Everyone on my flist is talking about this. And I haven't read any of the original posts and I don't have any idea how all this started, but reading y'alls posts has made me think a little bit about my own fic and warnings and such. It's probably easier in popslash, or safer in some ways, because we simply don't have that many writers anymore, and headers/warnings were never really standard to begin with. I mean, for Make the Yuletide Gay and DWNOGA before it, all you knew before clicking a link were the characters involved.

(And sometimes, that was a lie, too. Ahem, the story I received my first year.)

( Blah blah blah, warnings and triggers and starbucks, oh my. )

I'm sure you've all seen the whole thing about how Danny Gokey is a douchebag. I mean, like we didn't already kind of know that? But it's a little different seeing the douchebaggery in motion.

I have a lot of thoughts about this whole episode, and I think I will ( cut them to save your eyes from teal deers. )

So today was very busy, and I was writing ficlets and doing actual work and it all went by so fast that I somehow forgot to check my flist. I KNOW. I will be doing so soon, like as soon as I can figure out why my computer clock keeps turning itself back an hour, but for now, I was just reading Jacob's American Idol recap and I needed to share some thoughts with you.

Last night on American Idol, David Archuleta performed. I do not like the Arch, I do not like him, wil.i.am. As I was watching his stupid fish lips sing this terrible song that is so much worse than the song JC wrote for him which is actually pretty good, I couldn't help but wonder how anyone likes that guy. And I know some of you do, and I don't look down on you or anything (I mean, I like JoBros and freaking Miley Cyrus, so there is no looking down going on here--at least the Arch can sing...), but his entire appeal baffles me. As usual, Jacob explained it to me. (And please don't use this as your opportunity to bash Jacob, as he is my friend in actual "real life" and it's his job to analyze these things for our entertainment, so no hateration in this holleration, please):

I also never really thought there would be David Archuleta again, either. But there he is. He sings some song about how if you scream loud enough at the Jonas or Archuleta or whatever concert, he will see you and take you backstage and then the two of you will get comfortable, turn the lights down, light some candles, and pray so fucking hard you'll be walking funny for a week.

( I don't get the Edward Cullen/Jonas Brothers thing at all, I don't like it. )

Okay, all this blather about the possibility that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant again is really bothering me. I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but it's really just... sort of horrible to see sites like Jezebel talking about how dumb the girl is for allegedly getting pregnant again. It's horrible to me that anyone would even report on this and just the entire lack of respect our society seems to cultivate for the privacy of people who were once famous, or have a famous sister, or whatever. And then you've got JOHN FREAKING MCCAIN, who is attempting to become the leader of the free world, saying that abortion has nothing to do with choice, and acting like the health of the woman is some sort of euphemism created by the librul media and not an actual concern for real Americans.

( Fuck that shit. )

zelda_zee linked to xparrot's meta discussion about fan types (right here and I have to say that finally, a year later, that whole bandom thing makes sense to me. She says:

But conflict can arise when people don't realize that what they are getting out of fanning is not necessarily what another fan is getting out of it. An emotional fan may have a difficult time understanding the pleasure of critiquing something they love (I've had people question me outright about why I meta, especially why I'll do negative meta for a series I like. I've had to explain that I find such analysis genuinely entertaining - I love a good friendly debate, I like the process of assembling an argument, finding data to support my conclusions. It's fun for me! But not everyone is so enamored of research.) Likewise, intellectual fans can have trouble understanding why emotional fans get so, well, emotional about their shows and characters (I have friends who don't understand why I have OTPs, or why I'd even watch a show when I detest one of the characters in it.

( Some more pertinent bits. )

*

And that pretty much explains my whole approach to fandom and meta. I was actually just telling llamabitchyo today that I don't really GET fandom on a social level sometimes because I have this tendency to analyze ideas and characters and people--to take them apart and put them back together in ways that makes sense to me. When I have a particularly strong visceral reaction to something like, for example, the fake bisexual wank from a million years ago, which I now fondly think of as "that time someone threatened to bash my virtual head in with a baseball bat," I tend to sit and think, "Why?" And then I analyze my reaction and pick apart the problem; sometimes I bring in Freud, which is never a good sign, and by the time I'm done picking it apart, any emotion I once had regarding the issue has been detached and I'm just looking at it like I would if I were writing a paper on Pride and Prejudice or something. It's fun to talk about and I enjoy being challenged and having the argument, but my feelings about the issue are pretty much resolved in the process.

So anyway, I just thought that was interesting. I think it is hard for people who approach fandom differently from each other. Like, the scary BSB fanclub girls who aren't going to eat until the concert just in case Nick wants to drag them away to his cave. I will never understand that sort of fannishness! Oh well. At least I get to eat.

Hello everyone! I am much cheerier today. I have three things to talk about.

1) I committed meta right over here, about lookism in pop music. I know a lot of people are freaked out by doing meta, but I love it. I like thinking about shit and discussing things and arguing about things. It reminds me of being back in school. Ironically, there is a professor here called Meta Jones. I am NOT making that up. Isn't that the best name ever for an English professor?

2) I've been watching Mad Men and I am officially in love with Don Draper and Jonie.

3) Let's do a meme! Comment here and I will make you a short playlist (unless I get inspired) based on how I think of you, and I will upload it for you. Because I am awesome.

There's something about So You Think You Can Dance and lyrical hip hop this year that's making me CRY. This is just gorgeous. I love this couple. So expressive.



In other news, I committed meta over at popsoundboard.

Today I am supposed to hear about one of the jobs I interviewed for. Everyone send me good vibes or whatever, please!! I NEED A JOB OMG.

lecksee pointed me to this essay in the NYTimes: Exposed by Emily Gould, who used to write for Gawker. She talks about her evolution as a blogger, the whys and hows and what-it's-like-to-be-mes of it, and it's very very interesting. I recognized myself in a lot of what she says, a lot of the ways in which blogging is both an intensely private yet inherently public affair, and how that effects us as individuals when we feel attacked via wank or whatever, because on the one hand, it's "just" the internet, but on the other hand, these are our "friends" and our community attacking and mocking us.

Some of my blog’s readers were my friends in real life, and even the ones who weren’t acted like friends when they posted comments or sent me e-mail. They criticized me sometimes, but kindly, the way you chide someone you know well. Some of them had blogs, too, and I read those and left my own comments. As nerdy and one-dimensional as my relationships with these people were, they were important to me. They made me feel like a part of some kind of community, and that made the giant city I lived in seem smaller and more manageable.

I think that describes almost all of us, doesn't it? And this:

My blog post was ridiculous and petty and small — and, suddenly, incredibly important. At some point I’d grown accustomed to the idea that there was a public place where I would always be allowed to write, without supervision, about how I felt. Even having to take into account someone else’s feelings about being written about felt like being stifled in some essential way.

( A few more choice quotes. )

Anyway, it's a very interesting essay and I think you'd all see some of yourselves in her story the way that I did.

So, the lovely and talented apocalypsos did some counting and I guess Dean uses the word 'bitch' a lot. And sometimes 'slut.' And since this is all anyone on my flist is interested in talking about today, here are some thoughts I had!

So, going on the assumption that word choice is both important and intentional:

1) Possibly part of Dean's animosity towards Ruby (who receives the vast number of 'bitch'es and 'slut's) is because he sees himself in her. She's what he's going to become, it's his worst nightmare, and when he calls her a bitch and a slut, he's also calling himself those things. I'm sure I could write a whole essay on that, actually. They're mirrors in a lot of ways, not just because Dean has sold his soul and is about to become her, but because they both fight for Sam's attention; they fight to have Sam believe them and not the other.

2) It's definitely important to look at the ways in which the other characters and the world of SPN itself reacts to the name-calling. Does the world ever punish Dean for being a jerk? Yeah, it does--Ruby beats the crap out of him. Clearly, the world itself isn't so keen on Dean being a jerk. His character might be misogynistic, but the show itself doesn't condone that.

3) I think it's also important to look at Dean as a whole person with a background and a history and so on. In SPN, as in a lot of horror/fantasy shows, the supernatural is a traditionally female world; if we consider old, patriarchal views of society, science = masculine and witchery, faith, etc = feminine. In that case, you've got Dean, inherently masculine and physical, trying to navigate his way through a feminine space that he not only doesn't understand, but has been brought up to NEVER understand and to hate without just cause or reason. In Dean's world, masculine=good and feminine=bad, and only in a very few instances can he be convinced that supernatural=good (ie the Vampires), and that's only when those supernatural beings give UP their supernaturalness (ie their femininity) and embrace science (ie animal blood, etc) instead.

So maybe Dean's freaking out in S3 with the bitches and sluts because he realizes that very soon, he's going to become a part of that feminine supernatural world he's been fighting against since he was a kid, and this is just one of his many petty forms of resistance. If he tries to strip the supernatural world of dignity with words, maybe he can regain some of the masculine power he lost when he made his crossroads deal.

...or something.

I offered to do commentary on fics the other day, and I'm just going in order by request. I can't remember who wanted commentary on this fic, but here it is! This might be the most depressing commentary ever. And uh... WAY too much information about me, so if you don't want to know, I would recommend skipping this. My comments are in blockquotes. Enjoy?

( What Color Is Your Parachute: The Writer's Commentary )

Someone on my flist posted a really interesting post this morning re: emo boybanders playing gay, and as per my usual, I've now thought WAY too much about it in both a personal and political sense, so I have A Theory. We'll call this Andrea's Theory on Faking the Gay. Or something. In honor of Lance Bass and his new "making the (gay) band" show.

( What is sure to be a very unpopular fandom opinion. )

Only my opinion, of course, and the way I feel about it. I know I'm one of the few fandomers who think this way, and most of us are delighted by all the gay play. And there's nothing wrong with that; I'm not trying to imply that you're some horrible, anti-queer person if you enjoy the gay play. Not at all. I recognize that my views are my own, and nothing more, and that I have rather more radical views than even the average liberal person. Even than the average liberal queer person, probably. I'm offended by completely different things than other people and I'm extremely sensitive about queer issues, just so you know where I'm coming from and that this isn't meant to be a judgement on anyone OR on bandom (because by all means, PLEASE, enjoy the gay, I know I wish I could!); it's just the way I feel, personally and politically. I recognize that my opinion means exactly zero, and anyone is free to tell me to fuck off.

ETA: Just FYI, I have edited this post very late in the game to remove my friend's name and quotes and link. I fucked up really badly in that I didn't realize her post was locked. I'm not going to make excuses for myself. Suffice it to say, I am incredibly stupid and a fuckup for not realizing she'd locked the post, and that I never should've quoted her. I didn't mean for my thoughts, which are mine and mine alone, to be attributed to her or reflect on her in any way. She and I have very different opinions on the subject, and all she was doing was asking the question. I'm the one with the wacked out opinion, NOT her.

Also, I am leaving on a work retreat tomorrow, so I won't be able to respond to a lot of your comments until I get back, hopefully in a better state of mind. Thanks for discussing this with me, and if you choose to continue discussing amongst yourselves, please keep it cool-headed and logical, even though I know this is an emotional subject for everyone (myself included.)

ETA2: In case this is still going on... here's an addition to address some of the questions people have been asking me:

1) Slash--isn't it the same?: I talked about this somewhere in that post, but man, I wouldn't want to troll through those comments to find it myself, so I won't ask you to do it! I've struggled with slash in the past a LOT, and I've written meta on it (which no one cared about, haha!). It doesn't feel like exploitation to me (because these are fictional characters, or real people that we're creating INTO fictional characters) but it does feel like fetishism. It feels like when men want to watch "lesbian" porn. Of course, not all slash has sex in it, but you get the idea.

What I finally decided after talking to a lot of gay men was that if they don't care, then I shouldn't be too worried. I think it is a kind of fetish for some of us (the object of desire being indirect to the person doing the desiring, if that makes sense), but in the same way that guys watching lesbian porn is. I don't think it's necessarily awesome or anything, but it's not hurting anyone and we're not getting money from it.

When straight people (and let's assume they're straight, for the sake of argument, and because that was the scenario I was going with) simulate gay sex acts on stage in a performance at which they are making money, whether they're doing it for titillation (worst case) or to promote gay acceptance (best case), it does hurt someone--it hurts me, and people like me. It feels disrespectful of queer people and the struggles they've gone through, when someone can play at their sexuality, get paid to do it, and then shrug that off and go home with their wives. (and yes, some of them are married).

2) That whole "blackface" thing. I don't think my analogy is extreme, but then, I tend to think that people shouldn't really say, "My oppression is worse than yours." I used that analogy to bring home a point, which was that people, especially people who are already accepting of homosexuality and gay rights, seem to downplay the oppression that homosexuals DO face in the world today. But everyone understands what I mean when I say "blackface". So I said, "If Ryan Ross came out in blackface, regardless of why he was doing it, it would be offensive." I ask--why is it then NOT offensive for a straight person to put on a "gayface"?

Al Jolson famously wore blackface in The Jazz Singer, not to mock black people, but to connect with that inner pain of oppression. And yet when I watch it? I am still incredibly offended. For me (and I emphasize for ME, because not everyone feels this way and I don't expect them to!), gayface is the same thing--it causes the same reaction in me.

So I was innocently looking at the Idolator on my feed reader today when I came across the following article about bandslash:

By now it's no secret that the internet is a haven for bored teenagers, music fans, and individuals with unique proclivities, groups which intersect as often as not. Online fan-fiction has existed since the early days of the web, but only in the last few years has a scene so perfectly tailored to the form seeped into popular culture. Designed to appeal to introverted, overwrought, sexually frustrated adolescents, the pale waifs parading around the emo universe--with their snug pants, same-sex makeout sessions, and penchant for eye makeup--practically beg to be objectified by horny teens. And one GreatestJournal group, discovered after putting together our own male-objectification list, exemplifies the farcical tone and tenor of emo fan-fiction fandom. It's also a little like watching nature-show rutting if all the animals were wearing girl's jeans:

The Bandflesh group is a 40-member collective of emo devotees who write round robin stories featuring Gerard and MIkey Way of My Chemical Romance, Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy, William Beckett of The Academy Is..., Brendon Urie of Panic! At the Disco, and many other musicians associated with the genre. Some of the stories are set in a strange alternate universe emo high school called St. Danzig's--these kids are more clever than you give them credit for!--complete with a prom and a principal (represented by a picture of Samuel L. Jackson). Others are just good ol' fashioned porn. The most disturbing aspect has to be the Gerard/Mikey incest angle. (Though to be fair, the female twin-on-twin fantasy rarely rates a second thought.)

( Read the rest. This makes my stomach hurt. )

*

You know, I'm not ashamed of being in fandom or writing RPS. I happen to think that a lot of fanfic in general and most of my fanfic is pretty good, and sometimes better than original novels I've read, that can be just as, if not more, derivative. So I'm not ashamed, but I don't like it when bloggers or journalists who think they understand fandom try to write about fanfic, because they really miss the fundamental POINT of fandom and they tend to do so in an insulting way that assumes all fanfic writers are 14-year-old secret cutters who are too ugly to get laid and write fanfic instead.

I also think it's one thing to expose fictional-person fanfic, but RPF is entirely different, especially when some of the people who read the blogs/articles might be the very people we're writing about. I don't care if my friends and family know I write popslash or RPS or fic where celebrities are animals in a zoo. I DO care if the celebrities I'm writing about know. Then it DOES become creepy and weird.

Besides which, emo boy band members do not need another reason to cater to fangirls. Next thing you know, they'll be actively having sex on stage, and then what would bandslashers have left to write about? RPS is no fun if it's CANON.

My flist pretty much exploded with talk of [FanLib] today, so I thought I'd weigh in. Because it's me, and I'm opinionated.

I'm not willing to go to the site long enough to get a deeper insight on what's going on over there, but as usual, Fandom Wank has helped me out greatly with their own analysis and from what I can tell, a couple guys decided to partner with some publishers and corporations in an attempt to make money off of fandom via website ad revenue. Now, I'm not going to pretend to understand how this is legal; I suppose because the fanfic isn't being specifically SOLD, rather, that the money is ad-generated, they can claim that the website is the product rather than the fic? No, nevermind, I still don't understand it. Besides the obvious flaw, this goes against everything I've ever thought about fanfic, as well as seeming highly immoral to me.

Let's put aside all the feminist arguments and the fact that the owners of FanLib don't seem to think slash is a mainstream fandom phenomenon (hahaha, could they BE any farther from fandom consciousness) and just focus on the idea that this group of guys and corporations actually think it's somehow possible to control and take over fandom. The very idea is laughable. If they're not prepared to deal with questions about their motives in creating FanLib in the first place, how can they possibly hope to deal with the inevitable shipping wars and plagiarism wank and kink wank? I'm pretty sure these people leapt into this venture thinking they'd make some easy money by harnessing and "legitimizing" the power of fandom, and that's really going to bite them in the ass. Fandom will not be harnessed. It'll be fun watching them TRY. They're already complaining about how MEAN we are. Heeee.

As for the offer of legitimacy--and here, I suppose they mean the connection to real, live publishing companies, oh my!--I ask, since when is that something fandom has ever wanted or needed? We don't write fanfic or create fanart so that we can be recognized as worthy by the general public! We do it because we love the characters and the stories (or in my case, we think boys are pretty and want them to have lots of sex) and we want to share that with our friends and other fans. Fandom has never been about making money; it's never been about legitimacy or greater recognition in the outside world. In fact, I think the majority of fans would prefer that the outside world NOT know about their involvement in fandom!

Of course, most of this doesn't even apply to me because I write RPS almost exclusively at this point. Part of the reason I love SPN and Popslash is because, unlike other fandoms (*cough*Harry Potter!*cough*), RPS is seen as perfectly normal and legitimate within the fandoms. It's NOT the red-headed step-child, for once, and I love that. But not only does FanLib ignore RPF/RPS, it ignores SLASH. Looking through the SPN fic on that site, it's all gen or Mary Sue fic. I haven't checked out the Harry Potter selections, but I bet there's a lot more het, and certainly a far greater percentage of het than occurs in fandom at large.

And finally, the owners of FanLib seem to have missed a big point of fandom, which is--porn. I know people who literally will not read anything that doesn't have at least a blowjob in it. Because let's face it, sex is a HUGE draw to fanfic. And there's nothing wrong with that (in fact, I quite enjoy it), but it's simply another way in which these FanLib fuckwits have gotten it all wrong.

In conclusion: we created fandom as an underground movement, as our own society with its own rules and factions and language and so on. So it's really astounding to me, the arrogance of these people who think they can swoop in from the outside and create an archive to house "the world's greatest fanfiction by popular demand." No fan worth her weight would ever sign on to have her fic hosted there, and you can bet I won't be reading anyone who does, on general principle alone.

So, as you all probably know, I write a lot of AUs and crackfic. I fully blame popslash for this new (okay, well, year-long) addiction with AUs, but now it seems like I can't just write a straight story anymore. I always ended up making it a little cracky, or deciding that really, wouldn't it be so much better if Jared and Jensen were randomly on a roller derby team? But I have, on occasion, written fic that was in no way intended to be crack OR an AU, and yet I nevertheless get comments wanting to know what I was smoking when I wrote that, or how great an AU this is. And thus having established myself as a lay-expert in the field, ( please excuse me while I talk about of my ass about AUs, crackfic, and when really, something can just be funny without drugs being involved. )

So today we learned that:

+not all AUs are crackfic
+not all crackfics are AUs
+crazy shit can happen in a fic ie alien babies, genderswapping, characters played by the same actor meeting, without that fic being an AU. When you're about to label your Lance Bass MPREG fic as AU, ask yourself: is this really another UNIVERSE, or is this something that could potentially (or magically) happen in the current universe?

Here endeth the lesson. Also, because it's time for me to go to lunch!

Let me preface this by saying that Jensen is still the hottest guy in just about ever, and Jared is also very good looking when he's not making the squishy face. And that Jared's hair could probably have a show of its own, or possibly be cast as the next Pussycat doll. They could have a song about it called "Doncha Wish Your Hair Could Fly Like Mine". Erm. Or maybe not. Anyway, the point is, what I'm about to say should in no way reflect on my love of the boys, and I definitely won't stop writing them anytime soon.

( That said, Supernatural has been kind of sucking for me this season. )

This weekend was pretty much craziness. I had a day-long meeting for work that included a workshop on the Romance genre which was really interesting. The woman doing the talk, Emily McKay, is a writer for Harlequin/Sillhouette, and it was just really interesting to hear her thoughts on the genre, why people read romance, why more men than ever before are reading romance, and the different types of romance subgenres.

What I found most interesting about her talk was what she had to say about why people read romances, because to me, it sounded a lot like the reasons people give for reading fanfic, especially those among us who will absolutely NOT read death fic or unhappy endings. McKay says that people read romances because they know what to expect, there won't be any huge surprises (like the death of the main character, etc), and there will always be a happy ending. She says that people read romances because, basically, they can trust a romance to take them into a world that is safe and predictable while still being emotional, and, yeah, there will be conflict, but everything will work out in the end. Romances fulfill that fantasy of a happy ending, and when you read a romance, you can trust that you're going to get exactly that.

Speaking as a former closet romance addict (I was a very bored teenager, before I started dating), this feels really true to me. I think about my initial reactions to films or books that I think are going to end happily somehow--Gone With the Wind, Cold Mountain, Closer--and realize that part of the unhappiness and dissatisfaction I felt when I first watched/read them is actually a deep sense of betrayal. I trusted Margaret Mitchell to bring Scarlett through all the bad shit and get her together for real, finally, with Rhett. But she doesn't, and everytime I watch the movie, I get so angry at the end.

I think a lot of people do the same thing with fanfic. I know a few people who've said to me that they will absolutely not read death fic, or anything that ends uphappily. They're reading fanfic the same way that romance readers read: they're putting their trust in a writer to bring them through happily to the other side no matter how angst-ridden the plot is, and when that doesn't happen, the reader feels betrayed. I think this is especially true in popslash, where people would much much rather read about the fluffy happy shiny lives of popstars rather than, say, Helen's Easy Come, Easy Go, about which I have written in my notes on del.ici.ous: "It's really good until everyone DIES."

In Harry Potter and Supernatural, I think it's a little less extreme with the wanting happy endings thing, simply because both are much darker canons than RPF generally is. In both, there's a big war between good and evil, a lot of potential for horrible things to happen, and, in fact, a lot of bad things happen in canon. But even so, I've seen comments, for example, to charlotteschaos's Knives Out about how wrong and awful it is to write a fic in which a main character dies, even though the authors make it very clear in the beginning that there will be deaths in the fic. And I really think that this sense of betrayal comes from the way in which a lot of fanfic readers read. Especially coming from a canon like Harry Potter, where we're pretty sure that Rowling isn't going to kill off Harry, we transfer that trust in Rowling and the world she created over to fanfic. When that trust is violated by an unhappy ending or a death, readers feel a very real sense of betrayal. They're reading for the continuation of the fantasy, and a death or similar takes them out of the fantasy and slams them back into the real world.

That doesn't mean I think people should stop writing serious/uhappy/death-ridden fic. I'll still read it; I'm very much over my closet romance days. I like variety. Sometimes I do want to read something incredibly sad or crazy or funny, even if the main characters are suffering horribly or dying or fatal diseases or have lost their memories or been impregnated by aliens. I never really understood why other people DIDN'T want to read everything that was well-written and characterized, but I think this helps me understand a little better.

I really wanted to ask Emily McKay about whether gay romance would become a new subgenre (I could make a fucking KILLING if that were the case!) but the workshop attendees were primarily librarians from rural Texas over the age of 50, so I thought I probably should keep that question to myself. Maybe I'll email her and ask; maybe Harlequin will start a new line of gay romances. Wouldn't THAT be awesome?

+So last night I had this dream that I went to a Bitch and Animal show with Britney Spears and schooled her in the ways of awesome lesbian rock. They even had a song about Britney, which was hilarious and fabulous in my dream, but when I woke up, I realized it was just Old Macdonald with lyrics about not wearing underwear. YEAH.

+JC, baby? Learn how to make a quip, please. When a DJ asks you if you've ever spooned with Justin, do NOT say, "No! NEVER!" DO say, "All the time, man. Justin's a needy little bitch. Won't take no for an answer." Also, please stop doing that weird thing with your hair. But do keep hanging out with Prince Harry, and then introduce him to Lance. Thanks.

+My favorite alien congressman, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, has announced that he is running for President. Again. I really love Kucinich even if he IS an alien, and he definitely most reflects my political views (or did in the last primary run), but it's sort of a waste of time at this point. Still, I really hope Al Sharpton runs again, too, because watching him in the debates is the most amusing thing ever. I want to see him arguing with Obama. YES.

+Apparently, y'all really like crackfic. Which, YAY, but I honestly never thought people would enjoy a fic about actors who are boys who are inexplicably girls, for no reason. I've been thinking a lot about creation myth in fandom lately, especially as it pertains to RPF, where everything is publicist-invented anyway. NSYNC, for example, seems to be almost entirely Story Writer created, ie, does anyone seriously believe that little story they tell about how they got together? Of course not. They met in a club? Please! Chris was the only one old enough to GO to clubs. He had also already been with Lou for two years before he met the other guys. What was Chris DOING with Lou? I don't think anyone wants to know.

( Cut for blathering about the Creation Myth, world building, and other assorted fun things. )

While googling for popslash by Mary the Fan, whose fic I read over at Don We Now Our Gay Apparal (and I can't find anywhere else, SIGH), I discovered this piece of awesomeness: a Wickipedia entry about the history and contraversey behind RPF/RPS. A lot of the history I didn't really know, but it was so interesting to see how RPF happened, the wank that ensued, and the ramification thereof, with references for my dorky enjoyment.

This quote in particular amused me:

The earliest known RPF was written by the Brontë children from 1826 to approximately 1844. Based on the children's roleplaying game about the Napoleonic Wars, the series featured the Duke of Wellington and his two sons Charles and Arthur, and their arch-nemesis Alexander Percy, partly based on Napoleon. Over the years, Arthur evolved into an amazingly charismatic and powerful figure, the Duke of Zamorna. These stories were not published until well over a hundred years later, but the children used them to polish their writing skills and eventually all became professional authors.

If the Brontes did it, it must be good, right?

( It all started when one crazy, genius fan wondered, 'Wouldn't it be totally sweet if the cast of Star Trek were accidentally beamed aboard the Enterprise?' And thus history was made. )

So those are my thoughts. Check out the article, it's definitely worth reading and understanding the history of RPF. Now, what do you think?

So lately I've been thinking about slash, the nature thereof, why I (and so many others) find it attractive, and feeling sort of, well, guilty about it, actually. Because I have to wonder... when I read slash, especially smut, and particularly as a writer, it's almost like we're well... fetishizing gay men. And I really don't like to think that I might be doing that, I mean, some of my best friends are gay men, and I don't mean that in the "some of my best friends are black" sort of way to prove I'm not homophobic or whatever. I mean obviously not. And maybe that niggling guilt in the back of my mind whenever I write a really graphic slash sex scene means that at least I'm thinking about what it means to be a slash writer and the population I'm portraying. Worried about this, I looked to my Three Essays on Sexuality to see what Freud says on the subject:

There are some cases which are quite specially remarkable--those in which the normal sexual object is replaced by another which bears some relation to it, but is entirely unsuited to serve the normal sexual aim... The situation only becomes pathological when the longing for the fetish passes beyond the point of being merely a necessary condition attached to the sexual object and actually takes the place of the normal aim, and, further, when the fetish becomes detached from a particular individual and becomes the sole sexual object. [pp19-20]

So, what Freud is really talking about here is actual objects, but later he explains that people are objects, the object of the sexual aim, to be specific, so I think that in this case fetishism is definitely possible.

I guess the real question becomes whether or not we're replacing the "normal" sexual object with this fetish, and if you consider the mindset of slash fans as a whole, I sort of think we are. There's this whole "ewwww het" mentality from a lot (not all, obviously) of people, most of whom are straight women, that certainly strikes me as, well, fetishism. I'm guilty of this too. If I'm reading sex, I far prefer to read slash over het. I can't really nail down why--I mean, I'm a woman, you'd think I'd want to read about me. But I don't. And I don't think it's just the fantasy aspect of it either. There's something about slash that attracts me in a way that het doesn't.

So here's my question to you all. Is it okay to fetishize gay men? Is that even what slash is, or is there something else about the characters and the stories that make it less of a fetish and more of a legitimate sexual aim? For the women out there--do you ever feel this way, like we're fetishizing gay men? Why or why not? Should I feel guilty, or should I be like, "Yo, they're fictional so it doesn't matter! (except for that pesky RPS I tend to write)"

Thoughts? Bueller?