(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Gosh, there's a lot of rubbish reboot Trekfic on the AO3 these days. Benedict Cumberbatch seems to be inadvertently to blame for some of it, as there is the usual rash of badly-written Sherlock crossovers*, but even discounting that, the quality seems to have gone down dramatically.

Also, I wish people wouldn't tag slashfics with 'gay sex'.


* Stupid though Martin Crieff/ John Watson or Martin Crieff/ Moriarty is as a premise, it's surely topped by Khan Noonien Singh/ Molly Hooper?

Comments

[caulkhead]

If I didn't dislike the Sherlock characterisation of Moriarty so much, I might be tempted to write a crossover just for the pleasure of seeing Moraiarty run up against a brick wall of sheer Arthur-ness. Slash would not be involved.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Well, that explains why my fairly formulaic Kirk/McCoy fic the other day is proving oddly popular. It'd have disappeared in the wash in the heyday of ST:AOS fandom, but with the fandom dozing (and, if you're right, producing a lot of shit)...

Although the other problem is that now the AO3 is the central clearinghouse, whereas in 2009/10 fandom was mid-shift, and it was the older, more practiced fen who went to the AO3 first. I'm noticing this with The Force Awakens - there's a lot more crap on the AO3 to wade through that would've been on people's LJs and not necessarily cross-posted, back in the day. And, say, a Merlin/Arthur fic with background Gwen/Morgana wouldn't have turned up on the femslash LJ comms, but a Reylo fic with background Finn/Poe turns up in the Finn/Poe AO3 tag, or a Finn/Poe with background Rey/Jess, etc. So there's just so much _more_ to wade through.

[ineptshieldmaid]

oh, and what's particularly irritating about "gay sex" as an additional tag? Better than seeing it in the warnings, as in the LJ heyday....

[nineveh_uk]

The inevitable rule of big fandoms? And also there hasn't been any new canon for a while, which is fine in a small fandom where there is lots of ground that hasn't been covered, and people are probably in the fandom to engage with that, but more of an issue in a big and trope-heavy fandom, especially when it involves Benedict Cumberbatch. Khan Noonien Singh/Molly Hooper is at least more plausible than Kirk/Smaug.

I saw a fic the other day on FFN that had a chirpy "No slash, I promise!" which took me back to the Old Days. But although the author profile proclaims her to be a "Baptist Christian" she is also evidently rather young, and I suspect that at least some of the warning/promise relates to the fact that the characters in the fic are old/middle-aged, and thus officially beyond the age up to which sex is allowed.

[kerkevik_2014]

Slash fic is by it's very defintion gay sex; or it should be. The term slash comes from the days of K/S, or Kirk/Spock fic writen; exclusively by female Trek fans from the earliest days of fandom. Anything not gay sex related, and using the / should be labelled as 'not' being gay sex, or proper slash fic.

It's why the term femslash, or femmeslash, has become prevalent.

Het Slash is ok, but then you can get that in your every day media outlets everywhere anyway.

kerk

[ineptshieldmaid]

Slash fic isn't by definition gay sex, though. Slash fic does not by definition have to contain a sex scene. Presumably the additional tag is to inform you that, in addition to being a m/m romance, it has gay sex in it.

There are a number of reasons you might be annoyed about that tag: for instance, it would be more informative to tag 'explicit sex' or 'implied sex' or 'oral sex' or whatever, if you want people to know what they're in for. 'Gay sex' used to be used as a 'oh noes' warning in a way that you rarely saw on het fic, because oh noes two dicks touching (my impression is this is less likely to be the case on the AO3 than in older fandom spaces). It is also not necessarily true that an m/m fic is GAY: for instance, all parties could be bisexual, without substantially changing the content of the sex scene, so in that sense the tag "gay sex" is not helpful either.

But it's not true that slashfic is by definition gay sex. It's not by definition sex at all.

[tree_and_leaf]

True. I suppose it's that I don't really like the multiplication of tags that you get on AO3, and it seems kind of redundant when you've got a slash pairing, a pwp tag, and an explicit rating. That really is being a grumpy old 'get those kids off my lawn' fan, though!

But yes, better by several miles than having it in the warnings.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, I think , on further reflection, I was being overly grumpy, but I would prefer 'explicit sex' (or whatever).

[tree_and_leaf]

On further reflection, I think Inept's right.

I have to disagree with you about the '/' (as opposed to 'slash' as a genre) - that's pretty much universally used for any romantic pairing these days, whether it's Spock/Kirk or Spock/Uhura.

[tree_and_leaf]

And also there hasn't been any new canon for a while, which is fine in a small fandom where there is lots of ground that hasn't been covered, and people are probably in the fandom to engage with that, but more of an issue in a big and trope-heavy fandom, especially when it involves Benedict Cumberbatch.

That's a good point.

Khan Noonien Singh/Molly Hooper is at least more plausible than Kirk/Smaug.

Anatomically, if nothing else. Has anyone written that? I'm not sure I dare look.

I suspect that at least some of the warning/promise relates to the fact that the characters in the fic are old/middle-aged, and thus officially beyond the age up to which sex is allowed.

Heh. Yes, probably.

[tree_and_leaf]

I hate Sherlock! Moriarty too, but that would be worth it.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I think you're right on both points. (So much! And Sturgeon's Law inevitably pertains, I suppose).

[kerkevik_2014]

Realistically you are correct; it's just that as a term and a genre; slash started as exclusively for the K/S fandom, and by extension stories containing m/m pairings. It has become more widespread, but it was intended and used for stories about, or implying gay sex.

Oddly enough I had a similar conversation with a lesbian friend last month, who felt uncomfortable that slash as a term was only used for gay and lesbian relationships.

Those eho invented the term and the genre are dying off now, and I feel obliged to honour that generation by not letting the term's true origins and meaning to go off peacefully into that dark night.

My apologies if I appeared overly didactic about it, but I knew some of those people, and they were a lot very good people who would make modern fanfic writers blush.

kerk

[miss_s_b]

*joins the annoyed-by-Sherlock-Moriarty Club*

I'd like to see new Trek Uhura kick his scrawny irritating arse, frankly

[ineptshieldmaid]

Oh, it's definitely redundant, it's just not redundant because all slash fic is gay sex...

On 12 February 2016 at 15:19, tree_and_leaf - DW Comment < dw_null@dreamwidth.org> wrote:

[miss_s_b]

I get annoyed by by "gay sex" as a bi person because there's no such thing, dammit. But I recognise that the rest of the world thinks I'm weird for this.

I use M/M, F/F, ?/? etc to indicate gender of participants.

[tree_and_leaf]

Now that's a cross-over!

[ineptshieldmaid]

Oh, I didn't mean to say it wasn't annoying - I was curious as to which reason you had for being annoyed by it, as I could envision several. And I do think it's less annoying on the AO3, where additional tags are not framed as warnings.

I... used to be annoyed by "tumblr style" redundant tags, but I'm coming around to them. (That one in particular is redundant, mind) I love oddly specific tags - eg, the fact that "dubious consentacles" is a canonical tag fills me with joy, and the fact that I once used the tag "gratuitous archivists" makes me happy. I like that if a personal or quirky phrasing of something is used often enough it scrobbles to a canonical tag: enough people use "friendship is the best ship" that if you tag your work with that it shows up in the canonical tag for "friendship", but "friendship is the best ship" expresses something about your approach or what you get out of that work.

I found, when I first posted something last year after three years' hiatus, that the AO3 seemed really... sterile, impersonal, compared to LJ/DW-based fandom. If someone opens my fic on my LJ or follows a link from DW they have my whole journal (including my personal tags, but also icons and meta and so on) to assemble a sense of me as a person. They don't have that on the AO3. Why should they trust me? How will they know what they're in for? I'm finding tumblr-style tags fill that gap. "don't look at me for a happy ending" is different to "warning: unhappy ending". "Inappropriate flirting with subordinate officers" technically comes under "power disparity" but tells you something more about what you're getting into.

On 12 February 2016 at 15:17, tree_and_leaf - DW Comment < dw_null@dreamwidth.org> wrote:

[shewhostaples]

'Gay sex' makes me think of that ridiculous line in A Question of Integrity - 'he thought gay sex was a big yawn', which I cannot imagine anyone saying, even in 1990.

[tree_and_leaf]

Somethings even the early nineties cannot explain or excuse.

[nineveh_uk]

I would bet that someone has written it somewhere (kink memes? I'm not going to look). AO3 is not promising, though it does contain McCoy/Smaug. Bilbo/Smaug is of course A Thing.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Bilbo/Smaug became a thing as soon as Cumbersnoot was cast, I remember that (I mean, fandom being a thing it would've become a thing eventually: given Snape/Giant Squid exists, Smaug is a perfectly cromulent participant in erotic fanfic).

[tree_and_leaf]

... I am now wondering what the fact that I find Giant Squid porn unsurprising, but Smaug porn implausible, says about me.

And whether I actually want to know.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ok, 'dubious consentactles' might make me have to reconsider my stance.

[aunty_marion]

One of the more unlikely fics I read once was Giant Squid/Astronomy Tower.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Someone in copperbadge's circle discovered it was a tag that existed, and they embarked on a giant fic-a-thon to get enough dubious consentacles that it registers as its own tag rather than not scrobbling at all or disappearing into either dub-con or tentacles. This is the height of glorious user-generated tagging.

[nineveh_uk]

That you find plausible those things that grow organically, such as that given enough time and enough fans, everything will happen, particularly when it is Harry Potter fandom, which would try anything for the sake of fun, vs something being obviously about wanting to shoehorn in a favourite actor for the sake of barely-veiled RPF.