Naír

Do you know that feeling when you’re reading a fic, which is mildly oc but seems well enough written and entertaining and boom. You get hit in the face with what is clearly a projection on the charas and the plot of the fic author own issues instead of canon or a well thought au?

As I’ve read more and more fic I’ve become more and more able of seeing those poor author issues through the flimsy excuse of writing fic, and while sometimes it’s really cathartic because it meshes really well with canon in most cases I’m like: “gosh author, this is much more than I needed to know about you. Can we go back to this chara plausible issues and not you own projection of your problems?”

Which makes me feel mean, so I don’t comment or anything and just close the window. But also makes me feel embarrassed on their behalf, although they’re very brave for posting anyway I guess, or just ignorant of how they come across….

I won’t pretend that projecting our own issues isn’t what everybody does when writing, but when you write well it isn’t an imposition on the poor chara, that comes out of left field but part of the story you know? But fanfic is amateur so you come across these things super often. And it’s weird. 

So I guess what I wanted to say was that one needs to learn to distinguish btwn chara and oneself, bcs the basis of fanfiction is the chara and/or worldbuilding (i consider this one also imprescindible but i know i’m in the minority here so….).

And now I’ve realised that this view implies that inserting lgbt+ issues or other mental health things is wrong. Eh. No. I’ve enjoyed most of my fic in that category. But also. Don’t write a pamphlet or the rant to your parents you wish you could give? Like. 

Use the chara personality and world not yourself dear god; unless that’s exactly what you meant to do; in that case proceed without worry bcs we’re all free of doing whatevs in fiction and tag with OOC or self-projection or something for purists like me. 

Please tag it ;_; (although if you have a hand of gold writing then everything is pardoned. good writing is good writing, although it may be poor fic itself >_<)

That feeling when you love most of some-author characterization, and their use of temporal lines and canon. And almost every fic they have is pure porn. Porn in which the characterization counts a lot, and where they have conversations that make very hard just skip the scene. But porn. 

(And there is an obscene amount of porny scenes in their fic.)

And I’m beyond frustrated, bcs the part of the story where the charas are conversing and playing each other, their action scenes, the bits of plot mingled with chara development, all that, is my fav part. 

And I think author has a relationship to sex in which is used like a weird mix of therapy and other kinds of interactions. And sometimes I like how they play with it, but sex all the time? I can’t understand it, nor stand it. It bores me. It’s repetitive; why don’t we go back to the brilliant conversation and cuddles? To the fights and spars? To other kinds of fun. 

To the fucking addictive outsider povs.

There’s also the problem of having the sex scenes be, in their majority about the physical sensations. Like. Completely comprehensible, and the intimacy etc, is there heavily implied by the sex and dialogue (i told you this author used sex as substitute for other kinds of interaction) but unless you don’t describe the overwhelming feelings extensively along the porn I just can’t get invested with the scene or enjoy it that way. 

I think the problem is that I’m too ace for this author. Seriously; I was reading the comments section and the author answers and explanation for the sex thing (they’re very much conscient that their perspective is not “normal”) and I kinda get where they come from but it’s still incomprehensible for me in an emotional way. 

Where is the bonding?? the non-sexual bonding, which doesn’t mean unsensual or unpassionate. 

Sometimes author completely nails it with the mix of feels-sex but most time I’m scrolling past reading the dialogue over the sex to see if there’s something interesting lmao.

So the problem is that I’ve ended obsessed and reading their whole fic-work in the fandom I like (in 3 days lmao), because despite myself I love their interpretation of canon and most of the characterization, and growing progressively more frustrated bcs I wanted more. 

It’s not like they’re unable to write beyond porn! A few of those fics are more about the ambiance and the feels and playing with what if? and although they also include the numerous sex scenes, they’re very well balanced (not the 80% of the fic) and the rest of the story is absolutely interesting and well done. 

Sigh. 

I guess they just aren’t interested. They bypass one of my fave secondary charas and the opportunity to explore their relationship with the rest of the cast bc they feel they’re too young for sex. They are yes, but fucking porn isn’t the only way to do a character study or to write about relationships! For the love of god, augh!!!

Everyone to their own business and I wouldn’t dream of raining on their parade in the comments section but I feel I had to share somewhere lol. They don’t owe me anything, but it’s frustrating bcs I know they have the potential of writing the stuff I absolutely love -for something I’ve obsessed and read all their work in 3 days- but I also know they won’t. 

GAH

Is anybody else tired of reading fics where the women (protagonist or not) are treated like shit? Because I am. Even if it’s for the plot, or the angst, or the romance, i hate reading about a women being rendered impotent again and again for the narrative and then have only as recompense a romance or a mildly happy ending, as if that were satisfying enough? Most times, those romances even start from that situation where the women has been powerless and I hate it with all my soul, I can’t stand it. I think, oh this fic has genderbend whatever character, it’ll be interesting to see how it changes, and what it changes it’s that it becomes an excuse to emotionally and psychologically torture those characters. It ceases to be about them as a person with some interesting studies of gender, to be about how horrible is to be a woman. It’s not, it shouldn’t be horrible, it shouldn’t be a synonym with being perceived or treated as leaser, it shouldn’t mean to be that you’re even more vulnerable to the evil in the world.

 I understand I have to only click and close the page, and most times I do; others I hold out hope that the suffering will bring a reckoning and then I’m let down again. I understand these stories are, more likely than not, how other people deal with their issues. I respect that. I’m talking about how they affect me, and if somebody want to talk about how they feel with me because I don’t have many who would understand in the real world.

I’ve never been specially oppressed for being a woman, living as a middle-class white girl in Spain, so I guess that privilege is why those fic don’t work for me, but I think that’s why it infuriates me even more. It’s a deep understanding of “that could have been me, if I were born in another country or some years in the past or in a retrograde family”; I shouldn’t have to feel lucky for being a woman who has escaped what shouldn’t exist. If I escaped it, why I have to deal in every damn piece of fiction with it. (Why I have to watch the news about murdering and reaping pigs?Why are still my sisters unable to be free in more than half the known world?) Why are people unable of crating AUs without misogyny and inequality? Sometimes I can appreciate a thoughtful critic of those issues, if they are handed well, but the way most times it becomes an excuse for wangst? I can’t. I really can’t. And really, I already know it’s shit you don’t have to convince me of it.

I’m writing this because I’ve just read a fic in where in a world where the protg is female, she is forced to marry one man who despises the protag (or so she thinks, and he does nothing to dispel the notion), and after getting pregnant with his child, and then plotting his murder (look i never said she was a saint or that he didn’t have certain reasons to hate her) he discovers she is pregnant, and because she has hide it, in the beginning (to not foster vain hopes, to still retain a bit of her independence after being tied with someone who she loathes an is loathed in turn being treated like a criminal) amenaces with killing her and the kid in that same moment, burying her alive, was my damn take on the scene, in the same tombs where his mother was ritually sacrificed after his father death. I exploded. Okey, I just wanted to kill that damn character. The disregard, the way he just implies with everything that her place is to be dead if she is not the perfect spouse and even then, that she only serves to be a wife. Gods how I loathed it all. I started crying. Should have looked more closely the warnings at the end of the chapter, or stopped reading a few chapters ago when I saw what attitude had the story towards its protag. That because she was morally corrupt the only way to be redeemed was to learn to be happily married with that man. The fic didn’t say so textually, but I can read between the lines. It was an attack not on the villainy of the protag but on daring to be a woman and a villain too, it felt like. Or using her femininity to punish her badness which felt equally bad.

I guess I understand now why people with other issues are so sensible to certain portrayals in fic or novels. Gods I hope to avoid making people feel so attacked by anything I write or say. This taught me empathy if nothing else, but really. I have always been fed up with these kind of fic (one of the principal reasons I can’t stand ABO or anything about pregnancies too) but today it was the gota que colmó el vaso, and I needed to share it before exploding uselessly in my home.

And really, fuck the patriarchy, and capitalism, and all those other shitty -ism, and up with feminism and equality!!