(no subject)

[lotesse]

Ugh. I somehow - don't ask me how - ended up in the Sherlock Holmes section of ff.n, where I found a disturbing quantity of fic marked "bromance." I've never seen that term applied to fanwork before; I earnestly hope to never do so again. Bromance!

Comments

[aiffe]

Eh? I've heard that before. It generally refers to guys who are so close they're practically gay, but not quite--sort of halfway between bros and romance. Like House and Wilson, for example.

Very similar to preslash.

[lotesse]

Right - but I'd only seen it in mainstream writing. I don't remember who said that bromance was slash plus gay panic, but that's it exactly: it's a term that allows people who are afraid of genuine homoeroticism to enjoy the power of its tropes while ultimately denying its impactfulness. You get to have all the fun of the Boys' Club without any of the Scary Queer stuff messing up the fun.

It's not a word that I much like. It's not a word that fandom made, and honestly I prefer our terminology: preslash or smarm or subtext. It bothers me, a little, to see fans picking up what to me reads as deprecatory, anti-queer language.

[aiffe]

Huh, I never viewed it that way. As a mostly-asexual with a lot of asexual friends, I tend to like non-sexual romantic relationships of any orientation, wherever they appear. I never saw it as being afraid to be gay, simply enjoying a non-sexual romance for what it is.

But, you have the right to see it differently and be bothered by it.

[lotesse]

But do you really think that word coined for mainstream magazines to talk "cheekily" about male friendships that read as queer is describing that sort of non-sexual romance, and in that framework?

[aiffe]

*shrug* If it wasn't before, it is now.

Stuff like this makes me squee. I'm not going to stop squeeing because somewhere, somewhen, someone might have used the word and at the same time been uncomfortable with homoromanticism.

I would be genuinely surprised if fen meant it in an anti-queer way.

[lotesse]

It makes me squee too :) And I agree with you that fans likely don't mean harm by it - it just strikes me as a rather worrying incidence of lexical drift.

[laughingrat]

That word needs to die a swift and terrible death.

[lotesse]

INORITE?

[elspethdixon]

Holmes fandom on ff.net pre-movie had a disturbing level of anti-slash and anti-gay sentiment in it, and a disturbing number of people who, while not overtly homopobic themselves, were willing to co-write with and write gift fic for and favorites-list fans who were. So while the new movie has probably brought in a bunch of new people... Yeah, I'm not surprised.

(on that note: Do not read anything by a woman named KCS. I discovered that the hard way, after being misled by recs on crack_van that didn't mention the author's overt homophobia.)

[lotesse]

Thanks for the warning - her name is all over the place. Eek.