meretricula | this has been a meta post

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!