#and that’s not necessarily a fanfic thing! it’s also a source material issue imo

[izzystizzys]

not to be a party pooper on the usual crack programming of this blog, but one thing i’ve noticed really turns me off in fic is the tendency to really go in on senator orn free taa’s size in some corners of fandom

and i don’t mean this as an accusation, more as like from the perspective of someon who’s maybe uncommonly sensitive on topics like that due to extensive experience with EDs across the board, i can’t help but notice how pervasive the conflation of morality and body is in our society. and this doesn’t mean everyone does it, obviously, or that people do it maliciously or even consciously, it’s just something i noticed about this character in particular

anyways just food for thought

[laufire]

lately I've been... not exactly rethinking, but, adjusting? the way I think about "fanon".

I've made it no secret that I don't care much for it, in a general sense. whenever I'm truly invested in the canon source to the point where I actually read and even write fanfic, it's because there's something (often multiple things) about canon that managed to capture my attention. so I have little interest in versions of it that have passed through a game of telephone for years and feel unrecognisable to me.

when it comes to my own writing, ninety-nine times out of a hundred I like to work with canon. not necessarily adhering to it, but using its foundations as groundwork. my go-to ideas are usually: what if this one (1) event went a different way? how much would change? what would be the ripple effects and how far would they go? or, what if I focused on this trait of a character and took it to the extreme? or, what if we look at this plot point canon used but didn't explore, often because it wasn't the point of a larger story, and shifted the focus towards it? and so on.

but that's my approach and I don't intend to proselytise about it. however, when it comes to the much-maligned/mocked abstract "fanon", I do take issue with a few things. again, it's not about wanting stories that adhere to canon; canon is there and not going anywhere. fans have sometimes influenced canon sources to an extent, but it's always far less meaningful or ruinous than some people would have you believe. official adaptations have done far more damage to ongoing source materials (and influenced subsequent adaptations, who take inspiration from it even when it contradicts the source), and I try to stay blasé about those -emphasis on "try", if I'm honest.

my issues are largely about 1.) flanderization, and b.) lack of originality. the first, well. nobody likes to see characters/storylines they like (or even just enjoyed on an intellectual level) and see them reduced to a few basic, exaggerated traits, some of which don't even apply to them lol. the latter it's about my particular annoyance with the echo-chamber effect in certain fandoms; someone popular does something, it gets reproduced over and over, and it becomes ~fanon gospel. I've read fics that had interpretations of the characters (sometimes even my favourite characters!) that didn't match my own, yet they were well-written, didn't lack depth, and strived to do something different with them than what we usually see. I value all those three things, so I liked them.

this gets even more complicated in the dc comics fandom (and other canons built on collaborative writing, but dc comics is the most extreme example), because if we're being perfectly honest, canon often has those same issues, and worse ones. there are several events that used to be key to a character's journey that aren't considered canon anymore. or, at least, the canon status of said events is very much in the air, and there are even runs that imply they had to have happened but they happened differently, with little explanation about what those differences were. canon writers (maybe just some of them?) are also given room to cherry-pick things from various continuities, presumably as long as it doesn't contradict editorial's (sometimes seemingly arbitrary and/or dumb as fuck) stipulations, and at this point it's more productive to judge whatever changes they implement on their internal logic than on how well they coordinate with everything else. just as it is, IMO, perfectly understandable that fans of a character would dismiss a specific writer's interpretation; their choices don't occur in a vacuum, they do come to some things in bad faith, and some of them display their biases without shame (which I frankly prefer, but you know. you can both be frank about your preferences and write characters you dislike with some grace lol).

lastly, because this is something I've tried to word on other occasions... I get the impression that those of us who are, let's say, "canon-adjacent" in our fannish activities, are seen as possessing a holier-than-thou attitude. it's... maybe not unwarranted in some cases? I know I personally come across as pretentious and even arrogant lol. and I probably am, although I will say I do play it up for ~humorous reasons, especially if something has really annoyed me. but in this respect I can genuinely say that I don't approach this thinking "I am aligned with canon and therefore Superior, unlike those fanon-loving people who Don't Get It!!"

it comes from a place of genuinely loving canon. from looking at the universe it presents and appreciating both what was created to fill and the new possibilities it presents. from loving the characters and admiring their creation. from looking at all the pieces of the puzzle and a desire to play with them. and with dc comics in particular, vast and ever-expanding as that canon is, from a desire to know more about it.

yes, even I rag on it. that also come from a place of love. if I never shut up about some artwork it's just a sign that I care about it passionately xD

[silenthillmutual]

What's the fic 👀

ugh. i'm not going to namedrop the fic on anon. but i can tell you some gripes i had with it that lead to me not liking it:

the characters mention the central twist of the game in conversation, which i think is a fascinating angle to take a fic in. unfortunately they just bring it up the once and it is literally never addressed again despite this fic including character death as a major aspect of it. and i would think that knowing that none of this is real and you're dolls in a sandbox would change how you view things like death.

the characters have anal sex without lube. okay, not all that strange for a fanfic, except that immediately after the sex scene one of them mentions having lube with them. so what was the fucking point of them having sex without lube? either don't bring up the lube or edit your sex scene so they use it. that's just fucking asinine.

not sure if this kickstarted the herb bride!daniil thing or not, but considering its age it probably contributed to its popularity and there are, you know, issues with taking a sacred indigenous role and plopping it onto the (racist) white dude love interest. not to mention that's not how the role of herb bride works in canon and several people just outright get this wrong in their fics.

speaking of things breaking canon: it breaks the extremely well-established and explicitly stated canon that the polyhedron does not work on adults. which, even if i'd liked the fic, would have completely ruined it for me. i don't expect everyone to have every detail of the game memorized and there are going to be times when people forget bits and pieces of canon or ignore them because they don't like them, but the happy ending hinged on something that is, like, central to daniil's route.

there's a recap chapter.

i didn't think the characterization was all that good. it was another one of those fics where artemy just seems to kind of exist to be daniil's love interest, despite the story predominantly being (from what i can remember, and granted it has been about a year since i read it) from his perspective. this is a problem with a lot of fic, people are just sort of fascinated with daniil and seem to decide to use artemy as a lens through which to view him. but i've read fic more recently which is a, much more up front about doing this and b, still gives artemy his own characterization through which he interacts with daniil (and others). but there's a point in this fic where artemy is getting ready to destroy the entire town just to keep daniil alive. which is just such a disservice to his character, imo, especially if you're not even going to bring up the fact that artemy's ending was about saving the town. and i didn't really feel a connection or relationship between the two that the author clearly wanted us to feel.

there's also a weird thing toward the end of the fic where artemy hatemarries a character for no apparent reason and has a kid with her and he hates this kid but also this kid reminds him of daniil? it's just. bizarre.

my problem overall with this fic isn't necessarily that it's not good. i wasn't nearly as impressed with it as everyone else seems to be. some of the prose here and there was nice, but overall it was just kind of mediocre. my problem is that people treat this fic like the notre dame of the fanbase, giving it a level of reverence it doesn't deserve. and then this adoration of this fic bleeds into how people treat both source material and fanon. which is why i am just begging people to read better fanfic. like we have obt and alaiw and more recently this fic are all much better than what i just described. like i'm not going to say i 100% agree with everything every author of every fic i rec writes, but they're just. much more enjoyable imo.

anyway rant over lol. this message will self-destruct in the morning<3

[mild-lunacy]

Building Sexual Tension and the Sexualization Threshold

Reading this quote by Francesca Coppa on the purpose of fanfic and erotica, it's not that I disagree. Not at all. It's just... when I read a fantasy that includes romance and some sexuality, like Grace Draven's work, I remember my stance on how I do prefer romance to be slow-build and sexual, and this fits the bill. I absolutely like the careful, gradual characterization involved in slow-build romance like this, although I like there to be tension or animosity as much as friendship as a foundation. Starting with sex is a difficult proposition (although not impossible to do well by any means, as long as it's not instalove). The issue is that 'eventual sex' isn't enough for me either. The friendship needs to be built up to have satisfying romance, just like Coppa suggests. But the sex too needs build up.

The problem with Draven's books is that they have some sex but they're not sexy. The sexual tension is barely plausible. Sometimes, like with sci-fi/fantasy erotica by R. Lee Smith, the sex isn't sexy but this isn't important due to the amount of characterization and situation-specific tone that goes into each of these scenes. They're not sexy as in titillating, but they don't have to be: they're enlightening, sometimes sweet, sometimes grim, sometimes just weird. With Draven's books, there are pretty paint-by-numbers sex scenes that aren't either sexy or especially personal. This is an issue when it's original writing, rather than fanfic. With fic, you let the original work do a lot of characterization heavy lifting so that in explicit fics, you can spend a lot of time on building sexual tension. And sexual tension is no minor add-on. I think portraying it believably is way more important than the actual sex scenes. Combining it plausibly with friendship is a major feat. It generally takes more than one book in a series, or a pretty long story, at the very least.

In my opinion, sexual tension is a huge part of the draw for erotica of any kind, just like romantic tension is a major factor in the appeal of romance. One reason why I admire good fanfic is that I think using most established friendship as a source is difficult, especially if you're hoping to be in character. It's definitely not easier than an original work that starts with romantic/sexual tension, and it might well be considered harder. The thing is, good sexual tension isn't something that comes late in a relationship (in most cases), though it can be pretty subtle at first. It always exists between two people in a way friendship doesn't, but it doesn't prevent the slow build of self-awareness and an actual relationship. It's just a delicate balance.

In Draven's work, you can see she actually tries to do this: the sexual tension is gestured at, more or less. But it's not actually *there*. One reason it's so tricky is that while you can simply sit down and write a sex scene, sexual tension pervades every interaction between the characters in some small way. And it can be subtle (at least at first) or very overt, as long as it's *palpable*. It's very obvious (at least to me) if the writer doesn't feel the heat, so to speak. And it's very obvious if they do, even if no sexual innuendo or overt arousal occurs. To be clear, a man having a hard-on or a woman blushing and staring at his eyes or mouth is not necessarily 'sexual tension'. Even less so, lots of references to the extreme attractiveness of the other person. Good banter, on the other hand, is frequently all that's needed.

Good banter is hard. One of the reasons fanfic of noncanon couples succeeds for me even though I'm a canon-whore is that a lot of times, the source material includes well-written, bantery dialogue. You can probably ship every other character with each other in Marvel or on Buffy at least partly for this reason. This was definitely true in S1-2 of BBC Sherlock, at least for me: it's not that they were such close friends and fic could use that. It's that they *weren't*. There was tons of tension involved in that relationship, both bantering and not. Combined with their obvious (if conflicted) attachment, this created all that's necessary to make a romantic relationship plausible. Once their relationship truly settled into comfortable, close friendship, IMO some mild romantic potential remains but the sexual tension would be gone.

It's perhaps hard to explain properly what a friendship that doesn't lend itself to sexual romance is truly like, which is why I mention Grace Draven. I knew it when I saw it, particularly so because this is m/f friendship (in a romance genre work) and my brain should have a low threshold for accepting sexualization in this context. And yet, her couples seem platonic to me.

I'm not sure this perception is common. A lot of people in fandom seem to have a very, very low sexualization threshold (especially for their preferred couples). Outside fandom, lots of readers seem content with using the heteronormative attraction presumption more broadly and easily than me, judging by the comments on Draven's book, at least. I did find one Amazon commenter who said they found the sexual tension to be implausible, though they said this was due to some of the description or nature of the characters and their situation rather than the writing itself. I'm a lot more open to a whole lot of different situations and contexts leading to attraction. But the writing has to sell it for me. Grace Draven is a good writer, who is very good at characterization overall (which is what makes her a good example of this specific flaw). She is just not very good at selling sexual tension. It may or may not be related to her average skills at snappy dialogue. There are definitely other ways to build sexual tension, but not a lot that coexist with slow build romances based on friendship first.

Anyway, ordinary friendship is definitely not enough for me if the relationship is going to be romantic. That's probably partly why I'm not a huge fan of Hallmark movies. They tend to have a relatively slow build, but the tension is low; sexual tension is extra extra low. Of course, the portrayal of sexual tension and attraction in general is different in film. It's partly about dialogue, but it's also just the actors and their chemistry and even personal charisma. A truly charismatic, sparkling actor-- especially a pair-- can overcome or strongly enhance the platonic tension or lack thereof in the script and create something unnameable and perhaps ineffable but undeniably romantic.