could you explain more about what you view as the before era and what you view as the after? i need to learn my herstory
I think this requires a more detailed and educated/researched answer than I can give after an exhausting workday and an after-hours work event, but I'm going to do my best and also open up the floor in reblogs for people to chip in their thoughts
foremost: a DISCLAIMER that this post does not aim to shit on writers from the "before" era. there are many classic fics that I love and enjoy, even if I consider their characterizations to be "less accurate"* than the ones we have in the after era.
*aside to say: accuracy is based only off of literal media accounts we have of these men; we do not know them, we should not claim to know them, and they have had different comfort levels with the media knowing selective truths about their lives [sid out of choice, geno out of media xenophobia] than they did when these early fics were being written.
"before" fics (which I tend to refer to as "classic" fics, and had their heyday in 2012-2013 but continued up until 2016ish) tended to have more regimented roles for sid and geno. sid was usually the protagonist; geno was the love interest.
this came with a cascading set of characteristics assigned to each guy. sid was poor-little-meow-meow'd. geno was the pursuer in the relationship. sid usually bottomed. sid had the whole spacetoaster moment (he was the inspiration for the term, haha). there wasn't much a/b/o fic but sid was, like, the omega-fied one and geno was alpha-ized.
something I've been thinking about more recently is how 2012-2013 era sidgeno displayed signs of Migratory Slash Fandom. I don't think of MSF as an inherently negative/condemning thing, but I think it's a phenomenon that deserves to be mentioned/analyzed, yeah?
MSF thrives on big character differences.... like, grumpy/sunshine, sarcastic/broody, genius/empath. it's all about emphasizing disparate archetypes to create natural tension in a story. this works really well in most romance novels! I love it!
the issues arise when people try to make characters fit into these preset dynamics. and, frankly, when sidgeno first got big, we straight-up didn't know as much about sid and geno. I mean that. despite sid being EXTENSIVELY covered by media from age, like, 14, he was really tight-lipped compared to what we have now.
and geno was.... there. I don't mean that as a diss—he was INCREDIBLE, but the media totally passed him over again and again. or they helped contribute to stereotypes of him being a dumb oaf who didn't know english.
aside: ironically I think that helped in creating sidgeno and not, like.... sidflower or sidtanger. geno was so "DIFFERENT" from sid (aka: russian, characterized by media as not knowing how to speak [in comparison to sid's highly curated media soundbites]) that it meant he was the best candidate for A Ship with sid.
a lot of the really big writers who got into sidgeno were fandom veterans with lots of experience in other big fandoms. to me, that means MSF had a hand in all this. and we should be grateful, because it led to the BOOM of hockey fic, and of sidgeno fic specifically. modern hrpf wouldn't exist without it.
that being said, those template ship dynamics, plus the media's attitude then towards sid and geno in its coverage, led to those characterizations of whiny soft sensitive boy sid who needed to be rescued even though he was the best hockey player EVER, and geno as the lumbering tall strong alpha not-that-bright Love Interest Man.
this isn't to say every fic was this way, or that this is BAD. I, uh, love poor-little-meow-meow-ing sid and omegafying the hell out of him. what I'm saying is that it was a near-ubiquitous characterization across the board.
that all changed in 2016-2018. I personally wholly credit sevenfists, though I imagine it's more nuanced than that, but: my blog, I make the rules here. I don't know if sevenfists was psychic or just highly observant and absolutely excellent at reading people (and that's basically the same thing, right?), but characterization shifts began taking place in fic....
and the coolest thing happened, in that those characterizations were seemingly reinforced by more media coverage. the back to back cups brought with them TONS of interviews with and media about the team, and sid and geno in particular. the coolest part of it was that sid had loosened up a LOT and geno had gotten more comfortable (and had gotten a reporter firmly on his side).
the interviews about sid post 2016 were just SO different. so much information started coming out, and a LOT of it conflicted with Ye Olde Characterizations. as it turned out, sid was deeply one of the boys. he was funny. everyone liked him. he loved hosting. he was insanely comfortable around almost everyone, including strangers, because he's a little freak who's kind to everyone. he can make smalltalk like no one's business. he's kind of gross. he likes to giggle and be in on jokes and get into the thick of it. he isn't some blushing virgin bride sold off of mario's doorstep, yeah?
and geno, too, was finally getting the coverage he deserved. and his personality was both fortified by age and better shown to us through media. as it turns out, he isn't some happy go lucky oaf. he's mercurial and intensely aware of what others think of him (and he CARES). he's sensitive and thoughtful but also can lash out at random times. he has a wicked sense of humor that he uses as a defense mechanism and as a surefire way to get people to like him, which matters to him. and, as everyone says, he is SMART.
if you had to boil it down, I'd say that post-2016, it became clear that SID is the confident one and GENO is the insecure one. and fic caught onto that with a miraculously fast pace. also: they're more alike than they are different, but I still think romance inherently feeds off of difference and tension, so we still exaggerate things to make the stories ✨WORK✨.
I'm not going to give examples of pre- and post- era fics, because I don't want to point any fingers and say someone was doing characterization "wrong." that's not the takeaway I want anyone to have here.
fandom attitudes have changed. it's been 10 years since that first wave of fics, and while I don't think that's very long, it's a hell of a long time on the internet, and in a niche internet community. what was once the standard for fics (and what was well-read, and what people gravitated towards) was different. not worse—different.
I think it's fair to say the "after" era of fics is more "accurate" to what we know of sid and geno. it's also fair to say that this is only the case because we have a WEALTH of information, character-revealing interviews and videos and anecdotes, that Ye Old Authors could only dream of getting.
I really love the story of how everything has changed, and it's a fabulous microcosm of fandom evolution and how approaches to fanworks have changed and grown with fandom, and I think it's all so so cool.
#good analysis but i would actually argue it started earlier. 2014/15 even#in 2015 There’s No Place Like Home came out#in 2014 PensTV started fine-tuning their deeply engaging documentary format which most people started really following along with in 2015#plus the extra content via tim horton’s (when no one gave a fuck about nathan mackinnon and it was mostly about sid)#also. in 2015 mcdavid got drafted and pulled a lot of the more uncomfortable media attention from sid which i wonder about loosening sid up#(and of course insert thesis statement here about natemack softening sid’s hard shell media exterior)#but also geno got some interesting airtime and articles written about him in that time and was on socmed more#this all might’ve taken a minute to trickle down into fandom so potentially making the fic cutoff 2016 makes sense#especially with the extra interest gained by the 2016 cup run#but the source material that enabled all this definitely came out earlier (via @crosbyism)
Agreed! While I'm happy to take sole credit for this lol I got into the fandom in late 2016 and started posting fic in early 2017, and there was soooo much content from the 2016 Cup run and the subsequent season. Not to mention stuff like The Russian Penguin documentary. I'm not psychic, I just consumed a lot of content and couldn't abide a spacetoaster. Plus there were plenty of people already in the fandom writing fic with a more nuanced version of Geno that influenced my own take on him -- snickfic and liophael are two who come immediately to mind. (As you can see things are somewhat fuzzy now from the mists of time.)
What's your favorite toursity thing to do in your city/town?
I love the National Parks and wildlife areas. My favorite “touristy” things to do in Massachusetts:
-Walk the Freedom Trail in Boston-Attend arts festivals and craft fairs (StART on the Street is my fav)-Go to the Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium-Find Horseshoe crabs on Monomoy Island-Walk the Provincetown dunes on Cape Cod (and watch “CAPE COD: THE SANDS OF TIME” at the National Seashore Visitors Center)-Higgins Armory, seriously, HIGGINS ARMORY-My hometown con: Anime Boston-Salem, as long as it’s not GODDAMN October (seriously, did you see Paranorman? That was Salem. That was totally Salem)-The Norman Rockwell Museum, shut up, he’s awesome.-THESE frickin’ madmen, who stand on mountains and count birds
There has been a point in most readers’ lives, when we all got dead set on finishing the classics—those books that are referenced throughout time and which often land themselves on high school or college student’s required literature lists. For an American, classics may mean books like Frankenstein, To Kill A Mockingbird, anything from Shakespeare or Moby Dick. Reading these books gives you a glimpse of the societal lens of an era and how language around certain topics has developed over the decades.
It is difficult to whittle the list down, but for you we have collected “classics” of Germany. These books are significant for their time period, their subject matter, and for their influence on future authors. Just like some of the classics in the United States, a few are from foreign authors but were translated and gained popularity in Germany—some of these may even be familiar with!
Die Welle / The Wave
“The Wave” by American writer Todd Strasser is about a history teacher who conducts an experiment in his classroom where he seeks to demonstrate what it’d be like to live in Germany under the Third Reich. He slowly integrates principles and practices of the Nazi regime into class—slogans, rules of conduct, and an organizational structure, and a feeling of identity and community. His experiment was meant to demonstrate how, though it seems easy to assume only evil people would join in the Nazi movement, through slow exposure and manipulation, even normal people can be swept up in destructive political movements.
Im Westen Nichts Neues / All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, published Im Westen Nichts Neues in 1929. His book made a splash for its unromantic portrayal of soldiers’ hardship both during and after their time at war. In 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, Remarque’s book became one of the first books to be publically burnt. It has since sold 2.5 million copies and has been translated into 22 languages.
Tauben im Gras / Pigeons on the Grass
Unique in that the events of the entire book take place in the span of one single day, Tauben im Gras portrays the intensity of living in an occupied Germany. All day, allied planes fly overhead. It’s focus on characters experiences rather than events occurring helps highlight the personal cost to Germans of living in the 1950’s.
Die Leiden des jungen Werther von Goethe / The Sorrows of Young Werther
If you thought you could escape a classics list without Goethe you were wrong. Goethe, like Shakespeare in the States, is a grind you just have to endure as a student. Die Leiden des jungen Werther von Goethe, published in 1774, was one of the most important novels in the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) period of German literature and was rumored to have been written in full in five weeks. The plot revolves around a love triangle between the young Werther, Charlotte and Albert and the tragic mental and physical downfall of Werther.
Die Verwandlung / Metamorphosis
Look familiar? Multi-national novelist and reigning king of magical realism Franz Kafka in 1915 in Leipzig. In the novel, a traveling salesman wakes to find himself transformed into a bug. His works have influenced other great writers and magical realists like the famed Gabriela Marcia Marquez.
Die Räuber / The Robbers
Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller was a jack of all trades—philosopher, poet, playwright, and historian. He was also buddy buddy with an already famous Wolfgang von Goethe. He, too, contributed to the Sturm und Drang literary movement and his drama The Robbers included it’s quintessential emotional language, individualism and symbolism, centering around two brothers pitted against each other.
Die Blechtrommel / The Tin Drum
Part of the Danzig Trilogy, Günter Grass’s book, published in 1959 has been praised as having portrayed the forgotten face of history. They focus on the rise of Nazism and the lasting effects of World War II on areas separated after the war ended.
Der Vorleser / The Reader
A book written by a lawyer and judge doesn’t seem like it’d make the classics list but this 1990’s novel captured the attention of generations of Germans coming to terms with their past. Much of the book deals with the divide between those who were born before and after the atrocities of the second world war. It has been translated into 25 languages and was adapted into a film starring Kate Winslet.
Das Parfüm /Perfume
Those who saw the movie adaptation of this book probably didn’t suspect that it was originally based on a German historical fantasy novel by author Patrick Süskind. This book combines murder and sensuality by following the character Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born with an exceptional sense of smell. He only explores the possibility of taking another life after discovering the wonderful scent of a young girl. Though the plot sounds creepy, this book has been the inspiration for everything from a Russian musical to a music video of Marilyn Manson.
Winnetou and Old Chatterhand
The most stunning part of German writer Karl Friedrich May’s adventure novels of the American Old West are that he, despite writing in first person, had never actually been there, or to the United States in general. He is one of the best-selling German authors of all time, selling 200 million copies of his books worldwide.
Discussing Vested Stock Options The Other Day, Like You Do
copperbadge: I do kind of want to write a fic now where Tony is trying to explain stock options to Clint.
copperbadge: “Take me through it one more time.“ "Clint it’s so simple.“ "Your stock is IMAGINARY.” “All stock is imaginary!”
scifigrl47: “WHY ARE YOU PAYING MONEY FOR IMAGINARY THINGS?”
copperbadge: “People pay ME money for imaginary things!" "You are a con man." "I AM A TITAN OF INDUSTRY!”
scifigrl47: “A conman with a COLLEGE DEGREE.”
copperbadge: “Does Pepper know your company is based on a lie?" "Pepper owns 24% of the lie!"
copperbadge: Meanwhile, Steve is like "THIS! THIS is why half the country was unemployed when I was a child!"
Yeah, but you can’t just dump an idea like “money is also imaginary” on a guy like Clint, that’ll mess him up! You gotta ease into that kind of thing or you’re liable to get yourself a supervillain.
my dad–also a writer–came to visit, and i mentioned that the best thing to come out of the layoff is that i’m writing again. he asked what i was writing about, and i said what i always do: “oh, just fanfic,” which is code for “let’s not look at this too deeply because i’m basically just making action figures kiss in text form” and “this awkward follow-up question is exactly why i don’t call myself a writer in public.”
he said, “you have to stop doing that.”
“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.
but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.”
i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”
as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck.
“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”
I think what I’m really trying to write about is how you take something awful you endured and use it as motivation not to let anyone else have to go through what you and your family went through.
My first fanfic was about dealing with loss of perspective and a crumbling sense of self, depression, and how to accept when life takes you in another direction than what you thought it’d be and finding happiness in unsuspected places. Fun thing is, I realized it was about these things only after i’d finished it. It took me a year writing my existential diary as a “what happens to this anime protag after the show ends” to realize what I did and how it had helped me.
My most recent complete (and easily longest) fanfiction was about rediscovering joy and hope in the midst of a fascist takeover of our government by connecting with others.
Not sure it really applies to my current major project but two themes I keep coming back to over and over are: being trapped in a bad situation and making the best of things, and giving up and coming back from it.
1. Love means never having to say you’re sorry you kidnapped your godson Bonds of love and friendship are strengthened through a mutual purpose of doing what is right, not just what is easy, but doing what is right can require a strong support network to succeed.
2. An angel boning William Shakespeare It is difficult for writers to build strong relationships sometimes because reality is not as easily manipulated as fiction.
3. A church that eats people Steady, systematic kindness and compassion builds a metaphorical edifice that shelters and protects the entire community.
I drew this poster for Jon Acuff and his FINISH book tour. Big thanks to Jon for this collaboration, his book has some great ideas about how to complete creative and life goals.
“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi river in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding: it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
i’ve probably said this before but there is no purer love than enjoying a fanfic writer’s work so much that you start indiscriminately consuming every single thing they write, even in fandoms where you’ve never consumed the source material and in fact have zero interest in consuming the source material but great, now i’ve got all these orphaned feelings about characters i couldn’t pick out of a goddamn lineup
scrolling through ao3 like well shit, you magnificent and terrible wizard, what the fuck are you gonna make me care about next
Aww. I love doing that too, as a reader. I used to be baffled, as a writer, why someone would read for a fandom they’re not in, until it happened to me for the first time :D
shh, she's studying. @jennavsstudies - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
