Slash tolerance reality check

[emmuzka]

ethrosdemon lured me to check really bad mostly bandom-related tattoos on fbr_trash. If you have ever considered tattooing your favorite song lyrics on your person? Think twice.

Anyway. As I don't usually read fbr_trash (because of its snake pit tendencies), I scrolled back to see what was in there. A good thing in a way, since I got a wake up call on the "outside" people's attitude against slash. I seem to forget that the slash-tolerance is not a generation thing. Being a fan (?) of mildly queer-themed bands doesn't actually make anyone tolerable. There are actually very internet-savvy, young, fandom-oriented people who think that people who write slash are disgusting/hurtful on their actions/sick. As I live in a freedom-of-speech-happy-land Finland and freely discuss slash in restaurants with my friends, I tend to forget this. So, thanks for the reality check.

Comments

[nana-rena.livejournal.com]

As far as I read the people were upset by the idea of Little Miss Sunshine slash and thought it was about the little girl of maybe nine years old who was in the film. Also Cars movie slah creeoed them out. I am not sure if most of the community were against slahs in general but incest or pedophilia usually creep people out and for a reason, no matter how fictional it is. Someone also said that they didn't understand fanfiction because it's about real people, well, not all of it is and at least this person did not know what they were talking about.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

Those comments really show that if you like, preterminatedly don't like something and refuse to know more, you'll never learn what it's about.

Little Miss Sunshine slash would definitely not be about the little girl. Anyone reading slash would know that it would be probably between the adult male characters, since 90% of slash is male-male and 98% is adult-adult. (numbers taken out of thin air) So being creeped out altogether on slash because Incest! Pedofilia! is like condemning all the movies of the world because of child porn.

The comment about fanfiction being about real people is understandable in a light that the comment was in a band fan community, but it just shows again how people condemn things without knowing them at all. I'm not saying that people would somehow spontaneously change their opinions if they would just be educated on the issue, but just that it would be decent to know a bit of the issue one has really strong opinions of.

[nana-rena.livejournal.com]

[...]"Anyone reading slash would know" [...] is something that doesn't work there because obviously most of the commenters do not read or know anything about slash. I checked out the lms community they linked and most of the fics did have the classification of incest and despite the fact that it did not involve the little girl. To someone who knows nothing of fanfiction the word incest is an instant turnoff. That word probably will make them nor want to know more. They might assume that all slash is like that. Also I think that from the attitude of some of the users, people who know and like slahs will probably not want to talk about it there and with them, because they will be flamed and called perverts.

But all in all the world is full of stupid people who will never read or find out something for themselves because of prejudices, no matter what the subject matter is. I am not defending these people but everybody is indeed free to like or not like whatever they please. If somebody chooses to be ignorant I can't really fauult them for it, because in the end it is their choice.

[lumiyu.livejournal.com]

Reading those comments almost killed my brain. It was like lolcats on speed typing :/.

Mostly people don't have a clue what slash is, and are just being prejudiced. Nothing new there :).

Bandslash is another thing still, even people who are into slash can be creeped out by it. And I don't know, maybe there's a point to it. I've read bandslash, but it's a guilty pleasure.

The way I see it though (entirely -my- view, not saying this is how it is), is that bandslash is less about the actual real people, than the media/fan created images of them. We get the iconic Gerard Way or Patrick Stump, and the real persons actions and pictures are seen through the iconic filters, and sometimes those are ignored completely. In some stories the only connecting piece is that the person in the story has the same name as the bandmember, and we are assuming they look the same (descriptions are sorely lacking in fanfic). I'm happily reading a story of two guys I know nothing about, but because the story is well-written, I read it. It just as easily could be fictional characters.

But I still think of the real people somewhere out there, and what do they think of all this :/

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

We share generally the same view. It's about characters. also, about the real live characters living removed enough. I would absolutely love to go to a Fall Out Boy concert, but I would be probably really creeped out to actually meet them. I would probably keep a two week carence time from reading any fic two weeks prior and after, or something ;)

No guilty pleasure for me from reading bandslash, since I come from the long tradition of reading boybandslash :)

[lumiyu.livejournal.com]

Also, I think I prefer the bandslash-version of the boys to the real ones to read about. The sort of escapist romance / angst fantasy without the murkiness and confusion of real life :)

Of course it would be cool to meet them, but not from the bandom-fan point of view. That'd be too strange. But you know, musicians and artists, that could be fun.