this has been a meta post

[meretricula]

so... today is the day I realized that self-insert football fic was a thing on tumblr rather than just a random periodical annoyance in the victor valdes tag. huh. with the speed at which platforms for sharing ideas change these days, it's hard for me to guess whether this is all part of the same fannish "evolution" I went through, but maybe? I don't know. I mean, I think mine was a fairly common experience: self-insert (although the only genuine this-character-is-meant-to-be-me story I remember writing was orig fic about myself and my friends from chorus when I was still in grade school, and even then I used a different name for my character; I didn't like my name when I was younger) leads to a Mary-Sue period leads to an extended "slash only, het is gross!" period leads to eventual acceptance/appreciation of het (give or take some breaks for genfic) in one's old age. it kind of makes sense; tumblr fandom seems to skew quite young. the internalized misogyny that contributes to the fangirl growth cycle is obvious in retrospect but not so much at the time, of course.

I have decided opinions about fanfic on tumblr (one opinion, really: it doesn't belong there, tumblr is for pictures), but leaving all that aside, does this seem like the fanfiction.net developmental stage of our youth? (I was on Schnoogle rather than FF.net but same difference really.) LJ comms were fannish homebase for most of the "eww, het!" phase, and it seems like the AO3 hoved into view just as I was beginning to realize that fictional women deserve love and orgasms as much as fictional men do. I have no idea how much of that is dependent on which fandoms I am or was in, but my general experience across all my fandoms has been that neither livejournal fandom nor AO3 fandom is home to self-insert, but the AO3 is markedly more welcoming to het than LJ is.

my not-very-well articulated point has something to do with how distasteful I find it that the main football fanfic community on livejournal outright bans heterosexual stories. I can understand not wanting to become ground zero for an explosion of "tumblr-style" self-insert fic, but the self-insert/Mary-Sue phase seems to me to be completely distinct from hetfic in general. but at the same time, I say that from the perspective of being (in fannish years) A Really Old Person who has been through all these stages of development. (I have no idea what comes after learning to like het and slash equally. have I reached fannish nirvana? maybe I'll start to actually appreciate plot and quit skipping the blah blah plotty bits to get to the witty banter.) football fandom, much more than a lot of the big media fandoms that are now settling in at the AO3, is still in the middle stage of development, and thinks that girl characters are obstacles to be got out of the way of boy relationships and girl parts are generally icky. (I should clarify: Big Slash Fandom as a phenomenon is still going strong at the AO3 and pretty much everywhere else, too. a lot of fans never outgrow the middle stage of developments! but Big Slash Fandoms also get het fics written in them by fans who have hit the "hey, het and slash are both pretty okay" stage, and sometimes they're quite popular. I am currently reading the hell out of that one girl!Lestrade/Mycroft fic, for example, and judging by the hits, comments and kudos I am not the only one.) but at the same time I don't think it's fair of me to demand, on this side of enlightenment or whatever, that everyone else in footie fandom see the light: they're not old enough yet, and fair enough. it'd be like getting pissed that the 13-year-olds on tumblr don't understand punctuation. of course they don't! they're 13 years old! some of them will learn by the time they're 23, and fuck knows I wouldn't want to be judged on the basis of what I wrote like when I was 13. every writer, whatever her stage of development, deserves a safe space to experiment with her peers.

I suppose the question is whether there is any significant population in football fandom that is "old" enough to serve as an audience for hetfic. I know there are some people who read it, but on the other hand we tried to have a "ladies special" over on touchline a while back and it was pretty much the same six people talking to each other and it didn't really go anywhere and it made me very sad. (except for the fact that I learned about Neka and Irune because of the ladylove fest and that is always something to celebrate!) most of the time when I find het (and I do find it! I look! I even have a special recs section!) it's on a personal journal, not cross-posted--except sometimes for genderswap, which is kind of a special case. (this is also true of gen, for what it's worth.) is that the best case scenario that can be hoped for? or would a broader platform actually help reach an audience that is willing to read but doesn't know where to look?

the thing is, I don't think a het-specific platform is a good idea. it wouldn't be able to be self-sustaining, for one. I don't think I know anyone who only wants to read het football fic; I still very much want to read and write slash football fic, at least. I just also like to read and write het. (am I wrong? speak up, folks!) I don't want a "footballhet" comm; I want a central comm for football fic regardless of whether it's het, slash or gen. (yes, I know footiefic. nobody uses it. that's the problem.) I would love, in an ideal world, for footballslash to pull a rarelitslash and just change their rules to allow people to post het and gen. (rarelitslash absorbed a sister community that welcomed het and never changed its name; the misnomer never particularly bothered me. most of the fic posted there was and still is slash. it just stopped forbidding other stuff, on the apparently correct assumption that people who liked rare lit slash would probably like any form of rare lit fic.) but again, if all but a small handful of footie fic readers and writers are still in the "eww, het!" phase it's (a) pointless and (b) unfair to ask that their fannish space change in order accommodate the few who don't care if their fic has girl parts in it.

all of which is rather moot since I am unwilling in the extreme to bring this up myself to fandom in general/the mods of fbslash after having had five, count them, five separate instances of wank dumped on my head by the malcontents of footie fandom, but whatever. I like meta! I like talking to you guys about meta! talk to me! uh, if you could follow any of what I was saying, anyway, I know I rambled a lot. feel free to link to anyone you think could contribute to the discussion as well, obviously my flist is not universally representative and I am curious to hear what other people think about het/gen/femslash in footie fandom.

postscript: please, please, please do not pull out the "I just don't like het! I only like slash! stop being a mean judgey-pants bitch about my reading tastes!" card. IT IS OKAY. YOU ARE FINE. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH LIKING WHATEVER YOU LIKE AND I AM NOT CRITICIZING YOU AS A PERSON. I am probably older than you (maybe not in years, but I have been in fandom for... ahahaha oh god half my life, which I think counts for bonus experience points) and you are in no way obligated to listen to my Wisdom of an Older Person but look, you'll just have to trust me that I remember being just like you and that is why I am saying these things. you'll get it when you're older, maybe. and also your mother is probably right about more than you want to admit.

post-postscript: seriously. there is a lot of ingrained woman-hating in our society that contributes to the phenomena I'm talking about and it's hard to see it from the inside and it is not your fault, in any way, but there's not a whole lot of point in talking about it with someone who isn't ready to see it. so, if you just don't like het, that's fine, that's your prerogative, and you are not the audience to whom this post is addressed. come back and chat if you change your mind!

Comments

[angualupin.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I don't think I can necessarily agree when it comes to women in footie fandom. What women are you going to write about? More and more attention is being paid to female footballers, which is great, and that includes more football femslash, which is also great. And of course there's always the occasional genderswap, like your Cesca fic. But other than that, the only women involved in football are the WAGs, and a lot of people have a problem writing about real people who don't have a public persona. Certain WAGs have a public persona of their own, like Sara Carbonera, and certain WAGs have a public persona by trading off their HAB's fame, like Alex Gerrard, but a lot of them don't have public personas. I'm highly uncomfortable writing or reading about a WAG who purposely keeps a low profile, and I know other people are as well -- and more relevantly, the official RPF communities, like fbslash, must be careful about what they allow. RPF is arguably on even more shaky legal ground than normal fanfiction because it's about real people, and certainly the public perception is that it's a hell of a lot creepier than normal fanfiction (which doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation in the public sphere to begin with). RPF's saving grace is that it is written more about a person's public persona than it is about the person themselves, but that only holds for people who have a public persona. Replace that with "woman who is married to famous person" or "woman who works for Chelsea Football Club" and you get on very shaky ground indeed.

I agree with you that women are often portrayed poorly in the footie fandom, and that this can have misogynistic undertones (which is, unfortunately, hardly unique to footie fandom). Certainly there have been countless fics where things were going along fine until a player's partner showed up, and then I had to hurriedly click away because the characterization was so nauseatingly unpleasant. But that is something that should be addressed itself, with "stop being so damn misogynistic", not, "these women we really know nothing about should be written about more/in a certain way". Because honestly, I don't think the partners of most players should show up in fic at all, because of the aforementioned not having a public persona. I am far more comfortable with fics in which the characters' partners magically don't exist than I am with fics in which a non-famous partner is given a large role, even if she is written well. If a person hasn't gone out of their way to make sure they are famous, then I feel they should not have porn written about them on the internet, and that covers a fair number of women who would be portrayed in footie fandom. You know I am always on the lookout for Andres Iniesta fic, but I don't want to read about Ana Ortiz, not because I want to pretend she doesn't exist to fuel a fantasy where Andres Iniesta is actually in love with me, or because I want to pretend she doesn't exist to fuel a fantasy where Andres Iniesta is actually in love with Xavi Hernandez, but because she's not famous and doesn't show any inclination of wanting to become famous, and I think it's disrespectful to write fanfiction about her as if she were.

And when it comes to places like Kickette, honestly, Kickette has a tendency to stray into the wrong side of creepy. The comments really do. I am (mostly) glad that Kickette exists as non-fanction-related proof of women being interested in football, but I really wouldn't take as a shining example any place that habitually has people posting with handles like "Mrs.DavidVilla"; RPF already has enough trouble with stalker types.

Basically, I think it comes down to this: there are a lot of fandoms out there that have really good het and femslash pairings, including most RPF. But if you really want female characters, you should try one of those fandoms, not football RPF.

[nahco3.livejournal.com]

I don't want to read about Ana Ortiz, not because I want to pretend she doesn't exist to fuel a fantasy where Andres Iniesta is actually in love with me, or because I want to pretend she doesn't exist to fuel a fantasy where Andres Iniesta is actually in love with Xavi Hernandez, but because she's not famous and doesn't show any inclination of wanting to become famous, and I think it's disrespectful to write fanfiction about her as if she were.

I think this beautifully sums up my personal reasons for not wanting to read or write fic about WAGs.

[angualupin.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it more, I think what it comes down to for me is "knowing what you've gotten yourself into". That is, entertainers -- sportspeople, actors, musicians, whatever -- have consciously chosen a profession where a large portion of their job is a perceived identity presented to fans. A footballer's job is to play football, but more than that, a footballer's job is to play football for other people. A footballer who does not play football specifically to entertain other people is called an amateur. A footballer, therefore, has knowingly chosen a profession that involves presenting an identity to a large number of people, most of whom she or he will never meet. Certain things, like getting pictures of yourself in the tabloids and having people write porn about you on the internet, are going to come along with that. The footballer might not like that part of the job much, and might try to keep his or her personal life as private as possible, but, fundamentally, the footballer has knowingly chosen that career, with all it entails.

Someone who is not professionally an entertainer has not chosen that. Choosing to marry someone famous or choosing to become a sports medicine doctor is not the same thing as choosing to become an entertainer. I therefore feel that such individuals should not be forced to provide an identity to fans, which includes the right to not have pictures of yourself published in tabloids and not have people write porn about you on the internet.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying and I totally respect your discomfort with not writing non-celebrity characters! I just don't think it's true of the fandom as a whole, you know? I see plenty of WAGs, footballer offspring and people-somehow-affiliated-with-football in fic, and if someone doesn't want to write or read them that's cool, they don't have to, but it's not like fbslash is actually pretending to avoid them on legal or ethical grounds. their policy is "no het or gen" not "no non-famous characters". I personally operate on the "it has nothing to do with the person I'm writing about and I couldn't care less what they would think about it, just don't send them a link and we can go our merry ways" philosophy but I recognize that that's a personal philosophy and I would never dictate where somebody else should draw the line. I still don't think that's the main issue going on here as far as rules go, though. I mean, I have written fic featuring Emili Ricart, who is as far from a celebrity as it's possible to be while still being employed by FCB (he's not even on Twitter), and there's no problem with that as far as unwritten rules of fandom go, so far as I can tell (though to be fair I'm not sure anyone would tell me if I had crossed a line). he's got his own tag on the AO3 now, congrats Emili! if I wrote a romantic story about him there would be no problem posting it anywhere in the common spaces of this fandom. I don't particularly want to read a fic about Anna Ortiz either, but I think somebody who wants to write about her (or the lady doctor of Chelsea fame, which is possibly more comparable) should have the same ability to share that story that I do when I write about Emili Ricart, you know? nobody has to read either fic if it makes them feel uncomfortable on ethical grounds. but it strikes me as weird and questionable that it's totally okay according to fandom rules to write these women as bit characters with zero agency who exist only as part of the scenery, but it's not okay to write them as the protagonists of their own love stories.

(I'm with you on the comments on Kickette, though. forums for comments on the internet are a special level of hell. avoid at all costs. but I am really glad that Kickette exists, and it wouldn't without comments, so I will be grateful that comments enable it to continue existing and just never read them!)

idek, man. if I knew what I liked so damn much about football, maybe I'd figure out how to stop caring. XD

[angualupin.livejournal.com]

But there is a difference between writing a fic in which a non-famous person is a tangential character and writing a fic about that person, especially if that fic involves porn. For example, I don't have any problem with the minor role that Emili Ricart plays in your soulbonding AU because he is a minor role; it's written respectfully; and he doesn't do anything in the fic that the real person might be embarrassed about. If someone were to write an equivalent fic that included the female Chelsea doctor, I'd have as little problem with it. But if someone were to write a, say, Emili/Pep fic or an Eva/Mata fic, then yes, I would have a great deal of problem with it, because what the fuck, they're not the kind of people you write porn about on the internet. They didn't sign up for that. And that, unfortunately, does extend to pretty much all women in football (with the exception of lady 'ballers, who should get more love than they do, but that is also a problem with society at large). Football is by default a slash fandom because there simply aren't that many women "characters".

That is NOT to say that there isn't a lot of misogyny in footie fandom, and that I don't think that it should be addressed. (Although that's hardly unique to footie fandom -- I've been in Marvel fandom since forever, and while I am very, very glad that the Marvel universe movies have generally been awesome and have brought a lot of new talent to the fandom, seeing the same old let's-get-this-canon-female-character-out-of-the-way-so-we-can-have-our-happy-slash-pairing replayed over and over again on AO3 -- finding a way to get Pepper Potts out of the way to have Tony Stark/Steve Rogers slash is really big right now -- gets really annoying really quickly.) I do think the characterization of women in the football slash fandom should be worked on, because it is generally very awful. But I also think the characterization of women in football fandom as a whole should be worked on, because it is generally very awful. And I don't think places like Kickette help much, because they generally tend to portray women who are interested in sport as only interested because the men are attractive. The fact that most of what Kickette posts about WAGs is about what they're wearing or what they're buying is even worse. I mean, Sara Carbanero is obviously an intelligent women who has worked hard to get where she is in life, and she is defined by a hell of a lot of things outside her relationship with Iker. But when was the last time Kickette posted anything about her that wasn't about her boobs/clothing/boobs in clothing? That's indicative of a larger problem. But again, I don't think that complaining that there isn't enough het in the football RPF fandom is the way to go about fixing the perception of women in sport.

And as for footballslash, it DOES specifically forbid fic that focuses on non-famous family members. That rules out, right there, any het that isn't, say, Pique/Shakira (or arguably Iker/Sara). And frankly, I think they are perfectly correct to make that call, because of the incredibly dicey legal issue that RPF already skates too close to. They do specifically forbid het, but since they also specifically forbid gen, I don't really see how you can argue that their specifically forbidding het is misogynistic. Ruling out het and gen rules out anything that isn't slash, and they are claiming that they are a football slash community, not a football fic community. You can decry this categorization -- personally I think it's bullshit, they long ago morphed into the general fooball fic comm -- but it's the categorization they've chosen, and you can't cherry-pick what part of the classification you don't like to make your point.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

idek man. like, if I do write that Xavi/Emili fic I don't expect you to read it, but I don't think you not wanting to read it means that I shouldn't write it, you know? everybody has their own lines, and I respect that. I'm just uncomfortable with the idea of drawing them for other people. it gets way too arbitrary way too fast. what if it's a positive portrayal? what if it's only rated PG? what if it's gen? what if...? in my ideal world people wouldn't write rapefic about characters they hate but I don't contest their right to put it on the internet; I just don't read it. (and probably bitch in private to a friend if I see it, because I never claimed to be perfect.)

(word on the Marvel fandom, sigh. PEPPER IS AWESOME YOU FOOLS. did you see the Pepper/Tony/Steve fic I recced a while back? FEELINGS.)

Kickette is a complex issue--I wholeheartedly agree that the comments section is its own level of hell, and I often feel like the writers choose to pander to the attitudes of their most extreme fans--but like I said, I'm glad it exists. sure, most of it is shoes and boobs and half-naked dudes, but I'm interested in that stuff, and I sure as hell can't get it from Zonal Marking. it's not perfect but I can filter out the commentary I disagree with a lot more easily than I can aggregate everything I'm interested in on my own. and credit where it's due: Kickette was the only voice I remember sticking up for Sara Carbonero's right to do her job while Madrid was trying to shut her up and Madrid fans were blaming her for a dressing room split. sometimes they get it right.

you know, it's funny, my first reaction was a knee-jerk no they don't I checked that and I went back and reread the rules just to be sure: we are reading the exact same rule in a different way, go figure! I would take "not solely related to players' family members" to mean that you can't write about, idk, Sergio Ramos' sister hooking up with Iker Casillas' brother, but given that I've seen fic about Sergio Ramos himself hooking up with Iker Casillas' brother (he plays in the third division, I think we can confidently assert that he's only famous because of his brother) I would assume that so long as one person in the pairing is fbslash-worthy you're fine. we need a lawyer to work out some of these rule interpretations though. XD and dude, I fully respect the right of fbslash to be whatever it is and stick to their own rules! I just wish they'd change the rules to reflect what's going on in the comm. gen does get posted there and nobody complains because where do you draw the line between friendship fic and G-rated preslash? but you can't pass het off as anything but het because it's got a girl in it. so, given that fbslash has become a defacto comm for slash and gen, I would love for it to become a comm for any and all football fic, but I know perfectly well that my wishing is just wishing and ain't nobody got to listen to me! I just like to talk.