shut up and let me see your jazz hands

Okay, I was excited when AO3 introduced the kudos feature (and even more excited when they put in notifications for it, so you actually knew people were leaving kudos), but I have to say, after having had it for a few weeks...I really, REALLY love it.

I love it as a reader because there are times when I don't have anything other to say than "I liked this" or similar, and I kind of feel awkward leaving comments like that (though it doesn't stop me from doing so) because I feel like I should say more, and also because I know the author will feel obligated to respond and there's not really anything you can say to that besides "thank you".

So for stories like that, I just hit the kudos button now. Which means, yes, I'm using it in place of a comment. But I'm not using it to replace comments that actually said anything. Clicking a "like" button is exactly the same as typing "I liked this", but it's less work and stress for everyone all around.

I also use it in addition to comments. Sometimes there are fics I really love so much and I want to tell the author in as many ways as possible. And even when I leave gushy feedback, I'm kind of crap at it. I'm not one of those people who leaves long, detailed, amazing comments because I just can't express myself well. So for something I really love, now I can not only leave a comment, but I can leave kudos in addition to the comment. (And I will also use the AO3 bookmarking feature to bookmark it, even though I don't reread and will not actually use the bookmark, because it leaves a heart for the author and that is yet another way I can show how much I loved the story.)

But what about as a writer? Do I feel like I'm being cheated out of something when someone "just" leaves kudos rather than commenting? Absolutely not! I love every comment I get on my fics (unless it's like, trolls or spam or something--nothing worse than getting excited over a new comment only to find it's spam), even ones that are nothing but "I liked this". So kudos functions just the same as an "I liked this" comment. It lets me know that someone enjoyed the fic, which is something I really like to know.

I have the hit counter, too, of course, but all that tells me is that someone clicked onto the page. It doesn't tell me whether or not they liked it, or indeed, whether they even read it or not. There are plenty of reasons why one might click onto a fic and not read it, and not just "bad" reasons like they clicked in, saw something they didn't like and left. Kudos tells me they actually read and liked it.

Of course a long, gushing comment and/or detailed concrit is always awesome, but let's be real. Most people don't leave comments like that. I don't leave comments like that most of the time, so how can I expect others to do so? Whether the kudos replaces an "I liked this" comment or is left by someone who wouldn't have commented at all otherwise, I don't think it is keeping people from leaving longer comments if that's what they are moved to do. I really don't think that someone who would have left a paragraph-long comment otherwise is going to see the kudos button and go "oh, I'll just hit this instead of commenting". And even if that did happen, so what? I'm not entitled to anything, and I'm grateful that someone takes the time to let me know in any way, whether by comments or kudos, that they liked what they read.

Also, I do feel stress in replying to comments sometimes (even though I am not someone who gets a lot), and so it's nice to have something like the kudos feature where there is no obligation to reply back.

Getting a notification of a comment in my inbox makes me happy. Getting a notification of kudos makes me just as happy. To me, there is no downside either as a reader or a writer.

Now if only DW would get a "like" feature...

First off, thank you to everyone who commented on that meme. There were a couple of anon comments I wanted to address, and I figured doing so in my journal meant people might actually see the answers.

Someone said they're sad I never comment on their posts and that I probably don't read their journal, and I just wanted to say that if I have you friended, either on LJ or DW, I read your journal 100% of the time. I never filter my reading list. I'm sorry if I haven't commented on your posts, but I don't comment on the majority of what I read on my flist. Doesn't mean I didn't read, just that I either had nothing to say or didn't have the energy to engage.


The other thing I wanted to address was a comment that said "while I appreciate your recs, I am often surprised how limited I find your attitude towards sexuality to be--particularly in cases of bisexuality in fics or historically accurate approaches to sexuality".

I think this is a really profound misunderstanding of what I find problematic in a lot of fic. I am totally pro-bisexuality and love to see it in fic. The thing is, I don't see it that often.

Say there's a story about John and Rodney and they both have only been attracted to women until they meet each other and fall in love. They are functionally bisexual in the story, because they have had have sex/feelings/relationships with both women and men (or a man, rather), but because most fics like this are romance, and romance tends to emphasise "true love", it comes off as this gay relationship simply being an exception to their heterosexuality. Often the attraction is expressed entirely as an attraction to the person's personality, with no accompanying physical attraction at all. Combined with the fact that they have never looked at another man before and never will again, thanks to this being OTP romance, it ends up feeling like a story about heterosexual people who happened to fall in love with someone of the same sex.

Literally, the minimum I am asking for is an acknowledgement that they are attracted to men, not just to each other. What I would love, of course, is if it were shown. Have John check Rodney out. Have him think Rodney is hot before he falls in love with him for his great personality. Give me a John with past experience with men as well as with women. If you want this to be his first ever relationship with a guy, how about falling in love with Rodney makes him realise that he has always been attracted to men, just suppressed those feelings?

And before you comment to tell me there are people who do fall in love with someone of the same sex* without ever having any attraction to anyone else of the same sex...I know! I am not saying this is a totally unrealistic situation. I am not saying it should never exist in fiction. All I am saying is that in a genre that is supposedly about same-sex relationships, there is a dearth of people who are actually attracted to people of the same sex and it hurts.

It wears me down to read fic after fic after fic and see the same thing. I understand why this story is popular. For some it may be because they don't want ick gay cooties on their favorite characters, but I think that is probably a much smaller group of people than it used to be. The main reason is that it's romantic. I get that.

But I do think it's problematic when that story is so common that it's hard to find stories about people who aren't "gay for you". And I refuse to believe that being disappointed with the preponderance of Gay For You stories is somehow anti-bisexual.

As for the second part of the statement, that I am against historically accurate portrayals of sexuality, I can only assume this is in reference to Holmes fic, as it's the only historical fandom I read. I am very much for historical accuracy. But historical accuracy does not mean erasing queer people. Of course they would not use 21st century terms, but that is not what I'm asking for. Again, I am simply asking for a Holmes and Watson who are attracted to men (either exclusively or in addition to women), not just to each other. It is not historically inaccurate for a man to know he prefers other men (or is attracted to both men and women), whether it is something he struggles with or accepts about himself. (And I highly recommend this book if you still insist that historical accuracy precludes that sort of self-knowledge. Or even if you don't. It's an awesome book.)

All I am asking when I complain about yet another Gay For You story is that there be a little more queer representation to balance it out. That or maybe people start warning for it. :p But it's so normalised that it's not something anyone even considers putting in the headers or tagging for. It's just how things are.

It's not that Gay For You is, taken on its own, a bad story. It's that too often it's the only story. And so even in slash, it's once again a hunt to find stories about queer people.

ETA: Maybe a better way to phrase it is that I'm looking for is stories where the character's sexuality is not directly linked to the person they're in love with.



*The concept of same/opposite sex is flawed, I know, but I'm not coming up with another word to express what I mean.

I found this really awesome post about slut-shaming, monogamy, and non-monogamy in Star Trek fandom via this post asking for fics with open relationships.

Maybe because I spent five years where my primary writing was in an RPG set in a kinky sex club and if your characters weren't single or didn't have open relationships, it meant you weren't going get much chance to write with others, I don't think of open relationships as being that rare a thing in fic. Thinking about it, though, I guess they are in the wider world of fanfic. I think they tend to be a little more common in RPF as a way of dealing with canonical SOs, but the romance tropes of true love (which means never even looking at another person lustfully) are pretty strong in fandom so for a lot of people it's not something they want to read or write (even assuming they can separate consensual non-monogamy from cheating).

I'm actually more interested in exploring open relationships than the OT3+ stories which tend to be more common, so I should make an effort to write more scenarios like that rather than just having in the back of my mind that X or Y isn't monogamous.

Reading posts like this always makes me sort of go O_o. It's about having a second story open in another tab to cheer you up when you read a really sad fic. I mean, it's not that I see posts exactly like that all the time (I think it's the first), but the idea that reading a story can affect your mood is really foreign to me. I mean, some people have said in warnings debates that they need character death warnings because if they read a fic that sad, it will ruin their mood the whole day.

Even if that is the extreme, it seems to me from my years in fandom that it is common to at least be affected to some degree by a sad story. Or to read happy stories to cheer yourself up. So is it just me or is anyone else unaffected by what they read?

ETA: To clarify, it's not that I have no feelings about a story, but I'm not affected by whether the characters are happy or sad or what have you.

So yeah, I'm amused by badfic, or enraged by an author's opinions, or impressed by a well-written story, or excited by an interesting story, etc. But a story can't make me feel bad.

So, Supernatural.

The thing is, Dean has been sexist from day one. His entire persona is built on being not girly, because that's icky and stupid and bad. So he didn't sling insults around as much in seasons one and two. That didn't make him a better person and it certainly didn't make him not extremely sexist.

Now, I'm not saying don't be upset by him being an asshole, or don't write to the show complaining, or whatever. I'm not saying it's a good thing, or that it's just "boys being boys". (I think it's sad and it reminds me of my gross little nephew.) But...it's not OOC. His character has, from the beginning, been completely based on misogyny because that type of macho manliness cannot exist without it.

As for him ramping up the insults in season three, to me it actually fits in well with how angry and on edge he is. He reacts to everything with completely over-the-top anger so it's not surprising that the insults are coming out more often. (And considering how much he values "manliness" and scorns anything "girly" it is no suprise at all that his favorite insults are misogynistic and homophobic.) Whether this is how the writers intended it or not, I don't know, but it's certainly not a far reach for me from the Dean I saw in seasons one and two.

Interesting post here on wanting more fic that is like a romance novel. One point that really struck me was this:

The thing is--minisinoo once said that a lot of fanfic fell under the genre, and I half agree, but the truth is, if we are, we suck at it very badly.

And I think it's that while a lot of fanfic is romance, it's not all "romance novel" romance, and part of that is because it's very hard to write romance novel romance and be IC, since the characters we're writing about are not romance novel heroines and heroes (especially the heroines part).

So people may write a romance between John and Rodney, say, but if they're trying to write about John and Rodney, and actually care about characterisation, of course it's not going to read like a romance novel, since that would mean they'd have to be slotted into those roles, automatically making it OOC. Of couse some people don't care about being in character, so they write it anyway, and obviously the OP and the people replying to the post don't care about it either (or don't always care about it), but it is something that many people see as important, so of course it's going to be seen as bad writing. I don't think romance novels in general are automatically bad writing, but they are dealing with original characters. As soon as you put John and Rodney in those roles, it automatically makes it bad, no matter how good the rest of the writing is.

So I think it's kind of ridiculous when people whine about how it shouldn't be seen as badfic. I don't think people should be ashamed to read and write it, but they need to suck it up and admit that it's ridiculously OOC and thus, yes, bad. (And if you're reading stuff with healing cocks, etc. then it's bad for more than just OOCness.) Love it because it's bad, love it despite its being bad, but don't complain that people call it bad!

Reading some more on elfwreck's post and was prompted to comment again. There's a lot of condescension going around there, and implications that if you don't agree, you either don't know your own motives, or if you write for different reasons, your writing sucks and is more illegal than her way of doing things. So...I think I'm going to try really hard to stay away from anything to do with her from now on. Best for my blood pressure. :p

Anyway, I wanted to c&p my response here and expand upon it, because it actually made me think about some interesting things.

What I disagree with about her post is the idea that this is why it has to be fanfic. Almost nothing I write has to be fanfic (there are a few stories that are so completely tied to a canon plot point that they couldn't be rewritten as original fic, but those are few and far between; most of my stories deal with themes that are universal and not specific to one canon universe or character). If I decide to write it as fanfic, sure I make sure it's IC and works with canon, etc. etc. But I could also write it as original fiction. Or tell the same story in a different canon universe. And in each case I would make sure it worked for that scenario. But there is nothing that makes it have to be fanfic.

That's what I said, now ( to expand on it... )

I just finished reading one of the books I got for Christmas, All the Fishes Come Home to Roost by Rachel Manija Brown. I first heard about it while reading her awesome posts about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, in which she used examples from her own life, and linked to her book. I was interested just from the stuff she mentioned, but it was the comparisons to Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors that was the clincher.

I started reading it a week or so ago, and found it really hard to put down. If I hadn't forced myself to do so in order to do other stuff, I probably would have read it all in one sitting. Basically it's a humorous account of her (pretty horrible) childhood. I highly recommend it (and Running with Scissors, if you've never read that, either).

*

Speaking of recommendations, Lurid Digs is one of my favorite blogs. Now, you may have noticed, but I love mockery blogs, such as Go Fug Yourself, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and the late, lamented Threadbared. It doesn't matter if they're mocking things I don't care about (in fact, those three are about celebrity fashion, romance novels, and patterns, none of which I'm interested in); I just love them.

Lurid Digs mocks photos posted on gay dating/hookup sites, which means it's more than a little not-safe-for-work (or family, or public places, or...). It doesn't mock the men in particular, though sometimes it does. What it's really all about is the settings of the photos. And you would not believe some of them. A lot look like they took the picture in their grandma's bedroom while she was out shopping. All of them put lie to the stereotype that being gay means having good taste in decorating (or indeed, any inclination towards not living in a pigsty). All in all, it's absolutely brilliant.

But today's post. Today's post may be the highlight. I don't know if they will ever find anything better than this. I really, really hope the text of this guy's ad said something along the lines of "looking for a man to be the Roadrunner to my Wile E. Coyote" (or vice versa). Since I have no way of ever knowing for sure, I have decided that yes, it did. And since yesterday was apparently More Joy Day (whatever that is), and this gives me much joy, I am sharing it with you.

*

So once again we're back to the idea that fanfiction is not "fiction based on someone else's universe or characters", but rather some nebulous aesthetic, and thus if it doesn't "feel" like fanfic to someone, it's not. coffeeandink (from whom I got the link to the first post) sums up my thoughts pretty well here.

I'm also dubious of the claim that "if it's a m/m slash pairing, there is almost always fetishization of the sexually submissive half of the pair". If you're talking old-school slash, then probably yeah. But I don't think the same could be said now. Yes, it's still a common type of fic. But. I read a lot of slash, and even the stuff I dislike is rarely like that. Of course the reason for this is that for the most part I avoid reading stuff that looks like that in the first place, but the fact that there is plenty of other fic to choose from is a sign that it's not as ubiquitous as it once was. I mean, the very idea that one half of a pairing must be "sexually submissive" conjures up yaoi-esque uke/seme tropes, and thankfully that sort of stuff is not all there is.

Maybe it's just me being too literal, but "almost always" suggests that anything other than that should be extremely hard to find.

*

And since everyone and their mother is posting about OTW, here are my thoughts.

1. I'm sick to death of hearing about it.
I realise that I am contributing by talking about it myself, but I don't care. :p

2. I don't really see the point in Yet Another Archive.
Maybe I'll change my mind, who knows. As a writer, I don't look forward to uploading several hundred works of fiction to yet another archive, especially when (at least at first) the audience is going to be primarily LJ users, thus feedback will probably be very low since it would be reaching the same audience as on LJ, not LJ plus another audience. As a reader...well, if you wanted to torture me, making me troll through an archive looking for fic would be a good way of doing it (although frankly, the same applies to LJ comms). It is just not enjoyable to me at all, and no matter how many new bells and whistles they add, that won't change because I don't read like that. Search and sort functions are useless because I don't read by pairing or kink or anything except whether or not the summary is interesting, which is just not something you can figure out aside from scrolling through and reading them all. I lose patience going through archives and comms after about one page.

So I don't see benefits to me either way. This doesn't mean that I don't think it should be made, just that I can't get excited about it and the excitement, in general, utterly baffles me.

3. Despite my ambivalence about OTW, the people who are flogging the Fan History Wiki annoy me even more than anyone associated with OTW.
partly_bouncy's whining about people not using her fugly-ass wiki is far and away the most annoying thing in all of this. Yes, it exists already. But it's ugly (yes, I am shallow and actually like the websites I use to look decent), and its policy is "misinformation is better than no information". Also it's run by someone who is a batshit grudgewanker. At least the OTW wiki won't be run by one person. (Mind, I personally have no use for a fandom wiki, either, as I can't see myself either reading or contributing, but the ugliness of Fan History Wiki and the annoyingness of partly_bouncy is more than enough to put me off hers.)

I was reading yet another discussion about including wives and girlfriends in RPS (specifically bandslash, here, but it's applicable most everywhere) and as usual some of the answers are from such a different mindset to mine I really can't even wrap my head around it.

But I really like the response I came up with this time, so I figured I'd post over here, too. It's short and to the point:

What it comes down to is that I am not interested in reading or writing stories that mimic these people's lives. I'm interested in stories starring these characters.

I don't need their personal details to be preserved, or their relationships to each other. I don't need age differences to be the same, and if I'm writing them at a different age, I don't need that to be taking place in the past or future that reflects their actual age. I don't need any significant others included. I don't need them to be actors or musicians or whatever. I just want these characters, their personalities, and I want them to be recognisably themselves, but the setting, this world of famous people and celebrity lives, is just so uninteresting to me.

Spoilers up through S3. This may have been brought up elsewhere, but I've not read any SPN meta until now, so sorry if I'm retreading old ground that everyone already knows about. Also, I am not interested in spoilers, only speculation.

Earlier today I was thinking ( about... )

Also I really need a Bella icon. Maybe I'll go looking for screencaps later.