Countdown to wank in 5...4...3...2...

[apple_pathways]

The first entry for originalfic_las was due today, and I used my first skip. I just couldn't come up with anything! I promise, though, I will do better in the future. Promise.

In the meantime, I will be voting in this round, and you should, too! There are many good reasons to do so, not the least of which is all the AWESOME WARNINGS posted with the fic!

My attention was drawn to the warnings by the lovely ladylovelace when she pointed out that one author chose to warn for: "a little language, gays (no slash)." GAYS! The author warned for GAYS! I'll have to lodge a complaint as soon as I finish laughing my ass off.

Here are some examples of the other high quality warnings on offer:

Mild innuendo
body horror
brief mention of drug lab
f/f relationships (if not your cup of tea, apologies)
The word 'shit'
hints at a male/male relationship
implied death
Adultery

I'm sure most of these people are well-meaning and just trying to be safe rather than sorry, but seriously: what word do these people live in that they really think someone is going to be shocked and appalled at "mild innuendo"??? Haven't they ever been--oh, I don't know--on THE INTERNET before? There's a lot more than innuendo out there.

And what is 'body horror'? Is it one of those "if you have to ask, you don't want to know" type of things?

TWO MORE people warned for "teh gayz".

LOL at warning for "the word 'shit'". (But did they warn for the warning???)

We now have to warn for even the MENTION of death?

And adultery? Really?

Ay yi yi!

Comments

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I hope I get flamed.

I'll do my best to get the ball rolling. (-;

I imagine these people to be mostly American with varying degrees of ESL.

I can't entirely disagree with the "mostly American" part of your assessment, just because the demographics of the challenge are bound to swing that way. But I think the ESL evaluation more closely nails it.

I have a feeling that a lot of the writers for this challenge are very, very young, and their worlds are still very small. They can't have had much exposure to fandom or internet culture, or they'd realize that slash relationships are de rigeur, rather than some bold, edgy approach that people need to be prepared for.

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

I make the American judgement purely because the majority of the English-speaking Internet is American, and because this is the confusing part to me because like you say, these people seem very under-exposed to The World, in general. So unless they're all coming from the middle of nowhere, I'm completely lost.

But slash is edgy. Isn't it? Guys? :'(

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

But slash is edgy. Isn't it? Guys? :'(

Aww, it is when you write it, baby! ;-)

You're getting notification in your inbox of my comments, right? Some people aren't and I'm trying to figure out if it's the captcha that's interfering.

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, I am. I got an email for this one, certainly.

LiveJournal is prone to notification freakouts from time to time for no apparent reason.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's definitely happened to me before. I'm just trying to figure out if it's an LJ hiccup, or the fact that I turned on captcha for my comments. I think it's the former. Thanks for your help!

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Poking my head in here, but outside of fandom I'm constantly surprised at how 'edgy' slash still is. My creative writing classes almost always had a That Guy (or That Girl, but usually That Guy) that was writing teh ghey just to be edgy. And people fell for it! Invariably this was the same That Guy/Girl who ranted on and on about clichés and how terrible and vanilla and uninspired everyone else's writing was and it was very hard for me not to point out every terrible slash fanfic cliché they ran aground on (I think the only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to out myself as a fangirl). And then there are the women I work with, and their "Gay, how does it work!?" conversations... I won't even get into those.

Anyway, point being, outside of fandom it appears to be super-easy to be well into or past your 20s and still feel like homosexuality is the sort of shocking thing you need to warn for, so I wouldn't put them all as super-young. I'll admit, though, that I generally operate under the assumption that LJ is all some sort of fandom, so I've found this especially baffling. (-;

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, slash could definitely still be considered edgy out in the wider world. I was speaking about internet culture generally, and online fandom more specifically. The moderator of this challenge runs an empire of similar comms, all of them fandom based except for this one. (I also follow, though don't participate in, the whoverse_las comm.)

I had just assumed that most people found their way to this challenge through fandom-related channels, as I did. I could be wrong, though, and maybe that's the problem! It would certainly explain a lot, because no one who has been exposed to fandom culture for longer than five minutes can have any illusions about the ubiquity of slash! (One would hope--I have seen fanfic authors warn for gay relationships, and in those cases, they were very young and new to fic-writing.)

I could just imagine my mother coming across fanfic and being shocked at how much of it is slash-focused! (And I always love the conversations that crop whenever I have to explain to my RL friends what 'slash' is! They just can't believe how popular it is.)