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jlhHere's the first way: I was tagging my fics with more than one 'type' of ship as 'multi', not realizing that you could click off more than one 'type' in the box. Which means that the stuff I've written literally doesn't 'count' as anything at all for an analyis like this. And that sucks! I would hate to think that my fics are "white noise."
So I'm going to retag all my fics when I get home tonight.
But that brings me to a larger problem, of writing a fic with more than one ship. I tend to do this, pretty much to my peril. I guess I just have Shakespearean comedies and romances in my head when I sit down to write something longer than a couple thousand words, and so I want all these ships. I have a pairing everyone off mania, it's true. And of course not all the ships are really featured. But often in these longer fics there will be more than one ship sharing the load. In Eight Ways From Sunday there were four ships (hence the eight ways), and maybe one of them was a little minor compared to the other three. In A Dream That Could Not Last, there were three ships of equal weight. But I bet you all think of both stories as being primarily boyslash stories, because if there's any boyslash at all, then that's all the story can be.
In fact, most of the commenters on the Idol fic, which had a femslash ship, never commented on that ship at all. And indeed, while I had started out posting update notices for the fic on femslash today, I stopped around ch 3 because I thought, well, a femslash fan isn't going to want to read any of that het or boyslash. On the slash, sure, on the het, sometimes, on the femslash, basically never. At least for EWFS the het ships were major ships that had shippers reading the fic, though they generally classified it as a slash fic.
I wish we weren't so siloed. I wish we didn't feel like we had to be. I wish I didn't feel like when I finally post the damn EWFS sequel, which has a major femslash ship and then the EWFS ships in the background, that I won't be able to put updates for that on femslash today or hpfemslash because it also contains het and boyslash in the background. I wish I didn't feel like I had to keep warning--warn the het fans that there's slash, warn the femslash fans that there's boys, warn the slash fans that there's het and femslash. It's tiring.
(Not to mention I think it's even more crucial to ship a mainstream femslash ship than anything else--it's really shocking how, looking at femslash today, there are only a few ships that gain any traction at all, no diversity whatsoever.)
And you know, I could tell you that I've been writing characters of color for a long time, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't believe me, or there's some way I've done it to make it not actually count for whatever we're counting these things for. I mean, if everyone is talking about it like it's so difficult and so rare, but I feel like I've been doing it without thinking about it since I started in fandom, I have to be the wrong one in this situation, right? It is absolutely statistically more likely that I'm just full of shit and patting myself on the back for bullshit, than that I'm doing anything that counts in the way that these things are supposed to count. Maybe because I'm not doing it on purpose? I mean, does Dean Thomas count for these sorts of things? Does all that Seamus/Dean count? Does Spock/Uhura? Does the Kimberley Locke/Anwar Robinson that I wrote? I don't know, it's like, I keep thinking that I'm writing fic that talks about race, especially the historical AUs, but then I wonder if I'm just trying to pat myself on the back, here.
I'd like to think that the Mercedes/Quinn sitting in my notebook right now will count as femslash and as containing a character of color, even though there's a background established boyslash ship and there's just one CoC shipped with a white person. I'd like to think that the Parvati/Pansy sitting in my gdocs will also count as the same, even though there's background established het and boyslash ships and of the ten main characters only three Coc's, all shipped with white people (Parvati, Padma and Dean). I guess, people are so scolding and angry about this that I'm wondering what the bar for entry is?
And yes, I need to finish the HIMYM racebending fic. The first draft just kind of wasn't working.
So I'm going to retag all my fics when I get home tonight.
But that brings me to a larger problem, of writing a fic with more than one ship. I tend to do this, pretty much to my peril. I guess I just have Shakespearean comedies and romances in my head when I sit down to write something longer than a couple thousand words, and so I want all these ships. I have a pairing everyone off mania, it's true. And of course not all the ships are really featured. But often in these longer fics there will be more than one ship sharing the load. In Eight Ways From Sunday there were four ships (hence the eight ways), and maybe one of them was a little minor compared to the other three. In A Dream That Could Not Last, there were three ships of equal weight. But I bet you all think of both stories as being primarily boyslash stories, because if there's any boyslash at all, then that's all the story can be.
In fact, most of the commenters on the Idol fic, which had a femslash ship, never commented on that ship at all. And indeed, while I had started out posting update notices for the fic on femslash today, I stopped around ch 3 because I thought, well, a femslash fan isn't going to want to read any of that het or boyslash. On the slash, sure, on the het, sometimes, on the femslash, basically never. At least for EWFS the het ships were major ships that had shippers reading the fic, though they generally classified it as a slash fic.
I wish we weren't so siloed. I wish we didn't feel like we had to be. I wish I didn't feel like when I finally post the damn EWFS sequel, which has a major femslash ship and then the EWFS ships in the background, that I won't be able to put updates for that on femslash today or hpfemslash because it also contains het and boyslash in the background. I wish I didn't feel like I had to keep warning--warn the het fans that there's slash, warn the femslash fans that there's boys, warn the slash fans that there's het and femslash. It's tiring.
(Not to mention I think it's even more crucial to ship a mainstream femslash ship than anything else--it's really shocking how, looking at femslash today, there are only a few ships that gain any traction at all, no diversity whatsoever.)
And you know, I could tell you that I've been writing characters of color for a long time, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't believe me, or there's some way I've done it to make it not actually count for whatever we're counting these things for. I mean, if everyone is talking about it like it's so difficult and so rare, but I feel like I've been doing it without thinking about it since I started in fandom, I have to be the wrong one in this situation, right? It is absolutely statistically more likely that I'm just full of shit and patting myself on the back for bullshit, than that I'm doing anything that counts in the way that these things are supposed to count. Maybe because I'm not doing it on purpose? I mean, does Dean Thomas count for these sorts of things? Does all that Seamus/Dean count? Does Spock/Uhura? Does the Kimberley Locke/Anwar Robinson that I wrote? I don't know, it's like, I keep thinking that I'm writing fic that talks about race, especially the historical AUs, but then I wonder if I'm just trying to pat myself on the back, here.
I'd like to think that the Mercedes/Quinn sitting in my notebook right now will count as femslash and as containing a character of color, even though there's a background established boyslash ship and there's just one CoC shipped with a white person. I'd like to think that the Parvati/Pansy sitting in my gdocs will also count as the same, even though there's background established het and boyslash ships and of the ten main characters only three Coc's, all shipped with white people (Parvati, Padma and Dean). I guess, people are so scolding and angry about this that I'm wondering what the bar for entry is?
And yes, I need to finish the HIMYM racebending fic. The first draft just kind of wasn't working.
