#migratory het fans

[nostalgia-tblr]

right, so.

obvious disclaimer: yes, some Migratory Slash Fans are wanky and annoying, but we regularly Discourse about that and I feel like I spend more time around Migratory Het Fans so they get more chances to annoy me and i would like to vent.

2nd disclaimer: i shall be using "het" to refer to m/f pairings and yes this is not always accurate but this is the terminology we're currently stuck with, pls someone fix this (thanks in advance).

so.

The Migratory Het Fan is someone who moves from fandom to fandom in much the same way as a Migratory Slash Fan, only they can fly a bit under the radar due to having more canon pairings to work with and because it's not seen as "weird" in quite the same way that slashing is. But they share the traits of primarily interacting with fandoms/canons through a shipping lens and thus ending up in fandoms with Popular Het Pairings or Canon Het Pairings that appeal to them in some way - careful observation will often show a MHF making characters fit their favourite tropes with as much gusto as a MSF turning protagonist and sidekick into their fave Any Two Guys. Again.

First thing: some MHFs, mostly ones who have stuck to canon or semi-canon pairings, are really weird about non-canon pairings and slash pairings, conflating the two and asking with bizarre bewilderment why anyone would be pairing those characters who spend a lot of time together and who clearly value each other as friends. This is quite hard for me to take seriously as an argument, as to me this seems hopelessly naive about fandom in general and about what they themselves are doing/have done with different characters. It can also come across to slashers as an offensive refusal to accept that shipping is shipping and we're all freaks here. Oh, good for you, Susan, your E-rated OOC fluff about your faves is so much less weird than that person's E-rated OOC fluff about their faves. The normies are sure to leave you alone when they're picking on the internet weirdos.

Second thing: this can also involve a lack of understanding about what happens when you have a canon ship that conflicts with your OTP. As I have aged into Fandom Old-ness I increasingly feel like the best approach is simply to ignore such conflicting ships and pretend they don't exist (not an ideal solution, but there isn't an ideal solution, as I am about to explain). And some people just don't like doing that, that want to fit their canons a bit better, or they want to write about how the other pairing is Bad and worse than their fave both artistically and morally. Which is annoying, yes. But it can be really hard to discuss a canon without having to discuss one or another canon pairing. There isn't really anything that can be done to stop people getting mad at each other over things like this... except you can Just Fucking Block People and this will hide a lot of it from you.

My point, which I lost somewhere - the 'rival' shippers are not going on about your pairing all the time because they're "obsessed" with it or with you (or at least most of them aren't), they are doing so because it is "in the way" and this must be dealt with in one way or another. Having been on every possible side of such situations over the years I can assure you that it sucks for everyone, nobody likes it, and see above about Just Ignoring That Part Of Your Canon. (Aside: long rants about why this or that ship is Terrible, Actually are generally preaching to the choir. You ever met anyone who realised via a tumblr post or a tweet that their OTP was Terrible, Actually and promptly changed their ways and jumped to the rival ship? Well, exactly.)

Another thing: a lot of het fic is generic and OOC, but this is true of a lot of slash too and I don't actually think either category is better or worse at this part of fandom than the other. Sometimes the only reason the m/m porn doesn't feature any bodice-ripping is that neither man was wearing one. I think that a lot of MHFs (I won't guess a percentage) do just skip from one fandom to another producing generic romance novel content for every pairing they get into, just as MSFs often do, and that this is just a general Shipper Problem, not one with any connection to the genders or sexualities of the characters involved. You can say "but MY ship is CANON!" all you want but that loses some of its supposed power when you discard that canon as easily as the MSFs discarded your fave female character, reinventing your (random example to avoid offence) pair of ruthless space pirates as (again random) 21st century accountants, one of whom is moonlighting as a dominatrix and the other is looking to explore his interest in submitting to a hot chick. This is no longer a canon pairing, you do you but the hill you're trying to die on is now a double-decker bus. So haud yer wheest.

I think that's all I have enraging me this evening on the topic of Migratory Het Fans. I actually suspect that most people would consider me to be one of those, including myself on occasion, so I'm not slagging off the concept, just the annoying things they sometimes do.

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

think i'll complain about migratory het fans this evening

[cto10121]

Twilight Clown Takes Special Edition—Kristen Stewart & the Migratory Slash Fandom

99% sure this is headline bait from Variety, but regardless, the clownery is too tempting to resist, even if it leads to my ultimate destruction. Gasp! Maybe I am queer-coded?

1) Yes, obviously, but also 2) Tell me you only saw the films without telling me you only saw the films.

Because in the books, it’s abundantly clear which of these boys has Bella’s V in a vice hold. And it ain’t the friendly neighborhood werewolf.

The Migratory Slash Fandom Appears

I literally don’t know where to start with this. With the obviously queer-coded characters? Even the dumb anti fandom usually stick to Queer!Alice and Rosalie, and that’s mostly because they hate Edward (and Jacob) with Bella. Their backstories are gay? Only if you believe that writing about trauma is inherently gay, which 😬

Someday I will sit down and make a serious study on this fan tendency to queering het romance even heteros have trouble stomaching (past the obvious resonance of “forbidden love” as a theme). But that day is not today.

Literary Analysis!1!!1!

Because forbidden love trope = queer every time. And I mean every time!!!

Look, Dracula and Carmilla’s queer undertones are more than just the fact that they are Gothic. They literally must have implied queer desire (haven’t read Carmilla, but Dracula at least has the “Leave him! He’s mine!”). There must actually be a current of homoeroticism, symbolic and textual, in the work. If a Gothic novel doesn’t have that, then it’s really not queer (Wuthering Heights would be a prime example). Genres and their conventions are not inherently queer or straight.

One Based Reply

Preach.

[frumfrumfroo]

i’m sorry if i come off like i’m rolling in schadenfreude, but the f*nnreys can’t live in fanfic bc their fan community is basically dead. most f*rs being antis isn’t just bc all purity wank bloggers decided to ship f*r after tfa came out (tho tfa hit at the right time to catch the worst of the migratory bad-activism fandom) it’s bc they drove away the less toxic shippers by being utter jerks, then made shipping f*r all about being an* reylo. they have so few content creators left it isn’t funny

Yeah, shockingly if you make your community unforgiving and hostile with an open culture of McCarthyism towards all wrongthinkers, not many people will make content for fear of ending up in the dock. My heart does not bleed for bullies who have no fic.

And maybe this isn’t always true, but based on my experience, I doubt they would have had a lot of fic anyway, especially if it had been canon the way f/rs imagine it. There’s no drive for it. There’s no tension, no conflict, nothing to overcome for them to be together. They don’t challenge each other. I mean, I enjoy fluff, but there’s only so much you can do with it and if there was never any obstacle or angst to go through to get there, the fluff isn’t very satisfying. If you wanted wholesome low stakes f/r and f/r is canon, you don’t need fic because there’s nothing left to say. It also wouldn’t ever be included in a Star Wars movie but I digress.

Which is why very flawed canons, epic ~problematic ships, and outright tragedies tend to have the big, enduring fandoms. There’s so much there to explore or fix or say ‘what if?’ about. Whereas the simple love B-plot of an action movie where two Good People just have to beat the bad guy so they can make out probably won’t spark much in the way of derivative works even if people really liked it. Reylo isn’t the het juggernaut just because antis poisoned the well, but because it’s a ridiculously huge mother lode of unmined drama potential and a full hand of deathless romance tropes.

[nyctanthes-arbor-tristis]

With each new season of Stranger Things, I get an uptick of readers for my As You Are fic. This year, when I look at the bookmarks of the people who have kudosed, etc. I’m finding...Steve/Eddie. (And still some Steve/Billy.)

How does this happen? Does someone look at my Stranger Things stuff, which only includes Steve in the most perfunctory way - never enough to be tagged - and say, “Not bad. But too het or gen.” And then they find my As You Are stuff and are like, “Two penises? Yay!” Or do they somehow get to my AYA stories via the movie itself? Which doesn’t star Joe Keery. Or that other dude. 

They’re sad that Charlie Heaton only gets 18 minutes of screentime in S4, Vol. 1 and go looking for his other work? They’re new Owen Campbell fans who wish he didn’t get killed off in X and it's taken them a while to find his other movies?

As someone whose ships are very few, a mix of m/f, f/f and m/m, and typically canon, the ways of migratory m/m slashers remain a mystery. 

[explainslowly]

y'all are killing me

be realistic

the only significance Phlint has is that it should make you question what is going on in the brains of slash fans sometimes, it's significant as maybe the ghost of migratory slash fandom

Is Phlint spawning iconic copy pastas and the worst romance novels you have seen in your life? BE REALISTIC. Reylo is like, one of the most iconic het ships of the last decade probably. It makes people so mad. The romance novels are soooo bad. Please.

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Round 2 Side 1

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[hailmaryfullofgrace55675]

@byebyebriar hey, sorry for the long time to response. I agree that the excitement for woc/woc shipping is real and genuine. I think Trini/Kimberly is a good ship! while writing this reply, I started looking at stuff on the AO3 and honestly it seems like there's a significant factor of... the movie's primary fandom coming from migratory femslash fandom rather than power rangers fandom. I would agree that it's somewhat surprising there's not more het considering power rangers fandom has always run high pretty high on F/M - the AO3's main Power Rangers tag has 993 works tagged F/M to 1003 tagged M/M. I feel like the tone of the franchise generally precludes the male characters being Awful To Women, and provides a lot of solid male/female interaction, both canonically romantic and otherwise. I think both of these factors lend themselves to high levels of het shipping. however, I think the (2017) fic-writing fandom is mostly pretty separate from the fandom(s) for the yearly TV shows. there are definitely people I've seen around in show fandom producing (2017) content, but a lot of them seem more like dedicated femslash fans - no other (non-2017) power rangers fanfic on their accounts but fanfic for the 100, supergirl, carmilla, legend of korra, fifth harmony, ghostbusters, pitch perfect, person of interest, tomb raider, etc. it would make sense that they're not suddenly writing non-femslash now that they're into power rangers (2017) that said, I think that (2017) fanfic that focuses on the boys at all disproportionately focuses on Jason. he's got 197 fics, more than Billy or Zack, and Jason/Billy, Jason/Zack, and Jason/Kimberly are all in the top 10 ships. Billy/Zack, on the other hand, has an astounding four fics, exactly one of which is actually Billy/Zack-centric. so basically, I think that the migratory femslash fandom is what it is, and the non-femslash fandom is really dropping the ball by failing to produce Billy-focused or Zack-focused content. stats were taken on May 4, 2017

[nostalgia-tblr]

The Role Of Bees & Beekeeping In The Fannish Experiences Of Migratory Het Fans: A Historical Study.

What a great essay that doesn't exist. Absolutely captures the tension created in the fannish soul by the interaction of "He Named A Bee After Her!!" with those repressed traumatic memories of "A BEE? A FUCKING BEE??? IT COULDN'T HAVE WAITED ANOTHER TWO MINUTES TO STING HER??? WTF!!!!"

[nostalgia-tblr]

ps i recently thought someone was VERY Migratory Het Fan even though they seemed to be in their first fandom, so did i assign someone migratory het fan at birth?

[nostalgia-tblr]

Things The Tumblr Drafts Feature Is Currently Saving Me From Actually Posting About Where Other People Would See It:

America looks odd

We're harsh on Amsha and Richard Bashir but actually I can see why they did that in such an ableist society and it feels a bit unfair to hold them solely responsible

A fic snippet from a fic I am claiming not to be writing because it's fucked up and I feel guilty about that

Further complaints about U MUST REBLOGism

Me Godwinning the Mobius Discourse TWICE!! :O

"Sibling-coded" lol no

Migratory Het Fans: A Commentary

No I Shall Never Write Thorki Fic. Ever. But if I did...

A Barbie meme reblog everyone else already reblogged

LOKI CLASSISM WANK!!!

Mein Hobbys In The Tags

Columbo made people rate Boris Johnson (WTF????)

Some gay bit from M*A*S*H (a reblog)

The Funniest Disablity Discourse Is Person-First Language Except It's Not Actually That Funny But Also It Is (if u didnt laff u'd cry)

Everyone sounds like twats in Them Thor Films and for some reason I have Extensive Thoughts on why that is and also fandom is stupid (and maybe classist?)

BOYSLASH WANK: DR WHO EDITION

[nostalgia-tblr]

think i'll complain about migratory het fans this evening