So I was on a forum with about the manga Kuroko no Basuke. Somebody made a post saying wouldn't it be awesome if the show was shonen-ai and the two male leads were together.

This is my response:

This is the answer I got.

Anyways... Discuss?

 

Shut up. Castigating slash fangirls isn't cool anymore.

 

Say what you want about the other stuff, but this is the goddamn truth. I dispise female leads in animes/mangas. The only one I've ever come across that I didn't hate was Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club, and most of the characters think she's a dude.

 

True for anime, sure, but I don't think it explains other fandoms, like HP, where (at least some of) the female characters ARE interesting and DO have redeeming qualities.

To be honest I think a lot of chicks just like reading about two dudes getting it on.

 

Yes. This.

I didn't like slash when I first encountered it, I thought it was kindof gross actually, because I was a naive little girl. The internet has brainwashed me in the meantime and now I can't imagine caring if a couple is hetero, slash or femslash, I'm an equal opportunity fangirl. Yaoi fanfiction promotes tolerance, who knew?

If I "ship" a slash couple it's because my favorite characters in a series are male. Say there's an interesting good guy and an interesting bad guy and a female lead I'm indifferent to who pretty much just exists to be the love interest. Im going to ship good guy/bad guy. I just don't like the female characters a lot of the time. They tend to be boring, or annoying, or just not as interesting/sympathetic as the male characters.

That said, I avoid Harry Potter slash. Because all the slash pairings suck. I can't really fathom the appeal of Draco or Snape or Voldemort for that matter.

Also, there is a lot of really bad slash fanfiction. Really, really bad. I think the worst offender is the whole uke/seme obsession. Anyone who reads that shit doesn't really want slash, they what to turn their favorite character into girl, a really weak, sad, annoying girl. It's bizarre, it popularized the m-preg(abomination), and it reduces any character filtered through it's parameters into the exact same stereotype. I blame Japan.

 

Unless the character is canonically gay or has clear, bisexual tendencies (of which Harry Potter, for example, does not), I see all slash, regardless of gender or age, as severe character perversion.

Severe character perversion always ends up with poorly thought out OC's being cast as pre-existing and canonical characters.

That, and I find the very concept in itself very distasteful and crude.

 

I think it can also work (in theory, anyway) if the character seems completely asexual in canon. Take Dumbledore for instance: It didn't change or pervert his character when JKR declared him gay, because we never saw him in a relationship or sexual context anyway.

 

Pretty much, but characters that have been written as asexual, like Dumbledore has been, are more than just rare.

 

I get where you're coming from with this, but I don't entirely agree. If a character just randomly wakes up gay without explanation, then yeah, that's bad writing. And yeah, it does happen in a lot of slash.

But if a fanfiction author writes about a character discovering a new facet to their sexuality, especially in their teenage years, I don't think that's necessarily a perversion of that character. I for one am not half as strait as I thought I was 10 years ago. When I was young I pretty much assumed 1 girl + 1 boy= couple. Then I grew up and got exposed to the internet and porn and gay marriage rights and whatever else and I my mindset changed. Brad Pitt? Yes please. Angelina Jolie? Also Yes.

Long personal exposition aside (sorry if too much information), what I'm trying to say is sexuality can be fluid. I think a character dealing with that and the inner conflict it could cause could be done well, could actually be an example of good characterization. If it was done well, which it usually isn't.

 

...because all interesting characters have to be paired up?

Also, I don't think it has much to do with the physical relationship at all, robk. Most slash fics are also comorbid with a number of themes. Hurt/comfort, domination/submission, angst, damaged goods, physically strong hero but emotionally weak, and so on. I think the real thing that attracts the slash fangirls is the emotional melodrama.

 

^that. Most slash pairings are created entirely for drama. Draco/Harry, Aang/Zuko etc.

In fact, since often enough the fangirls are only doing slash because of its potential for drama, when another pairing provides equal drama, say Hermione/Draco, they are willing to play with that too: that's where you'd get Zutara in the Avatar universe.
For another example, in fandoms such as Pierce, where the main character is a female who is not a whiny bitch, they inevitably pair said main character with her male rival and then have him rape the female character multiple times "out of love" and then have her fall in love with him, since slash there is difficult to create.

 

Fair enough. Maybe I should specify that by interesting, I mostly mean characters I like. Makes more sense than shipping a character I like with one I don't care for. None of which is to say whatever series the characters came from would be improved by catering to my preferences. They wouldn't, it's a guilty pleasure thing.

Again, fair enough. Like I said, lots of bad slash fics. Lots of fangirls writing their favorite character as a girl, without actually changing his gender. Angst like whoa. I don't blame anyone who doesn't like it, hell, I don't like the vast majority. I'm just saying that I don't think writing a canonically straight character in a slash relationship is necessarily a perversion of character, and trying to explain why I sometimes like slash.

I have actually read slash that avoided all the dominance/submission and ect. badness that I completely agree makes for painfully awful reading. Not much of it tbh, but there was the occasional gem buried amongst all the shit. This is mostly nostalgia for my younger years, I did get tired of shoveling through the shit eventually. These days I generally prefer my fanfiction without romance, maybe I overdosed on drama.

 

Given your distaste for "severe character perversion," I take it you object to 85/100 stories in the DLP library. Why the hate for severe perversion?

One day I will write a Draco/Harry fic that does not suck* (except in certain scenes**) and in which the pairing is not there for in-fic drama. One simple reason: It would cause enough on here.





* That day is the fifth of never.

** Get your mind out of the gutter. No author can write every scene perfectly, pervert.

 

I think its more of a severe character perversion with a cause explained. Assuming the main character grew up the same way and experience the same events as canon, why should their personality be any different from canon? Say, to make Harry Potter suddenly a homicidal maniac that somehow became super intelligent/godlike for no apparent reason would be something repulsive to read. I also do believe that is what separates a good fanfic from a bad one. (Of course, crack fics are in a completely different category).


In any case, I fathom how slash could ever be written in a way that does not suck for readers that generally dislike them. Their effects could be minimized if only small mentioning of the relationships are written, but than that would just be on the scale we normally use. More Slash = Worse fic, less slash = maybe barely tolerable

 

Personally I find most female characters in Anime and in HP are kinda shallow (personality wise). Being female myself I understand the female mind-set and a lot of FF I read where the pairing is HET is really, really predictable. Boy meets girl etc, etc, etc... And the dynamic between the couples get repetitive, I read a lot of FF and get bored quickly with themes, pairings and genres so I jump around heaps. I'll give most pairings/themes/geners a go.


And yes that most certainly includes slash. I actually prefer it. JK’s male characters are amazing; Snape for example is a multi-dimensional character his motives for becoming a spy and protecting Harry are all deeply seated within is psyche. Snape is without doubt my favourite character, and before you starting saying I therefore must ship Snape/Harry… I don’t. I’m more inclined to ship Harry/Voldemort! I’ve given Harry/Snape a go, sure but I’ve never really liked it.



The ratio of male to female characters in HP is heavily one sided. Out of all the female characters to ‘pair-up’ Harry with my personal choice of what I could read without rage-quitting, throwing up in my mouth or just crying would be Luna, Tonks or Bellatrix. And JK broke all my dreams (with freaking GINNY!!) of an ending with Harry/Luna riding into the sunset! *shakes fist*


But I think the biggest part of me reading/liking/preferring slash is because there is so much of it. I know there is some horrible slash stories out there I run into it daily! However I also know there is some amazing stories, with fantastic plots, character development and impeccable gramma/spelling whose main pairings might be Harry/Voldemort, Harry/Draco or Harry/Sirius. And well after however many years I’ve spend with my head in a FF story I just read it for the story now. I don’t care about the pairing (unless it’s Dumbledore/Harry, Dobby/Harry or something *shudder*)!



I also read meaningless smut as well, gotta have some fun sometimes right?



You can say whatever you want about slash or het or harem so long as it doesn’t included a house-elf or a character I hate (like Ron and Cho) I’ll give it a go.

 

Ah yes. That would make your mindset pretty similar to the one I quoted. Anyways, apparently this mindset extends past just manga/anime and into fanfiction.

 

So basically what you're saying is that, if given a totally different set of experiences, the character would be totally different. Okay, so basically random OCs named Harry are okay, just as long as they don't ever suck cock.

I'm glad we cleared that up. It's good to know that some people here are just as airheaded as the fangirl you're bashing

So basically, slash -- even if well-developed and well-written -- will always be bad, but regular fan-fiction which does not have slash will be barely tolerable. It sure is good to know that your "but totally different story arcs are okay" argument is exactly as brainless as I'd initially pegged it as.

So, if we were to take a look at your rating history, I'm sure we'd find that you objected to 85 of every 100 fics in the library. Yeah, thought not.

Or, in absence of that, I suppose we could just take a look at your own assessment of the library right here.

 

Well, yes. A new experience would probably make up a new character. I would think that was obvious enough. Of course, that is not to say that every random OC every created would be written well, but if they are, then there's no problem. In any case, I think you should be happy to find that almost 100% of the fics in the library are all made up of OCs named Harry Potter. The actual books are there if I wanted to read canon.

Also, as you said, it is quite surprising to find people as airhead as the fangirls I'm bashing, despite their large post counts and activity in the forum. (By the way, when did I ever say I was bashing them? I am merely quoting a post that I found interesting written by a fangirl. Unless you believe like slash is inherently bad, I don't see any sort of malice in my writing before this post)

Please do not change what I wrote to something that suits your argument. I did not say all regular fanfiction without slash will be barely tolerable. During that statement that you quoted, I was refering to any stories with slash in it at all. Of course, these are all my own personal taste, so if you have "well-developed and well written" slash that you enjoy jacking off on, I will not stop you from reading them.

 

/me sighs.

There was a time when half the people in this thread would have been chased off DLP by a mob bearing pitch forks and torches.