unpopular opinions no. 92:

[parthenia]

I feel I ought to have an opinion about OTW, just because of the sheer volume of posts about OTW crossing my screen, but I still don't really get it.

Also, the emphasis on 'female community' drives me fucking mental. Sorry. I have many female friends, I think many women are awesome, I can see that fanfic brings loads of women together in a wonderfully countercultural anti-capitalist way, and I think it's marvellous that female fans organise stuff in spite of their ladyparts...I even am a woman myself. But I just don't get it with claiming the femaleness of the fanfic writing community as some special condition in need of praise and attention.

I mean. It's mostly a product of the sodding subject matter, isn't it? The majority of open source code writers are probably male. Gamers are predominantly male. Do they spend their time warbling about what a quintessentially male community they've created, apart from the couple of female programmers and gamers who've wandered by who are a bit of an anomaly but are all right PROVIDING THEY PLAY BY OUR RULES???? DO THEY? Actually maybe they do.

GAH. GAAAAAH, I SAY.

OK. I know I'm out of line with many of you. I just think that our attempts to claim the moral high ground for our odd little hobbies are very strange indeed.

If I had more time, I would love to explore the world of machinima a bit more (films and videos made using gaming software, like World of Warcraft); my son watches simple Runescape videos on Youtube.

I love the fact that the Internet has helped all this amateur, underground culture flourish. I came across a site today with links to recent good machinima,like this rather nice music video. Beautiful texture. Note the quintessentially male comments on the video. *g*

ETA, post-metafandom linkage. Oh holy fuck. I did not intend a personal rant dashed off on a Friday to be listed by Metafandom (to the point where I nearly specifically said so). Still, this is the way of the interwebs. I will reply to comments, eventually. Please be nice.

ETA 2: Don't you lot have homes to go to? *clears glasses, wipes tables, starts to stack chairs*

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Not an argument with much of a leg to stand on, though (the same could be said of the argument for slash being inherently feminist; I think it's impossible to say such a broad and diverse category of fiction is inherently anything).

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I think I've expressed myself very badly here, in conflating whatever OTW has said in public about female community with my knee-jerk anxiety about the argument that slash=female space=special that I see coming from folk that have been involved with it; and that just seems to be a view across a great divide.

I think it's impossible to say such a broad and diverse category of fiction is inherently anything

Yes. Gosh, yes.

But I'm kind of being serious - I could quite easily see someone who was not sympathetic to slash seeing it as a weird and disordered response.

[stolisomancer.livejournal.com]

That may be putting the cart before the horse a bit. I've seen some slash fans who fit that description (especially those who have a vicious hatred of female characters for no other reason than that they're female), but it's not that widespread.