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

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

well, that's the point, isn't it? that football slash isn't Big Slash Fandom? I'm not trying to accuse anyone; I got to where I am in one way and I know other people got there in a similar way, but I also know it's not the only way to get there, and I'm interested in getting to know the other routes too. which is why it is great that people are talking! but the world in general is by default sexist... so fandom in general is sexist, the status quo is sexist, and if I'm not actively thinking about it I'm sexist. which sucks. I don't think it's controversial to say that people need to hit a certain level of maturity to start actively thinking about sexism, though? obviously everybody gets there at different points in time. if the fannish landmarks I hit on my way to my current level of maturity/acknowledgment of my own and the world's sexism aren't universal that's good to know! it's a cool theory but I'm not married to it.

oof, yes, Eva Carneiro. sorry, Chelsea fans! I was reading an interview with Mata the other day where he talked about her so she was on my mind, but obviously this is not my corner of the fiefdom. >_>;; all I'm really qualified to talk about is Sharon... I don't remember her last name, honestly, but she's a recognizable member of the MCFC staff, she appears regularly in Inside City, I'd be comfortable describing her interaction with the players. I know enough about her to write her as a background character. (better than a lot of the players tbh, I am a terrible fan.) if I were writing her as a main character I would be doing a lot of fleshing out. but the same is true for a lot of male characters and I write them anyway, so it bugs me that I would dismiss the idea as "oh, self-insert" just because the character is a woman. I'm just talking about myself there, though. I know there's levels and levels to how much any given writer is comfortable making up about a character. (UGH WHY CAN I NOT MAKE WORDS MAKE SENSE. but, like. I wrote Oriol Romeu fic for zanoranna! AND IT WAS TOTALLY SELF-INSERT, WHO AM I KIDDING. I was writing about my experiences being a cold and lonely tourist in London. but I don't think it was necessarily a bad fic? idk. so why do I assume that if I did something similar with Eva Carneiro it would necessarily be a bad fic. someday my brain will make sense to me.)

but, um. yes, I agree that lack of het is symptomatic of widespread sexism in football culture! I think it's symptomatic of some other stuff, too, because lots of things are sexist, not just football culture. and I am curious to see what other people feel about it, and if it's something that they would be interested in trying to remedy, even in a very small way!

(okay, I do not in any way want to derail you so cut me off right here if you feel like that's what I'm doing. but, um... I feel like that is a slightly different issue? I'm not in handball fandom.)

[louis-quatorze.livejournal.com]

But how do you even know people came to Big Slash Fandom in the same way as you did? Or any fandom in the same way you did? I have a feeling (from my research, but also talking to other people) that fandoms with big non-insert het populations were also many people's "introduction" to fandom. Harry Potter, for example, comes up in a lot of my research, and a lot of people read het in that fandom without having to go through any "evolutionary" nonsense. If your first fandom is Harry Potter, which it is going to be for a lot of people our age, and you started reading Harry/Hermione but then got into Harry/Draco and then Merlin fandom and then footballslash, what is your "evolution" and "enlightenment"? Why is het necessarily a "mature" stage of fandom? (You ever read anything about Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom? Whoo boy.) I think that's the issue I'm having with your presentation of getting into het as a linear thing. Linear models of anything as subjective as fandom life is inherently flawed. You went through it this way, and now you've had some big enlightenment, great, but don't assume no one is at your level just because they're in footballslash and writing certain stories there. You're assuming that everyone act(ed) as you do, but it's also just as possible that they're writing het in a different fandom that you don't know about.

I think the lack of het in football fandom might be a combination of a lot of issues, but that you immediately went to blame the people IN the fandom rather than thinking about those issues (lack of female "characters", marginalization of women's role in football) didn't quite sit right with me. Yes, it might be that some of the people in this fandom aren't "mature" enough to be on your level, maybe that's the case for a lot of them, but it's also just as possible there's not enough women in the fandom unless you're digging into Manchester City videos. Frankly, I think that's the bigger issue.

(I don't know. It's not so much "handball fandom" and more about having to fit in with a crappy new team/not play your sport any more. And it's cool if you're not into that, of course, but if your reason for not being interested in her is because you're not interested in Per, that's a bit curious.)

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

I don't! I am learning lots of things from talking to people in this post. I have always gotten the impression that a lot of folks in football fandom are not in other fandoms though--I thought that was part of what you were researching? maybe I'm wrong, I remember that being part of your survey but idk. so it's hard to tell, especially since I find that the folks I talk to the most around here are the ones who are (or have been) in other fandoms, and also are cool with het/ladies in various forms. but I am not doing surveys and anecdotal evidence is worth exactly fuck-all, so there you go. if/when there are statistics to the contrary I shall shut my trap immediately!

BUT DUDE I WILL DEFEND A:TLA FANDOM TO MY LAST BREATH. (though I haven't noticed it being a particular het-heavy fandom? maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but I didn't find much on delicious or the AO3 when I was in my OH GOD I LOVE THIS SHOW GIVE ME ALL THE FIC phase. not sure why JetKo is such a big thing, either. ugh, Jet, nobody cares about your psychotic manpain. and why no Aang/Katara, anywhere. ~sulky~)

but, like. I am not blaming anybody in fandom? so I am confused why you keep insisting that I am? societal default is misogynist, it is unfortunate but not anybody's fault. I would like a place for hetfic in this fandom, and I am curious to know whether other people would be interested in one. I started thinking about it because of the self-insert hetfic and rambled my way down, and I'm sorry that I offended you in the rambling; I wasn't trying to, but it takes a lot more effort to word everything perfectly and then I never would have posted anything and I wouldn't be having this conversation right now, so. it is obviously a complex issue and I don't have the answers! I would just like a place where I can collect other people who are both into football and into the ladies so that we can squee at each other on the regular, and maybe encourage other people who are into football to appreciate the awesomeness of the ladies, since they are (as you have pointed out) underexposed. so now I'll see what I can do on that front, since it is better to be productive than to complain! (she says, despite loving to complain more than almost anything. ahhhhh bitching is like my favorite hobby never take it away from me!)

(it is hard to be into a pairing when one half of it inspires you with determined apathy, and it is really hard to be into writing gen for a person you've read one article about. or maybe that's me being weird? idk, I find it a lot easier to get into stories about relationships, is that weird? I guess I need that hook at the beginning. it took me almost a year in football fandom to be able to appreciate good gen, and now I love it, but man. I shake my head at you, younger self who was too ignorant to appreciate applefic's stories. but I don't much like books that don't have a romantic pairing that I'm rooting for either, so maybe it really is just me.

all of which is to say: if you write the fic, I will read it, and that will be a hook into that character for me! I don't feel equipped to even think about writing her, though. so... no, I did not respond to that prompt.)

[louis-quatorze.livejournal.com]

It is part of what I'm researching, and it turns out nearly everyone (barring two) who responded was in fandom of some kind before finding footballslash. It may not have always been "big slash fandom" (there's a lot of anime and various band fandoms, and as someone who was in 'various band fandoms' I'm not surprised at that) but there was always some other fandom involved.

The parts that show up on Fandom Wank when I was reading it was pretty much all het fandom? I can't say I know much about it, but if you end up there you don't exactly get to claim maturity. Maybe you're not looking in the right place? (And, well, canon fanfiction, at least to me, is boring. That's what the canon is for. You don't need to rewrite the text if what you want is provided in it.)

I keep insisting you're being blamey because it sounds that way to me? It's very much "why aren't they all doing what I want what's wrong with them" couched in words of concern for the societal misogyny that these poor lambs are buying into. It's extraordinarily condescending, especially since you put it in terms of "maturity" and talk about how much better you are (than everyone else) now that you've figured it all out. I know that's probably not what you're going for, but that's the way it comes across. Especially since you don't know what everyone is doing in other fandoms. It comes across as blaming the people in this fandom who want to write about relationships between footballers - who respond to the relationships and characters they see presented in the media, and want to engage with and interpret them - for not instead responding to the minor female characters that you have to dig extremely deep to even find, much less develop a character to interpret. Instead of saying "hey I'm interested in football hetfic is anyone else interested in that?" you came out swinging, insisting that anyone who isn't interested in hetfic in this fandom is just not at your rarified level, without even engaging in the issues surrounding (the lack of) female representation in football. That's why it seems like you're blaming the fandom instead of trying to find a space for het in it.

(That's fine. I'm not saying you have to be interested in Ulrike, it just struck me as odd that since you were insisting that we pay attention to the women involved in football but that you couldn't imagine being interested in her without being interested in her man. Hell, there's plenty in football fandom I am not at all interested in - I am having to force myself to read things about Daniel Agger and Fernando Torres and whoever's on Atletico Bilbao so I can write about them for my thesis, because I just do not find them interesting at all. I'm actually very picky with who I'll even read about. I have to be interested in a character already in some way, otherwise my eyes will sort of glaze over and I can't pay attention any more. Even reading most Spain NT fic is a bit of a chore for me.)

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

huh. there goes my pet theory for why so many people in this fandom are such enormous flaming assholes. back to the drawing board, then!

idek, man, I've heard the "if it's in the canon who needs fic" thing a zillion times and I guess I can sort of see it, but at the same time I don't see why that necessarily rules out writing a canon ship. futurefic! AU! missing scene! different POV! there's just so many ways to play with canon, it makes me sad to see canon ships that I love ruled out like that. :( but in this case I will concede that I think most people just don't love Aang and Katara like I do, haha. there is plenty of good Zuko/Mai fic and they're canon too, so.

I'm not going to apologize again, but I understand where you're coming from. and yes, I'm a condescending asshole--I think most people are idiots, not just the ones in fandom, and more so when it's late and I'm tired--but on the other hand, I do think refusing to read het just because it's het is immature and unconsciously sexist, and I do think I'm a more mature person now that I've grown out of that particular prejudice. (I also think I'm more mature now that I've grown out of thinking that feminism is unnecessary just because I never noticed any gender discrimination affecting me.) I am only speaking for myself; I probably did try to speak for other people in that incoherent ramble, so I'm sorry about that part: obviously I'm not qualified to talk on behalf of others. I'm not trying to put down others, only my idiot younger self. but yes, I do think that about myself, and if that's condescending... well, I've done worse things in my time.

as far as football fandom goes, though, I think you're misinterpreting me? or more likely I didn't state it clearly at all, that whole thing is a mess and I'm surprised anybody could get any sense out of it. look, nobody has to write anything, obviously. it is really damn hard to find out anything about women in this fandom, and I could hardly blame anyone for (a) not knowing anything about women in this fandom or (b) knowing a little but not enough to really care or (c) caring a little but not enough to write fic. but people do write it sometimes; I've seen excellent fic about women in this fandom. but then they have nowhere to put it except their own journals (and the much-maligned footiefic, if they're aware of its existence), and so almost nobody reads it except their friends, so... idk. I don't necessarily think a common forum would make a noticeable difference (especially not right away), but I do think there's a certain amount of serendipity that goes into finding something new to read. so who knows? I think it would be interesting to see. like I said above, I had to rant in order to start the discussion, and now I have some ideas of productive things I can do.

you know, it's funny, every once in a while I'm reminded of how bizarre the way I consume fandom really is. (I was thinking about this when I first read your comment, because to me wives and girlfriends are an intrinsic part of football fandom, not something that you have to dig for at all--but that's because I interact with canon mainly by reading blogs and twitter, many of which are very gossipy, rather than by watching games.) I don't read everything anymore, and there are definitely pairings that make me wince when I see them, but it always takes me aback a little when people say that they don't read such-and-such because they don't care about that pairing. I only think of it as a problem if I know them and I hate them. XD (unless "do not find interesting" was a euphemism for "hate" in which case: I feel you. I am so sorry.) tl;dr I'm weird! I need to remember that more often, before I make offensive generalizations based on my weird-ass self!

[louis-quatorze.livejournal.com]

well, yeah. It's obviously not the way everyone feels about canon fic, but it's how *I* feel about canon fic. Especially if I like the canon narrative, oddly enough- I don't want fic for everything I watch and enjoy, which is probably why my fandom experience has been so scattered. If the canon "satisfies" me I don't need fic for it. (Like, I really wanted fic for The Tudors but not Rome when they were both airing.)

Yeah, I could totally be misinterpreting you, but that's what I got out of what you were saying and why I reacted the way I did. This is my fandom (and research project), I feel obligated to defend it. But I do feel like there should be a place for het fic, and I do feel like people "should" read it, etc etc. If you hadn't immediately started it as "football fandom is immature as a whole because this ten-year-old community is not the way I want it to be" I would have reacted differently. But now it kind of makes more sense- it's a problem you had with your past self more, and that's who you're angry with.

Wives and girlfriends to me are only part of "the story" if they're inserted into the story, if that makes sense. I get my information from games and football news sites/magazines and "mainstream" fan blogs, etc. Like, my example (because Germans are my thing) is of Sarah Brandner vs. Mario Gomez's girlfriend. Sarah is much more visible of a character- we see her interacting with Bastian in photo shoots and in the stands, she gives interviews, Bastian talks about her a lot, he's got her name stitched in his boots, etc. However, I don't even remember Mario Gomez's girlfriend's name off the top of my head even though they've been dating for twice as long as Sarah and Bastian. But we don't see her. She doesn't give interviews, she's not photographed with Mario in the stands much, only occasionally is at events, she certainly doesn't do photoshoots (and they don't do them together). So I don't encounter her- the "Mario Gomez" in my head, the one constructed from photos and interviews and DFB videos, doesn't have a girlfriend. Unlike Bastian, who does. Which is also kind of weird, I know, but that's basically the way I think.

"Do not find interesting" doesn't mean "hate'," it just means "does not find interesting." I don't like everything or everyone- I have to be interested in a character to want to read/write fic about him/her. (To me, actually, character is more interesting than relationships, which means I run into problems in fandom where what I really want to write is Philipp Lahm being bitter and single but without a partner for him there's really no place for that kind of story? I legitimately like genfic and always have, so.) Like, I'm not super interested in David Silva, which I know makes me a rarity in this fandom, so I don't read a lot of David Silva stories unless I'm really bored and it's recommended to me and/or he's paired with someone I do find interesting. I don't read everything in fandom because a lot of it I just don't care about. (but I will go on for ages about my Germans because I find them super-interesting.) Which is also a not-everyone-does-it kind of thing. It's just how I work. (And to go back to The Tudors: I was always annoyed because what little fic there was tended to be for the canon gay couple, who were both boring as hell, or Henry/Charles Brandon, which I wasn't interested in very much.)