Jan
6th
2019
Reblog: The State of FimFiction's Fading Erotic Scene · 11:07pm Jan 6th, 2019
MrNumbers just wrote an absolutely superb blog post on FiMFiction's erotic story culture, and why it's not particularly welcoming to female readers or writers. I highly, highly recommend reading it, and you can find it right...
To be clear, Mr. Numbers is still terrible and I still hate them, but this post is pretty legit. I feel like I learned something reading it. Maybe not something I wanted to know, but something I should know.
...Why exactly is MrNumbers terrible?
Seemed pretty chill to me, the few times we've interacted.
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Yeah, that's a bit weird. Both of them act like fairly reasonable people in their blogs and they both write intelligent stories.
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We've got beef. They say I'm an elitist prick at every opportunity, I call them an insecure bully whenever the occasion arises.
I mean, just fandom beef though. I'd still pull them out of a burning car or donate blood. Don't blow things out of proportion.
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Wait, that was *you* he was talking about? I thought he hated MythrilMoth!
I can't keep track of this fandom drama haha
Already read it, but thanks. :)
I didn't know you had a bit of a feud with them; glad it's just fandom beef, though.
(Not really sure where the "elitist prick" thing is supposed to come from...)
What I got from it was that there are a bunch of guys on the site saying to women writers, "You didn't write the story *I* wanted."
Which is immature on the face of it: writers write what they want, not what you want, unless you're paying them damn well to do it. And these guys aren't paying these women. So it's also the age-old problem of men expecting women to do things for them for free.
The proper response might be "Okay, here's your $0.00 refund!" But I imagine you'd get tired of saying that.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back...
I'm going to be honest; I'd have appreciated it if more wordcount was put into emphasizing the issue I'm describing (and you're apparently agreeing with), then confirming that you think I'm a terrible human being that you still hate.
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It was. My problems with MythrilMoth dwarf any problems I have with Jaxie, 'insecure bully' comment there aside.
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You're free to stop calling me an elitist ass at any time.
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Fair enough: guess when people have been a part of this community as long as some of y'all then having issues with more than one person at a time is to be expected.
Well, fandom drama aside, the recognition of 'yeah I don't like them but they've got a point' is the kind of worthy opponent stuff you don't see enough of. So there's that at least.
You know, the theme of fanboy-of-fictional-heroes-who's-living-in-a-bubble should really be explored at length.
Oh, wait:
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The thing with Mr. Numbers is that if you talk to him long enough he turns into Rik from The Young Ones, if Rik had actually been a talented poet.
Not like this. Mostly.
"God I'm bored. Might as well be listening to Genesis"
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My experience on this site is that people will say that about any story, and unless you follow them closely or they state it somewhere very clearly, there is little way of knowing what gender anyone is.
I think highly of you, my dude, but it comes off as so incredibly childish and silly to include "they are still terrible and I still hate them" in a post like this. It doesn't reflect well on you in the slightest, regardless of whatever reasoning (well-founded or not) you might have for feeling that way. You could have just not included any of that at all, or if you really had to say something you had so many better ways to say that you aren't fond of them as a person but found something important they did. This only makes me and others like me lose a lot of respect for you. Furthermore, it greatly distracts from the importance of the point you're trying to agree with.
Overall, I'm disappointed. I think you can do better than this. I know you can.
EDIT: oh asdfakfsk ohshit it was all a joke and now I feel silly aaaaaahhhh
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I’m so glad I got to see your original comment before Jaxie erased it. Always a treat to find real Top Minds like you out in the wild.
(By the way, radical communism is a moral imperative and privatized wealth is the greatest evil in human history.)
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I think GaPJaxie was joking, and I think the whole exchange is like the flamewar between Oscar Wilde and Whistler in the "Letters" column of the World.
artic.edu/iiif/2/cce981e4-2066-7cee-b6be-aa0da64cc419/full/843,/0/default.jpg
Shown: GaPJaxie and Mr. Numbers, in some order.
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You may have missed the small joke there.
...Unless you're actually super committed to continuing the bit and I'm the one who's missed your joke. XD
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I was playing up fandom drama. Mr, Numbers and I genuinely don't get along, but we interact with eachother once in a blue moon, I don't actually hate them, and like I said, I'd pull them out of a burning car or give blood if the situation arose.
I did think it was a little funny.
Hmm I am not really part of your fandom I just write stories I don't see the need of clop.
Since my previous comment became collateral damage in some anti-drama cleanup, I'll attempt to phrase it a bit differently this time.
I took issue with three underlying assumptions from Mr Numbers' post:
To oversimplify: predominantly male authors writing for a predominantly male audience use a male-centric style. Despite the caveat that "This isn’t an issue of what we should be ‘allowed’ to do", Numbers clearly writes from the perspective that this is a bad situation:
My first major disagreement is that this is something we ought to correct.
I realize that Mr Numbers is unlikely to find this line of argument convincing due to his political philosophy, but FiMfic is pretty much a "free market". There are few artificial barriers to publishing a story here. The reason that
is because that's what people want to read! There are already people on the site writing the sort of porn/erotica which Mr Numbers is promoting. It tends not to spend much time in the featured box. (I see that Vertigo is currently in there, but it was not prior to the reblogging of the associated post.) If more people wrote this sort of story instead of the status quo, I strongly suspect the lower demand spread out across a larger supply would keep it out of the box to a greater extent, while the lower-supply, higher-demand status quo porn would dominate it even more easily. (I'll provide my reasoning for this later. I actually have relevant data and analysis!)
This leads into my second disagreement: that this is something we can correct.
Without engaging in various artificial interventions, you aren't going to change the underlying supply/demand situation. If you artificially restrict supply (cutting down status quo porn approvals, restricting featured box access, etc), the demand stays the same, and you just artificially concentrate it in the remaining supply. You can't change what people want to read, so to change demand you'd have to either artificially alter the membership, or restrict access to status quo porn entirely to destroy the demand. Simply writing "better" porn won't work, because people are already writing "better" porn, and the target audience says it isn't "better". (Again, more support later).
The third issue is separate:
I categorically reject this view, and agree with author S.M. Stirling:
IMO, backed up by plenty of examples from published authors writing on the subject, the editorial enforcement of this idea is directly responsible for the near-death of several genres of commercial fiction, with only the indie authors ignoring it and self-publishing keeping those genres alive in a recognizable form. While some readers want "moral lessons" in their fiction, this is far from universal, and the inclusion of same is a deal-breaker for a great many readers. This is especially prominent in porn. You'll just alienate wide swathes of your audience if you try this.
A while back, Bad Horse did a survey of FiMfic readers. While he did not release the full results publicly, he was kind enough to send me a draft of the formal academic report, and allowed me to use his data and conclusions for my own writing on the subject.
I posted elsewhere on the political leanings of FiMfic members: The "bronies are right-wing" meme. TL;DR: FiMfic bronies were vastly more likely to be Clinton-supporters than Trump-supporters, both in and of themselves, and as compared the general US population of their age brackets (so not just in general terms), with one major exception: porn readers. Porn fans preferred Trump over Clinton by 19 percentage points. Based on political generalizations, feminist porn is exceedingly unlikely to be popular with FiMfic porn readers.
Bad Horse also looked at specific traits of different FiMfic subcultures. When asked whether people saw fanfiction as "art" or "fun", as well as voting preferences, Literary and Romance fans chose both "art" and Clinton, while Porn fans chose "fun" and Trump. To generalize, Porn fans don't care about your artistic skills, your feminist politics, or your moral lessons. They want hot, fun, wankable porn. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200, just give them a clopfic and close the door.
While the blogs and comments may appear to contradict this, you're seeing the results of a "filter bubble" which does not resemble reality. When Bad Horse analyzed participation rates, he found that
Your average FiMfic reader, especially your average FiMfic porn reader, does not want to buy what Mr Numbers is selling. The problem is not lack of supply, it is lack of demand. You can't fix this by writing more of what people don't want, as what evidence we do have indicates that while Mr Numbers' claim that "it makes for much better porn" might be correct from a certain ideological point of view, it's simply false by any objective measure of popularity.
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I'm not sure your claim that there's no demand is true. I'm not here for porn, but basically whenever an author I follow posts an M-rated fic it makes the feature box and stays there for a while. And I've seen many complaints about the average quality of porn here over the years.
But the story market is more like a vote for a parliament than for a president. So 40% of porn should be progressive-compatible, by this simplified data analysis.
There's also just a fundamental difference in the way he looks at fimfiction: he sees it as a community, you describe it as a market.
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This is an argument that pimps, drug dealers, and hit men all use!
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I disagree with a lack of demand. Whenever I see an M fic of what I'd consider higher quality (character focus, build up, sex positivity, enthusiastic consent...) I inevitably see a lot of people also commenting that it's great because they can never find something like that. I mean, I'm hardly here for the porn. I'm more likely to happen on it if it's by an author I already like. But just casually judging by comments, there's a market that's being dramatically under served either through poor supply or poor marketing.
I'd also take some issue of the methodology of the study, if they put 'art' and 'fun' as a dichotomy.
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Definitely agree on the market vs community angle as well
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That's the thing though: the vast majority of readers don't comment, and the vast majority of favorites come from readers who don't interact at all. The few commenters are not representative of the people reading, voting, favoriting, and pushing stories into the featured box. They're a tiny but loud minority, and a tiny but loud minority of that tiny and loud minority is who Mr Numbers is chasing here.
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That, and the "community" is a distinct and much smaller subset of the whole "market" of total readers, with subcultures within the "community" with different values and tastes, and very little overlap. The comments over at Mr Numbers' are discussing the RGRE fans like some strange culture they don't understand, because that's what they are. (Having a toe in the RGRE corner of the site, I found the pro-feminist-porn group's attempts at explaining RGRE hilarious. They really don't understand the subculture or its motives.)
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And? Unless you want to provide an argument as to why non-feminist written porn is as objectively harmful and should be treated accordingly, this is just "Hitler liked dogs, therefore dogs are evil."
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Well, it depends on amount of competition and other messy stuff, but that kind of skewness often tends to amplify (simplest corner case: if there's no competition and you're choosing between two equally costly actions to write story either for bigger group A or for smaller group B right action to maximize expected approval is obvious). Things like feature box make things worse. Although, authors are not exactly approval-maximizing agents.
Those are not things of same category. "Market" is economical tool for making predictions about how things will go naturally. Doesn't mean you should like how they go "naturally". Does mean that it would be difficult to change.
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It's visible in clusterization? Holy cow! Is that analysis available somewhere?
Eh, all studies on the effect of porn on health/mind and society at large i know of were a voluntary type(as in people seeking it out). So for the deluge of low quality but high engagement porn to have any effect on women as individuals it has to be from them seeking it out, what i doubt if they are so against it. The "community" effect is harder to gauge i suppose. But again it depends on interaction between two sides rather then just existence of porn itself. If there is issues within the community then from the studies i read about the effects of porn in genera it wont fix any such issues.
A comment on Numbers blog post by "Dual Throne" seems to capture my thoughs on it pretty well.
4992524 Not calling it a rebuttal, or even a counter-argument: Simply the most well-put-together, emotion-free, morally-neutral, source-citing counterpoint I've read in this entire mess.
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Yep, in the heat map of author overlap, the porn block stands out within the larger "popular authors" block, while the "literary" block is entirely distinct. The survey of readers' opinions identified the same subcultures in a different but matching way: Literary and Romance fans both say "fanfic is art" and supported Clinton (Clinton had less of an advantage in Romance than Literary), Fluff and SF&F fans say "fanfic is fun" and didn't like either candidate (but with Clinton having more support with Fluff than SF&F, where Clinton was in third place behind Trump) , Comic Adventure fans say fanfic is art but are evenly split on Clinton/None with Trump nearly making it a 3-way tie, and Porn fans say fanfic is fun and preferred Trump outright.
Afraid not. Bad Horse never did a public release of that part of his results, and (given that he doesn't seem to do that sort of blog post anymore) I doubt he'll ever bother at this point (years later). I'm not about to hand out the draft I have, but you could always ask him. The analysis I did using his data is here, concentrating mainly on the politics.
4992695
Thanks! That's what I was aiming for, and why I posted it here and not over there. That comment section is devolving into YouTube comments level poop-throwing and trolling.
EDIT: since it went over well here, and the other post might be quieting down, I'm reposting it in the comments there. I may regret this.
it's bizarre and honestly a bit disconcerting how they don't get the obvious exaggerated nature of RGE story. for a fandom born in 4chan, they seemed to forget about 4chan.
*sigh*
Nobody loves me enough to hate me for who I am, instead of just hating me for the shit I write.
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I'm sorry man I just can't hate you you're too nice.
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4992708 You should add your reply to Darkstarling somewhere into the other post there. It was a valuable addition to your original post here.
4992775
Just did, thanks.
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But do you love me enough to hate me for loving what you hate?
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No, but I do hate you enough to love hating you for loving what I hate!
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Then there's nothing left to say but...
The cynicism in me says that MrNumbers wrote this up because they were upset that their story wasn't getting the attention that it "deserved" despite being "quality erotica". As opposed to that "trash" everyone seems to push to the featured list. Especially with how they patted themself on the back about Vertigo partway through.
We don't watch porn for deep characterization that is femininely "correct" and cannot be viewed as problematic. We watch it for the lemon-stealing whores. Same goes for literary erotica.
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Now, what y’all wanna do?
Wanna be rock stars, Featured-box stars?
Your own YouTube channels, sittin’ on panels
With the pros at the cons, party ‘til dawn’s
Early light? Then you gotta be tight with this right
Here: write about dykes til the admins yell “yikes!”
Yeah cloppin’ the raw deal
Three-course meal: carpet, sushi and veal
AJ makin’ Rainbow Dash squeal
Twi’ butterin’ Fluttershy’s fly
Pinky Pie makin’ Rarity holler
Got her wearin’ a collar
Tyin’ up that ho-bag wit a ball-gag
(You wanna bitch-slap some ponies, fuck bein’ a woke brony)
Come on, come on—
It's all about the lesbians, baby! (uh-huh, yeah)
It's all about the lesbians, baby! (uh-huh, yeah)
It's all about the lesbians, baby! (uh-huh, yeah)
It's all about the lesbians, baby! (Equestrians, uh)
Because Puff Daddy is still fresh, right?
Why do people always try to trick themselves into believing their opinions and tastes are somehow more valid then others? I'm certainly guilty of it, my comment I deleted was guilty of it and was trash because of it. It just makes everything worse.
Wow, this is the least painful thread relating to this whole mess I've read. Feels nice.
4992383
You probably should have put more wordcount into actually proving the issue you claimed, instead of trying to state your opinions as fact from a very small sample group. Also, you should have put less wordcount into acting unhinged in the comments section of your blog and more into keeping your echo chamber from drowning out and attacking people who wanted actual discourse.
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Right? Shame that MrNumbers didn't try to keep it like this, it would have been much more productive and certainly not have spawned the backlash that it eventually did.
4992524
To understand how MrNumbers' post makes sense to him, you have to try to understand the worldview that he's embedded in.
Saying what someone else thinks is error-prone and likely to get you yelled at, so I'll just say that these beliefs characterize the memetic group that MrNumbers claims membership in: radical contemporary Marxists [1]. That's more-specific than just socialist or communist. (None of the things I list below are tenets of socialism.)
Now, Zontargs wrote:
He says, "You can't change what people want to read", but Marxists don't believe that. They believe that what people want to read is conditioned by society. The basic mechanism for social change, in Marxism, is not to control what people do--although they want to do that, too--but to change what people want, to "raise their consciousness" or make them "woke". [2]
This is why Marxist economics ignores supply vs. demand. They believe "demand" is a social construction, and the main task of central planning committees is to decide what demand should be. After everybody has absorbed this, everyone will want the right things, and the party will fade away, and we'll have heaven on Earth forever and ever.
This is also why the original post, and the following debate, are so ambiguous about whether the change MrNumbers wants is to be voluntary, or enforced. The Marxist framework implies that there's little distinction between these two, since "voluntary" acts are merely made according to social conditioning, and social conditioning--even if it's kind and gentle--is force, no different in principal from the barrel of a gun [6]. Freedom was so antithetical to Marx that he defined it away, using the anti-concept of "freedom from want" to erase the concept of "freedom from control" from existence [3]. Good Marxists have no word in their vocabulary that means "freedom".
[1] It's common for people to claim membership in a group without believing all of that group's fundamental beliefs, because they don't understand how those fundamental beliefs are necessary in order to believe that the group's action plan will be effective.
[2] This is analogous to Plato's concept of "conversion", which Christianity adopted. Marxism is basically a variety of Christianity which doesn't have Christ, and is in many ways closer to the teachings of Jesus than Christianity is [7]. As such, naturally Marxism emphasizes the need for people to change. The difference is that in Christianity everyone needs their individual soul purified by God; in Marxism, the Party purifies society as a whole.
[3] Christianity also defined away "freedom". See Augustine's Confessions, in which Augustine argues that our natural inclinations are evil and oppress us, so true freedom means freeing your superego from the domination of your body and your sinful inclinations [4]. Medieval Christian "freedom" was thus freedom from yourself and subjection to the Christian authorities [5]. "Liberty" was considered wicked until the Enlightenment--and still is today, by conservative Christians and radical leftists. That's one-half of why they both hold "liberal humanism" responsible for all the evils of society.
[4] "Super-ego" is a Freudian term, but it's a revival of the divisions of the mind made by Plato, and Augustine--a die-hard Platonist--had Plato's superego-equivalent in mind.
[5] This is basically the same way that Hegel redefined freedom, except that Hegel's state isn't Christian. That's not surprising, since Hegel was trying to construct a Christianity without Christ or Christian doctrine. And it's not surprising Marx also constructed a Christianity, since he was trying to make a version of Hegelianism that was materialist instead of spiritual.
[6] This is why Marxists are so cavalier about using physical force.
[7] Some ways Marxism is closer than Christianity to Jesus' teachings:
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While I didn't wish to incite further flamewars by making potentially incorrect assertions about Mr Numbers' beliefs, you and I are on the same page here, and I alluded to this in my post:
The details of my beliefs are beyond the scope of this topic, but while I am not anything resembling an anarcho-capitalist or racial biological determinist, I strongly disagree with the views held by "radical contemporary Marxists" or other varieties of pure blank-slatism. As such, Mr Numbers and I are unlikely to agree on much involving political views, including (from his worldview) pony porn.