#23 — Brown Goes Down

[dekedangle_rpf_mod]

This is the twenty-third post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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Comments

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Sid/Geno fans have made me hate Sid/Geno, which is terrible because I like the Penguins and like 95% of the fic for the team is Sid/Geno. I could never ever say this publicly though because I have friends who DO ship it like burning.

It's just that, well. For one, they don't strike me as particularly close? The deepest bond on that team is probably the one between the 3 (now 2) French Canadians, but Sid and Geno are always BFFs in fic who spend their summers together (despite all evidence to the contrary). They seem more like guys that are on a team together and have a mostly teammate-ish friendship. I am totally fine with shipping two players who have a relationship like that (give me all of the Kopitar/Quick and Geno/Ovi tbh), but I really dislike when people make so much out of stuff that is by all means not true.

Their fans tend to promote so much of that top/bottom dynamic that I really intensely dislike because, well, I'm bi, and queer people rarely define themselves as liking ~just one. I remember a post on tumblr that was like "bottom geno is worse than not having any fic at all" and that's just both disrespectful and reinforces the gender binary to a distressing degree. Also my ship has a grand total of 3 fics on AO3. TAKE WHAT YOU GET YOU ARE VERY LUCKY. (I think this may be a carry-over from a lot of BNF fic from fans who come from other fandoms, namely anime and manga ones, which have very defined top/bottom roles. Thehoyden in particular I remember wrote some Naruto fic I liked back in the day.)

And everyone who ever appears is usually mischaracterized. I am so sick of Flower the Relationship Guru and Missing Kris Letang Syndrome (seriously why wouldn't you include the prettiest dude on the team?) despite the fact that those two are the other half of the Penguins' core players. Plus, Sidney Crosby is not a basket case. There are maybe two players I can think of off the top of my head that are half as wrapped up in their own heads in real life as Sid tends to be in fic.

I just hope McDavid doesn't end up getting the spacetoaster treatment because I would be very interested in McDavid/Draisaitl that didn't follow Sid/Geno tropes.

This is long and rambly but, well, this is a venting thread.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I even agree with some of this. But people have been complaining about the gross seme/uke dynamic in S/G forever, you're not a special snowflake.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

What about them having a common complaint makes you think they were trying to be a special snowflake?

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

How about their agony over never being able to say all of these unheard of criticisms!!! in namespace?

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Please go be bored and obnoxious somewhere else, and let people vent in the venting thread in peace.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Again, what about venting in a venting thread on an anonmeme so that they don't have to deal with their SidGeno shipper friends going "HDU!!!" seems like a special snowflake? Like, I'm sure you have a lot of new and interesting contributions to make to the world in and out of namespace, but I think you're being pretty ungenerous here.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

DA

If you want ungenerous, I'm filing this person with the people who say "penguins fans make me hate the penguins!" and "I'm a huge penguins fan but I hope they lose everything and get leprosy because other fans annoy me!"

It's such a neat double insult. Not only do I hate what you love, it's because you made me hate it.

IME people who just straight up hate the penguins because they're Flyers or Caps fans are much more tolerable than those who sigh about how ~the fans made them hate it.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT (yes i am the special snowflake)

It's because I try not to be super wanky in namespace? That is literally the point of posting stuff here! And because even if these are common criticisms they are actually pretty legitimately damaging to real life people who are gay/bi/lesbian because of stereotyping. It doesn't seem like a big deal but I've been asked if I'm more femme or butch enough times to want to tear my hair out.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

They might be new enough to the fandom or surrounded by enough S/G shippers that they haven't seen the criticisms, though. If they want to vent, let them vent.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I see S/G as an old fashioned ship tbh which makes sense because it's the oldest and most established ship in this fandom, but a lot of your complaints are a result of that I think. Fandom has moved on from the tropes that used to be fucking everywhere when S/G first became big so it's more noticeable now. At least in hockey fandom.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I ship it like burning and would sell my soul for more bottom geno tbh.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

+1

And more Geno-centric Sid/Geno (which tends to come with the bottoming, for whatever weird fandom reason that is *waves hands*).

Also more Sid/Geno that includes more of the team. I'm sad oflights doesn't seem to be writing much of the pairing anymore, because she always did a good job with the supporting cast. downjune, too, although she seems more into other Pens pairings these days than Sid/Geno. And withershins tends to give cameos to a lot of secondary Pens.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah I'm really sad about oflight too, she always managed to portray the entire team really well, and of course I adored her S/G. I haven't read much of downjune's stories, mostly because some of the pairings she used to write didn't interest me at all.

We need someone new who will write 50,000 words about them, amirite anon?

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, please.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

From your lips to writers' ears. I would love to see this, just because so much of the fic is very Sid-centric, and yeah, exclusive bottom Sid is such a thing.

Also, there's such a fun supporting cast of Penguins! I'd love to see more of them in Sid/Geno fic.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

There's a lot of truth to this (and I'm glad someone pointed out the lack of Letang...I really don't get it), but I think the three major ships in this fandom all have odd characterization choices. I mean, even prior to last summer, I could never get into most Kane/Toews fic because it just felt like a less angsty version of Stiles and Derek from Teen Wolf. And Benn acts more like some awkward, insecure fat kid in fics than a multi-millionaire athlete who is one of the best at his sport. You just have to separate fandom characterization, which usually has certain types of characters and relationship dynamics that are more popular, from real life characterization to be able to enjoy it. I don't like the spacetoaster!Sid stuff either, but there are a lot of other S/G fics that I enjoy even if the dynamic isn't true to real life. It is a bit annoying when people take the most insignificant interaction to be the sign of a great friendship, but being in an RPF fandom is a bit odd anyway so I can't really judge.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

da

Yeah, Kane's voice in fics always reminded me of fanon!Stiles. Since I liked fanon!Stiles, that worked out for me okay, but I can see how it'd get on some people's nerves. And Jamie Benn, insecure ex-fat kid, is definitely not my favorite.

I do like S/G that incorporates a lot of actually hockey life and people, but fortunately for me I also enjoy a lot of the tropey fanon stuff. Mostly I enjoy them as a pairing where the people involved really like each other (as opposed to K/T, which had a dynamic that tended to be, IDK, a lot more disrespectful of each other as people), and I will take that any way I can get it, whether it's silly fanon stuff or more true to life.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

This is such an outdated rant. It's like you stopped reading S/G fic after 2013.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

Lmao. Old S/G is still the most popular S/G, and there hasn't been some great revolution since then.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

there hasn't been some great revolution since then.

Really? I feel like there has. There's a lot more variety in Sid characterization now, he's written as an adult a lot more of the time, the Tarzan!Geno dialogue is almost gone. There's still stuff that feels like it could've been written in 2013, but there's a lot of stuff that feels more fresh, to me.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

+1 Sid's characterization has moved pretty far away from TFV's robot shit and that's true for early adopters of that characterization, like thehoyden. Yeah, there's still more top Geno/bottom Sid but that happens in every ship that has a BNF that popularizes that dynamic. And there are enough people that complain about the lack of bottom Geno that it can't be totally nonexistent.

The most outdated complaint is the lack of ensembles. Modern S/G is huge on ensembles. And I don't know how many quality authors actually write S/G as BFFs anymore; usually they're written as close teammates that care about each other that have separate groups of friends, which is as close to reality as RPF should get. There's an entire oflights fic that deals with the novelty of Geno hanging out with the French Canadians more as an extension of dating Sid.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I ship them, and TBH what I've noticed is they don't seem as publicly close as they did when they were younger (which isn't bad, they're more grown up now and Pens PR never promoted them as BFFS FOR LIFE!!!! the way Hawks PR did K/T) , but the fic has improved. I don't know if I'm sad or not lol.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

It still dominates because, well, it's been around longer and will probably never dislodge from the top kudos'ed works. I don't see anyone writing spacetoaster!Sid anymore. That's gone away, etc.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

While that does tend to be true, four or five works in the top 20 most kudosed are from the last two years.

Re: Fandom Venting

[(Anonymous)]

I want to know where they're finding fic that has them habitually spending the summer together. I don't think I've ever seen that.