I'm a bad yaoi fangirl
Feb. 23rd, 2004 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotNew fandom, new fanfic, same old issues. For all that many animanga series give me in canon more of what I crave than nearly any Western show, anime fic too rarely satisfies. Mainly because despite my One True Pairing tendencies, I'm honestly not that into pairings--any pairings, a kink which puts me at odds with fundamental fangirl tenets. Ranting to follow, with the caveat that I know my tastes are not the norm, but after this long they're unlikely to change. I'm always up for trying to figure out why I like certain things, and I have my theories, but when it comes down to it, I like what I like and knowing why doesn't alter that I do.
First off, lemme get this straight - I am a yaoi fangirl. I own and love Kizuna, KKH, Gravitation, FAKE. I read Smallville slash and suspect Ban and Ginji are locked in passionate liplocks whenever the camera pans away from their hugs. This wasn't always the case; for a while I avoided slash, on the principle that I didn't like romance. While that's no longer so, the truth is, I've always loved stories about friendship more than sexual attraction. "Smarm", it's called in some Western fandoms - "the physical/verbal display of platonic friendship". I'm a hopeless hurt/comfort junky and a smarm fan to the end; giving into slash did not affect that. I'll enjoy a good bit of smut, but give me two guys putting their lives on the line for one another, and you'll melt me into a puddle of fangirl goo faster than a box of Crayolas cast into the sun.
Obviously h/c and slash are not mutually exclusive; where would yaoi be without comfort sex? But platonic love can be just as appealing. And here's where I run into problems, because anime gen fic is a rare phenomenon, and too often it's what I most crave.
I'm not sure why it's unusual. In most of my Western* fandoms, there was a strong gen contingent. Stargate has tons of Jack/Daniel (and Sam/Jack, but there's only one blonde officer making it with her colonel that I care for at present, and they're not it), but scads of well-written team-fic as well, and a surprising amount of authors who divide their time between both. I only wrote gen for The Sentinel, and was far from alone. Even X-files had quite a number of fics in which Mulder & Scully stayed true to their show-selves and solved cases together with extreme angst but no forays under the covers.
[*in case it isn't self evident, by "Western" I mean North American & European shows, movies, cartoons, etc. Not really into the whole cowboy thing unless it's Bebop or Trigun]
In most anime fandoms, however, it's difficult to find any fic in any fandom that doesn't involve someone lusting for someone else, be it a het or yaoi coupling. And I'll be damned if I know why.
Obviously if you're writing a fic for, say, Fushigi Yuugi or X/1999, the majority of your chars have gotta be romantically interested or else they're not going to be in char. And yes, to write a long story in which no one is thinking about a special someone or sex in general is not going to be believable if your chars are over twelve. But does it always have to be the central theme? Go to ff.net's anime category and page through the archives of a show; how many fics don't have a pairing or two or six listed in the summary?
I'm not anti-romance; the amount of shoujo manga on my bookcases would debunk that argument fast enough. But take a look over my oeuvre of fanfic, and consider that most of the time, what I write is what I want to read. I've got one long story with a focus on a romantic relationship, though it wouldn't be classified as a romance (it's for Final Fantasy 8. I like Squall/Rinoa. Sue me. I also like Miaka/Tamahome and Cyclops/Jean Grey, so you'll have plenty of supporting evidence). The rest of my longer stories may have touches of romance, but tend to focus on friendships, partners, teams, "brothers in blood", etc. You'd also note that a lot of the relationships I love to pieces in canon - those above, not to mention Van/Hitomi, Sheridan/Delenn, Enjouji/Ranmaru, many more--I don't read or write about. I like them, but I don't crave more action than what we're given.
Even when I do read yaoi/slash fic, it often is for the story--no, really!--the character relationships involved; once they're in bed, unless it's damn fine writing I'll usually skim. I can argue I'm not that into smut because there's only so many ways to write a guy banging another guy, or a girl, or whatever; you run out of metaphors and bodyparts sooner or later. But that doesn't explain why I don't tire of snowfic h/c, even though there's only so many ways to save a hypothermic buddy, and no matter how many times one char screams his friend's name when said friend goes down in a fight, I'll still love the next time they do it. I can't say why sacrifice and concern and empathy stir me quite as they do, but a well-written affirmation of friendship will move me more than the hottest sex scene. My bro calls the over-the-top h/c and smarm stuff my personal porn...embarrassingly accurately.
It doesn't help that over time I've become a fanfic snob; I want well-written, grammatically correct, in character stories, preferably with a modicum of plot to keep things moving. All this, and for someone to get injured or mentally tortured or whatever, so I get their friends worrying about them. And while I'm at it, I'm an inveterate lover of happy endings as well.
When I first got into anime, I was assuming that since that kind of thing was so thrillingly prevalent in the canon--how many fight shounen don't have the scene when the best friend/rival goes down and the hero goes psycho, often with tears and flashbacks?--there would be plenty of fic with it. And sure, there was tons of fic out there--but more people cared about how Vegeta and Bulma got together than exploring the complexities of Vegeta and Goku's relationship, and no one at all wrote about Tasuki and Tamahome's friendship despite all their squabbling. It was a disappointment--but I did find some excellent DBZ out there of the sort I wanted; luck of the draw, maybe I'd picked poorer fandoms.
Four years and countless animanga later, I'm still going back to my Western fandoms when I want a good dose of h/c smarm, and not just because word for word, Western fandoms have better-written fic (Western fans tend to be older; anime fen are mostly teens, while the majority of Western fen are 20s-50s. Not to say there aren't some 16 years old who write better than some 30 year olds, but in general older fen are more discriminating) And this frustrates me, because there's a lot of anime fandoms for which I'd love to read some good friendship stories.
I thought for a time that I had it made - with GetBackers and Saiyuki, the friendships I fell in love with I also saw romantic sides to; I wanted them to see them be more than just friends. Maybe I was at last becoming a true yaoi fangirl, squeeing madly over my favorite couples with hearts in my eyes and shoujo bubbles in the air! Disregard that in Saiyuki my favorite relationship became Gojyo and Sanzo's sniping, though I'm a 58/39 girl so deeply and completely that alternate numerology almost makes me cry--and it was easy enough to ignore my love of the platonic Ban-Shido dynamic in the overwhelming light of the BanGin. (Ignore, too, that my main reason for wanting BanGin is because I can't see them with anyone else, more than wanting to see them with each other. Which isn't to say I don't want to see it, but it's outweighed by the friendship factor, which explains the paucity of sex in my GB fic, if you were wondering.)
And then I got into FullMetal Alchemist, and now One Piece, and I'm back to square one - not seeing any slash, hardly seeing any het, and not wanting any pairings because the relationships that most interest me aren't a whit romantic or sexual. FMA isn't so much an issue, because I'm not especially interested in reading fic for it; One Piece is another story altogether, but I'll save that rant for another day. OP is a bigger problem for me than most; in a lot of my fandoms, it's not that I'm against the yaoi, it's just I enjoy more. There are other relationships every bit as compelling, intense, and fascinating as the sexual or the romantic, and I wish those realms were more explored.
And if you know of some good gen anime fic, go ahead and point 'em my way!
First off, lemme get this straight - I am a yaoi fangirl. I own and love Kizuna, KKH, Gravitation, FAKE. I read Smallville slash and suspect Ban and Ginji are locked in passionate liplocks whenever the camera pans away from their hugs. This wasn't always the case; for a while I avoided slash, on the principle that I didn't like romance. While that's no longer so, the truth is, I've always loved stories about friendship more than sexual attraction. "Smarm", it's called in some Western fandoms - "the physical/verbal display of platonic friendship". I'm a hopeless hurt/comfort junky and a smarm fan to the end; giving into slash did not affect that. I'll enjoy a good bit of smut, but give me two guys putting their lives on the line for one another, and you'll melt me into a puddle of fangirl goo faster than a box of Crayolas cast into the sun.
Obviously h/c and slash are not mutually exclusive; where would yaoi be without comfort sex? But platonic love can be just as appealing. And here's where I run into problems, because anime gen fic is a rare phenomenon, and too often it's what I most crave.
I'm not sure why it's unusual. In most of my Western* fandoms, there was a strong gen contingent. Stargate has tons of Jack/Daniel (and Sam/Jack, but there's only one blonde officer making it with her colonel that I care for at present, and they're not it), but scads of well-written team-fic as well, and a surprising amount of authors who divide their time between both. I only wrote gen for The Sentinel, and was far from alone. Even X-files had quite a number of fics in which Mulder & Scully stayed true to their show-selves and solved cases together with extreme angst but no forays under the covers.
[*in case it isn't self evident, by "Western" I mean North American & European shows, movies, cartoons, etc. Not really into the whole cowboy thing unless it's Bebop or Trigun]
In most anime fandoms, however, it's difficult to find any fic in any fandom that doesn't involve someone lusting for someone else, be it a het or yaoi coupling. And I'll be damned if I know why.
Obviously if you're writing a fic for, say, Fushigi Yuugi or X/1999, the majority of your chars have gotta be romantically interested or else they're not going to be in char. And yes, to write a long story in which no one is thinking about a special someone or sex in general is not going to be believable if your chars are over twelve. But does it always have to be the central theme? Go to ff.net's anime category and page through the archives of a show; how many fics don't have a pairing or two or six listed in the summary?
I'm not anti-romance; the amount of shoujo manga on my bookcases would debunk that argument fast enough. But take a look over my oeuvre of fanfic, and consider that most of the time, what I write is what I want to read. I've got one long story with a focus on a romantic relationship, though it wouldn't be classified as a romance (it's for Final Fantasy 8. I like Squall/Rinoa. Sue me. I also like Miaka/Tamahome and Cyclops/Jean Grey, so you'll have plenty of supporting evidence). The rest of my longer stories may have touches of romance, but tend to focus on friendships, partners, teams, "brothers in blood", etc. You'd also note that a lot of the relationships I love to pieces in canon - those above, not to mention Van/Hitomi, Sheridan/Delenn, Enjouji/Ranmaru, many more--I don't read or write about. I like them, but I don't crave more action than what we're given.
Even when I do read yaoi/slash fic, it often is for the story--no, really!--the character relationships involved; once they're in bed, unless it's damn fine writing I'll usually skim. I can argue I'm not that into smut because there's only so many ways to write a guy banging another guy, or a girl, or whatever; you run out of metaphors and bodyparts sooner or later. But that doesn't explain why I don't tire of snowfic h/c, even though there's only so many ways to save a hypothermic buddy, and no matter how many times one char screams his friend's name when said friend goes down in a fight, I'll still love the next time they do it. I can't say why sacrifice and concern and empathy stir me quite as they do, but a well-written affirmation of friendship will move me more than the hottest sex scene. My bro calls the over-the-top h/c and smarm stuff my personal porn...embarrassingly accurately.
It doesn't help that over time I've become a fanfic snob; I want well-written, grammatically correct, in character stories, preferably with a modicum of plot to keep things moving. All this, and for someone to get injured or mentally tortured or whatever, so I get their friends worrying about them. And while I'm at it, I'm an inveterate lover of happy endings as well.
When I first got into anime, I was assuming that since that kind of thing was so thrillingly prevalent in the canon--how many fight shounen don't have the scene when the best friend/rival goes down and the hero goes psycho, often with tears and flashbacks?--there would be plenty of fic with it. And sure, there was tons of fic out there--but more people cared about how Vegeta and Bulma got together than exploring the complexities of Vegeta and Goku's relationship, and no one at all wrote about Tasuki and Tamahome's friendship despite all their squabbling. It was a disappointment--but I did find some excellent DBZ out there of the sort I wanted; luck of the draw, maybe I'd picked poorer fandoms.
Four years and countless animanga later, I'm still going back to my Western fandoms when I want a good dose of h/c smarm, and not just because word for word, Western fandoms have better-written fic (Western fans tend to be older; anime fen are mostly teens, while the majority of Western fen are 20s-50s. Not to say there aren't some 16 years old who write better than some 30 year olds, but in general older fen are more discriminating) And this frustrates me, because there's a lot of anime fandoms for which I'd love to read some good friendship stories.
I thought for a time that I had it made - with GetBackers and Saiyuki, the friendships I fell in love with I also saw romantic sides to; I wanted them to see them be more than just friends. Maybe I was at last becoming a true yaoi fangirl, squeeing madly over my favorite couples with hearts in my eyes and shoujo bubbles in the air! Disregard that in Saiyuki my favorite relationship became Gojyo and Sanzo's sniping, though I'm a 58/39 girl so deeply and completely that alternate numerology almost makes me cry--and it was easy enough to ignore my love of the platonic Ban-Shido dynamic in the overwhelming light of the BanGin. (Ignore, too, that my main reason for wanting BanGin is because I can't see them with anyone else, more than wanting to see them with each other. Which isn't to say I don't want to see it, but it's outweighed by the friendship factor, which explains the paucity of sex in my GB fic, if you were wondering.)
And then I got into FullMetal Alchemist, and now One Piece, and I'm back to square one - not seeing any slash, hardly seeing any het, and not wanting any pairings because the relationships that most interest me aren't a whit romantic or sexual. FMA isn't so much an issue, because I'm not especially interested in reading fic for it; One Piece is another story altogether, but I'll save that rant for another day. OP is a bigger problem for me than most; in a lot of my fandoms, it's not that I'm against the yaoi, it's just I enjoy more. There are other relationships every bit as compelling, intense, and fascinating as the sexual or the romantic, and I wish those realms were more explored.
And if you know of some good gen anime fic, go ahead and point 'em my way!
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 10:22 am (UTC)(Wah, I hate to quote this much, but it's a large part of what made me slink on over here and decide to comment. ^_~ *snips a bit out*) Oddly enough, a lot of that kind of thing is what made me start seeking out romance fic in the first place. (Well, that and some people royally suck at the plot thing. People can usually manage to get romance done semi-right, at least.) I came from fandoms like Highlander or The Sentinel and got a little burnt out on the teasing after awhile. I'd gotten fed up with the dancing around each other and eventually started wanting to grumble, "Give me my romance, godddammit. MAKE THEM KISS. *fumes*"
It didn't help that this was exacerbated by fandoms like Yami no Matsuei where NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. I cannot tell you how many fics had Tsuzuki and Hisoka (or, hell, Tatsumi and Watari, when I could find decent writing for them) always dancing around the fact that they had (probably) feelings for each other, never quite going anywhere with them. After awhile it got to the point where I couldn't read any more fic because I couldn't take the lack of forward momentum in their relationship.
I agree that anime fic these days is far too dominated by romance and that plotful writing is sorely lacking and that the softer approach to romance seems to be a dying art, rather than the sledgehammer approach to two characters' feelings for each other. And maybe I'm just feeling guilty and trying to justify my love of romantic fanworks for any given series, but... eh, give me a post-romantic, plotful fic and I'm usually at my most happy-fangirl-bliss point at that. (Meaning, a story that has my favored pairing established, but the story doesn't revolve around their getting together, at least not entirely.) Because I love plot, it makes me sparkle and puts stars in my eyes, but I also like well-done romance. I like my romance tempered with genuinely moving the story/relationship/whatever forward.
So, if that means a choice between a well-written gen fic that feels stagnant to me and a semi-decent romance fic that at least gets things going again...? I admit, I have a really, really tough time choosing.
(And looking over this response, I feel I should clarify a few things, just in case I'm not coming across as well as I'd hoped. ^_~ I really do very much agree that gen fic is underappreciated by a lot of authors today, but, at the same time, I can understand the impulse to go straight for the romance fic. When I like a pairing, I crave those cathartic get-together fics because I'm not getting it in canon, dammit. And I need that itch scratched so that I can move on to other things and not be so distracted by it. Plus, it's really difficult to maintain that level of tension with the whole "Will they or won't they this time?" thing without wanting to scream and smoosh the characters' heads together and force them to kiss. ^_~
Doesn't mean I don't adore gen, of course--my absolute favorite fanfic ever was the novel-length X-Men story, "The Betrayal Arc" by Valerie Jones. What I loved about that story? Wasn't the romance. Yet, at the same time, so much of what attracts me to a fandom is the emotional component, the hook of the characters and their relationships with each other. Without that, I wouldn't even need fic, I'd just go rewatch my episodes or move on to the next series. When I become genuinely fond of the characters, that's when I want more of their interaction and it's what I seek out in fanworks. Doesn't mean I want the series itself to be about that 24/7, but it's what I go for when I want that fanworks itch scratched. XD)
*shutting up now* ^_~
no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 12:01 pm (UTC)Character relationships are both my bread & butter and my greatest addiction, and like you, I go to fanfic for more of the interaction I love in canon, and to see chars & relationships progress further (actually, this might explain why I'm not into fic for arc shows, especially those centering on char development, since the canon scratches that itch for me). The problem I run into is that for me, a romantic relationship is not necessarily the highest progression of a relationship.
And here's why I'm a bad yaoi fangirl - because there's quite a few pairings that I *love* as friendship, that I do not see as sexual, that I do see turning into a sexual relationship, and that I have no interest in seeing any sex or romance, because the love there is, to my mind, of a different nature entirely.
A lot of this is subjective. For canon pairings it's one thing; I'm not going to deny Shuuichi and Yuki's love, and a fic about their relationship where they didn't get physical would frustrate. I don't care much for YnM, and part of the reason might because Hisoka & Tsuzuki pretty obviously are a couple but aren't doing anything about it. You mentioned post-romance fic, stories with couples already established - I love those myself, that sure, certain sort of love (I am *such* a sucker for stories about married couples.)
But then you get into something like GetBackers, in which I adore Ban & Ginji's friendship and am absolutely totally 150% in favor of BanxGinjixBan. And yet I've written little genuine yaoi for them, because for me, at least, that's not really what it's about. If there's attraction there, it mostly stems from the fact that they just love and need each other so much that their bond is physical as well as everything else. Consumation of that physical part just doesn't interest me as much as the complexities of the emotions that tie them together.
And then there's, say, One Piece, in which I love so many of the char dynamics, but don't see nearly any of them as sexual. Luffy & Zoro's relationship is probably my favorite if I had to choose, but their bond is one of friendship, to my mind. I think they love each other; I don't think they're in love with each other (and Luffy+sex breaks my brain). At the same time, I desperately want to read fic about them, because the canon doesn't quite totally fulfill me; they show they care for each other, but I want just that little bit more, the realization from Zoro of just how much his idiot captain does mean to him...
What it comes down to, I suppose, is a matter of expectations, what you're looking to get out of a fic, and what tensions are resolved. Stories are more stirring when they do affect something, when at the end something is different from what it was before. Romance is an obvious way to manage this - char A & char B always loved each other, now they sleep together, obviously they're at a new level in their relationship. But for me, at least, there's something just as powerful, or even more powerful, about a subtler change. I love h/c stories because--in the well-written ones, at least--the chars come out of it with new understandings about each other..."I didn't know he cared about me so much to do *that*"; "I didn't know I cared about him so much that I *would* do *that*." In pairing stories, this realization usually is 'sealed with a kiss', so to speak, but for me, it's not the kiss that satisfies, it's the realization, and I don't mind when the kiss isn't there.
I gotta say, thank you so much for that comment. Not sure if this reply makes much sense, but it's clarified in my mind some things I've been wondering about...
no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 12:02 pm (UTC)