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Cultural exchange with a gamer.
Dec. 27th, 2010 02:42 amS. is a gamer. Which means that:
a) his computer system here is powerful enough to run NASA,
b) I hate his twitchy gamer mouse (I mean, it looks slick, but...) and
c) he knows just enough about fandom to be wary of us.
And he has a few misconceptions. This is cool because most people don't know anything at all. He and I have already had the "no, fanfiction is not by definition bad writing" conversation, along with the "yes, there's lots of bad writing but that's because anything can be published online, and trust me, I've seen publishers' slush pile, so that's why there are rec lists" conversation. Apparently in the manga end of his community, fanfiction is for people who can't draw.
This weekend he showed me some of the more cinematic scenes of World of Warcraft (amazing) and I hovered while he played around on DeathSpank, Plants Vs. Zombies, and a few rather funny games. I dug WoW and Plants Vs. Zombies (what? Who wouldn't root for plants?).
The cultural exchange continued this evening after he commented that slash was a "tiny subset" of fanfiction.
"Er, well, slash is a pretty big segment of fandom, not a tiny subset," I said.
"Well, it used to be very small. Slash is bigger now. That's why most people wonder 'Why is fanfiction all porn?'" S. said.
I finally caught on that his gamer community has the slash-equals-porn belief. Riiiiight, I've heard of this in fandom posts.
Cue soapbox:
"Well, I've written five novels and about a hundred and twenty-five stories, mostly slash. While about a third of my stories have explicit content, only two of my stories are porn. By which I mean you can pull the character names out and it wouldn't matter, because the story would be the same, it's all sex," I explained.
"Partially that's because I don't get many reviews for porn. I get hits. But I don't write for hit counts, I write for comments. I want to hear what people think. So I don't write much porn because I don't get what I want.
"I finally got a comment on this one porn story that has a huge hit count--it was someone I knew, so I asked her why. She explained that there's not much you can say about a PWP; 'that was hot' is about it. It's too bad, because I'm good at porn. But we'll all get a lot of responses from a humor story (if it's actually funny) or a romance with a lot of build up that focuses on the relationship, so that's what we tend to write. There might be a pay-off, there might be a really explicit scene, or not, but the majority of slash is about the relationship."
After I'd taken the time to appreciate his world, he really listened this time.
Hmm. The key to cultural exchange is not assume that just because cultures are related they are the same, and tonight I learned that first you have to be willing to appreciate the other culture before there's room to appreciate yours.
a) his computer system here is powerful enough to run NASA,
b) I hate his twitchy gamer mouse (I mean, it looks slick, but...) and
c) he knows just enough about fandom to be wary of us.
And he has a few misconceptions. This is cool because most people don't know anything at all. He and I have already had the "no, fanfiction is not by definition bad writing" conversation, along with the "yes, there's lots of bad writing but that's because anything can be published online, and trust me, I've seen publishers' slush pile, so that's why there are rec lists" conversation. Apparently in the manga end of his community, fanfiction is for people who can't draw.
This weekend he showed me some of the more cinematic scenes of World of Warcraft (amazing) and I hovered while he played around on DeathSpank, Plants Vs. Zombies, and a few rather funny games. I dug WoW and Plants Vs. Zombies (what? Who wouldn't root for plants?).
The cultural exchange continued this evening after he commented that slash was a "tiny subset" of fanfiction.
"Er, well, slash is a pretty big segment of fandom, not a tiny subset," I said.
"Well, it used to be very small. Slash is bigger now. That's why most people wonder 'Why is fanfiction all porn?'" S. said.
I finally caught on that his gamer community has the slash-equals-porn belief. Riiiiight, I've heard of this in fandom posts.
Cue soapbox:
"Well, I've written five novels and about a hundred and twenty-five stories, mostly slash. While about a third of my stories have explicit content, only two of my stories are porn. By which I mean you can pull the character names out and it wouldn't matter, because the story would be the same, it's all sex," I explained.
"Partially that's because I don't get many reviews for porn. I get hits. But I don't write for hit counts, I write for comments. I want to hear what people think. So I don't write much porn because I don't get what I want.
"I finally got a comment on this one porn story that has a huge hit count--it was someone I knew, so I asked her why. She explained that there's not much you can say about a PWP; 'that was hot' is about it. It's too bad, because I'm good at porn. But we'll all get a lot of responses from a humor story (if it's actually funny) or a romance with a lot of build up that focuses on the relationship, so that's what we tend to write. There might be a pay-off, there might be a really explicit scene, or not, but the majority of slash is about the relationship."
After I'd taken the time to appreciate his world, he really listened this time.
Hmm. The key to cultural exchange is not assume that just because cultures are related they are the same, and tonight I learned that first you have to be willing to appreciate the other culture before there's room to appreciate yours.