Main Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls Discussion

LGuardinal

topic

10:05:13 AM Aug 6th 2010
edited by LGuardinal

Hey, I don't want to open up a new can of drama, but would there be many complaints if this was changed to Most Fanfic Is Romance?

I'm probably coming off as some PC jerkoff, but the title just really gets under my skin. Yes, it's true, but it still smacks of unnecessary sexism.

RawPower

08:13:43 AM Oct 2nd 2010

It's not sexist if it is factual.

appointmentwithdensity

05:34:50 PM Oct 6th 2010

"Most Fanfic Writers Are Women" or "Female" would be a good compromise, though. I've known fanfic/slash in their forties and fifties who would be surprised to learn they were "girls," and it would be a better contrast to its brother trope, "Most [TV] Writers Are Male."

Pteryx

04:06:33 PM Oct 21st 2010
edited by Pteryx

I'm quite sure it's "Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls" in order to imply not just gender, but age or at least level of maturity — you know, the real meaning of "girl". Personally, I'd find "Most Fanfic Writers Are Women" more offensive, as it would suggest that women never outgrow such things. — Pteryx

05:29:42 PM Mar 2nd 2011
edited by FreeRadical

Well fine, keep the title if you must, but it still leaves a bad taste with me. I'm a girl, and I write fanfiction, but so far none only one of them have been about romance. (Even then, the romance scene was a major source of Squick for me to write). In fact, I'm barely even interested in romance fics. Sure, I'm a "girl," but I also admit that my lack of maturity doesn't result in a crapload of lemons and yaoi fanfiction!

Galaxyspinner

02:38:18 PM May 14th 2011

As it stands it's an interesting sociological observation, one which, when compared to "Most Writers are Male", leads us to ask questions as to why these dynamics exist. All of this is lost if we pretend that the thesis is not true. If merely pointing it out makes you ashamed (it's not like the title is "Most Fanfiction Writers are Pathetic, Horny Schoolgirls with No Skill, and You're One of Them" or anything) then maybe the healthiest thing you can do is giving up fanfiction.

pittsburghmuggle

03:40:38 PM Jul 27th 2011
edited by pittsburghmuggle

I'm noticing a huge number of female writers across the board - io9.com while being a sci-fi website has very few male writers, Universe Today a space exploration blog is run by a woman. (nothing wrong with that, they are just assumed to be male-dominated fields) I'm noticing far more female names on articles in the newspaper and on news websites than male.

I don't think women are better or worse writers than men, but I'm starting to get the feeling that in general more women enjoy the process of writing than men.

gfrequency

05:59:26 AM Aug 28th 2011

The page also comes across as a bit snide, embittered and sexist. In both directions at once, somehow. Vast, cynical over-generalizations left and right. Stuff like this just leaves a bad impression:

"Other side effects include a proliferation of Mary Sues compared with Marty Stus and the heavy favoritism of guy/guy Slash Fic and Boys' Love Genre stories over girl/girl, Yuri Genre, and sometimes het (Unless of course, the series has a predominantly female cast, at which point the Yuri Fanboys will probably take over, in which case expect either background lesbians behind the fighting or smut more than romance)."

Considering that even most yuri fanfiction is written by girls (and fanfiction written by girls isn't exactly smut-free), shouldn't this be changed or just taken out completely? What exactly does "background lesbians behind the fighting" even mean, anyway?

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RawPower

topic

08:14:46 AM Oct 2nd 2010

So we do away with all the Real Life examples? It makes sense, but this is a Real Life trope that sometimes gets reflected in fiction, when authros are very self-aware.

Ghilz

04:06:50 PM Oct 2nd 2010

It's not just the real life section (seriously, why do people only pick up on this one ????) We removed the original example section because 99% of the 40 or so examples had nothing to do with the trope - most entry only listed preferred shipping. That showed the trope how? It was decided in the trope repair shop to limit this to in-universe examples.

artman40

07:47:19 AM Dec 2nd 2010

But why also parodies and deconstructions? That doesn't make sense.

FreeRadical

05:43:29 PM Apr 6th 2011

Raw Power: Because this happens a lot, so to list all the examples would be close to impossible. Maybe if there was a listing for aversions to this trope, if only to prove that Gen Fics really do exist, but that's just a suggestion.

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Tedofg

topic

07:03:48 PM Jul 24th 2011

Who said most FF writers are gals?

Stoogebie

11:33:51 AM Aug 23rd 2011

The Internet.

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Stoogebie

topic

07:04:04 PM Sep 23rd 2011
edited by Stoogebie

I found this quote on Fanfiction.Net, and it sounds like a subversion of this trope:

"...not all fanfic out there is badly-written Harry Potter yaoi written by horny teenage girls. Some of it is well-written stories with an actual plot and characters who stay in character, written by horny teenage girls."

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FlashGaze

topic

10:19:19 PM Dec 19th 2011
edited by FlashGaze

Is it just me, or does TV Tropes treat it as if all fanfiction writers are female? This is honestly the vibe I'm getting.

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IsaacSapphire

topic

08:57:40 PM Jan 25th 2012

"most written porn is female-oriented" does not match my experience with many many (United States) bookstores' erotica sections, much to my disappointment. Unless you're including some amount of romance as porn... and then where do you put the line, because not all romance even has implied sex scenes, forget on-screen ones.

However, I would say "most female-oriented porn is written." I suspect that this has more to do with the lower cost of entry to produce and more ready distribution channels compared to visual porn. Plus social norms of course.

As for the gender of fanfiction writers, best I can tell it depends on the intellectual property. The Devil May Cry fan-authors on fanfiction.net seem to be about half and half (other M-for-Manly games seem even more testosterone heavy), popular gen anime series like Naruto or Pokemon seem if anything a little more likely to have guys. Obviously, there aren't many male fan-authors for Twilight or CW series.

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