Kink and Literature Mentalities

dragonscholar's interest in McFanfics explored here at fanthropology and foofasaurus's post discussing the use of warning labels, here have both made me think, and the thoughts have been becoming mixey. Synthesis is threatening to occur. (Much of this is cannibalized from my comments to foofasaurus's post.)

It struck me that there were two different mentalities functioning in the debates, and these mentalities frame the way we tend to look at fanfiction in general, both in the sense of reading and writing it and the type of analysis we do over here at fanthropology. (I'm sure these mentalities apply to fannish activities other than fic, but I'll stick to describing fic because that is the thing with which I am familiar.)

The first, the "kink mentality" (originally called the "slash mentality") believe that they shouldn't have to read anything which doesn't satisfy the kinks they feel like satisfying at that moment. Fic exists not to be aesthetically organic, not to be beautiful in its own right (although these are still positives for this mindset), but primarily to fulfill a kink. If it doesn't fulfill a kink, then despite how beautiful it is, how much the reader needs to read it in a certain sense, the reader should be protected from it.

The proponents of this mentality are more likely to claim that there is a qualitative difference between how canon and fanworks are to be approached, a view which strikes me as rather odd. For them, canon represents works of art/literature/&c. and has to be taken as such--one is stuck with it--but one is free to choose between fanfic because there's so much more of it, and one should never have to read that which doesn't answer one's kink.

In the extreme case, this mentality is extended even to original, published fiction/literature. These most extreme proponents seem to eschew the literary approach altogether, and feel that even canon should exist to satisfy their kinks--that Anna Karenina, Villette, and Romeo and Juliet should all have

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character death warnings. (Of course, it could be argued pretty easily that R&J already has an implicit character death warning.)

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On the other hand, if they don't happen to have a kink for dystopian fics, they shouldn't have to read Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World no matter how important the insights those works contain into the human condition may be. One reads to satisfy kinks, not for insight, unless of course one has an insight kink. I'm not really sure how to enter into dialectic with these types: I can only look at them funny, shrug my shoulders, and walk away. Or maybe even pity them.

OTOH, the "literature mentality" (originally called the "gen mentality") denies that canon and fanworks should be held to different standards, but in the other direction. The standards that should be brought to fanfic are the same that most people bring to original fic, be it Joss Whedon or George Orwell. To them, the whole thing about both fanfic and original fic is creating an aesthetic experience. One is in it for the overall aesthetic experience and not to satisfy any given kink. Indeed, this is where Joss Whedon's dictum "give them what they need, not what they want" comes from--sometimes unexpected character death is precisely what the reader needs (or at least what the fic needs), but the reader rarely wants it, and chances are it isn't going to satisfy a kink. Indeed, it's the anti-kink, and that's the entire point.

The "literature mentality" people would be much less willing to provide warnings or even pairings for the readers because they are more interested in shaping the aesthetic experience for the reader than guiding readers with relevant kinks to their story. Of course, if no one reads the story, then no one will appreciate the aesthetic experience, so this method works better for people who have a readership which trusts them to tell a good story no matter what, just as we don't need labels on literature because we trust Orwell, Huxley, Hemmingway, Bronte, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, whoever to tell us a good story even if it doesn't satisfy our kinks.

The kink mentality assumes a consumer culture, in which we need to choose which fics out of a too-large pool we are going to read--indeed, in which this is a necessary survival tool in a fandom (every fandom) that like everything else obeys Sturgeon's law and is 90% crap. The literature mentality assumes trust in an author to produce good fiction no matter what. This being the case, one might suppose that only BNFs could successfully operate under the literature mentality, but I maintain this isn't the case. Even without pandering to kinks, a new fic will usually receive a wide enough reading (at least in a semi-large fandom) so that if it is any good at least some people will learn to trust the author. If I write a new Buffy fic, it'll show up on the su_herald. Some fraction of the subscribers will give it a look. If they see quality, they'll keep reading no matter how I label it, and will be more likely to read a fic of mine even if they don't usually read that type of fic because they know to trust me. (I'm only using me as an example because I'm me. I fully admit the possibility that what I write is part of the 90% crap.) Also, leaving intelligent comments to other's meta and/or fic will encourage them to friend you and/or read your fic. Note that this method encourages the buildup of intelligent feedback from figures whose opinions you trust--your flist.

In my comments to foofasaurus's post, I suggest that the kink mentality is more common among slashers, with the literature mentality primarily used by gen writers, with het writers and femslashers somewhere in the middle. mofic understandably took offense to this, especially due to the fact that as much as I tried to use value neutral terms to describe the two sides, I didn't really succeed. Which is why I gave up trying here.

Even though I think it is clear which group I belong to and support, I don't necessarily believe one mentality is better than the other--I just have such a great difficulty understanding the other POV that whenever I describe it I sound disparaging. I have nothing against fic which primarily uses the kink mentality (after all, I have kinks, and I enjoy having them satisfied) but I acknowledge my mindset--the way I approach literature--is primarily that of a gen writer, even when I'm writing het or femslash, and this brings with it certain assumptions and preconceptions about plotting, characterizations, canon, fanon, and yes, even warning labels. Nor do I believe that any fic or ficcer fits completely in one category; after all, I've included in a very canon-heavy BtVS epic a relatively random Dawn/Dru-as-Amanda-in-thrall scene mostly because I'm a het male and I like femslash in general and Dawn/Amanda in particular. Wish fulfillment is an important and legitimate part of fanfiction; I just cringe when I see it taking control of a story and destroying the fic's integrity.

However, I thought it would be useful to acknowledge my perspective--which I thought shared many characteristics with others arguing against the use of detailed labels--and compare it to the ones I was viewing. My real insight was that I thought that what was true of me was true of the other side as well--neither group really understood the logic the other was operating under, and I finished reading the comments here with a distinct feeling that everybody was talking past each other instead of at each other or even to each other. We were just ships passing in the night.

Anyway, mofic argued that I didn't really understand slash, and there wasn't really any way to respond to that. ("Yes, I do!" "No, you don't!" "Yes, I do!") Admittedly, I'm not a slasher, although I am an occasional femslasher. Still, I do think that gen writing preassumes the literature mentality in a way that slash doesn't. A fic written under the literature mentality, after all, is likely to be longer, more plotty, with a fuller narrative arc. A kink fic is likely to be shorter, a McFanfic. (It's extreme form being the PWP which exists only to satisfy a kink, and basically eschewing the narrative arc--other than the sex--and sometimes even characterizations in the process. This is not to deny, however, that there is plenty of grey area in the middle.) Also, most kinks are sexual, and gen by definition simply doesn't include sex. (The closest gen equivalent to a PWP is an angsty introspective fic.) Longer, plotty works that have a "gen feel"--like most of my WIPs--might include sex, but they owe their "gen feel" precisely to the fact that the sex is at most a minor element. It was the authors of such works--technically het or slash authors, but writers whose work feels like gen--that I found most often supporting not using detailed labels or warnings. I don't have any statistics to base this on--perhaps someone with a paid account could do a poll--but my experience suggests this correlation, and my theory provides a possible explanation. (Incidently, this also caused me to complete hallucinate a gen writer who wasn't actually involved in the discussion, because I saw het and slash writers describing plotty fics whose summaries felt to me like gen.)

So, my question is: do you think that analyzing fandom in terms of kink and literature mentalities is a useful fanthropoligcal resource, or am I in left field here? Can the ability to understand the phenomenon of McFanfics and a debate over fic labeling and warnings as related help us to understand fandom, or is it only obstructing what is actually going on?