meretricula: (theirloveissomyopic)
[personal profile] meretricula
partially prompted by [livejournal.com profile] sarahtales's most recent post, but I've been pondering this for a while.

has anyone else noticed a horrifying dearth of women in sports slash? I mean, this is true of slash in general, don't get me wrong. but I don't know if I've ever seen a fandom so prone to simply excising really important relationships from its fic just because one of the people in those relationships is (ew! ick! cooties!) a girl. Merlin fandom is all about the Arthur/Merlin, which is fine and dandy, but it's not like the authors habitually pretend that Morgana and Gwen don't exist. (to be fair: Supernatural fandom has always been about writing out all significant heterosexual relationships. but the heterosexual relationships are so badly written in the show that I'm sort of willing to give the fans half a pass on that one.)

this drives me crazy about fangirls. WE ARE WOMEN FOR FUCK'S SAKE. PLEASE DON'T HATE WOMEN. I've been thinking and thinking about a comment I got on a tennis fic, and I don't want to be ungrateful, because it was clearly meant as a compliment, but it basically said "the guys in this relationship are awesome! and so is female character X (the girlfriend of one of the guys) - even though she's just a girl," which makes me so fucking mad. she's just a girl? for the love of god, are you not a girl yourself?

in sports rps, most of the people we want to write about do have girlfriends. some of them are even married. and yes, some of them are dating women who are former nude models or pop singers or whatever (not that we should look down on women in any of those professions), but most of them are dating very lovely, nice women. aside from the fact that it's a little disrespectful to just pretend that they don't exist, they're very important to the men that we're writing about. how can you think you're doing a good job of characterizing someone if you completely leave out his relationship with a woman he's been dating for years? sorry to delve into specifics, but - Mirka Vavrinec has been with Roger Federer for what, nine years? she's a completely inextricable part of his life. Xisca Perello is not just Rafael Nadal's girlfriend, she's his neighbor and good friends with his little sister. Novak Djokovic is friends with women - not just his girlfriend, but also Ana Ivanovic and (so far as I can tell) Maria Sharapova. pretending the world is only peopled by men is not going to cut it, people.

I honestly think it's even worse when a writer deals with the presence of a woman who happens to be roadblocking the 'ship by turning her into a villainous bitch. these men are very rich and very good-looking: they would not be dating women they didn't like. can we all accept that their girlfriends are not evil and move on? also: gay sex is still cheating on your girlfriend. if the girlfriend doesn't know about and condone whatever is happening in the locker room showers, then yeah - your hero is being an asshole. which is fine to write! people are assholes all the time. just acknowledge that you are not writing a shining upright paragon of morality. I'd rather read about someone being sort of a dick than someone going around doing the right thing all the time, but I want the narrative to acknowledge his (or her!) dickishness.

sorry for the rant. I hope that if anyone spots me writing fake women or ignoring canon women, you'll call me on it! I know I've done it in the past, and it itches at me. fandom loves men, and loves men who love men, but - the vast majority of us are women. and women are fucking awesome.

Date: 2009-08-25 05:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meretricula.livejournal.com
well, male characters definitely get forgiven for more ([livejournal.com profile] sarahtales was right, Harriet Potter would be the most annoying character on the planet, though I'm not crazy about Harry either), and at least in my case I worry about imposing myself on female characters too much. but on the other hand I also worry about making male characters too feminine (by which I mean: able to communicate and concerned about hurting each other's feelings), so there's no easy solution. woe. (yeah, Sarah Tales used to be Mistful, who was Maya in HP fandom. since she got published she took her fic down.)

I guess it depends on the situation? I mean, if you're writing an utterly contextless pornlet, then going into the guilt in depth is going to take away from the point of the story, which is hot sexings. and there are some fics where it's more apropos to gloss over stuff than others. I mean, the ATP is an almost all-male environment, and I could accept that some players compartmentalize "my girlfriend is here so I am with her" and "my girlfriend is at home and I am on tour so I can do whatever I want" and feel very little guilt over that. I mean, I still think it's a dickish thing to do, but you know what I mean.

(you keep hinting about your bigbang! ~grabby hands~ I am excited.)

Date: 2009-08-25 11:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aramley.livejournal.com
Characterisation is just hard, in general. I think it's difficult not to write idealised versions of characters, particularly since fic generally comes out of love (or at least liking). Which might be another reason why cheating doesn't get dealt with very much. It's unpleasant to think of someone you really like as being a dick.

(Oscillating between excitement and terror and deep, deep loathing for the bigbang atm. Only halfway to the wordcount D:)

Date: 2009-08-26 12:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meretricula.livejournal.com
yeah. I don't want Novak to be a dick! I love him! ~cuddles Nole protectively~

once you're over 50% done it's all downhill from there. =)

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