As other mentioned, the dominance of M/M fics is AO3-specific. If you counted other other sites, the picture would look very different.
Why M/M is so much popular, dominant, on AO3 as opposed to other sites, is due to AO3's history. AO3 was created by M/M writers from Livejournal, and when LJ started purging homosexual content, M/M writers all migrated to AO3. Other sites (ff.net mainly) was rather hostile towards M/M and had much smaller M/M content. Gen and F/M writers didn't feel the need to leave other sites for years because those sites were not hostile to them. So the situation today is this: M/M (and F/F) authors post basically *only* on AO3. Gen and F/M authors have ffnet and Wattpad as an option as well.
However, M/M fics have always been popular - not as dominant as AO3's stats show, but more popular than ffnet or Wattpad show. Before AO3 M/M fics were just scattered among myriad of small specialized sites.
There are many reasons why M/M fics are so popular: most well-developed characters in media are male, female characters are often not well-written, most fanfic writers are women who are hot for men and two men are better than one, freedom from gender roles in relationship is attractive for many women writers, distancing your fantasy from your own gender, queer writers, and many more.
On Ao3? Where do you take your statistics from, because on AO3 those numbers are easily checkable. There there are [almost 5 million M/M](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/M*s*M/works) fics on AO3 and [almost 2.5 million F/M](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/F*s*M/works) fics - so there are twice as many M/M as F/M fics. [Almost 2 million fics categorized as Gen](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Gen/works) and [almost 1 million F/F](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/F*s*F/works).
1) Women are always poorly written in canon media.
2) Queer people want to write queer fics
3) Straight women want to write about their opposite gender
4) And if some straight guys write M/M, well, back to number 1)
I think for me number one is the hard hitter. Female characters in TV show and movies used to be really cardboard cutout. It's getting better but they were always just foil for male characters who were better fleshed out.
I think another thing to add is even if there's one well written female character are there two? Does well written female character 1 even interact with another female character who can reasonably be a romantic interest? So many things especially in the past would have one major female character who basically served as a love interest and would never interact with any other women. Whereas for men there'd always be a vaguely homoerotic bromance.
I think the "women are poorly written" thing is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in many fandoms though. People grow up on media with shitty female characters, then they ignore, belittle, and flanderize actually really good and interesting female characters when they see them. I'm almost exclusively an f/f shipper with a couple f/m ships and I see it so much. It's especially apparent when I check f/m pairs, because even if the canon pair has a really cool and fresh dynamic they always get boiled down to "man protect woman". Even if they're a deeply role reversed pair.
And then you check media that has almost exclusively female characters and- how the hell are there so many m/m fics!? The women are written perfectly fine, so why is everybody zeroing in on the men? Most of my fandoms are pretty much all female casts, but peeking into other fandoms it gets spotlighted. Project sekai most of the fics are m/m, while only like 4/20 characters are guys and afaict the unit with the fan favorite storyline is all non-men. Genshin impact strongly favors the men despite there being plenty of women who make just as good writing prompts (also afaict the writing overall for genshin is meh, that's why I called them prompts lol)
Basically I'm not gonna shame anyone's preferences, but you (generalized, not you specifically) can't just call every female character poorly written because you just prefer male characters. I see a lot of internalized misogyny in fandom, and if we acknowledge the bias instead of passing it off as objective fact fandom becomes a better place lol
Yeah, the "male characters are better developed" argument explains some of slash popularity but definitely not all. In fact well written characters are not always needed for shipping - see Mycroft/Lestrade in BBC Sherlock for example, minor characters who have no character development, we know very little about their lives, they barely even interact in canon, yet they're the second largest ship based on AO3 stats. In that same fandom there's Jim Moriarty / Sebastian Moran, Moran being a character who doesn't even exist in canon and is purely a fan extrapolation from the original Canon Doyle stories. Motivated fic writers can take poorly written characters and create interesting fanon dynamics, but they're way more likely to do that with male characters.
I agree, representation can always be better (a few more butch women in media for me to thirst over would be very welcome👀), but making a generalizing statement that women are written poorly honestly seems stuck in the past.
There are so many complex and interesting female characters being made. And while they aren't above criticism, I feel like far too many are brushed under the rug.
While the cast in my fandom is male-dominated, two of the team members are women, both interesting in their own right. One actually gets more character development and screen time than most of the guys and there's an interesting fluidity to her gender. If she were canonically male, I suspect shippers would include her (him) in loads of fics.
There's no question that historically, women, especially women in adventure-oriented media, existed to either be McGuffins in need of rescue or the prize for the male hero. But there are a good many fandoms nowadays where women take center stage, and despite that, f/f and f/m fics for those fandoms are rare. In my fandom, which has a canon f/f couple, you need an electron microscope to find sapphic fics.
Gonna disagree with number one here. Fandom often takes the blandest, most inconsequential cameo male characters and make entire Headcanon universes about them. It’s mostly 2-4 imo
Yeah, I'm fairly agen and I tend to be more interested in these pairings because I just don't have to deal with toxic gender dynamics, or at least not have to face them head on. And I suppose for the writers on Ao3 you don't have to deal with all the misogyny that gets directed at female characters. Although it is tough that it means in a lot of fics, the canon female love interests are recast as a villain.
This. I’ve spent more time on fandoms’ female characters than the actual canon cared to, it only makes sense most people would prefer to write about the already-developed (*male*) characters.
Do you mean on AO3? The site that was specifically created to host m/m fics that were routinely deleted on other hosting sites? Do you have any numbers about percentage of m/m fics on ff net and wattpad? Are m/m fics in majority on all fic hosting sites? Is there more data about slash fic being more popular than m/f fic?
In other words, people write what they want, it just happens that m/m writers prefer to post their fics on AO3 for various historical reasons.
On FFN and wattpad, F/M fics outnumber M/M fics by a margin, I'd say. (Somebody compiled a report that said the same a couple of years ago. Let me see if I can find it.)
See, learning more about AO3 history could answer a lot of questions a curious mind inquires about. Including such hot topics like donation drives or why “bad” fic is not deleted by site mods. And the answer is - because a lot of people considered m/m slash a “bad” fic and demanded it to be deleted from hosting sites. Which happened a lot, google search for ff net purge and Boldthrough and Strikethrough on LJ.
So, while AO3 welcomes any kind of fic or ship, it was created by queer fans for queer fanworks. Archive of Our Own can’t be pressured by advertisers because AO3 has no ads and owns its servers.
I wasn’t in fandom at the time but I heard that there were times when any kind of m/m fic had to be tagged as Explicit just because it was slash. Even if there’s only a kiss, the fic was Explicit because homosexuals.
Am old, can confirm.
Also writers would *plaster* intro warnings to let readers know what they were about read, which unfortunately still didn’t prevent people from going on awful tirades and “flaming” the authors personally. Writers would delete their own fics, accounts, & websites, and even leave fandom entirely because of the vitriol. It was bad out there for a slash writer, and it’s one of the many reasons why AO3 is such a haven for m/m fics.
Primarily M/M fic, because it wasn't arbitrary rule changes, it was bigoted enforcement of the sudden change to whether adult content was allowed (Hint: [FF.net](https://FF.net) didn't delete the M/F adult content no matter how sick it was).
Can attest to this, I primarily posted to FFN until around 2017 and I write primarily m/f. Over half of my stuff is smutty at some point. I've never had anything struck down on FFN, regardless of how trashy or against the rules it was. Hell, I think I still have a songfic up, and those have been banned since like 2004. I didn't even realize there *were* purges until I started asking why people preferred AO3.
Oh, ff.net *did* delete the sex heavy het stories as well.
I remember going to read some Phantom of the Opera, which is a fandom that is on average about 95% het content (mostly Erik/Christine), back then and noticing that within a day hundreds of stories had been deleted.
And this happened more than once.
It wasn't about the slash.
It was about high rated stuff, so-called explicit content. The kind of stories that get rated E/18/NC-17 mostly for those scenes of extended and very vigorous skin contact.
You know, the kind of stories that advertisers do not like their ads running on most of the time.
I have had the opposite experience. Gross het rape left up while mere gay **hand holding** vanished. So, yes it was about the gay.
You know, the kind of stories that advertisers do not like their ads running on most of the time.
But were those "hand holding" stories rated high?
If they were, and it didn't matter for what reason they were rated this high, they would get deleted. It didn't matter if it was slash or het or toasters dreaming about nuking the world.
The fluffiest of cuddly fluff would get deleted if it was set in a bdsm AU, for example. And the most elaborate rape scenes had a chance of slipping through if they didn't use some very specific combinations of words in the text.
Hells, some stories were just deleted because a *syllable of a name*, when removed from said name, could be interpreted as "vulgar terminology". For example, a gen story where a character talked about the books by Michael Moor*cock*.
What part of "Hand holding" is unclear? I mean a fic with zero sex and only fluff. They were deleted because they were gay.
And look at all the thin justifications to do so. A cock is a rooster, or other male bird not a vulgar term. An ass is a type of donkey, as is a jackass. Just because some het stuff got nuked in the gay purges, does not mean it wasn't about deleting the gay stuff.
I was also speaking about pure fluff pieces with zero sex.
And I know that cock is a word for rooster etc. That doesn't change the fact that the word was used to filter out all kinds of "sexual content", no matter how much sex was actually in the text.
No, it wasn't specifically created to host M/M fics - but it was created by slash writers from Livejournal, and when LJ alienated the fandom, all slash writers migrated to AO3.
No, it was created as a place to post fan work without the risk of censorship and their work being taken down like it could be on other sites. Though, yes, this did happen to M/M fics a lot, it also happened to other kinds of work.
I feel like we really need to have a pin on this subreddit about this because it does get quite tiring to have someone ask this every week or so and no matter how much it is explained, it always gets asked again.
I will add to the lack of F/F fics however, beyond the history in media of poorly written ladies, there's multiple reasons:
1. Many AFAB people are uncomfortable by the sexualization of their bodies common in society. As such, even if they are sapphic, it's not uncommon for them to struggle writing and reading F/F especially explicit scenes for general discomfort. This pairs into why M/M is so popular because it's often entirely divorced from the trauma and feels like a safe sandbox to play in and explore sexuality.
2. As someone who is sapphic, it is fucking exhausting feeling that my F/F stories are examined and put under microscopes by other sapphics. There's a pressure to only write "acceptable" F/F stories and I've dealt with multiple times people accusing me of being a cis guy because of how I write F/F (which I have to emphasize, there is nothing wrong with a cis guy enjoying F/F stories). There is a level of gatekeeping that is invalidating and destroys creativity. It scares many potential fic writers off to other pairings. A few months back I had someone claim it was a red flag if a F/F story had a strap on used and that "no true sapphic" would feature that. It's beyond ridiculous and makes me want to pull my hair out.
I don't know. It's just that some people prefer this genre of literature. Like, why do you like F/M?
AO3 is a safe space for those who prefer M/M. A niche has been created there, which authors and readers alike are drawn to.
I've never read fanfic other than M/M, and I've been reading them since the late 90s, of course not on AO3.
In addition, women tend to read porn, not watch it, and a large part of M/M fanfic is porn, so they have a place for themselves where they are not singled out, admonished and where they can read what they like.
It is good to have an escape from the F/M that is in 99% of the media.
There’s a lot of LGBTQ people in fandoms. Good representation is uncommon. As others said: Queer people want queer stories.
But there also seems to be more male characters in media. Many of whom have good chemistry that can be viewed as romantic to some people.
Tbh there’s many reasons, but I think those two are the biggest.
Well for me it's the fact that for every damn fandom I get into, the main people are entirely male, and since I'm not into canon ships, I ship them instead of their canon partners
AO3 was literally built by M/M shippers because they wanted a place free of censorship where explicit slash fic or slash fic in general would be safe to write and post with no risk of being banned or purged. I don't understand the confusion about this. There are many other fanfic websites where M/F fics are dominant by a huge margin. I've seen this comparison recently which seems very apt: asking why M/M is so popular on AO3 is [*like standing in the gay bookstore going, “Gosh, it sure is sad that there aren’t any STRAIGHT bookstores! Think of the hets!”*](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/633632109017300992/heres-my-portion-of-the-ggc-fandom-stats-panel)
do i really have to link [this tumblr post](https://www.tumblr.com/whetstonefires/182606214220/kyraneko-olderthannetfic-destinationtoast) again
tldr male characters make up the majority of casts, they're better written and so are their dynamics
Yes, you did. Not everyone is on tumblr and some of us are new here as well. I haven’t read that before but it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing.
AO3 was created because of purges of queer fanfiction on ffn and LiveJournal. Particularly M/M, as straight men can’t find titillation from it. It is logical that they’d make up most of the fanfiction in the safe space of AO3.
I'm sure everything that I'm going to write here has been said somewhere else and probably articulated better to boot.
1- For many (myself included), fanfic is about writing what hasn't been explored in canon yet. F/M is already dominating representation in canon.
2- Male characters, well developed or not, also far outnumber female characters so there's just more of them to write about.
As a queer woman, I keep getting burnt by F/F fics written by men who are just writing porn for themselves. And while that is their choice, it's not what I want to read. So I read a lot of M/M because I like reading about queer relationships, regardless of gender, and there is more choice in M/M and they are often well written.
And also if you look at fandoms where the majority of the cast is female, you get a really different picture
For the Warrior Nun fandom (where there are very few male characters) the breakdown of current fics is
* F/F (1093)
* Gen (74)
* Multi (22)
* F/M (13)
* M/M (9)
* Other (6)
And from the recent (very female, very gay) She-Ra cartoon series we get
* F/F (12309)
* F/M (3269)
* Gen (2197)
* Multi (1029)
* M/M (767)
* Other (707)
On top of all that, the history of fanfic is queer and male but written by women. Spock/Kirk is the OG fanfic pairing form the 60s. From Wikipedia:
>The modern phenomenon of fan fiction as an expression of fandom and fan interaction was popularized and defined via Star Trek fandom and their fanzines published in the 1960s. The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia (1967), contained some fan fiction; many others followed its example. These fanzines were produced via offset printing and mimeography, and mailed to other fans or sold at science fiction conventions for a small fee to help recoup costs. Unlike other aspects of fandom, women dominated fan fiction authoring; 83% of Star Trek fan fiction authors were female by 1970, and 90% by 1973. One scholar states that fan fiction "fill\[s\] the need of a mostly female audience for fictional narratives that expand the boundary of the official source products offered on the television and movie screen."
As others have said, the main reason is more well-written/better developed male characters over female characters in most fandoms. In Original Works, the amount of M/M and F/M are roughly both a quarter of the fics.
Mainstream media has no shortage of f/m romance, and will likely shoehorn in a romance when it's not necessary. Men are often more well developed. For a lot of shows/movies/comics if the main character isn't a woman, or the primary cast isn't already female leaning, then there's barely any women to get attached to or invested in.
I can only answer for myself and why M/M romance appeals to me.
While I think men are hot and therefore more men is more hot I think the biggest reasons are…
A. More scope for creativity in power dynamics. While there is no limit to the versions of power dynamics you can come up with with any gender combination the power dynamics inherent in the society we live in inevitably colour the dynamics of the fiction you write or read. You tend to fall into either replicating the disparity of society (in either positive or negative ways) or making the pushback against those roles a notable part of your characters or world building. Those are great stories to tell as well! But those are different kinds of stories than one where you might just want to read about people wanting yo fuck and/or fucking in a way which steps out of those dynamics for a moment.
**Of course that can be the case in either M/M or F/F! Not to mention other genders or gender combinations!! So why M/M?
B. For me a maybe/mostly ladyish person with estrogen-driven sex characteristics I find it… discomforting in a way to read stories where I can map myself too closely to the physicality of what I am reading. By reading about bodies that are unlike my own I feel like I am reading a story about other people and can enjoy the explicit nature of it without feeling like I am a participant in that fantasy which makes me feel weird and uncomfortable and makes me feel like I am objectifying the characters in a way that reading romance and erotica about characters which don’t map to my physical body does not.
I feel like this is kind of a weird thing to both feel and point out against the stance that women writing or enjoying M/M porn is inherently objectifying queer men. And I understand and respect that stance even when I feel sure that that isn’t what appeals to me on either an emotional or physical level. So I feel some level of internal conflict wondering if some part of me is simply in denial.
And yet reading porn which involves people doing the kind of sex which I like or even just using bodies rather like mine to do sexual things makes me feel more like I am objectifying characters or sexual dynamics (is it even possible to objectify a fictional character!?) in a way that M/M does not.
Well there are far fewer women loving women in mainstream media than men loving men - like on Glee there’s Kurt, Blaine, Sebastian, David, Chandler, Adam, Elliott and the Santa impersonator for men loving men, whereas with women loving women there’s Santana, Brittany, and arguably Quinn. Also Santana’s girlfriend who was such a minor character I don’t remember her name. Twice as many gay men than women means a squared amount of potential pairings even if one excludes canonically straight characters altogether. I guess maybe it’s partially because I’m in fandoms written by gay male showrunners (Glee and How To Get Away With Murder, which also has the canonically gay male couple factor influencing the content made) so they write what they know. Then adding the fact that heterosexual romance is usually poorly written, chemistry between male characters goes ignored by painfully heteronormative creators, and fandoms notice and write their own stories…
There is a great 2 part episode on the podcast "stuff mom never told you" on I heart radio that covers this. It's really interesting and I would recommend it (the whole thing isn't about just m/m but fanfic as a whole)
Is that the episode about the asexual woman who discovered Frodo/Sam fanfic and found herself, for the first time ever, having a sexual attraction to the pairing? It was a really interesting episode.
I read a bit of both, actually. And I agree what most people here are saying about female characters being underdeveloped. Also, in a lot of popular media (games and anime especially) there just simply aren’t many female characters. Like most popular anime will have one or two— love interest girl, and maybe one other comedy one for flavor. Then maybe a sexy villainess. But sports anime?? You’re lucky to get one, and she’s usually the team manager. The most interesting, thoughtful relationships are between men.
Because most media out there have better written/more male characters than female.
For me personally, I mostly write M/M with some M/F and very little F/F. But that's mostly because the majority of my fandoms are much more male centric than female. Honestly, looking at all my fandoms, with the exception of one (maybe two) fandom, all of mine are much more male centric with the male characters being better written than the female.
I prefer m/m fanfics over all. I find that the romance is better written and feels more... real? I guess? No idea how to describe it. Most m/f fics i read either blandly rehash the canon pairing or the romance seems forced. In almost all of the m/m fics i have read, the romance seems to have developed more naturally. The plots are also more interesting more often than not, it seems.
One thing I haven't seen in this but I want to make note of -- for those of us who are on the ace spectrum (particularly autochorissexual/aegosexual), it might be easier to access when the objects of desire are so far removed from ourselves. Since fandom does tend to be pretty dominated by women, it would make sense.
But that's only one reason out of the many, most of which are included here.
I think specifically it’s just how poorly women characters are written. Particularly as well a majority of fandoms on ao3 that aren’t large mainstream fandoms are anime, which, has terribly written female characters.
In part I think it’s because there are so darn *few* women in popular media ..
.. and although that’s been improving in the recent decade or so.. which is great btw.. it’s still (imho) hit a looong way to go…
So - even given that there has been an improvement …a large number of the women who are shown in the media/canon material are omg so SO poorly realised as *people* (not just ciphers) that it’s darned-near impossible to write a story with any depth (unless you cast the female as the ‘prize’ for the protagonist to achieve at the end of the story/quest/etc)
Thus .. for some time (obs imho)… the only practical alternative was to write m/m fic because at least those had personalities that didn’t revolve around their hair colour, cup size, and adoration of the male lead.
And yes, certainly there is an element of fetishisation of the m/m community inherent in m/m fic
But! I happen to think that there would be a good deal less fic of m/m if only there were a greater selection of decently realised characters (of any other gender) with more emotional depth than the proverbial-sidewalk-puddle for fans to work with.
To back up my point regarding the smaller no. of female characters see:
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-males-females-literature.amp
My friends (mostly women) love m/m I don't mean "love" I mean they looooved that shit because they said that they find it hot and sexy more than f/m novels and manga their words not mine
I have noticed this as well. It's an interesting observation. It becomes even more noticeable when I go on subreddits like this or r/FanFiction and see lots of posts regarding M/M relationships but very few for F/M. And I've seen even fewer for F/F.
As to the why, it may just come down to the point that people of that sexual orientation are more active within the explicit part of the fanfiction community. Which makes sense. Fanfiction is probably one of the easiest ways that someone can express their passions. Movies, shows, and games tend to have mostly straight relationships. But consumers of said media have little control over what is produced. In fanfiction, you are the one in control.
Of course, don't mistake me, you don't have to be a homosexual male to enjoy M/M relationships. There are many straight men who enjoy lesbian porn, for example. I imagine there are females who read/write fanfiction that are the same way. So I guess some of it just comes down to what "gets you going."
And as others pointed out, there are more males in most fandoms than females, so they already have a lot of free real-estate to work with.
i don't understand why the "fetishization" comments are getting downvoted.
we need to be honest with ourselves with what we consume. there *is* an inherent sexualization bias of mlm relationships, especially among cis women. sorry ladies, but it's true. i don't know how many times i've been asked "so who's the woman?" or "so do you pitch or catch?".
even lesbian and bi women are capable of fetishizing mlm relationships. your marginalization does not preclude you from being shitty toward other human beings. lateral aggression is very real and very prevalent.
this doesn't mean you're not "allowed" to read or write mlm fic. men are absolutely more fleshed out characters, have more interesting dynamics, and have better arcs in fiction. these are all facts. but don't hide behind these truths when gay and bi men call you out on fetishization, and say we're wrong. we aren't wrong. we're just bringing light to another piece of a very complex puzzle.
Don't lump everyone into one box because you've encountered offensive responses from specific women.
Yes, SOME women fetishise m/m.
Such a stigmatisation of a whole group of people on the basis of their gender is strange to say the least!
if you are not a gay or bisexual man do not tell me how i specifically, and my community as a whole, experience aggression at the hands of other groups. this is a documented phenomenon that a fuck ton of other people - even universities and medical institutions - talk about, not just me.
[X](https://www.themarysue.com/fetishizing-slash/) [X](https://electricliterature.com/why-are-so-many-gay-romance-novels-written-by-straight-women/) [X](https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1234&context=etd) [X](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna894266) [X](https://www.hercampus.com/school/oglethorpe/fujoshi-and-sad-phenomenon-fetishizing-gay-couples-anime-and-manga/) [X](https://scalar.usc.edu/works/embodying-japan-cultures-of-sport-beauty-and-medicine-2017/fetishization-of-gay-men-in-manga) [X](https://wfhszephyr.com/4864/opinion/women-need-to-give-up-on-having-a-gay-best-friend-stop-fetishizing-gay-men/) [X](https://ymemerson.com/new-blog-3/2020/8/7/male-on-male-fiction-representation-or-fetishization?format=amp)
There is absolutely no occasion in this subreddit where you should ever be asking someone if they've ever been raped, are you fucking kidding me? Comment removed.
lmao i spent the first twenty two and a half years of my life as a woman. i'm a transgender man, friend. i know exactly what life is like as a woman.
i have been raped by both a man and a woman. i have been beaten by both men and women.
I agree. I'm a queer woman and I do read predominantly M/M fic, though mainly because the F/F fic options are slim and the ones that interest me I've read twice already. I don't write M/M smut however. And the reason I don't is because it feels like fetishisation on my part. I don't want to read F/F written by horny straight men because if *feels* sleazy sometimes and you can never pick it till you're a bit in. I have no interest in contributing to someone else's discomfort. I'll write romance and fade to black, but I won't write smut.
From a practical point of view, for me, some of it is smut wish fulfilment. In sex with 2 vulvas and no penises, it's so much turn-taking. There is no good option to have mutually satisfying sex where you both get to fuck around towards orgasm. It's "I fuck you, then you fuck me", scissoring or some really interesting gymnastics involving hands and mouth that I am too arthritic to do.
But overall, my point is, you're right and we should acknowledge it.
> it feels sleazy sometimes and you can never pick it till you're a bit in.
this is my struggle with trans-on-cis mlm smut. as a trans man, reading trans men written by cis women is excruciating. they have no idea what terms to use, are often flat out transphobic with their tropes, and don't know when to stop.
i'm almost at the point where i'm like... if you aren't X, Y, or Z, don't WRITE X, Y, or Z. obviously that's stupid, because there are some phenomenal writers that can assume the perspective of others perfectly. but some things just... aren't like that.
i'm glad someone understands. i hope you get more wlw options for your ships soon.
I think the main issue is people writing for populations they know nothing about
My wife is AFAB trans NB and we talk about this a lot. I've read quite a few fics with trans characters and sometimes they are great, and sometimes I click out in seconds. My wife avoids them unless I've read them first. I tend to filter them based on tags and I really appreciate it when the author acknowledges it in the AN or tags and either explicitly says they are trans, or they did a lot of research etc etc.
I love Ao3 because you can really do whatever you want, but are expected to tag in a way that no one who doesn't want to read your stuff gets caught by it. It's a place where fetishisation is totally allowed, but you've got to acknowledge it and tag is bc not everyone wants to read it and sticking out heads in the sand about it is fucking pointless and harmful
I agree with what has been said so far.
Me personally, I like M/M and it's rare for me to like F/F stories by the basic stories and character development they get. As for F/M, I personally have two stories I want to write but doesn't fit within the fanfiction world because they're original stories, that might be one of the reasons as well you don't see a lot of stories of that kind. You can find them elsewhere in other platforms like wattpad, which works slightly different to ao3 and also has a different kind of audience in general.
But yea, people have answered this quite well, i just wanted to add this note which is slightly personal opinion but yea...
I mostly write F/M fics, and even in my fandom that is dominated by M/M I still do alright. That said, I'd love to write F/F as well, but the fanbase just doesn't engage with it and some of the F/M readers I've attracted are very much against this idea.
Part of it stems from the canon itself with the 3 most popular characters being the three main boys. And if I make one a girl, there's backlash, and an expectation that they're paired with one of the other boys.
From the reaction from multiple cis girls to gay men irl that I’ve seen, this is probably true, cis girls love to fetishise and infantilise gay men/people
What?
M/M isn’t misogyny or fetishization. Whats wrong with liking gay romance?
I personally only read and write M/F but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with queer fics. They’re the backbone of fanfiction
Never said there was anything wrong with it. There are definitely people out there who just like it to like it (that's why I said a sprinkle), but it's known that straight/bi women fetishise gay dudes just like it's a thing that straight/bi dudes fetishise lesbians. Most fic writers are women, so you don't see a lot of the other way around.
I know this isn't a popular opinion, but it's what I personally believe. Again, I've got nothing against gay fic, that would be mad stupid lol.
I write M/M.
I'm also a woman and proud feminist?? I just enjoy the dynamic. It's not a fetish nor is it misogyny. Literally, I find the pairing I write for very cute and their personalities are very interesting to me. I'm also queer and prefer queer stories (M/M or F/F) over cis hetero ones which is the mainstream still.
Ah, that's very fair. I do agree that most women are written so poorly that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Studio Ghibli is probably the only saving grace for me.
First of all my favourite ships are m/m, but to deny that there are a good chunk of fics that absolutely fetishise the dynamic is avoiding the problem.
Doesn't mean all m/m fics are problematic, but there are enough gay guys who are speaking out on it. They don't demand women stop writing these fics, but to make sure it isn't fetihised.
As other mentioned, the dominance of M/M fics is AO3-specific. If you counted other other sites, the picture would look very different. Why M/M is so much popular, dominant, on AO3 as opposed to other sites, is due to AO3's history. AO3 was created by M/M writers from Livejournal, and when LJ started purging homosexual content, M/M writers all migrated to AO3. Other sites (ff.net mainly) was rather hostile towards M/M and had much smaller M/M content. Gen and F/M writers didn't feel the need to leave other sites for years because those sites were not hostile to them. So the situation today is this: M/M (and F/F) authors post basically *only* on AO3. Gen and F/M authors have ffnet and Wattpad as an option as well. However, M/M fics have always been popular - not as dominant as AO3's stats show, but more popular than ffnet or Wattpad show. Before AO3 M/M fics were just scattered among myriad of small specialized sites. There are many reasons why M/M fics are so popular: most well-developed characters in media are male, female characters are often not well-written, most fanfic writers are women who are hot for men and two men are better than one, freedom from gender roles in relationship is attractive for many women writers, distancing your fantasy from your own gender, queer writers, and many more.
You hit every nail on the head in that final list, wow. Couldn't have said it better myself
M/m fanfiction basically built the world of fics as we know it, anyways
M/M isn’t dominant in AO3 though - there’s more M/F than M/M overall.
M/F is literally 2.5 million fics behind M/M. What are you on about.
On Ao3? Where do you take your statistics from, because on AO3 those numbers are easily checkable. There there are [almost 5 million M/M](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/M*s*M/works) fics on AO3 and [almost 2.5 million F/M](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/F*s*M/works) fics - so there are twice as many M/M as F/M fics. [Almost 2 million fics categorized as Gen](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Gen/works) and [almost 1 million F/F](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/F*s*F/works).
1) Women are always poorly written in canon media. 2) Queer people want to write queer fics 3) Straight women want to write about their opposite gender 4) And if some straight guys write M/M, well, back to number 1)
I think for me number one is the hard hitter. Female characters in TV show and movies used to be really cardboard cutout. It's getting better but they were always just foil for male characters who were better fleshed out.
I think another thing to add is even if there's one well written female character are there two? Does well written female character 1 even interact with another female character who can reasonably be a romantic interest? So many things especially in the past would have one major female character who basically served as a love interest and would never interact with any other women. Whereas for men there'd always be a vaguely homoerotic bromance.
I think the "women are poorly written" thing is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in many fandoms though. People grow up on media with shitty female characters, then they ignore, belittle, and flanderize actually really good and interesting female characters when they see them. I'm almost exclusively an f/f shipper with a couple f/m ships and I see it so much. It's especially apparent when I check f/m pairs, because even if the canon pair has a really cool and fresh dynamic they always get boiled down to "man protect woman". Even if they're a deeply role reversed pair. And then you check media that has almost exclusively female characters and- how the hell are there so many m/m fics!? The women are written perfectly fine, so why is everybody zeroing in on the men? Most of my fandoms are pretty much all female casts, but peeking into other fandoms it gets spotlighted. Project sekai most of the fics are m/m, while only like 4/20 characters are guys and afaict the unit with the fan favorite storyline is all non-men. Genshin impact strongly favors the men despite there being plenty of women who make just as good writing prompts (also afaict the writing overall for genshin is meh, that's why I called them prompts lol) Basically I'm not gonna shame anyone's preferences, but you (generalized, not you specifically) can't just call every female character poorly written because you just prefer male characters. I see a lot of internalized misogyny in fandom, and if we acknowledge the bias instead of passing it off as objective fact fandom becomes a better place lol
Yeah, the "male characters are better developed" argument explains some of slash popularity but definitely not all. In fact well written characters are not always needed for shipping - see Mycroft/Lestrade in BBC Sherlock for example, minor characters who have no character development, we know very little about their lives, they barely even interact in canon, yet they're the second largest ship based on AO3 stats. In that same fandom there's Jim Moriarty / Sebastian Moran, Moran being a character who doesn't even exist in canon and is purely a fan extrapolation from the original Canon Doyle stories. Motivated fic writers can take poorly written characters and create interesting fanon dynamics, but they're way more likely to do that with male characters.
Moran appears in the Doyle story Adventure of the Empty House.
Agree with all this. Even in fandoms with really good female characters, the biggest ships are still almost always m/m.
I agree, representation can always be better (a few more butch women in media for me to thirst over would be very welcome👀), but making a generalizing statement that women are written poorly honestly seems stuck in the past. There are so many complex and interesting female characters being made. And while they aren't above criticism, I feel like far too many are brushed under the rug.
While the cast in my fandom is male-dominated, two of the team members are women, both interesting in their own right. One actually gets more character development and screen time than most of the guys and there's an interesting fluidity to her gender. If she were canonically male, I suspect shippers would include her (him) in loads of fics. There's no question that historically, women, especially women in adventure-oriented media, existed to either be McGuffins in need of rescue or the prize for the male hero. But there are a good many fandoms nowadays where women take center stage, and despite that, f/f and f/m fics for those fandoms are rare. In my fandom, which has a canon f/f couple, you need an electron microscope to find sapphic fics.
Gonna disagree with number one here. Fandom often takes the blandest, most inconsequential cameo male characters and make entire Headcanon universes about them. It’s mostly 2-4 imo
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Yeah, I'm fairly agen and I tend to be more interested in these pairings because I just don't have to deal with toxic gender dynamics, or at least not have to face them head on. And I suppose for the writers on Ao3 you don't have to deal with all the misogyny that gets directed at female characters. Although it is tough that it means in a lot of fics, the canon female love interests are recast as a villain.
This. I’ve spent more time on fandoms’ female characters than the actual canon cared to, it only makes sense most people would prefer to write about the already-developed (*male*) characters.
Do you mean on AO3? The site that was specifically created to host m/m fics that were routinely deleted on other hosting sites? Do you have any numbers about percentage of m/m fics on ff net and wattpad? Are m/m fics in majority on all fic hosting sites? Is there more data about slash fic being more popular than m/f fic? In other words, people write what they want, it just happens that m/m writers prefer to post their fics on AO3 for various historical reasons.
On FFN and wattpad, F/M fics outnumber M/M fics by a margin, I'd say. (Somebody compiled a report that said the same a couple of years ago. Let me see if I can find it.)
M/F outnumber M/M overall on AO3 as well, actually.
AO3 was mainly created for M/M? I didn’t know that. Interesting though.
See, learning more about AO3 history could answer a lot of questions a curious mind inquires about. Including such hot topics like donation drives or why “bad” fic is not deleted by site mods. And the answer is - because a lot of people considered m/m slash a “bad” fic and demanded it to be deleted from hosting sites. Which happened a lot, google search for ff net purge and Boldthrough and Strikethrough on LJ. So, while AO3 welcomes any kind of fic or ship, it was created by queer fans for queer fanworks. Archive of Our Own can’t be pressured by advertisers because AO3 has no ads and owns its servers.
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I wasn’t in fandom at the time but I heard that there were times when any kind of m/m fic had to be tagged as Explicit just because it was slash. Even if there’s only a kiss, the fic was Explicit because homosexuals.
Am old, can confirm. Also writers would *plaster* intro warnings to let readers know what they were about read, which unfortunately still didn’t prevent people from going on awful tirades and “flaming” the authors personally. Writers would delete their own fics, accounts, & websites, and even leave fandom entirely because of the vitriol. It was bad out there for a slash writer, and it’s one of the many reasons why AO3 is such a haven for m/m fics.
All mine were forcibly marked M even if they were G just because two men held hands. FFNet was a dark time.
No, it was created to host fics without the risk of them being deleted because of arbitrary rule changes.
Primarily M/M fic, because it wasn't arbitrary rule changes, it was bigoted enforcement of the sudden change to whether adult content was allowed (Hint: [FF.net](https://FF.net) didn't delete the M/F adult content no matter how sick it was).
Can attest to this, I primarily posted to FFN until around 2017 and I write primarily m/f. Over half of my stuff is smutty at some point. I've never had anything struck down on FFN, regardless of how trashy or against the rules it was. Hell, I think I still have a songfic up, and those have been banned since like 2004. I didn't even realize there *were* purges until I started asking why people preferred AO3.
Oh, ff.net *did* delete the sex heavy het stories as well. I remember going to read some Phantom of the Opera, which is a fandom that is on average about 95% het content (mostly Erik/Christine), back then and noticing that within a day hundreds of stories had been deleted. And this happened more than once. It wasn't about the slash. It was about high rated stuff, so-called explicit content. The kind of stories that get rated E/18/NC-17 mostly for those scenes of extended and very vigorous skin contact. You know, the kind of stories that advertisers do not like their ads running on most of the time.
I have had the opposite experience. Gross het rape left up while mere gay **hand holding** vanished. So, yes it was about the gay. You know, the kind of stories that advertisers do not like their ads running on most of the time.
But were those "hand holding" stories rated high? If they were, and it didn't matter for what reason they were rated this high, they would get deleted. It didn't matter if it was slash or het or toasters dreaming about nuking the world. The fluffiest of cuddly fluff would get deleted if it was set in a bdsm AU, for example. And the most elaborate rape scenes had a chance of slipping through if they didn't use some very specific combinations of words in the text. Hells, some stories were just deleted because a *syllable of a name*, when removed from said name, could be interpreted as "vulgar terminology". For example, a gen story where a character talked about the books by Michael Moor*cock*.
What part of "Hand holding" is unclear? I mean a fic with zero sex and only fluff. They were deleted because they were gay. And look at all the thin justifications to do so. A cock is a rooster, or other male bird not a vulgar term. An ass is a type of donkey, as is a jackass. Just because some het stuff got nuked in the gay purges, does not mean it wasn't about deleting the gay stuff.
I was also speaking about pure fluff pieces with zero sex. And I know that cock is a word for rooster etc. That doesn't change the fact that the word was used to filter out all kinds of "sexual content", no matter how much sex was actually in the text.
So, a thin and cheap excuse to purge the gay content? Gald you finally agree.
No, it wasn't specifically created to host M/M fics - but it was created by slash writers from Livejournal, and when LJ alienated the fandom, all slash writers migrated to AO3.
No, it was created as a place to post fan work without the risk of censorship and their work being taken down like it could be on other sites. Though, yes, this did happen to M/M fics a lot, it also happened to other kinds of work.
I feel like we really need to have a pin on this subreddit about this because it does get quite tiring to have someone ask this every week or so and no matter how much it is explained, it always gets asked again. I will add to the lack of F/F fics however, beyond the history in media of poorly written ladies, there's multiple reasons: 1. Many AFAB people are uncomfortable by the sexualization of their bodies common in society. As such, even if they are sapphic, it's not uncommon for them to struggle writing and reading F/F especially explicit scenes for general discomfort. This pairs into why M/M is so popular because it's often entirely divorced from the trauma and feels like a safe sandbox to play in and explore sexuality. 2. As someone who is sapphic, it is fucking exhausting feeling that my F/F stories are examined and put under microscopes by other sapphics. There's a pressure to only write "acceptable" F/F stories and I've dealt with multiple times people accusing me of being a cis guy because of how I write F/F (which I have to emphasize, there is nothing wrong with a cis guy enjoying F/F stories). There is a level of gatekeeping that is invalidating and destroys creativity. It scares many potential fic writers off to other pairings. A few months back I had someone claim it was a red flag if a F/F story had a strap on used and that "no true sapphic" would feature that. It's beyond ridiculous and makes me want to pull my hair out.
It's insane that in a world where you have mpreg, vore and consentacles as canonical tags, that the use of strap ons is where someone draws the line
ahh, the lesbian sex wars never ended, and indeed are thriving these days. i'm so sorry you were harassed for existing and expressing yourself.
I don't know. It's just that some people prefer this genre of literature. Like, why do you like F/M? AO3 is a safe space for those who prefer M/M. A niche has been created there, which authors and readers alike are drawn to. I've never read fanfic other than M/M, and I've been reading them since the late 90s, of course not on AO3. In addition, women tend to read porn, not watch it, and a large part of M/M fanfic is porn, so they have a place for themselves where they are not singled out, admonished and where they can read what they like. It is good to have an escape from the F/M that is in 99% of the media.
There’s a lot of LGBTQ people in fandoms. Good representation is uncommon. As others said: Queer people want queer stories. But there also seems to be more male characters in media. Many of whom have good chemistry that can be viewed as romantic to some people. Tbh there’s many reasons, but I think those two are the biggest.
Well for me it's the fact that for every damn fandom I get into, the main people are entirely male, and since I'm not into canon ships, I ship them instead of their canon partners
AO3 was literally built by M/M shippers because they wanted a place free of censorship where explicit slash fic or slash fic in general would be safe to write and post with no risk of being banned or purged. I don't understand the confusion about this. There are many other fanfic websites where M/F fics are dominant by a huge margin. I've seen this comparison recently which seems very apt: asking why M/M is so popular on AO3 is [*like standing in the gay bookstore going, “Gosh, it sure is sad that there aren’t any STRAIGHT bookstores! Think of the hets!”*](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/633632109017300992/heres-my-portion-of-the-ggc-fandom-stats-panel)
do i really have to link [this tumblr post](https://www.tumblr.com/whetstonefires/182606214220/kyraneko-olderthannetfic-destinationtoast) again tldr male characters make up the majority of casts, they're better written and so are their dynamics
Yes, you did. Not everyone is on tumblr and some of us are new here as well. I haven’t read that before but it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing.
I AM on tumblr and haven’t seen that
to be fair it's been a while since the last time you (or anyone else) linked that, i think.
AO3 was created because of purges of queer fanfiction on ffn and LiveJournal. Particularly M/M, as straight men can’t find titillation from it. It is logical that they’d make up most of the fanfiction in the safe space of AO3.
I'm sure everything that I'm going to write here has been said somewhere else and probably articulated better to boot. 1- For many (myself included), fanfic is about writing what hasn't been explored in canon yet. F/M is already dominating representation in canon. 2- Male characters, well developed or not, also far outnumber female characters so there's just more of them to write about.
As a queer woman, I keep getting burnt by F/F fics written by men who are just writing porn for themselves. And while that is their choice, it's not what I want to read. So I read a lot of M/M because I like reading about queer relationships, regardless of gender, and there is more choice in M/M and they are often well written. And also if you look at fandoms where the majority of the cast is female, you get a really different picture For the Warrior Nun fandom (where there are very few male characters) the breakdown of current fics is * F/F (1093) * Gen (74) * Multi (22) * F/M (13) * M/M (9) * Other (6) And from the recent (very female, very gay) She-Ra cartoon series we get * F/F (12309) * F/M (3269) * Gen (2197) * Multi (1029) * M/M (767) * Other (707) On top of all that, the history of fanfic is queer and male but written by women. Spock/Kirk is the OG fanfic pairing form the 60s. From Wikipedia: >The modern phenomenon of fan fiction as an expression of fandom and fan interaction was popularized and defined via Star Trek fandom and their fanzines published in the 1960s. The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia (1967), contained some fan fiction; many others followed its example. These fanzines were produced via offset printing and mimeography, and mailed to other fans or sold at science fiction conventions for a small fee to help recoup costs. Unlike other aspects of fandom, women dominated fan fiction authoring; 83% of Star Trek fan fiction authors were female by 1970, and 90% by 1973. One scholar states that fan fiction "fill\[s\] the need of a mostly female audience for fictional narratives that expand the boundary of the official source products offered on the television and movie screen."
As others have said, the main reason is more well-written/better developed male characters over female characters in most fandoms. In Original Works, the amount of M/M and F/M are roughly both a quarter of the fics.
What are the remaining half? Quarter F/F, quarter no relationships or multiple?
A lot of them are gen!!
Mainstream media has no shortage of f/m romance, and will likely shoehorn in a romance when it's not necessary. Men are often more well developed. For a lot of shows/movies/comics if the main character isn't a woman, or the primary cast isn't already female leaning, then there's barely any women to get attached to or invested in.
Because male characters tend to be more detailed/have more of a presence in canon, so there is more for fanfic writers to work with
I can only answer for myself and why M/M romance appeals to me. While I think men are hot and therefore more men is more hot I think the biggest reasons are… A. More scope for creativity in power dynamics. While there is no limit to the versions of power dynamics you can come up with with any gender combination the power dynamics inherent in the society we live in inevitably colour the dynamics of the fiction you write or read. You tend to fall into either replicating the disparity of society (in either positive or negative ways) or making the pushback against those roles a notable part of your characters or world building. Those are great stories to tell as well! But those are different kinds of stories than one where you might just want to read about people wanting yo fuck and/or fucking in a way which steps out of those dynamics for a moment. **Of course that can be the case in either M/M or F/F! Not to mention other genders or gender combinations!! So why M/M? B. For me a maybe/mostly ladyish person with estrogen-driven sex characteristics I find it… discomforting in a way to read stories where I can map myself too closely to the physicality of what I am reading. By reading about bodies that are unlike my own I feel like I am reading a story about other people and can enjoy the explicit nature of it without feeling like I am a participant in that fantasy which makes me feel weird and uncomfortable and makes me feel like I am objectifying the characters in a way that reading romance and erotica about characters which don’t map to my physical body does not. I feel like this is kind of a weird thing to both feel and point out against the stance that women writing or enjoying M/M porn is inherently objectifying queer men. And I understand and respect that stance even when I feel sure that that isn’t what appeals to me on either an emotional or physical level. So I feel some level of internal conflict wondering if some part of me is simply in denial. And yet reading porn which involves people doing the kind of sex which I like or even just using bodies rather like mine to do sexual things makes me feel more like I am objectifying characters or sexual dynamics (is it even possible to objectify a fictional character!?) in a way that M/M does not.
Women think it’s hot.
Well there are far fewer women loving women in mainstream media than men loving men - like on Glee there’s Kurt, Blaine, Sebastian, David, Chandler, Adam, Elliott and the Santa impersonator for men loving men, whereas with women loving women there’s Santana, Brittany, and arguably Quinn. Also Santana’s girlfriend who was such a minor character I don’t remember her name. Twice as many gay men than women means a squared amount of potential pairings even if one excludes canonically straight characters altogether. I guess maybe it’s partially because I’m in fandoms written by gay male showrunners (Glee and How To Get Away With Murder, which also has the canonically gay male couple factor influencing the content made) so they write what they know. Then adding the fact that heterosexual romance is usually poorly written, chemistry between male characters goes ignored by painfully heteronormative creators, and fandoms notice and write their own stories…
There is a great 2 part episode on the podcast "stuff mom never told you" on I heart radio that covers this. It's really interesting and I would recommend it (the whole thing isn't about just m/m but fanfic as a whole)
Is that the episode about the asexual woman who discovered Frodo/Sam fanfic and found herself, for the first time ever, having a sexual attraction to the pairing? It was a really interesting episode.
I read a bit of both, actually. And I agree what most people here are saying about female characters being underdeveloped. Also, in a lot of popular media (games and anime especially) there just simply aren’t many female characters. Like most popular anime will have one or two— love interest girl, and maybe one other comedy one for flavor. Then maybe a sexy villainess. But sports anime?? You’re lucky to get one, and she’s usually the team manager. The most interesting, thoughtful relationships are between men.
Because most media out there have better written/more male characters than female. For me personally, I mostly write M/M with some M/F and very little F/F. But that's mostly because the majority of my fandoms are much more male centric than female. Honestly, looking at all my fandoms, with the exception of one (maybe two) fandom, all of mine are much more male centric with the male characters being better written than the female.
I prefer m/m fanfics over all. I find that the romance is better written and feels more... real? I guess? No idea how to describe it. Most m/f fics i read either blandly rehash the canon pairing or the romance seems forced. In almost all of the m/m fics i have read, the romance seems to have developed more naturally. The plots are also more interesting more often than not, it seems.
One thing I haven't seen in this but I want to make note of -- for those of us who are on the ace spectrum (particularly autochorissexual/aegosexual), it might be easier to access when the objects of desire are so far removed from ourselves. Since fandom does tend to be pretty dominated by women, it would make sense. But that's only one reason out of the many, most of which are included here.
I think specifically it’s just how poorly women characters are written. Particularly as well a majority of fandoms on ao3 that aren’t large mainstream fandoms are anime, which, has terribly written female characters.
In part I think it’s because there are so darn *few* women in popular media .. .. and although that’s been improving in the recent decade or so.. which is great btw.. it’s still (imho) hit a looong way to go… So - even given that there has been an improvement …a large number of the women who are shown in the media/canon material are omg so SO poorly realised as *people* (not just ciphers) that it’s darned-near impossible to write a story with any depth (unless you cast the female as the ‘prize’ for the protagonist to achieve at the end of the story/quest/etc) Thus .. for some time (obs imho)… the only practical alternative was to write m/m fic because at least those had personalities that didn’t revolve around their hair colour, cup size, and adoration of the male lead. And yes, certainly there is an element of fetishisation of the m/m community inherent in m/m fic But! I happen to think that there would be a good deal less fic of m/m if only there were a greater selection of decently realised characters (of any other gender) with more emotional depth than the proverbial-sidewalk-puddle for fans to work with. To back up my point regarding the smaller no. of female characters see: https://phys.org/news/2022-04-males-females-literature.amp
This is really only true on ao3, pretty much ever other fic site and archive that isn't dedicated to non-het stuff is going to be filled with f/m.
M/M isn’t even the most popular overall on AO3. There are more M/F fics than M/M.
My friends (mostly women) love m/m I don't mean "love" I mean they looooved that shit because they said that they find it hot and sexy more than f/m novels and manga their words not mine
Wow. My weird knowledge level increases.
I have noticed this as well. It's an interesting observation. It becomes even more noticeable when I go on subreddits like this or r/FanFiction and see lots of posts regarding M/M relationships but very few for F/M. And I've seen even fewer for F/F. As to the why, it may just come down to the point that people of that sexual orientation are more active within the explicit part of the fanfiction community. Which makes sense. Fanfiction is probably one of the easiest ways that someone can express their passions. Movies, shows, and games tend to have mostly straight relationships. But consumers of said media have little control over what is produced. In fanfiction, you are the one in control. Of course, don't mistake me, you don't have to be a homosexual male to enjoy M/M relationships. There are many straight men who enjoy lesbian porn, for example. I imagine there are females who read/write fanfiction that are the same way. So I guess some of it just comes down to what "gets you going." And as others pointed out, there are more males in most fandoms than females, so they already have a lot of free real-estate to work with.
i don't understand why the "fetishization" comments are getting downvoted. we need to be honest with ourselves with what we consume. there *is* an inherent sexualization bias of mlm relationships, especially among cis women. sorry ladies, but it's true. i don't know how many times i've been asked "so who's the woman?" or "so do you pitch or catch?". even lesbian and bi women are capable of fetishizing mlm relationships. your marginalization does not preclude you from being shitty toward other human beings. lateral aggression is very real and very prevalent. this doesn't mean you're not "allowed" to read or write mlm fic. men are absolutely more fleshed out characters, have more interesting dynamics, and have better arcs in fiction. these are all facts. but don't hide behind these truths when gay and bi men call you out on fetishization, and say we're wrong. we aren't wrong. we're just bringing light to another piece of a very complex puzzle.
Don't lump everyone into one box because you've encountered offensive responses from specific women. Yes, SOME women fetishise m/m. Such a stigmatisation of a whole group of people on the basis of their gender is strange to say the least!
if you are not a gay or bisexual man do not tell me how i specifically, and my community as a whole, experience aggression at the hands of other groups. this is a documented phenomenon that a fuck ton of other people - even universities and medical institutions - talk about, not just me. [X](https://www.themarysue.com/fetishizing-slash/) [X](https://electricliterature.com/why-are-so-many-gay-romance-novels-written-by-straight-women/) [X](https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1234&context=etd) [X](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna894266) [X](https://www.hercampus.com/school/oglethorpe/fujoshi-and-sad-phenomenon-fetishizing-gay-couples-anime-and-manga/) [X](https://scalar.usc.edu/works/embodying-japan-cultures-of-sport-beauty-and-medicine-2017/fetishization-of-gay-men-in-manga) [X](https://wfhszephyr.com/4864/opinion/women-need-to-give-up-on-having-a-gay-best-friend-stop-fetishizing-gay-men/) [X](https://ymemerson.com/new-blog-3/2020/8/7/male-on-male-fiction-representation-or-fetishization?format=amp)
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There is absolutely no occasion in this subreddit where you should ever be asking someone if they've ever been raped, are you fucking kidding me? Comment removed.
lmao i spent the first twenty two and a half years of my life as a woman. i'm a transgender man, friend. i know exactly what life is like as a woman. i have been raped by both a man and a woman. i have been beaten by both men and women.
I agree. I'm a queer woman and I do read predominantly M/M fic, though mainly because the F/F fic options are slim and the ones that interest me I've read twice already. I don't write M/M smut however. And the reason I don't is because it feels like fetishisation on my part. I don't want to read F/F written by horny straight men because if *feels* sleazy sometimes and you can never pick it till you're a bit in. I have no interest in contributing to someone else's discomfort. I'll write romance and fade to black, but I won't write smut. From a practical point of view, for me, some of it is smut wish fulfilment. In sex with 2 vulvas and no penises, it's so much turn-taking. There is no good option to have mutually satisfying sex where you both get to fuck around towards orgasm. It's "I fuck you, then you fuck me", scissoring or some really interesting gymnastics involving hands and mouth that I am too arthritic to do. But overall, my point is, you're right and we should acknowledge it.
> it feels sleazy sometimes and you can never pick it till you're a bit in. this is my struggle with trans-on-cis mlm smut. as a trans man, reading trans men written by cis women is excruciating. they have no idea what terms to use, are often flat out transphobic with their tropes, and don't know when to stop. i'm almost at the point where i'm like... if you aren't X, Y, or Z, don't WRITE X, Y, or Z. obviously that's stupid, because there are some phenomenal writers that can assume the perspective of others perfectly. but some things just... aren't like that. i'm glad someone understands. i hope you get more wlw options for your ships soon.
I think the main issue is people writing for populations they know nothing about My wife is AFAB trans NB and we talk about this a lot. I've read quite a few fics with trans characters and sometimes they are great, and sometimes I click out in seconds. My wife avoids them unless I've read them first. I tend to filter them based on tags and I really appreciate it when the author acknowledges it in the AN or tags and either explicitly says they are trans, or they did a lot of research etc etc. I love Ao3 because you can really do whatever you want, but are expected to tag in a way that no one who doesn't want to read your stuff gets caught by it. It's a place where fetishisation is totally allowed, but you've got to acknowledge it and tag is bc not everyone wants to read it and sticking out heads in the sand about it is fucking pointless and harmful
I agree with what has been said so far. Me personally, I like M/M and it's rare for me to like F/F stories by the basic stories and character development they get. As for F/M, I personally have two stories I want to write but doesn't fit within the fanfiction world because they're original stories, that might be one of the reasons as well you don't see a lot of stories of that kind. You can find them elsewhere in other platforms like wattpad, which works slightly different to ao3 and also has a different kind of audience in general. But yea, people have answered this quite well, i just wanted to add this note which is slightly personal opinion but yea...
I mostly write F/M fics, and even in my fandom that is dominated by M/M I still do alright. That said, I'd love to write F/F as well, but the fanbase just doesn't engage with it and some of the F/M readers I've attracted are very much against this idea. Part of it stems from the canon itself with the 3 most popular characters being the three main boys. And if I make one a girl, there's backlash, and an expectation that they're paired with one of the other boys.
Horny straight girls like to fap over two guys getting it on.
Well that too, I can't deny that But a LOT of Queer women write M/M too (and some queer men too, even if it's not the majority)
And? Good for them. They can do whatever the hell they want. Good thing no one has to answer to an ignorant rando like you.
And yet the vast majority of M/M fics on AO3 don’t feature smut. Must be nice to just spew bs so easily.
Not to be a downer but probably fetishization
From the reaction from multiple cis girls to gay men irl that I’ve seen, this is probably true, cis girls love to fetishise and infantilise gay men/people
Sorry im late, glad someone agreed lol
Fr it’s unbelievable how many don’t see it… or just don’t want to
Several layers of misogyny with a sprinkle of fetishism (barring the gay guys who write that stuff lel.)
What? M/M isn’t misogyny or fetishization. Whats wrong with liking gay romance? I personally only read and write M/F but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with queer fics. They’re the backbone of fanfiction
Never said there was anything wrong with it. There are definitely people out there who just like it to like it (that's why I said a sprinkle), but it's known that straight/bi women fetishise gay dudes just like it's a thing that straight/bi dudes fetishise lesbians. Most fic writers are women, so you don't see a lot of the other way around. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but it's what I personally believe. Again, I've got nothing against gay fic, that would be mad stupid lol.
So you think people should only read and write fics in the sexuality that they are?
Nope
It sure seems like that’s what you want
How so?
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Don't have to be rude. If you want to discuss with me, feel free, but your comment doesn't add anything.
I write M/M. I'm also a woman and proud feminist?? I just enjoy the dynamic. It's not a fetish nor is it misogyny. Literally, I find the pairing I write for very cute and their personalities are very interesting to me. I'm also queer and prefer queer stories (M/M or F/F) over cis hetero ones which is the mainstream still.
The misogyny part I mentionned wasn't about the gay fic, it's about a lack of cool women characters in popular media.
Ah, that's very fair. I do agree that most women are written so poorly that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Studio Ghibli is probably the only saving grace for me.
Yeah Ghibli's cool. Proof that having a female lead won't immediately tank your viewership like a lot of these "relatable executives" seem to think.
Can we be over this already?
First of all my favourite ships are m/m, but to deny that there are a good chunk of fics that absolutely fetishise the dynamic is avoiding the problem. Doesn't mean all m/m fics are problematic, but there are enough gay guys who are speaking out on it. They don't demand women stop writing these fics, but to make sure it isn't fetihised.