Delurking to say hi, and well said, and thank you for articulating something about fandom that periodically bothers me and leads me to leaving fledgling fandoms before they get to the stage of their maturity cycle that I am already at (if that makes sense). For the record, I'd put myself in the same category of fannish evolution as you, although I've always thought of it as reaching the discerning omnivore stage (I'll consume pretty much anything provided it meets certain quality requirements).
One of the things that has puzzled me for a while about football fandom is that it seems curiously static and almost immature for its age, as in, it is stuck at the "Mary-Sue/het is gross" stage and doesn't seem to move on. (The Mary-Sue fic seems to mainly be confined to personal journals and half the time the Mary-Sue is actually a real-life player acting as the author's avatar but that's another issue.) The only reason that makes sense to me for this curious stasis is that football fandom periodically resets itself: world cups, euros, popular/successful teams, transfer windows, retirements lead to constant changes in authors, readers and characters and so there is no drive for change.
The other big problem that I think football fandom has in moving past "het is gross" is the dearth of female characters, by which I mean WAGs and female 'ballers, as original female characters are too often derided as self-inserts/Mary-Sues no matter how well they are written. The wives and girlfriends are rarely portrayed as anything other than caricatures of themselves in the popular media, although twitter can help mitigate this (or exacerbate, unfortunately). As characterisation in sports fandoms is so often formed by interviews, on field/court personas, newspaper reports and gossip columns, this leaves us with almost no material to work with for het interactions. Unfortunately, no matter how popular women footballers get around the world cup they seem to disappear from fandom's consciousness as quickly as they appear, but for the brief time they're around at least they're written like real people.
Oh boy, this got long, but I'd just like to join you in wishing there was more het and gen football fic out there and to say that I love the idea of opening footballslash up to non-slash. Now, while the community is relatively quiet might be one of the better times to suggest it, because I can see the fandom resetting itself again come the end of the Euros.
no subject
One of the things that has puzzled me for a while about football fandom is that it seems curiously static and almost immature for its age, as in, it is stuck at the "Mary-Sue/het is gross" stage and doesn't seem to move on. (The Mary-Sue fic seems to mainly be confined to personal journals and half the time the Mary-Sue is actually a real-life player acting as the author's avatar but that's another issue.) The only reason that makes sense to me for this curious stasis is that football fandom periodically resets itself: world cups, euros, popular/successful teams, transfer windows, retirements lead to constant changes in authors, readers and characters and so there is no drive for change.
The other big problem that I think football fandom has in moving past "het is gross" is the dearth of female characters, by which I mean WAGs and female 'ballers, as original female characters are too often derided as self-inserts/Mary-Sues no matter how well they are written. The wives and girlfriends are rarely portrayed as anything other than caricatures of themselves in the popular media, although twitter can help mitigate this (or exacerbate, unfortunately). As characterisation in sports fandoms is so often formed by interviews, on field/court personas, newspaper reports and gossip columns, this leaves us with almost no material to work with for het interactions. Unfortunately, no matter how popular women footballers get around the world cup they seem to disappear from fandom's consciousness as quickly as they appear, but for the brief time they're around at least they're written like real people.
Oh boy, this got long, but I'd just like to join you in wishing there was more het and gen football fic out there and to say that I love the idea of opening footballslash up to non-slash. Now, while the community is relatively quiet might be one of the better times to suggest it, because I can see the fandom resetting itself again come the end of the Euros.