Entitled knobnuts, part #758

[veronica_rich]

Fandom!Secrets may have moved to DW, but it's just as much fun as ever to read for venting. *G*

A theme I see brought up time and again is entitlement in fandom. As in, "I'm entitled to get to read stories/see fanart of THIS" and "I'm entitled to have what I like be the dominant force in my fandom" and "I'm entitled to do some name-calling when people waste their time on fanworks of things I don't like instead of what I want to see." Pre-Internet, I honestly don't remember fans I knew and met being so judgmental of fanfic or art beyond the usual "is it good or not?" which is fair enough. What I mean, there was none of this "quit wasting your time on slash and build me a het epic, bitch" that's become a staple at FS (which, FS is a concentrated dose of general fandom, so my guess is this maybe goes on in some individual fandoms out there to a lesser degree; I saw just a tiny bit of it back in POTC). I'm not talking about people who simply express a desire to read something specific they would like - I mean those who tear down other people for writing other things that aren't what the bitchers want to read.

And it is all het, occasionally gen. Even the femslash fans, who might have a point about not seeing enough of what they like, aren't whiny and entitled like the het fans who make these secrets or agree with them. I remember just a few occasional threads in parts of POTC where J/E fans (it wasn't ever W/E or even Norribeth or other het fans doing it) would sit around publicly wondering why anyone would like slash in that fandom. Or the few who insinuated from time to time it was down to misogyny because we didn't write Liz as much as they did. But it didn't come up with near the frequency it does on FS, and every time I see it, I wonder, why don't those people write what they want to read?

Seriously. This is how fanfic STARTED long before the Internet and even paper 'zines. Fans wrote what they liked to see and kept them to read again. Or traded with fellow fans. Or copied and passed around. Hell, this was going on into the 90s. So the bitchers who counter with "but I'm not a writer!" - well, I have no sympathy. Non-writers and professional storytellers have been telling themselves stories to beat boredom and fall asleep for tens of thousands of years; if you're so damn lazy you're the type who'd rather publicly bash because you're not getting what you want from people doing it for free, you deserve to be mocked by all of us who do it at FS and anywhere else.

Comments

[hippediva.livejournal.com]

Well, Pirategasm was all-inclusive when it started in 5/2003 and it still is! *wink* It's a lot quieter than it was, but it remains all-inclusive to this day.

But I do think you're right---the entitlement is appalling. I mean, I don't particularly care for most het but others do. Just like some folks love broccoli and others can't stand it. There is no unwritten law insisting that broccoli be eaten. *giggling at the idea of Jack forced to eat broccoli*

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

Pirategasm was/is *absolutely* indicative of how inclusive that fandom was. Seriously, maybe I was hopelessly naive at the time, but it seemed to me that POTC was basically people just writing fic about characters they loved and Pirategasm THE place where we could keep track of what we wrote and who wrote it. Of course it wasn't ALL sweetness and light--there was a vocal contingent of people who didn't get Sparrington--but I certainly never felt threatened when I wrote it. I just assumed that the people who didn't like it, didn't read it. And I didn't feel that the people who didn't read it didn't like me personally, which is how it seems to play out these days, or even worse, that what I write "sickens" people (a term that I have read used more than once to describe a reaction to slash pairings).

There will always be like minds grouping together within a fandom, but lately it seems that as fandom has become more public and more (ironically) accepted by mainstream media, it has become much more cannibalistic of its members. I question whether I would be in fandom today if I didn't have long roots. It's not as nice a place.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

lately it seems that as fandom has become more public and more (ironically) accepted by mainstream media, it has become much more cannibalistic of its members

It almost feels like some political plants from the Radical Reich being sent in to infiltrate and undercut anything not appropriately heteronormative for a good old-fashioned values apple-pie-and-baseball American picnic, yeehaw! What these fucknuts on the het side who go along with this bitching don't realize, if there ever comes a point that slash goes back into hiding (as it was for decades before the 2000s; even in the 90s, really), the Moral Majority frowning over m/m is going to turn its ponderous collective head to what is and isn't acceptable in het pairings next. Or so I wager. That's usually the way of things.

Oh well. If they want to write hand-holding and coquettish eye-batting and bear pressure against "vagina" being written in fanworks, I hope they have fun with that. Slash and any fanfic, really, will live on on the sidelines as it did for so long - and those of us who write it primarily for our own enjoyment won't lose nearly as much as those who do it solely for approval and inclusion. ;-)

[hippediva.livejournal.com]

Amen! Pope Sleazoid the First approves! *LOL*

[hippediva.livejournal.com]

You said a WHOLE mouthful there! Again, it's a small group of loudmouthed morons forcing their ideology on the larger group whether the masses want it or not. My only regret is that I got angry instead of simply tossing them all out on their ears the first time they stepped over the line of civility.