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Nov. 3rd, 2013 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brightly_litApparently, in this fandom, writing a het fic is worse than killing a puppy. But only a little.
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:32 am (UTC)No, I'm not getting flack; people would have had to actually read the fic before I got any of that. But the silence is deafening.
YAY, Dean/Lisa, Sam/Ruby, and all the other ones you mentioned! Glad to hear I'm not the only het fan. I mean, I like slash as much as the next gal, but being female myself, I enjoy reading about a little action between one of our fellows and a woman.
(Do you have any good het recs for me ... including your own? ;-) )
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:44 am (UTC)I'll also work on the het recs. For now you can start with http://spn-hetexchange.livejournal.com/ There should be something there that will fill the bill!
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:49 am (UTC)http://the-lilac-wind.livejournal.com/1112.html
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 05:55 am (UTC)1. I like to pretend that Jess, Lisa, Amelia, etc don't exist, so reading about them messes up with the totally imaginary world I've created in my head cannon.
2. Het sex? Meh. I get that at home.
3. Two hot guys, and no one to be jealous of? That's a story I can get behind.
4. I've spent my whole life looking at sex from one perspective (het). There is a whole different dynamic with slash, and to a greater extent with Wincest. Reading in this fandom has completely changed the way I look at sexuality.
4. And probably the most important... I think I've finally nailed down the reason why Wincest appeals to me so much. It's that the connection between them is so intense that they just don't care about any of the things that could stand between them. Gay? Who cares? Brothers? Who cares even less! The world falling apart around them? Forget it! That kind of intensity, that kind of connection is lacking in my real life, and this is where I come to get it. With het, it's just not the same.
But yeah, we suck. There are a lot of awesome, super talented writers out there that get overlooked merely because they write het. That's a shame. Also, I am a total hypocrite, because I WROTE a het fic (Cas/Pamela Barnes) and I know I'm going to be all butthurt when I post it and no one reads it. It will serve me right.
((((hugs)))) to you and any of your puppies that have been kicked.
:)
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Date: 2013-11-04 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 11:06 pm (UTC)1) When it comes to female characters in a story, I try to take it the way it's intended, for the female reader to identify with and imagine in her place, rather than getting jealous of her (but sometimes I do still get jealous of her, and then I try to take it in a more literary than emotional way, but anyway, I feel what you mean about this).
3) I also like this. I mean, one hot guy=GOOD. Two hot guys? fugeddaboutit.
2) I don't! Wah. But even if I did, unless it was SUPER hot, I'm pretty sure I would still enjoy reading about really good, hot het sex, which brings us to
4) See, I've been exposed to at least as much slash/alternative sexuality as het, so in a sense, het sex is the most intriguing to me, due to the differences between the participants' bodies, temperaments, and conditioning. Men and women are such different animals sometimes, I like the fraught dynamics that can come of that tension.
5) This is particularly fascinating to me, because since I became part of SPN fandom, the Wincest thing has kind of freaked me out (maybe because I have a brother, and EW, NOT SEXY!!). Not that I don't see where it comes from, but I couldn't get past the incest part. Recently, however, I felt like I had a epiphany about it: that these two guys know each other so well and have been through so much together, who else could understand them? Then again, I've had a life partner for my whole life with whom I don't have sex and I know sex isn't necessary for a very close, trusting relationship.
But in any case, what you say is so informative and compelling, THANK YOU for explaining this to me. (I was going to ask for a rec that embodied all these qualities you've described, but I'm still weirded out by it, but I am curious ... I don't know.)
I'll read your het fic! (If I somehow miss it, come remind me.)
Thanks again for your comment, bb, and I hope your het fic gets all the love.
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Date: 2013-11-06 04:52 am (UTC)wincest primer (http://sd-recs.livejournal.com/13270.html)
:)
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Date: 2013-11-07 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 10:28 am (UTC)I don't read much het either -- not because I don't care for the genre, just that ya know, those Winchesters come first, and I'm always scared that het will turn a bit rape-y. I've been burned by a few fanfics pretending to be het that was just mostly non-con.
Also, there's the small matter that the biggest het pairings are Sam/Ruby, which I ship but am always wary to try in fanfic because of obvious reasons; Dean/Lisa, which I've never really cared for, much; and Sam/Jess...in which Jess is sanctified as some kind of pious maiden way too often. So it's mostly about good het being difficult to find, and staying good once I do find it. Still, there's some great het writing in this fandom and you should keep writing it.
Puppies will revive and you will find a part of fandom that will love you for it. I'm definitely reading your fic, soon as I get time. [I was going to even before you posted this, but 9k is long with the limited time I have today, so I commented here first] :D
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Date: 2013-11-04 10:48 pm (UTC)... this is a really good point. I have total sympathy for the people who generally avoid het because of exactly what you say: it IS hard to find. (Argh, you're so right about the pious maiden thing.)
Puppies will revive and you will find a part of fandom that will love you for it.
Ahh, bb, you're so sweet. <3 <3 I hope you like that fic! Somehow I didn't really realize it was so dark and heavy until people kept saying so in the comments, but it's a pretty serious one.
And I'm glad your exams are over and you're FREE, free I say!
TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-04 01:21 pm (UTC)Not in the sense that everyone shouldn't be free to read/write/ship what they do, or that sometimes there's not a great lack of awesome female characters to read about, or het relationships aren't sometimes written really badly, or there's a sad lack of non-straight representation in canon... turning to slash is super, super easy, and even if it wasn't easy, it's definitely fun.
But there's also a tendency to erase female characters and judge them on massive double standards (I'm thinking Ginny and Neville from HP to start, or reviling characters I love from SPN for ~getting in the way of their pairing). Nothing infuriates me more than a lady getting unjustly treated (or made out to be an awful person) for the sake of a man taking her place (no matter the reason). I could grumble endlessly about fan treatment of Tonks and Lisa and goodness knows how many other characters.
I personally always tend to love gen more than anything - I'm super into plot and character development, and sometimes I wish I could just find more well-written canon fic that continues canon as it is in the original and I can pretend that I'm reading more source material, lol. This also obvs loops back to there not being enough LGBT representation in that canon, so it really sucks that 'continuing canon' often coincides with 'being het' as a matter of course, but yeah.
The ladies need some appreciation! \o/
Re: TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-04 10:33 pm (UTC)The thing about canon queer weirds me out, too. At least in SPN there's some gay subtext, so you can stretch it, but sometimes I am a bit baffled as to how characters who are presented as 100% straight in canon are treated as pretty much ... 100% gay in fic.
Not in the sense that everyone shouldn't be free to read/write/ship what they do, or that sometimes there's not a great lack of awesome female characters to read about, or het relationships aren't sometimes written really badly, or there's a sad lack of non-straight representation in canon
Yes, yes, yes. I definitely have sympathy for people avoiding het because there's so little of it written in this fandom that though I figure the percentage of great fics to come out of it remains the same, they're harder to find, but still,
But there's also a tendency to erase female characters and judge them on massive double standards
YES. I am so happy to belong to a corner of fandom that truly loves and appreciates the ladies in our Show, but the fact that we seem to be a minority makes it very frustrating for the way the producers respond (by taking virtually every long-term female character out of the show).
I am SO HAPPY I never personally saw any Lisa-bashing, but I've heard a ton about it. I was watching the show in a vaccuum at that time, so I had no idea about fan response, but I couldn't imagine a more likable love interest for either of the boys than Lisa, so it breaks my heart, especially that the actress had to deal with that when she is so freakin' talented.
I prefer gen, too, and actually, I would personally describe the het fic in question as gen, because though there is het sex, it could easily fit into canon.
It's so good to see you around here again!! I see that you posted and I'm also eager to read/respond to that. (I was looking for some lj fun last night and could barely scrape any together--it all came today! Now I'll have to catch up!)
Thanks for weighing in.
Re: TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-05 02:07 am (UTC)I don't want to get too deep into the potentially wanky area of what qualifies as "gen," but I feel like if a story has a significant, reasonably descriptive sex scene, it's not gen just because it can be made to work with canon. What can "easily fit into canon" is itself debatable. Just look at the never ending argument in certain sectors about whether Dean can be read as canonically bisexual.
More to the point, at least for me, is that a story with a sex scene between Charlie and Gilda would be more clearly canon compliant than Sam/OFC, but I can't imagine anyone labeling it as anything other than femslash. Likewise, someone could make a plausible argument that a pre-Jess Stanford era Sam/Brady fic "could easily fit into canon." Way back in the day, gen and slash were the only two categories in fandom. But assuming straight sex is "general" while gay sex needs a special category is problematic, which is why the het category was invented.
Re: TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-05 11:23 pm (UTC)But yes, because of that wanky potential, I'll call it het just so no one can complain (... or read it). :-}
Re: TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-06 01:53 am (UTC)Hmm, I think that's probably narrower than the conventional definition? My sense is that most people would say gen excludes both stories that focus on a romantic relationship and stories that contain explicit sexuality. I think you'd get side-eyed for putting a sex scene in a summgergen fic, for example.
In my story, they may have sex that drives the story forward, but the whole point is other stuff entirely, their relationship couldn't be described as romantic
A lot of the slash I've written isn't "romantic" in the champagne and roses sense of the word, and is interested in plot development, or the characters' mental states, or gender identity, or how they use sex to cope with trauma and function in the world.
I get the sense that you're using het and slash to refer only to PWP? But for most people in fandom those categories also include serious, plotty fic like yours, that uses sex as a means to explore character.
(or if someone did describe it that way, I'd worry about them!)
Haha, well, I've had people describe things from my stories as romantic or sweet that I thought were absolutely hair-raising, so there's no accounting for taste.
Re: TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-07 05:15 am (UTC)hee hee, RIGHT?? I've had the same experience.
Initially I thought "gen" would refer to something for "general audiences" that had no explicit sex in it, so I was surprised by the definitions I found, though I liked them better--basically, shipping (het/slash) vs. non-shipping (gen). I definitely don't think of slash/het as just PWP, because I would never think of characterizing my slash series as anything but slash, even though it's quite plotty, character-developing, even touching on deep spiritual themes, etc. (The sex is also not explicit.) But the (non-canon--Destiel) relationship is the heart of the story.
I do think once the sex gets explicit and takes up a significant portion of the story that you have to call it slash or het, but, for instance, I think you could have a gen story about Dean and soulless!Sam hunting together, during which soulless!Sam ducks out for a brief sex scene with a random OFC. Even if the sex was explicit, I think I could see it getting a pass at summergen. I don't know, it's a tricky question.
Re: TL;DR
Date: 2013-11-05 02:21 pm (UTC)It's good to be back. The new entry's basically just a laundry list of what I've managed recently, but I hope you enjoy it anyway!
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Date: 2013-11-04 03:05 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about the lack of interest in it in this fandom. I have two stories of the boys each losing their virginity and even though neither got many comments, it was even less so for the Sam fic. I still enjoyed writing them.
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Date: 2013-11-04 11:28 pm (UTC)I'm all about the pairing, too ... or, well, really, done well, I could hang with any pairing, I suppose (except the Wincest ...).
Awesome new icon, btw ...
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Date: 2013-11-05 12:50 am (UTC)Thanks, I had fun making the icon. I love making pretty pictures :)
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Date: 2013-11-04 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-05 01:35 am (UTC)Plus, OCs are a notoriously hard sell--any time you do that you lose the majority of your potential audience. The one fic where I wrote an OC (not even in a pairing!) remains one of the least popular fics I've ever written.
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Date: 2013-11-05 11:30 pm (UTC)I write a lot of unpopular fics, too, but most of them I know ahead of time will be unpopular, so I can steel myself for the lack of response. This was my first 'het fic,' so I didn't know what to expect and I was surprised! I've written slash before and it got lots of attention compared to my gen fics. I knew het was less popular, but since it had sex I figured people would still be quite interested, just less so; I didn't imagine it would be, like, WAY less popular even than gen!
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Date: 2013-11-06 02:05 am (UTC)Het pairings are all rare pairs in this fandom, but some will get more attention than others--Dean/Abaddon is big at the moment, and Cas/Meg is relatively popular, at least on Tumblr.
Have you tried posting your story to spn_het? It might even work for ohsam.
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Date: 2013-11-07 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-05 01:49 am (UTC)I'm certainly not immune to the temptation of fantasizing I'm sexing up an attractive man and wanting to write how it would go (and have written it, and those stories will never see the light of day), but some of the fanfiction I've read that does have a het pairing that involves sex doesn't seem to be interested in the woman as more than a vehicle for her to explore what she would like to happen if she were the character in the story. In addition to this, quite a few of the het pairings I have read feature a Mary-Sue in place of the female character, and I CANNOT abide Mary-Sues.
Granted, this is not going to be the case for several people who write or have written het, but this has been my experience for the most part, and it's quite difficult for me to get around that stigma.
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Date: 2013-11-05 10:22 pm (UTC)I think this is why lots of people avoid het, because you're so right, that IS what a lot of it is. Not that I have a problem with wish-fulfillment in fanfic. I mean, it's kind of what fanfic (and art of any kind, for that matter) is all about, or I figure it wouldn't be 90%+ porn and hurt/comfort--but I don't see any reason why that should mean it wouldn't also be a real story with well-developed characters and a plot. (PWP drives me crazy, as well, because there's only so much one body can do to another, and if there's no point beyond the sex itself, it's just like ... *yawn* ....)
I guess what we seem to have concluded is that we might be more open to reading het if we'd had better experiences with what we've come across.