![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
noracharlesSo, I'm making my own completely unscientific survey. It's not about the breadth of human sexuality, it's just about fans, fandom and fanworks, with an emphasis on shipping.
Please feel free answer without logging in or signing your name.
I log IP-addresses to deter harassment only. I'm not going to reveal any IP-addresses to anyone, or use them in any way to keep tabs on people unless I feel I am being harassed and stalked. I don't consider flames, insults, critique, opinions I disagree with, and so on harassment; if I feel harassed, I will tell you. No one is getting their IP-address reported to abuse without fair warning to stop their behavior. Feel free to answer while logged in. If you answer the poll without logging in, you can't go back and change or delete your answers.
Please answer all the questions
even if all you have to say is that the question is stupid, irrelevant, intrusive, or badly worded. Feel free to ask the question I should have been asking instead, and answer that.
The poll limits answers to 255 characters, feel free to elaborate in comments.
Answers are viewable to all!
I will attempt to write and post a summary, which will also be viewable to all.
>
Are you equally comfortable and likely to ship m/m, m/f, f/f and poly ships, or do any kinds of ships feel more obvious or more transgressive to you? Do you prefer gen? Does it depend on the characters in canon, or on the atmosphere of the fandom you're involved in?
How do you prefer to be fannish: mainly by following canon, talking with friends about canon, enjoying fanworks, producing fanworks? Are you in fandoms for canons you don't like/don't follow? What kinds of fanworks do you enjoy most, meta, reviews/recaps, crafts, vids, music, drawings, fiction etc?
When you look for fanworks to enjoy, how do you find them/choose?
Does your taste in fanworks overlap with your taste in non-fannish culture?
When you enjoy art with a narrative and/or character exploration, do you empathize or identify with any of the characters? Does a strong characterization help or hinder this? Is understanding the characters and their feelings and motivations necessary for your enjoyment?
Do you prefer explorations of a single character, of friendships, of romance or of sex? Does it depend on the artist, the characters or your mood?
What might make you want to enjoy fanworks with explicit sexual content: the artist, the characters, your mood, the type of sex, the quality of the art, recs, a good build-up, other factors?
When reading fic or a comic (or enjoying another type of fanwork where this question is relevant), what might make you skip explicit sexual content but still continue reading?
What other questions would you have wanted to be in the poll? What would you have answered?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 09:30 am (UTC)Anyway, the first question: I don't think it's that simple. Some ships feel transgressive and some feel obvious, and whether it's a het, gay or poly ship is really irrelevant. It depends very much on the characters. Generally I like ships that feel a little transgressive, but not too transgressive. When I watch or read canon, I like the ships that immediately click for me, but have a bit of difficulties to overcome.
When I read fic, I like to be challenged and see something new, but for example power differential or enemy ships have to be very well-written not to squick me. Very generally speaking, het ships and f/f ships often feel more transgressive to me, because I often feel like the female characters aren't as real to me as the male characters, and because certain traditional het dynamics are very squicky or even triggering to me. There are certain fandoms where the female characters feel very real to me, and I enjoy shippy fic about them, and there are certain authors I trust to write female characters in a way that appeals to me - usually people who also write m/m slash fic.
When I look at vids or drawings, I'm more open to gen, het and f/f. Mostly I just enjoy the pretty, I don't emotionally engage the way I do with fic.
Gen has never felt transgressive to me, I just tend not to seek it out. I think a lot of gen fic doesn't have much of a plot, and that bores me. Also, an emotional pay-off is important to me, and sometimes gen fic doesn't have that.
Second question: I often check out fanworks for canons I don't like/don't follow. If I like the fandom enough, I might familiarize myself with canon. Other times, I love canon, but don't feel the need to explore fandom at all. I like the remixy/transformative aspect of fanworks, and canon knowledge is necessary to enjoy that, but there are many other aspects I also like. Sometimes, there's nothing better than finding recs for novel length fic in fandoms I'm totally unfamiliar with, and reading them as stand-alones. I also like to read recaps and reviews of art I haven't seen/heard. Meta can also often stand alone, and be interesting in itself. I don't understand vids if I haven't seen canon, and often not even then. I'm not at all interested in filk or play lists. Drawings can be pretty to look at even if I don't know the context, but I never seek them out, and tend to ignore them except for a few favorite artists, or to help me decide whether I want to read a long fic they're illustrating.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 11:43 am (UTC)I tend to OTP in my various fandoms, on a writing basis. Reading I may dabble. dS I've done different things as I've interrogated things more.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 12:57 pm (UTC)Good point about interrogating things more. I also have fandoms where I just go with the flow and take the canon pairings as presented, and in those fandoms I generally don't bother seeking out other fans. Or I have fandoms where I'm particularly interested in one pairing, and want more of that. And then there are the fandoms I want to interrogate.
I'm not sure if there's any correlation between which fandoms I love and which fandoms I'm the interested in examining deeply.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 02:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-03 01:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-04 08:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 05:41 pm (UTC)