YOU KNOW WHAT I ABSOLUTE DESPISE?

[taranova]

The capitalization is necessary. I am about to curse a lot. Please shelter virginal ears.

I hate PEOPLE THAT ACT LIKE SLASH PAIRINGS ARE AN "INSULT" TO THEIR CHARACTERS. To those people, FUCK YOU. Fuck you very much. I'll write more later. Can't elaborate ATM because I have to be at a Christmas party.

But seriously. FUCK YOU.

[dearheart]

...I only have a problem with slash pairings if the characters in said slash pairings are both clearly straight, 'cause changing their sexuality seems too much like making them OOC to me... *dodges flying bricks*

Um, YEAH. SHIP AND LET SHIP, YOU JERKS. GRRR DEARHEART SMASH!!

...I fail at being intimidating. xD

[taranova]

XD You're very intimidating! Much love here. <3

I suppose the main point of posting was that I've come across way too many "parody" fics and long lists on why FMA slash pairings suck, and I'm absolutely sick of them. I can't go anywhere anymore without finding people dissing on my pairings because they're not "canon" or they "violate" the characters, and I just.

-breathes-

I hate to sound like an overly sensitive fanbrat, but sometimes I wind up getting my feelings hurt over stuff like this. XD Which I shouldn't, but it's like saying, "You MUST not really like FMA if you do this to its characters, and you MUST be a bad person, and you MUST be sexually confused. YAOI IZ GAY LMAO" Idk. S'how I see it.

/climbs off soapbox

[PuzzleChick]

PREACH IT, SISTA. /o/ I TOTALLY FUCKING AGREE.

AND DEARHEART, YOUR DEARHEART!SMASH IS MUCHLY INTIMIDATING.

That is all I have to contribute to this conversation right now. I've been overdosing on Puzzleshipping.

[obsessivealchemist]

I used to hate slash. Now anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with it. There's certain pairings I'm not a fan of -coughEdHeicough- but that doesn't mean they're bad pairings or it's an insult to the character to like them. It just means I don't like them. To each their own.

[bespecledcow]

No offense toward anyone here, but I hate Elricest. Seriously. I don't understand the appeal. I mean, in the first anime it did sorta seem like they had a thing for each other, but what I guess I mean is that I don't get what makes it 'ok'. Once again, I don't want to offend anyone and I don't care if you *do* like it...I just think that it makes no sense because most people would object to incest in real life...so why is it okay for Ed and Al?

*hopes no one is offended*

Ummm, let's see...oh, I second what Dearheart said. I have no problem with canon yaoi at all...I just generally don't like taking straight characters and turning them gay- once again, don't care if you do it, but I don't see the appeal. I've read some wonderfully written RoyEd, but I still don't get it. However, as many have said before me, to each their own!

I guess another reason some of these things bug me is that its kind of become a fad in and of itself, if that makes sense. I mean, its like a guy can't be close friends with a guy anymore without it making them in love. (I sorta have the same issue with some movies or shows with a guy and girl who are best friends and inevitably end up together. I mean, can't friends just *be* friends sometimes?) I don't mean you guys on here, but some of the fans of things like that get nuts (so do canon fans, at that). Truthfully, some of them aren't fans and they just put the people together because its 'hawt'.

Oh, and I also hate the allegations that Winry is abusing Ed, for the following reasons.

1. Izumi. She beat up Ed and Al frequently (and left scratches that stayed, I might add. More on that later.), left them on an island when they were kids, and yet- nothing bad is said about her.
2. Al, Pinako, Hughes, Roy, Armstrong, Riza, Ling, Gracia, Hohenheim, etc would never ever ever EVER stand by and watch if Ed truly was being abused. EVER.
3. The injuries Ed gets from Winry are gone in the next panel. Arakawa is really good about injuries Ed actually gets (ie, that scar on his forehead that kept getting ripped open in the constant fighting). Winry hitting Ed with her wrench is like Al's armor having expressions, or how people suddenly shift into chibi mode...its like a metaphor, almost.
4. Ed would not stand for it either. I get that the guy is full of angst, but he also has a sense of self worth. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to suffer, either. He wants to move forward and find happiness...so if someone was treating him wrongly, he would not stand for it.
5. Lastly, Ed and Al love Winry. This is a fact. People can insist that its not romantic (or that it is, in Al's case) all they want, it does not change the fact that THEY DO LOVE HER. They *know* her. They've known her all their lives. Once again, if she was someone that would abuse another person, they would not love her half as much as they do.

Wow, this turned out a lot longer than I meant.

Once again, hope no one was offended.

[Rainbow-Lord Crowmunculus]

I'm not even going to bother getting into it cos I love you guys and I can get pretty nasty when I get into it, but I will fight to the death the sentiment that making 'em gay makes 'em OOC. The DEATH, I say. (Noncanon =/= OOC, sexuality does not necessarily change your entire personality, fic is about experimenting with possibilities and alternative interpretation, yadda yadda yadda.)

But a really good thing to remember about slash is that a good number of the serious writers ain't straight. You straighties don't need to worry about lack of representation in the media, but the rest of us are for the most part relegated to the roles of plot devices, token minorities, and gross stereotypes. I like to see representation in my writing and let's face it, most fandoms don't have a wealth of canon gay characters. FMA has Garfiel. Out of all the hundreds of characters in FMA, the only one explicitly shown to be NOT STRAIGHT is Garfiel. If yer gonna argue statistics, there's gotta be more than him, the campy minor character gay for comedic effect. Can you blame me for writing my favorite characters in same-sex relationships I often can relate to more?

I hope that explained the appeal a little bit more. Slash is important to me, because it was reading slash by other queer writers that helped me identify myself, realize I wasn't alone, and come to terms with who I am.

(And I'm sorry, I giggled at the implication that slash is a fad, or some sudden new thing - it's been kicking around since Kirk and Spock first bromanced on screen. You only see more of it now because: homosexuality is more socially acceptable; anyone can post anything on the internet instead of relying on exclusive zines that frequently had anti-slash editors; fandom is more mainstream and thus more people participate and more fanwork is produced; slash is no longer this big fandom anathema and people aren't as afraid to try it out.)


SHYEAH. Remember that I think you're all awesome, I just have lots of Opinions. Lots and lots of Opinions. /soapbox hero

[PuzzleChick]

I won't get too much into it mostly because I'm terrified of confrontation and saying anything that would cause any of you to think less of me (even though I know you wouldn't...I'm just feeling insecure today and crave everyone's approval. OTL), but I will add this.

I think slash and how it comes out in any given work is pretty much based on the creator. I think non-canon slash can be written in-character, and at the same time canon slash can be written out-of-character. It's not the characters or what genders they are, it's how the interaction is being written by whatever author. In that regard, I HAVE seen slash (both canon and non-canon) works that truly do insult the characters. I've also seen het (again, canon and non-canon) work that insults the characters. And I've seen both and everything in-between that are glorious tributes to the characters. (I'm speaking of Yugioh here, since I'm not much in the FMA fandom, but I suspect fandoms tend toward similar trends.) And obviously generalizing ANY group is pretty ignorant, so those lists and whatnot that declare that EVERYTHING of a certain genre/style/etc is bad shouldn't be acknowledged anyway.

In the end, in my mind it's not the characters' bits that matter so much as how the writer portrays the people themselves. That's pretty much all I care about. But that's all I care about in original writing and in irl too, so yeah. xD

/the asexual gal's two cents

[bespecledcow]

Much as I love spirited debate, don't want to get into it here either because....*clears throat and stikes an Armstrong pose* I WILL FIGHT WITH TECHNIQUES PASSED DOWN IN MY FAMILY FOR GENERATIONS!!!!!

Guess the final thing I'll say on the yaoi stuff is that I think the reason people see it as OOC is, well...okay, think about it this way, if there was fanfiction with Garfeil portraying him as straight, even when he clearly isn't, you might see it as not only odd, but possibly OOC too. I know sexual orientation isn't about your personality (and oh hell yeah I bet there were a ton of gay people in the FMA world...to be honest I sorta thought Yoki swung that way, and that Heinkel and Darius might've had a thing going on. And I could easily see Ling having bisexual tendencies.) but who you love is reflective of your personality in a sense. For example, the main reason I find that Ed/Envy does not work is because they hate each other, and stand on completely opposite sides of things morally. Or Ed/Hohenheim would be seen as OOC because Hohopapa clearly loved- still loves- Trisha. So I suppose that people find non canon yaoi OOC because it takes some part of the character's basic nature, and changes it. This is one reason I have a problem with half the AUs out there. The ones set in Titanic or something. Basically, you're taking characters with set traits and putting them in situations where they act differently than they would in canon, sometimes to the extreme (IE, Ed acting like a gentleman, or Al being a cold blooded assasin.) and suddenly, though they look the same and even say some of the same things, they aren't the original characters at all any more. Well written yaoi doesn't take it to that extreme, but I hope you catch my meaning. Just trying to explain the other side of it, you know?

Um, yeah. WOOOO FREE SHIPPING, YEAH!!! POWER TO THE SHIPS!!!!!

To hopefully get off of this before I accidentally hurt someone's feelings (that's the downside to typing things- emotion isn't always easy to determine) I hate when people talk in text speak. Like when girls literally say 'OMG', 'LOL', 'ROFL', etc. Can't stand it. My sister used to do it all the time, but thankfully she grew out of it.

Other things I cannot stand:

Homophobia, or phobia toward people of other orientations. Never ever have I understood this. It fills me with such a boiling rage when people act so fearfully and hatefully toward gays, people who are bi or asexual, transgender, ect. You know what they say, live and let live!
The Simpsons. No offense toward those who like it, I just don't.
People who judge/hate anime or video games without actually trying them.
Abstinence only education. Let me put it simply: in my high school, there are around four hundred students. Do you want to know how many pregnancies we've had this year so far? SEVEN.
Most rap music.
Austin Powers
Barbies (except the Toy Story ones)
The idea that being Muslim makes you a terrorist.

There's much more I'm sure, but I gotta go eat my ravioli!

Haha, now the next poster is going to say 'I hate ravioli'.

[Rainbow-Lord Crowmunculus]

^ Though with Garfiel and other canon gay characters, there are legitimate reasons to not write him as straight and those reasons have nothing to do with characterization and everything to do with real-world Unfortunate Implications (erasure, “corrective” therapy, “corrective” rape laws, millennia of oppression and living in hiding, etc.) Truthfully, I could see Garfiel written as just a really campy straight man with some crossdressing tendencies; maybe write him as genderqueer. I mean, of my two best guy friends, the one into opera and theater is straight and the one into violent video games and porn is flamingly gay. It’s certainly a part of who you are, but writing them differently does not necessarily destroy their character.

And yer not straight until proven otherwise. There’s no default orientation. And most of the time you can’t tell, if the person isn’t open about it. I mean, my irl friends STILL think I’m straight! XD And the fact that I swing both ways is a big part of who I am, but I hide it, most of the time. It’s reasonable to say ambiguous characters (such as anime v1 Ed) behave the same. Some of us are so deep in the closet WE don’t even know it!

If queer writers waited for complex, interesting, relatable OUT gay characters in mainstream fandom to write slash for, instead of relying on subtext and interesting same-sex character interaction with preexisting straight/ambiguous characters, we’d be waiting a long time. At least until queer fiction goes mainstream, and given the state of the world? At this rate, it’s gonna be a while.

But Ed/Envy wouldn’t work smoothly even if Envy was a chick because it’s not their genders, it’s their personalities and backgrounds, like you said. When I pair characters, gender identity is a secondary concern – I’m interested in their interactions. I ship for character dynamics. HeiEd is CrowTP because even in just one Movie there’s loads of potential for drama and intrigue and all that good stuff. They have excellent interactions. For lots of RoyEd shippers, the appeal is in the intrinsic power difference, the way they bounce banter off one another, and the way they pretend to not care about each other even though they really do. The appeal is that yeah, it’s NOT a perfect relationship setup, but it’s an interesting one because it’s so fucked up, and with many different angles to play off of.

(This might be a reflection of how I am in real life: if I Like someone, I fall in love with them first, then their looks; gender is secondary. That’s usually how I write anime v1 Ed, also in part because I identify very strongly with his character, but mostly because it makes sense for my interpretation of him.)

But sometimes, slash really is simply wish-fulfillment. I admit I’m supremely skeeved out by straight fans who don’t give a fuck in real life but objectify and fetishize (often stereotypical) sexuality in fandom, BUT. For people like me, who aren’t straight, and who live in a world that pretty much ignores our existence if we’re lucky and fucks us sideways with a chainsaw if we’re not? Sometimes we need wish-fulfillment. Sometimes it’s nice to write about a world where there are no consequences to being gay. It’s not realistic, but it’s sure as hell cathartic. I lived in California when Prop 8 passed and I coped by reading and writing mass amounts of fluffy inconsequential gay. I’d like that, if real life could be like that, if you didn’t have to justify not being straight. But real life isn’t like that and it won’t be in my lifetime, so as I wait for things to get better, I have fiction. Even though I slash for character dynamics, I get the added bonus of feeling a little bit safer and more normal being queer in the world, even if it’s just pretend, even if it’s only for a little while.

What really stings for me is that so many of the militant anti-slash folk are perfectly ready to write the characters as dragons or pirates or actors or princesses and princes or cops or rock stars or any other defining role they are not in canon (and these are all real examples) but stick ‘em in a relationship with someone of the same gender and suddenly it’s heresy. You, though, just don’t like AU in general, so your stance on the matter is much more understandable, and I have to say I sincerely appreciate it (and I really do! Seriously, thanks for not falling into their gross double standards. It shows that you actually put THOUGHT into your actions, and base your ideals off of personal taste and logic and NOT latent homophobic tendencies.)

The appeal of AU for me, and many others, is the chance to explore aspects of characters and mythology not explored in the series. That’s the point of fic, I mean, but in AU you get to REALLY shake things up. They’re the same characters, but by changing pieces of their setting or backstory, they develop differently. Take Ed’s characterization in the anime and in the manga – in both cases, he’s still definitely Edward Elric, but due to their different circumstances they grow up into notably different (but still notably alike) people. AU is about exploring what could have been. In a good AU, no matter how much you mess with the world and the characters, no matter how much personality changes as a result of different circumstances, the characters should still be recognizable as their original selves. The link is on another computer so I’ll rec it later, but there’s this AMAZING manga AU that makes one small change to the canon storyline and everything changes because of it. It’s a rewrite of the series operating under this small change and it’s fascinating how different everything turns out. In the fic, Ed is a psychotic vigilante hero/serial killer, but he’s still Ed, if that one thing in Ed’s past turned out differently. That’s what I love about AU.

Also, Trisha’s Boys is a fan-fucking-tastic AU piece that changes an intrinsic identifying trait of the Elric boys and yes, changes everything. They’re still Ed and Al but their dynamics with the rest of the world are completely different. The question this AU answers is: what if Trisha had been Ishballan? This is what AU should be like. (It’s a short piece, could be read in about five-ten minutes, so DO EET.)

If any of this feels rehearsed, that’s because I’ve been in the thick of this sorta conversation so many times I could argue it in my sleep. I blame the Danny Phantom fandom :B

Also ravioli is fucking awesome and anyone who disagrees can take it to the gladiator death pits over yonder. I had them installed the other week, what do you guys think?

/soapbox hero continued. I seriously wanna see this as a video game someday.

[bespecledcow]

^ You know, I've actually read that fic before, and its one of the only AUs I actually like. Its very well written. To be honest, I used to really like AUs when I first got into fanfiction, but the liking had pretty much died by the time I got into FMA. I don't mind AUs like 'what if Ed had ended up in the armor', and so on, because they seem more in the realm of possibility, whereas 'Fearsome and dashing Edward Elric sails the High seas' is not. At all.

And I'm so glad I didn't offend anyone! Like I said, typing can really lead to misunderstandings, and actually your post helped to clear things up for me. Mostly, as I hope was conveyed in my own post, I just didn't *get* it, you know? But that actually helps a lot, so its good to gain perspective. ^_^

And yes, ravioli is the shit.

Hmmm....something else I despise....oh! The whole Ed rape!fic thing. I get that in some fanfictions it works out well, but when it gets to the point where there is an entire C2 on ff.net dedicated to Ed being raped...(the text describing the community says something like 'for those who love raping Ed' or something).

Oh, and EdEnvy, but that was probably obvious from my previous post.

[taranova]

^ Eheh..eheh...slightly guilty of the rape!fic thing. An entire C2 is ridiculous though. What the hell?

[PuzzleChick]

Ravioli is fucking amazing. <3

My brain is dead so I'll just say I agree with Crow's last post rather than reiterate it. xD Also, I intend to become a writer partly (specifically) so that I can expand and hopefully help the GLBTA genre grow and evolve into something that's less a niche and more a mainstream genre. And maybe jumpstart the idea of asexual lit. (Seriously, it's hard enough to find good non-heteronormative lit of the sexual romance variety, but it's damn near impossible to find asexual-romance books.) ALSO. CROW. YOU MUST READ THE NIGHTRUNNER BOOKS. YOU WILL LOVE THEM. I SHALL WRITE YOU A THESIS ON WHY LATER.)

Anyway, as LittleKuriboh said recently, hopefully someday society will look back on homophobia as something ridiculous. Like witch-hunting. (Not of the Good Omens variety, anyway.)

[bespecledcow]

This is sorta off topic, but the first time I ever read well written homosexual couples, was in the book 'The Ruins of Ambrai' by Melanie Rawn. While the couple isn't the main focus of the book, the couple is still written excellently (though its sad too), so I would totally reccomend the book to you guys.

To get back *on* topic, I hate it when girls name their little yappy purse dogs things like 'poopsy'.

[obsessivealchemist]

Can we just make this a vent thread?

You know what I absolutely hate? Bigotry. Of all forms. I rant on my facebook about it all the time but it angers me so much. What the hell makes certain types acceptable but others horrible? You're nothing but a hypocrite. /rant -foaming at the mouth-