tfa_kink | DISCUSSION/OFF-TOPIC POST

Honestly, with the way fandom reacts to certain things about Finn/Poe, I bet some people are worried about being called out for racism. I've already seen it happen once or twice.

Someone was forced to delete their story on AO3 because they dared to write a dark sex pollen story for Finn/Poe and brought in Tumblr's "that's racist" crowd.

So I completely get you. This fandom is ridiculous. Ironically this hyper sensitive SJW are only forcing people to move towards other ships with their constant censorship and progressive thinking, and in this case the one "safe" ship with two white dudes on it, which is what THEY didn't want in the first place.

At this point I am ready to move towards Kylo/Hux too because I love my dark angsty stories and apparently that would make me a racist.

Wait, they had to delete a Finn/Poe fic because it wasn't happy fluff?! Because it featured a kink trope that wasn't vanilla enough?! That's messed up.

I'm pretty sure the people screaming the loudest about racism and how not shipping fluffy Stormpilot makes you a terrible person are the same people who shrieked about how it wasn't racist to desexualise Sam Wilson and claim he's 'just too good for anyone' in their headcanon posts about Stucky. Now they're finally shipping something other than two white dudes, they're going overboard to prove they totally weren't being racist before, honest you guys!!1! And their overcompensation is so fucking loud it's becoming the fandom baseline for dealing with Stormpilot, which sucks. They don't actually care about race in fandom, it's just about proving their own fandom credentials, and ultimately they're damaging any discussion that actually does focus on race issues.

And write an entire apology for having offended them. I felt horrible for the author because their writing was amazing and I appreciate someone taking what is usually an excuse for shameless smut, and tacking it more seriously (feel the same about ABO).

They started yelling at the author that they were a racist and hurting people with their portrayal of Finn as the aggressor (even though the story made it obvious Finn was under the influence of sex pollen and had no control and was as much a victim as Poe was, even Poe tells him so) and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Ironically by their own admission, the people attacking the author were white. And hen real POC like me pointed out there was nothing racist about the story, we were told to shut up because we didn't understand "white privilege".

Exactly. They don't care about race. They just care about getting brownie points because, damn, they are shipping two minorities together?????

While I ship Stormpilot like FedEx, I am currently writing Hux/Finn and Kylo/Finn stories and I am just waiting for one of them to come my way about being racist, just so I can delete their asses.

Oh, THAT story! I've read it and enjoyed it but "their writing is amazing" is overstating things a bit. Still, it's too bad they gave in to the loudmouths. If it were me I would've just kept deleting their comments and kept the fic up.

I mean for the specific subject, I thought the writing was pretty good. Since people usually avoid writing those subject matters for characters they love (usually it is only explored if it is a character the author hates). And half the time it doesn't work at all since it becomes an excuse for the author to hate on said characters before that person is paired off with someone the author does like.

I would have done that too. AO3 now lets you moderate comments before they even show up, so thankfully is not that hard to deal with self entitled people like that.

NAYRT:

I was following that saga yesterday, and holy shit I felt bad for the author -- largely because I thought they actually handled the topic in a really graceful and nuanced way? There was one uncomfortable line but the rest of the fic was good, IMO -- and more importantly it wasn't boring. I was so disappointed to see people dogpiling that author because all it's going to do is make people scared to write Poe/Finn fic that isn't "everything is happy 100% of the time", which we already have a million fics of and gets really repetitive and boring.

Exactly. It did made me uncomfortable to read and I had to go find some fluff after, but I think that was supposed to be the point. It was a horrible situation, there was no magical "fix it" where the characters confess their love and all the trauma magically goes away. Is not easy to read and it is probably not easy to write either. But there is no need to pile on someone like that.

I have read dark shit that I have been impressed with. I have read some dark shit that I have had to pause, step away from the computer and skip it because it was too much for me. Sometimes the aftermath have been handled well and other times, not so.

But not once have I felt the need to tell a fellow author they shouldn't write it. I just close it and find something else to read.

Ok, maybe once, but it was E.L James Fifty Shades of Grey, and think we agree I was justified for the terrible writing alone!

Arrrgh why? Why did I miss that story? That's right up my alley!!!!!!

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 01:48 (UTC) - Expand

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 04:21 (UTC) - Expand

DA

You know, I think you might be onto something there with the Sam Wilson analogy. I know exactly teh type of people you're talking about.

That said though, for the record, I've written about five extremely angsty and/or dark fics for Poe/Finn, some of them sexually explicit or torturing Finn, and I've gotten nothing but good responses and zero hate on tumblr. So it might also be in the execution sometimes.

You'll also find them in the Sleepy Hollow fandom. their excuse is that the WOC lead is so badass she doesn't need the love of a man. Then turn around and ship her white-co lead male with every white female that shows up while congratulating themselves.

Urgh, that's awful. MOC and female characters get desexualised all the time in fandom (and the whole 'it's because they're too awesome' excuse is way more transparent than these people seem to think), so the treatment of WOC ends up getting the worst of both sets of bigotry.

God help the new WOC character in Ep VIII. The best she can probably expect is being paired in the background with Rey or Jess while all the focus remains on the male slash pairing. :(

DA

I've seen the desexualization with Rey a lot in TFA. There are some fics and headcanon out there that genuinely portray her as lesbian, aro or ace and those are great, but there's a lot of "she's too awesome to be with anyone and so let's make her aro or ace" or "let's make her a lesbian and pair her up with a random background character so she doesn't get in the way of a slash pairing". These fics and headcanon are usually pretty easy to pick out.

I suppose it's better than the old fandom trend of erasing women entirely or bashing them until they're just evil hags who shouldn't even be alive because they might get in the way of two dudes having sex.

To be honest, I just don't want to see Rey having a romance arc. I'm really sick of female characters I like and identify with having these overarching romance arcs, and Rey has bigger shit to deal with. I want to see her flipping around hitting people with her stick, but I can't write action scenes well.

I want to see the bad guys bone because then they won't blow up any more planets, tho.

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 00:17 (UTC) - Expand

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 03:13 (UTC) - Expand

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 05:11 (UTC) - Expand

Yup, agreed with all this. There's nothing wrong with headcanoning Rey as ace or aro or gay or what have you. But I wish people would look at why they're fixating on those headcanons. Some of their reasons are a little troubling.

The whole "she's too awesome to be with anyone" thing is uncomfortable for me as a reason to headcanon her as ace, because it's kind of saying "strong women can't be independent and sexual at the same time".

And headcanoning her as a lesbian is fine, but like you say it usually just involves a throwaway line to explain why there's no way she'd ever get with either of the male characters in a slash pairing. It can come across as part 'pair the spare', and part 'it needs to explained that she's not sexually attracted to male characters because men and women can't simply be friends'. For all the 'Rey is a lesbian' headcanon stuff I see on Tumblr, the ratio of people creating femslash fic and art with her is tiny. Sure, Star Wars does have some femslash, which is awesome, and the quality of it is top-notch. But a lot of the Rey/lady fics in the AO3 tags are just a barely-there background pairing to Stormpilot.

It is progress from the bashing female characters used to get. But in some ways it's also really insiduous and disturbing that now people desexualise and erase women from fandom but have found a way to do it that makes it seem like they're 'protecting' the female characters and should be applauded.

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 01:22 (UTC) - Expand

I will never forgive both the show and fandom of Doctor Who for doing this with Martha.

Martha? More like blartha.

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-18 23:26 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 01:58 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 02:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 03:19 (UTC) - Expand

Re: goddamit

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-19 04:28 (UTC) - Expand

AYRT

That's awesome that you're exploring less fluffy versions of Poe/Finn. The fandom needs more variety like that.

I think it's luck of the draw over whether your fic will get attacked by these people. Because it's more about their own fandom reputation than actually caring about issues in race, they don't bother to examine and explore issues before posting about them. But they want the cred for being seen to 'fight' racism. So if one person happens to stumble upon a non-fluff Stormpilot fic and decides it's racist for portraying Finn as anything other than an adorable puppy in the shape of a human, they'll post an angry rant about it. And all their followers will reblog that rant, and add their own rantiness to it. And it will spiral and spiral and none of them will have actually read the fic or will actually understand what it is they're claiming is racist. So suddenly there's a whole angry movement against a fic, with everybody riling each other up, and not a single voice of reason.

I mean, I definitely agree it's in the execution a lot of the time. But a big chunk of TFA fandom doesn't care about valid reasons or discussion, it just wants to dogpile and be patted on the back for it. So it becomes about timing and luck, too, and hoping your fic won't get noticed by somebody looking for half-assed SJW points.

Fandom as a whole has such huge issues with racism, and there are genuinely messed up depictions of TFA characters, particularly Finn, that should be addressed. But it's getting drowned out by people yelling at anybody that doesn't ship their ship and calling themselves progressive for it.

Ironically some of the most racist things, particularly in reaction to Finn, are being said/perpetuated by the people yelling the loudest.

Sadly that doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

+1

Come join us racists!

Though I haven't seen that thrown at Rey/Ren shippers, probably because there's so much else being lobbed their way. Or has that calmed down?

I don't follow Rey/Ren stories, so I don't know if they are targeting those authors too. I just know I have been part of fandom for over 10 years and this has been the most PC and annoying fandom I have seen. And I was in the freaking HETALIA fandom.

THAT FANDOM HAD ACTUAL-NOT-SPACE-NAZIS STORIES!

Rey/Ren gets called 'abusive' by fandom. Constantly. I've seen a lot of anti-Reylo posts cross my dash, and every single one uses that word.

They are literally enemies who try to hurt each other, so that's kind of the point of their relationship. And a lot of Rey/Ren shippers seem to be there for the hatesex. Those kind of ships are super common in all fandoms. But for some reason, the buzzword 'abusive' got attached to the ship early on, and people started attacking Rey/Ren shippers, calling them pro-abuse. Which is a gross accusation to level at someone for shipping fictional characters in fictional stories for their non-real life enjoyment. And also seems like a really inappropriate co-opting of actual real-life issues that people have to deal with - two fictional characters who are opposing sides of a black-and-white good-and-evil war and fight with magical shiny space swords is rather different to the kind of abuse real people in real life are dealing with every day.

It's a similar thing to the angry Stormpilot shippers. If somebody doesn't ship Stormpilot, these people can cry racism and get brownie points for being ~such activists~. So if somebody ships Reylo, those same people can cry abuse and get more brownie points.

Yes, people's tastes in erotica can be influenced by real life preferences. In the same way that, yes, that isn't always the case, and sometimes a person just wants to imagine two hot characters getting down for some angry sex. It's been a long time since I've seen such a vicious fandom-wide attack on a ship. It's like vintage anti-Harry/Ginny wank. The fact that the complaints are 'he hurt her' about two characters that are enemies makes it weirder.

Considering that some of the people yelling the loudest either whitewash Poe or stereotype him as a ~over sexual, they should rethink their claims of calling other people racist.