Fanboys (or: There's more to Black Canary than fishnet stockings)

This next disturbing trend is so pervasive that it would be unfair to single out any one person. But, hate as I do to separate on gender lines, it seems to be concentrated on the male side of fandom. So, we'll start there.

Obviously, half of any good comic book is the art. Good art can redeem shitty storytelling for some people, and good plotting can do the same for bad art, but when you get good art and good story together, it's... well, it's nice. There's no bad story to distract you from the art, there's no bad art to detract from the story. It's the best of both worlds.
What makes good art? One of the biggest parts, to me at least, is differentiating between characters. It's not as easy as it sounds. Both Hawkeye and Captain America, for instance, are blond, blue-eyed, tall, muscular men. So if they're in the same scene and out of costume, a good artist will be able to draw them both differently so that the reader can tell them apart. I'm sure you can think of any number of actors who share physical characters but you wouldn't confuse them -- Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire, Michael Shanks and Ben Browder, Jason Dohring and Teddy Dunn -- but you're able to tell them apart.

Now, costumes do make it easier, which is why the cinematic trick of putting everyone in plain clothes doesn't work in comics. All those bright primary colors let us tell the supers apart. But there's still a lot of artists who just paste different hair onto the same body they draw over and over and over again.

Mind-control stories are kind of like that to me (see, I was going somewhere with that). The premise is always the same. A fetishized superheroine like Wonder Woman or Black Canary is minding her own business when a villain -- sometimes a Marty Stu of the author, which is disturbing on all conceivable levels and some that aren't conceivable -- rapes her. She likes it (or doesn't like it... what made you think her feelings on the subject mattered in Downtown Disturbia?) and a variety of Rule 34 fetishes are indulged before she either escapes or is broken down into a sex slave.

Now, if that's your fancy, fine... I fear for the future of the human race, but fine. But what this story type does is completely reduce a perfectly fine character to a doll the author can hang his neuroses on. Yes, retards, there's more to comic books than the pretty pictures.
Black Canary /= Wonder Woman /= Supergirl /= Lara Croft. They're all vastly different characters and if these fanboys had an ounce of talent or creative energy, they would write a story to explore these differences. But instead they write the same story over and over, just changing out the props (i.e., women) and maybe sometimes figuring out a vexing misspelling. There's no improvement, there's no learning, there's no point. It's the literary equivalent of one of those chocolate-covered cockroaches. Not only is it bad for you, but when you think about it a little while, it's actually pretty disgusting.

Nowhere, NOWHERE, is this more frustrating then when a fanboy figures out that lesbians are hot and tries his hand at femslash. God knows there isn't much femslash out there and as a fan of it, you have no idea how frustrating it is when the portion of the fandom that has the most interest in lesbian porn (yes, male het-boys are more interested in lesbian porn than lesbians. Sad state of affairs, I know) sucks cock at it. And not in the good way. In the bad head way, where he's making all sorts of sucking sounds like he's really into it and you should be enjoying it, but you're just checking your watch until by some miracle of ejaculation he manages to bring you to orgasm. That kinda blowjob.

There’s a list of slash clichés that are usually used at least semi-ironically. If sex pollen shows up in a story, we may groan, but we’ll accept it as a genre convention. Huddling together for warmth, going undercover as prostitutes, aliens who for some reason happen to want two people with UST to have sex… they’re all hokey, yet valid, storytelling tools.

But as clichéd and hokey as they are, they would be a QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD for most fanboys. Anything to replace the constant stream of rape and weird perversions. I know, look who’s talking, but milking? Baldness? Pregnancy -- not “Aww, they love each other and they have a kid.” The other kind. Pick a normal kink.

It goes like this.

1. There’s far too little femslash.

2. Men like to write femslash.

3. Men can’t write femslash well.

Okay, that’s a bit disingenuous. It’s not like men can’t write femslash well. It’s just that the vast majority of them don’t bother. This is because male fandom, to a disturbing degree, has all the eroticism and sensuality of a ninth-grader that laughs whenever someone says "dong." Except it's more like they get a boner whenever someone throws a bunch of words like "cunt" and "firm" and "ample" and "tits" at the screen. There's no attempt to make the scene sexual because it's two sexy people with sexy personalities to go with their sexy bodies. You might as well be thinking of a donkey and a blow-up doll for all the personality they have (of course, many fanboys do give the audience a donkey because they're so homophobic of male sexuality, but we'll leave that rant for another time). And almost as bad as that is that so many male femslashers just don't know how this shit works.

It’s highly unlikely that any lesbians would volunteer to allow a fanboy to watch them make whoopee and take notes (not that it would stop the troglodytes from asking), but that’s no excuse to not do research. Passion & Perfection is full of stories by either lesbians, women who are fantastically open-minded, or men who have done the research. All that’s required is that you get more information on lesbian lovemaking than Where The Boys Aren’t X: Lesbians In Space. When in doubt, ask! That's why fangirl fics are kicking fanboy fics up and down Literary Merit Street. Fangirls have support, they build communities.

Newsflash! All writers, regardless of talent, require nurturing. Sometimes that's encouragement. Sometimes that's a kick in the ass to stop writing fics where women get raped and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. God knows fangirls can suck at this -- I'm sure we're all aware of fandom_wank and its spectacularly unhelpful contributions to the field of interpersonal communications -- but they at least make an attempt. I can rant about sucky authors for eternity, but if people don't start giving feedback, it doesn't mean a thing. A single thoughtful comment can mean more to a fanboy than pie, and fanboys love their pie. If you want better stories, stop creating an environment that pats people on the back for writing shit and create one where authors are congratulated for writing good stuff. Hell, be Harrison Bergeron about it and encourage them for just trying. But don't just be a mindless consumer, regurgitating faint praise now and then but never examining your readings critically. You're better than that. You owe more to yourself and to your fandom than THAT.

I'm gonna stop before this turns into a rant about lousy feedbackers, but I hope I got my point across. Next time, I've got a bone to pick with a trend I've seen in both male and female fandom, and then maybe I'll roast some deserving bastiches. Later.