Ladies who read male/male erotic or romantic fiction* what do you read (pick all that apply) and what sort of relationship do you prefer to see the characters establish, at the end of the story (pick your favorite)?
Gents, feel free to comment but please don’t take the poll.
This is motivated, in part, by a chat I had with a couple of gals who read m/m erotica; I read yaoi, and as it turned out we had rather different preferences in what sort of relationships we liked in m/m fiction. I was trying to figure out how to phrase the polling questions to see if there was a link between what people read and what relationship types they liked, but that turned out to be too much of a pain to set up.
Terminology, for the purpose of this post:
“Yaoi” is any m/m fiction for women from Japan or Korea, or Western work that consciously imitates the style of m/m fiction for women from Japan or Korea.
“Fanfiction” is anything using characters from someone else’s fiction (movies, TV, Jane Austin, etc.)
“Doujin” is material that is self-published in hardcopy (eg, a paper book not an ebook)
The difference between “slash”, “m/m” (predominantly aimed at women) and “gay” (predominantly aimed at men) can be rather fuzzy; pick the term(s) that seem(s) most descriptive of what you like
Fanfic reader. I like my relationships to end up with the two men devoted to one another, but an open relationship when it comes to the ladies. In other words, Spock and Kirk are soulmates, but Kirk still sleeps around, and Spock still finds a Vulcan woman every seven years. And no men on the side - if either of them wants to bring McCoy into the mix, they have to discuss it, and their situation goes from M/M to M/M/M.
This way, they’re lovers, but it doesn’t violate canon.
I like a variety but what I like best is two good friends taking the next step. Bromance in every sense of the word.
As to the rest of it, I find male-male relationships - even nonsexual ones - to be fascinating all by themselves. The sex is just an added dimension (albeit a good one!)
Hah, and furthermore, hah. We had a thread around here a few years back in which IIRC there were more women who liked gay porn than het porn. Right now, the “Do you find same-sex kissing offensive, blah, or erotic?” thread has 2/3 of the ladies reporting m/m smooching as “erotic”.
Likewise, there is maybe 10x as much fanfiction about m/m relationships as het relationships.
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not the same…
Xena slash fiction wasn’t m/m. Well, I’m sure someone managed to find two male characters from the show to match up (Joxer and Salmoneus? :eek:), but the vast majority of Xena romantic/erotic fanfic was about Xena and Gabrielle. A lot of it was written by straight women.
Are you kidding? Xena/Gabrielle is one of the biggest pairings in fandom history. I’m not sure how one would go about measuring it, but I’m certain there is more Xena/Gabrielle fic than Joxer/Ares.
No, it wasn’t. I’m sure there are Joxer/Ares stories (although why that pairing would appeal to anyone is beyond me), but would be a drop in the bucket of Xena slash (or “alt”, the term more commonly used in Xena fandom). There’s an OCEAN of Xena/Gabrielle fanfics out there. I’d bet that even Xena/Callisto or Gabrielle/Callisto or stories about the Amazons were more popular than Joxer/Ares.
Wow. Over one thousand pageviews and only 12 posts?
Anyhoo, slash fanfic is leading with a pretty big margin, with commercial yaoi squeaking ahead of the pack for a distant second. Looking at the pattern of choices, it looks like “free on the web” is a major draw. I’m glad to see that “happily ever after” endings have an edge, although “porn, plz” is doing quite well too.
So, question. I’m only really familiar with yaoi, which leans heavily to bluebirds and violins (or at least the translated stuff does; there’s quite a lot of “dark heavy angst” yaoi that the American publishers are studiously avoiding), but my limited experience with commercial m/m fiction suggests that it has much more casual sex and non-romantic pairings. Do you ladies (or gents) who read multiple genres see a difference in fan-preferred relationship types across the different genres?
I literally make a living by writing for women who are turned on by guy-on-guy action. So it’s not an insubstantial subculture.
I prefer romance in my slash fanfic, and I only write Happy Ever After because there’s enough sad endings in the world without me adding more. Strangely, my commercial stuff usually ends with a Happy For Now and not a straight-up HEA because I like to keep the stories as realistic as possible. I never have anything less than a HFN, since I do write romance. The readers would skin me alive if they got a sad ending!
In many ways, Kirk/Spock is my absolutely perfect m/m relationship. Even in canon, it’s clear that they truly depend on each other, respect each other, and love each other, yet their men with their own lives (when they’re not serving the 5 year mission), their own interests, and no matter what happens, they’ll always find each other.
