The Subtext Anxiety

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Title:	The Subtext Anxiety
Creator:	Shomeret
Date(s):	November 21, 1999
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	fiction writing, femslash, science fiction, concrit
External Links:	The Subtext Anxiety/archive link
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The Subtext Anxiety is an essay by Shomeret. In it, she refers to Apology for Criticism.

It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.

Excerpts

I've been the resident gadfly in a number of fandoms. In every single one of them I've noticed an anxiety toward subtexts. Writers never like hearing about them. There's a reason for this. When critics discuss subtexts, they are pointing out a level of interpretation that is almost always unintended by the writer. When you write a story, you intend to communicate certain things. Being told about something you didn't intend may be alarming or infuriating. Fanfic writers are not the only ones that have problems with subtexts. I first encountered the subtext anxiety in a literary fandom. I took over an ongoing fanzine series of feminist articles written about a certain science fiction writer's novels. The author denounced any efforts to find social significance in her work from the podium during a science fiction convention when my first essay appeared. As a gadfly, I found this to be a very encouraging sign. I feel that my essays did inspire thought that led the fandom in creative directions for many years.

In slash the anxiety about what you are subconsciously communicating also exists. Although I am bisexual, I have been unable to complete any f/f slash because I worry so much about the potential subtexts. Since there is so little f/f in the majority of fandoms (aside from Xena), I tend to feel very self-conscious about the sort of lesbian relationships that I would be portraying, and fear that I will misrepresent lesbians. I always ask myself what my f/f story might be saying about lesbians in general. Am I feeding into stereotypes? Am I being too negative? Am I being too positive? I don't want to over-romanticize lesbian relationships either. I have written lesbian characters into slash stories that are primarily m/m, but the idea of putting a story out there for other fans to read that focuses on an f/f relationship sets off a panic reaction in my brain. I have several uncompleted f/f stories in various fandoms, and one completed story that is in a state of eternal revision because it never satisfies me. Yet there's another serious problem that slash fans have with critical analysis. In science fiction fandom many people disapprove of science fiction getting any academic attention. A science fiction fan once actually wrote "Get science fiction out of the classroom and back into the gutter where it belongs." Like slash, science fiction is a despised genre. Many fans have enjoyed their liminal status on the margins of society. They fear science fiction becoming too respectable. In the case of slash, the legality of our writings remains a matter for contention. There is the fear that when the slash underworld is brought to the respectable world's attention through books written by academics, it is becoming too public and thus even more vulnerable to prosecution.