you've mentioned you identify as?) you find it pretty off-putting? Which totally makes sense to me because slash is pretty undeniably about white, straight fangirls enjoying the thought of two white dudes doing each other. Part of me feelings like, 'whatever gets you off, slash fans' but at the same time, I think do think slash reflects a lot of really problematic aspects our our culture. (Though, to be fair, some of the things that get ME off, reflect really problematic aspects of my culture, so. Glass houses.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

what you see a lot in fandom is it reaches this threshold where it's just. the characters don't matter, it's not about the stories, it's just about white dudes banging. i've been in a lot of bigger fandoms like that (merlin OH MERLIN jesus you were the worst)

I have read het sex like that - that was so boring and by the numbers that I skipped it (in romance novels, as well as fanfic, which is just like...come on, published authors, up your game.)

i don't actually know what the point of my ramble was, tbh, but we can both agree that there should be more great steve/darcy on ao3, y/y?


Fuck yes. I'm trying to find some Steve/Darcy is not wildly ooc that I haven't read before and it's.... pretty damn impossible, atm.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I feel like I have really been blessed with some excellent Steve Rogers gen, but goddamn, some times I really want to read about Steve and some ladies. Like, there was a gen fic that I just recc'd (The Goat's Back) and there was a voice in my head going 'Natasha JUMP THAT BOY' for, like 60% of the time I was reading that fic. (And 100% of the time I was going, 'oh, STEVE.')

Also, because I'm curious, which stereotypes have you noticed that come from the fandom and not the character?

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

his whole "steve rogers adjusting to the modern world, technology is hard!!!!" thing can be taken way, way too far. steve rogers is an incredibly bright military tactician but he was also an art student before the war, no one should actually expect him to know advanced physics.

Oh, fuck yes. It's gotten to the point where I really pay attention to how an author will write Steve and tech and it's like - he's clearly, in the movie, functioning with things like tablets and very advanted comms - he's not going to fumble around and act shocked by everything.

people forget that bruce and tony are two characters who are written to be as uncommonly smart as ~people wish they could be~, it's a different shade of the comic book power fantasy. steve is a different kind of intelligent, that doesn't mean he needs help tying his shoes.

*nods*

Compared to Tony and Bruce, just about EVERYONE (except Jane and Selvig and Betty) are idiots regarding one specific type of intelligence. (I also find it pretty funny that in the movie, Steve ended up finding basically the same information that Tony was hacking SHIELD for, and if you factor in when they each started looking, Steve found it faster.)

[lokifan]

Errrm I don't think it's "undeniable" that slash is about "white, straight fangirls". Like, not to say that slash doesn't "reflect a lot of really problematic aspects of our culture" - I think that's an excellent way of phrasing it. But I would also point out that the proportion of queer slashers is big. Like, a few years ago there was an attempt at polling this stuff - and obviously those are inherently going to be skewed and messy, but this particular poll of thousands of self-identified slashers had the "queer women" proportion at around 60%. Straight women were in the minority. I mean, obvs that's just one poll, but it was pretty massive and is less anecdotal than my personal experience, so.

And obviously queer women can do fetishizing messy stuff too. But we're not even a small minority of slashers; we're a heavy proportion, and I genuinely think it's become kind of erasing to emphasise this "slashers with straight privilege" thing.

Idk. I don't massively disagree but I just think "undeniable" is way too certain of a term when there are so many people for whom slash is not about that at all

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

But I would also point out that the proportion of queer slashers is big. Like, a few years ago there was an attempt at polling this stuff - and obviously those are inherently going to be skewed and messy, but this particular poll of thousands of self-identified slashers had the "queer women" proportion at around 60%. Straight women were in the minority. I mean, obvs that's just one poll, but it was pretty massive and is less anecdotal than my personal experience, so.

Huh, that is really interesting, because that is completely different than the other percentages that I've seen quoted before.

Idk. I don't massively disagree but I just think "undeniable" is way too certain of a term when there are so many people for whom slash is not about that at all

Yeah, probably a bad word choice.