SERIOUSLY, fandom?

[cimorene]

Considering the OT3 in Hustle is practically canon ("I love both of you."/"Jealous?" & Not to mention the boyish wrestling), I was a little hopeful for it though I didn't actually expect there to be any Hustle fic at all.

But I underestimated both the range of fandom's interest, and the dedication of fandom to discarding all female characters no matter how awesome or canonically in relationships with the male ones. The Yuletide archive is full of Mickey/Danny (well, all... 6 or 8 of it) and no OT3 at all, while delicious turns up nothing that's not in Yuletide.

Sometimes the [lack of] woman thing makes me hate fandom so much that I want to retreat entirely to lesbian fiction, or chickflicks, or both.

Comments

[perhael]

:(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( I WANT OT3.

[copracat]

Sometimes the [lack of] woman thing makes me hate fandom so much that I want to retreat entirely to lesbian fiction, or chickflicks, or both.

Yes.

Here, I've only just started reading this but I have great hopes for it:
Pastimes & Lifetimes - it's a Gwen/Morgana story from Merlin fandom that answers the question 'What if Hunith sensibly sent Merlin to somewhere not ruled by a sorcericidal king and he never turned up in Camelot?'

[effex]

I say we turn this [draws line around our corner of the internets] into the fannish version of lesbian fiction and/or chickflicks (the... good ones. Lesbian chickflicks exist, right? I pretty sure Saving Face counts). Or at least enforce a 1:1 dude to lady ratio. Using genderbending, if necessary.

[cimorene]

Well, 1:1 won't work with most OT3s, I'm afraid... of course, you could require it in fanfiction. It's depressing to think I'd never get to rec or watch anything if I tried that.

Ok, not never, but considering how much I read, the tiny number that would pass that test is... horrifying.

[cesare]

Sometimes the [lack of] woman thing makes me hate fandom so much that I want to retreat entirely to lesbian fiction, or chickflicks, or both.

But... I mean... there are whole het and gen contingents of fandom, and those feature female characters...? In SGA, there's still a fair amount of John/Elizabeth being written, and Elizabeth was written off the show two years ago.

I know slash fen on the whole have a rage-making habit of shunting female characters aside, denigrating them, drubbing them in favor of the guys. Not disputing that, and it sucks. But fan shippers have a habit of shunting all other characters besides their OTP aside in general. So it seems like on average, the place to look for female characters in fandom is going to be het OTPs and gen.

[cimorene]

I was looking at Yuletide, not some slash shipper community. Yuletide is overall pretty high on gen. It also includes het, which in this case I was looking for. I don't think it's a bad place to look for fiction containing the female regulars from canon at all.

[cesare]

Sure. But you start out saying you're surprised there's any fic for this canon at all, then you found a few stories in Yuletide, except they're apparently all by slash shippers who sideline the female character. I guess I'm suggesting that if the stories you found had all been by het shippers, they probably would have sidelined one of the guys. That just seems to be the way it goes: amateur writers tend to focus on the relationship they care about and ignore the rest. I read some het Big Bang Theory fic recently and it was interesting to me how many people ignore that series' ongoing tease between focal characters Leonard and Penny and instead pair Penny with Leonard's roommate Sheldon, and manage not to include Leonard much or at all.

Anyway, sorry you didn't find what you were looking for.

[thedeadparrot]

Hi. You don't know me, but I'm a big fan of your Star Trek TOS fic, and that's how I wandered into your DW. :)

If you're still looking for Hustle OT3 fic, I wrote a small ficlet for porn battle. You can find it on AO3 or on the porn battle. I don't know if it's the sort of OT3 fic you're looking for, but there it is.

Also, yeah, the way fandom treats women pretty much sucks, but sometimes, I'll read some really fantastic story that takes a underdeveloped, badly-written female character and makes her real far beyond what the canon achieves. That's part of what keeps me coming back to fandom, even when it hurts me.

[cimorene]

Thanks for the link! That was lovely - I just wish there were more of it.

Of course it's true, some of the best female-centric writing I've read has been in fandom; and it's really nice to see something taken back for female characters that's so often denied in the source text, so in that way, fanfiction is oftentimes more satisfying than an equivalent piece of original fiction.