[the shame! the horror!]

[reenka]

Fandom Shame Meme (or: Things I'd Be Ashamed of If I Had Shame)!

1) I (used to, when I read much fanfic) constantly read (and enjoy) oodles of H/D porn on ff.net & aff.net as well as lj that I never feedbacked and I thought had little to no 'redeeming value', not even with a 'hohoho, how charmingly ironic, I shall now mock silently to myself', but with a high willingness and ability to suspend all critical judgment-- sometimes I literally went through every R-and-over H/D fic I could find linked, in vain hopes it was remotely readable. I really have no practical standards to speak of; it's only when my eyes started bleeding from sheer pain that I stopped. Also, the great majority of my favorite HP fics are pretty OOC and I don't much care.

I've liked cutting fics, goth!Draco fics, Veela!Draco fics, gender-bender fics, poor-little-abused!Draco fics, top and bottom!Draco fics-- you name an H/D cliche, I've probably liked at one point. I am proud that I've never liked a nice!Draco or an abusive-and-evil-omg!Draco fic, never ever never, because mommy THAT'S GROSS.

A list:
- Draco in a skirt or girl!Draco; also usually rentboy!Draco
- almost any fic where Draco resents his lot in life as Harry's boyfriend and sex slave (yet sekritly loves it omg!) is fine by me; it's also fine if he's just a sex-slave and is yet so tragically in love with clueless-yet-sekritly-attached!Harry, aww.
- fics where Snape or Ron or whoever has some tragic unrequited lust for Harry and there is some combination of Invisibility Cloak, Astronomy Tower and naked detentions.
- Snape/Draco/Harry/etc is in lust against his will, pines away, wanks, happy ending.
- Harry getting all violent on Draco's ass; basically, Slytherin!Harry but not-- not!-- evil!Harry
- friendship fic where they learn to slowly get along and Draco is really genuinely cool
- fics where Remus always wanted Sirius (and hell, vice versa). awwww.
- Draco is pretty, oh-so-pretty... pretty and witty and briiiiiight... he's also a total flaming queen, clearly.
- meaningless drunken sex except they wake up and realize OMG I CANNOT LEAVE YOU (maybe there's angst first, though).
- lust/love/binding-potions done remotely well; I AM A SUCKER. there is nothing quite like do-I-love-you-or-is-it-the-DRUGS-I'm-on angst. I also love it when they can't move like, 2 meters away from each other or it huuuuurts, oh it hurts. Er. I might also have a slight telepathy thing.
- I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED YOU, HARRY. (*cringes* but he's in denial...!)
- ...Draco angsts and goes to clubs and is slutty and has piercings; Harry is a sincere sort of bad-boy, disillusioned with the war. Angry sex in back alleys, anyone?
- angsty, Sirius-obsessed Remus. It has to happen, mmkay.
- woobie-yet-headstrong!Harry meets prissy-yet-needy!Draco (...or is that canon??)

...But I still take H/D fic and writing quality way too seriously because (in spite of??) all this.


2) I spent my first year in fandom writing HP meta and fics and stuff without actually reading the HP books 'cause I really really didn't like the first one. On the bright side(?) this was not a secret at the time, either. There was wank, however.

3) I've only actually edited one of the 60+ fics I've written in fandom, though on the bright side I do proofread (...after I post, because I have an itchy trigger-finger). I've had several others betaed for me, but I was too lazy to implement the edits so the fics have never seen the light of day, and one of these is actually one of my best fics, I think. I'm just that lazy.

4) I've often contemplated writing 'sell-out plebefic' on ff.net about Veelas and hot!Draco and what have you just so I can get like, 1,000 comments (oh, would I but could I). I really can't write engagingly/poppishly enough, and I totally angst over that a lot. I wish my writing was more accessible and 'fun' and eh, it wouldn't matter if it was stupid if I was like OMG UBER POPULAR even among teenies. Yes, wild ff.net power-trip fantasy, yes. I constantly sekritly compare myself to others and wind up feeling inadequate just 'cause my fics on ff.net only get like, 2-3 comments unless you count het porn(!).

5) I totally wrote all sorts of pairings I thought were ridiculous or personally distasteful on request to please my audience and prove to myself I could, all part of some sort of need to pretend my fanfic writing was 'serious' and I was really learning something.

6) I've read a goodly amount of H/S porn though it totally conflicted with my OTP and I didn't even find Snape hot, just because the sex was written so well. There's a lot of good porn in H/S-- well, if you can stomach it. The word 'Snarry' needs to be shot repeatedly, however, as do fics where Snape uses fragrant shampoo. Let's get one thing straight: I'm at war with Snape's flowery, sweet-smelling and magically-delicious shampoo.

7) I usually avoid feedbacking fic for pairings other than my OTP just 'cause I'm lazy, even though I was known as Fandom Reviewer Person for a while. It sort of became a burden after a point; also, I often reviewed at length and inventively just to get praised for it and continue the vicious cycle of boot-licking. Though on the bright side, I was sincere.

8) I'm not, in almost all ways, a canon!whore, and I never have been. My huge, wildly proliferating pet peeves are mostly a result of a sekritly bitchy temperament and preference hardened by reading lots of crappily done fic that used certain characterizations or plot-devices so that I started to have knee-jerk biases against them. I think I wound up using 'in-characterness' as a way to justify myself and appeal to some sort of standard. Any standard. Please god, a standard.

9) I love (my favorite) Dracos. Just... not necessarily your Draco, random fandomer. No, your Draco I probably hate way way more than is possibly healthy. However, the types of Dracos I like tend to be contradictory and aren't divisible into 'canon' and 'fanon'-- more like into 'Reena's idea of crappy fanon' and 'Reena's idea of nifty fanon'. So there. Love me, love my contradictions of myself.

10) My sekrit OTP is really Tom/Hagrid. [And I think pointless in-jokes are fun, fun, fun!]

Comments

[triestine.livejournal.com]

I confess to complete hatred of girl!boys and pretty!boys (where boy = any male HP character, really), but this is mostly art criticism, since in reading I tend to overwrite my images over whatever the writer is presenting me with, if our visions of the character don't match. But in illustrations, if the guy looks like a woman (which is I suppose why I'm having a hard time trying to see what everyone else sees in a great deal of manga), my eyes cry for medication.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

It's odd... I like my guys adrogynous but not 'looking like a woman' if it's a visual (i.e., crossdressing). I like more the humiliation-of-Draco aspect than the um, visual aspect, I guess? Though in my mind Draco isn't all that 'manly' to start with, and he'd totally, completely freak out if he turned into a soft little girl, which makes me happy :> In manga I tend to like more guyish-looking guys, 'cause when one of them looks too much like a girl I start forgetting why this is called 'yaoi' again >.<;;

[triestine.livejournal.com]

I like more the humiliation-of-Draco aspect than the um, visual aspect, I guess?

Good point, thanks. I hadn't thought of it like that, possibly because I had the misfortune of stumbling upon works in which crossdressing is its own end.

when one of them looks too much like a girl I start forgetting why this is called 'yaoi' again

Exactly! I may be terribly out of date with everything but I don't find women very exciting; it's boys I'm into slash for, and I can't get into a comic if all I see is girls or straight couples. I love traditional romance as well but for some reason I have yet to fathom, it has to be of a far greater quality than slash to get me fully immersed.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually read many serious cross-dressing fics, ahaha... that is kind of disturbing, 'cause it sort of goes from amusingly humiliating to degrading, I guess? Hmm, I think the appeal comes from the mental dissonance somehow, and yet the thing is a power-play, too.

I think in shoujo/girl's manga the boys look girlish too-- at least in older ones they did. It's a style thing as much as anything, but it's frustrating. Sometimes I almost get worried 'cause it looks like there are issues of malnutrition or stunted growth or something with these boys' bodies o_0

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

Oh, and agreed to all of the above. I find fic or artwork where the guy looks really girly amusing and funny, as long as he's angry about it, but rarely hot. Guys dressed as women that still look like guys? Or complete androgyny? Yeah, that's where my kink is.

And, man, my biggest manga pet peeve is yaoi where the uke (or everyone!) looks like a girl. If I want to read het porn, I will.