I like it when people anticipate my thoughts

[next_to_normal]

I saw a link posted for The Men's Ficathon, and I was all ready to post a rant (using one of my WTF icons naturally, lol) asking why on earth someone would think we needed a men-only ficathon. It's not like men aren't already the overwhelming focus of fic in just about every fandom or anything. :\ But then it turns out other people beat me to it. Good job, other people!

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Ha! I was gonna do the same thing! But I like it when other people let me be lazy. I can't wait to read it!

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Lame, thumbs down, boo. Men are people too, E.

[next_to_normal]

We are so alike, lol.

[next_to_normal]

Men are people with privilege. Boo yourself.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Ah the ol' "privilege card." Ugh.

[next_to_normal]

Am I gonna have to give someone a spanking?

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Lighten up, you.

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It helps if I can tell if you're serious or not. Until then, this is as light as I get.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I suppose it's okay for them to have a ficathon of whatever they want. On the other hand, statistically speaking, I would say that fanfic is male dominated already. I mean, take a look at the Supernatural fandom as an example. It's nearly exclusively male already. Having male-only fic is practically redundant.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Srs Bsns!

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Come on though... the "Supernatural" show is a sausage-fest. Actually, that's part of what makes it not work so well, in my opinion.

Criticizing "Supernatural" fic for being too male oriented is like criticizing "The Man Show" for being too male oriented.

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, I'm all for more fic, but this seems wildly unnecessary. Also, she seemed to have copied the idea from a Women's Ficathon, which was hosted specifically to counteract the gender imbalance in fic, which makes for an extra level of WTF.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Aw c'mon... Male fic writers are about as common as butterflies in the arctic.

I know of what I speak.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Is that the man show from several years ago with girls in bikinis on trampolines in slow motion or the man show currently on that asks such probing questions as which floats better, real boobs or fake?

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So try any fandom ever, except maybe The L Word. (Do they have a fandom? I don't know.)

Slash and het are by far the most common types of fics, and both by definition include male characters. Gen is somewhat less common, and has a 50/50 chance of being about a male. Femslash, the only type that excludes men, is a miniscule section of fandom.

[next_to_normal]

We're not talking about fic writers. We're talking about characters IN fic.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

I think it's the second one...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Then I suppose the question is, is it a ficathon for male writers (which, yeah, are rather rare these days. I don't remember it being that way in the old days of X-Files but maybe I've been in the wrong fandoms in recent years) or is it ficathon for male character-centric fics, which is a slightly different thing as the preponderance of m/m slash is actually female writer generated.

I didn't actually read much about the ficathon, so that's a real question. Which is it?

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

So, you're problem is that WOMEN are writing about MEN?

???

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It's a ficathon for male character-centric fics. It's the very first rule:

Post as many prompts as you like for any male character in any fandom

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's really not much of a choice.

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, it's kinda sad that a female-dominated activity would end up spending so much time focused on men.

My problem is that there are already way more fics written about men than about women. I don't see the need for an exclusive ficathon that excludes women, which only perpetuates the gender imbalance in fandom.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Which brings me back to pointing out that in some fandoms that's redundant.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Sorry that just seems like a very cold and bookish way to look at it. Maybe we write about each other because we are curious about each other. I write about women all the time.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

My initial reaction was much like yours; WTF? From reading the creator's LJ, she didn't have any particular political motive, just "I like men, I want to read fic about men!" Which, fair enough, but like you say isn't there quite a lot of that already out there? Do writers need special encouragement to post it?

Especially since from what I can see of the prompts, they're mostly bog-standard ones with M/F and M/M pairings and single characters , like you'd find just about anywhere... I mean, they could at least have made a Men's Ficathon specifically about, I dunno, deconstructing masculinity or talking about what it's like to be male in a changing world, or something...