So I never went through the full transformation-of-fannishness-orientation -- does anyone, I wonder, in either direction?
Not that I have any empirical data (then again, who needs data to posit fannish theories? *g*), but I have a hard time to imagine that such preference transformations from het to slash or vice versa are permanent across a succession of fandoms. I mean, there are people who only like slash or only like het (and probably some who just prefer gen as well), but I think most people who are open to liking both kinds of fanfic will keep reading both, if to different degrees, just like people who go from completely mono-fannish to multiple fandoms, rarely go back to being *strictly* mono-fannish. Even if they may have a main major fandom as a focus again, usually people then still seem to be open to read in different and/or former fandoms under certain circumstances, like if a favorite author wrote something. I've seen in TS that sometimes people went from liking gen to liking gen and slash to reading just slash, and finally felt that gen didn't quite work for them anymore, but that was more that they were new to slash and really looking for things in gen, like certain h/c scenarios, that were better met by slash.
Not that some gen TS really seems all that gen if you look at it from a cross-fandom perspective. And I don't just mean that half the time people looking for stories they vaguely remembered (myself included) couldn't recall whether something was gen or slash. I mean, at its most extreme, I have read "gen" (as per the author's label) TS stories in which they showered together and masturbated each other, as well as "gen" TS stories in which they had anal sex in bizarre "bonding" situations. I never really understood why some writers labeled that kind of story "gen", and my first assumption that the authors had some weird reluctance to just call their stuff slash didn't work out, since some of those same writers also posted other stories to their sites in a slash section. Well in some respects TS fandom had truly weird quirks. *shrug*
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 06:33 pm (UTC)Not that I have any empirical data (then again, who needs data to posit fannish theories? *g*), but I have a hard time to imagine that such preference transformations from het to slash or vice versa are permanent across a succession of fandoms. I mean, there are people who only like slash or only like het (and probably some who just prefer gen as well), but I think most people who are open to liking both kinds of fanfic will keep reading both, if to different degrees, just like people who go from completely mono-fannish to multiple fandoms, rarely go back to being *strictly* mono-fannish. Even if they may have a main major fandom as a focus again, usually people then still seem to be open to read in different and/or former fandoms under certain circumstances, like if a favorite author wrote something. I've seen in TS that sometimes people went from liking gen to liking gen and slash to reading just slash, and finally felt that gen didn't quite work for them anymore, but that was more that they were new to slash and really looking for things in gen, like certain h/c scenarios, that were better met by slash.
Not that some gen TS really seems all that gen if you look at it from a cross-fandom perspective. And I don't just mean that half the time people looking for stories they vaguely remembered (myself included) couldn't recall whether something was gen or slash. I mean, at its most extreme, I have read "gen" (as per the author's label) TS stories in which they showered together and masturbated each other, as well as "gen" TS stories in which they had anal sex in bizarre "bonding" situations. I never really understood why some writers labeled that kind of story "gen", and my first assumption that the authors had some weird reluctance to just call their stuff slash didn't work out, since some of those same writers also posted other stories to their sites in a slash section. Well in some respects TS fandom had truly weird quirks. *shrug*