ineptshieldmaid replied to your post “msilverstar replied to your post “thatgirlonstage: ...”
BIG MOOD. But also you're right about m/f fic being weird like that! The BEST m/f fic is like 'this dude here he is REALLY INTO PUSSY, PREFERABLY WITH HIS FACE', but sadly, it is a rare subgenre.
Yes!
Yes. OK, so my feelings, as a bi woman who writes a spectrum of kinds of fic, looking at the comments I get on said fic, I definitely feel like there are two major categories of people who read m/f fic. And one of them, is the category I’m in, where I read m/f fic because I am into m and I am into f and I am definitely into what they can do together. Bingo: m/f is on the menu. (As is, for the record, other-slash-no genders too, it’s just those are the categories the archive uses, so.)
There is another major category, though, and that is people who read m/f fic who are into m and into the relationships m have with f, but they are super not into f! and that is! that is where they lose me! (and this is probably not a hard category divide, and maybe is more of a spectrum, so to anyone reading this who isn’t sure where they fall that is okay, there are probably also many other subcategories I’m not describing too but anyway this other category is the one that sometimes leaves me Uncomfortable Feedback so like, that’s why I’m talking about it.)
And I’m not saying it’s a bad viewpoint or whatever, it’s just totally foreign to me and I don’t super understand it. I sort of vaguely assume they’re largely straight women, but I don’t actually know that and was sort of being flippant in my previous post when I used that terminology-- I don’t understand them, I don’t know their perspective, I don’t really know what’s up and I don’t really mean to judge, except when they say things to me, the writer, that come across as sort of gross, and in that case I do get sort of grossed-out, but that’s not to say they’re necessarily bad people, just, I don’t like their takes. Anyway!
And so those readers would really rather I mostly talked about the m and didn’t actually dwell so much on the f. I guess? I think? I don’t know, I don’t really understand.
But you are correct, the number one marker for me that a fic is going to be Quality M/F is if the M is like Please Sit On My Face, regardless of the quality or quantity of the actual face-sitting-- it’s just a telltale, like, hallmark of quality. I like a (fictional, for the purposes of this post, is what I’m discussing, to be clear, lol) dude who’s really into pussy, where it’s a deliberately affirmative thing, and not just-- he’s a boy and she’s a girl and what more can i say trite formulaic nonsense. And not to be gender essentialist at all, but that’s the thing here-- it’s whatever the genitals are of the character who is NOT a man, for this specific thing, which is in most cases at least nominally a pussy of some kind. I don’t actually care about the details, I care that it’s Not Male Genitals.
(There’s not a cut-and-dried converse Hallmark Of Badness but anything where, like, her objections have to be overmastered in some way, is a pretty good I’m Not Going To Like This One red flag. (It’s not consent play! That can be good! I am incredibly super into that stuff in general, even horrible non-con-fantasy stuff even in the right fic, so it’s not like i’m saying it’s got to be Pure and Right smut; I love trashy stuff when it’s unabashedly trashy! But it’s the oldschool romance novel negging kind of Man Knows Best shit that’s bad bad bad I Will Not Like This news. Her mouth says no but her body says BACK BUTTON THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.))
