Wish I had an icon of a character in a wheelchair flipping off fandom

[gryphonsegg]

Remember when I was looking forward to the resurgence of interest in Xavier/Magneto fic that I was sure would follow the release of X-Men: First Class? I was being too optimistic. To provide context for this, I'll state up front that I was in X-Men fandom before the movies. I was there when movieverse fic began to overshadow comics-centered fic. Pre-movie fandom was its own thing, and the fandom based on the first two movies was a different, though sometimes overlapping, thing. By the time the disastrous third movie came out, the comics-centered fic-writing paled in comparison to the movie-centered fic-writing fandom. And most of the movie-centered fic-writing fandom drifted away because of severe disappointment with the third movie. Then the comics themselves went through big changes to the worldbuilding and the treatment of longstanding characters-- changes which lots of pre-movie fans didn't like. There's still an X-Men fandom, but it's not like the pre-movie fandom.

Anyway, both in pre-movie days and during the heyday of the X-Men 1 & 2 movieverse fandom, there was a lot of Xavier/Magneto slash. A lot. Some of it had descriptive sex scenes, and some of it just had sexual implications. I don't remember Professor Xavier's disability ever being an issue in either pre-movie or early movieverse fandom. Some writers incorporated sexual side effects into their fic, others treated it as not having any sexual side effects, and some just faded to black and let people who might wonder about the details imagine whatever they found most plausible. Now that XMFC fandom is up and running, the Xavier/Magneto pairing is popular again, but post-injury fic is now An Issue. Apparently, it's weird and many people don't like it, and at least some of the people who do like it treat this preference as an unusually exotic kink rather than as something that comes with the territory. Either it's WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to think someone who has a spinal cord injury might want to and/or be able to have sex, or it's hot in a "Tee-hee, I'm so naughty!" way because spinal cord injury is kinky. Yesterday I saw some stunningly offensive language being used in reference to post-injury X/M fic. Forget that bullshit. I want my old fandom back.

Comments

[holyschist]

Yeah, I am...not fond of the interpretations of their relationship based on this movie. And I am not fond of what seems to be more disability and Holocaust fail than the last time around. :-/

I almost think Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen being older was sort of protective.

[gryphonsegg]

Apparently, it's also a bit naughty and/or special snowflakey to declare "I shipped them even when they were old." *rolls eyes* I want to tell these people to get the hell off my lawn.

[holyschist]

Wut.

I am not sure I ship them, actively. Huh. I am more interested in the bitter aftermath.

[gryphonsegg]

*sigh* I have shipped them ever since I was old enough to understand the concept, and I probably always will, just . . . in a way that's really out of synch with the new fandom.

[holyschist]

Yeah. :-/

IDK, I'm feeling really out of sync with a lot of fandom. And I guess that was always true, but these days the stuff I am interested in seems to be drowned out a lot more, and don't get me started on how "Kinkshaming is bad!" is being used to make it impossible to criticize seriously sketchy attitudes.

[gryphonsegg]

I'd be more sympathetic to "Kinkshaming is bad!" if the boundaries between kinkfic and other kinds of fic weren't so porous.

[holyschist]

Yeah. I am kind of like..."Using the Holocaust cheaply for your h/c is not a kink. Neither is misogyny. Or racism. Or creepy fetishizing of PWD."

And just because a kink is not intrinsically bad doesn't mean it can't be written in a problematic way.

(We had this conversation, right?)

[gryphonsegg]

Oh, yes, we had this conversation. But it's one of those topics I like to retread because every time I turn around I find another example of someone not getting it.

[lady_ganesh]

This rant might please you, especially since it's one of the few fanficrants entries with many positive comments.

[gryphonsegg]

I does indeed please me, as does the discussion in comments about research being a good thing for creativity in fantasy. Guess what I'm researching for an original fantasy project right now-- horses! Because horses are not, in fact, functionally equivalent to bicycles.

[holyschist]

Have you seen Judith Tarr's ebook on horses for writers? It is totally worth the $5.

[gryphonsegg]

No, I haven't. I might check that out.

[holyschist]

http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Tarr-Writing-Horses

It's a pretty great basic overview of horses: how they work.