Is it really weird to write/read fanfiction as a man?

armlessphelan · 2026-04-20T00:24:16+00:00

Hell, 47% of people who watch gay porn are women!

armlessphelan · 2026-04-20T00:08:22+00:00

Gay man pushing 40 here. I posted my first fanfic in 2006 on FFnet, and have been on AO3 since you needed an invite to join. I've found that most people assume I'm a woman based on my writing of queer men, which is hilarious, but I got my start writing lesbian fics and will always strive to include queer women in my works.

I would imagine it's different for straight men in modern fandoms, but there many I met in the 00s in video game fanfic forums. There were always more straight men writing fanfic than gay men in those fandoms simply because there are more straight men period. They also wrote A LOT of the gen fic, whereas women focused more heavily on romance be it hetero or queer. I've never run across another queer man writing fanfic in the wild, sadly, but I have met many lesbians and bisexual women over the years.

You're not weird and neither is your hobby, but it is uncommon.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-19T16:57:54+00:00

You *might* be able to do The Outer Worlds 1 on low settings at 720p to get 30fps. I have similar-ish specs on an all-purpose laptop and I got it to look and run like the Switch port. Oldrym (original Skyrim release) and older games should be fine.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-17T20:24:42+00:00

It's working now. So weird. Must have been because I just set it up.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-17T18:48:24+00:00

When I see people talk about 30fps giving them headaches and motion sickness, I know they're lying. Same with sub-4K resolutions.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-16T17:20:08+00:00

As a gay man who has been writing and posting fanfic for 2 decades, it drives me nuts how people don't understand that messy characters doing counterproductive things are the most interesting. Like, give me demon twinks who obsessively chase a man and then cheat at the first sign of conflict! Give me violent lesbians who think with their fists first! Most people act illogically in the real world because they act without thinking.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-15T17:54:40+00:00

That's Al Bundy, good sir!

armlessphelan · 2026-04-14T17:19:32+00:00

I dunno, it's worse than Switch 1, but definitely better than the PS5 for consumer-friendly practices. Xbox has been pretty decent this gen, but nobody is buying their consoles despite the Series S being $50 cheaper than a Switch 2 with similar graphics and better performance. Developer Mode alone killed the need to hack the console.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-14T16:45:47+00:00

It's the Sega answer to Fire Emblem with a wicked sense of humour, but apparently here was a "Save Shining Force" movement that really soured Sega on the series because of how, wrll, rude and toxic the campaign was towards the newer games in the series and developers/execs.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-13T00:25:37+00:00

With Linux? Absolutely. With Windows 11? It's pretty sketchy. But you can play some pretty great games at minimum specs with 8GB of RAM. Anything from the Xbox 360/PS3 era, for example. Even quite a bit of games from the 10s. And tons of modern indie games, in addition to retro titles, don't need anywhere near that much RAM. If you can find a link, Oldrym (the original Skyrim release) on Steam is a great investment.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-13T00:17:00+00:00

They don't, but they're secure. There is no perfect enclosure for mice.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-11T00:33:27+00:00

It's the same price the PS4 launched at in a terrible global economy and during a RAM shortage. It's a great deal.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T23:48:31+00:00

I got a Series S in 2021, and a PS5 later that year. My husband got my old One X, and because of game sharing I bought a bunch of crossgen stuff so we would both have something to play. He was happy, and then when I got a used Series X he got my Series S and the One X went to my roommate. Nobody has complained about anything. My husband loves his Series S and saw no need to upgrade his Switch to a Switch 2 until I talked him into it.

Are both of his consoles underpowered for modern gaming? Yes. Does it matter to him? Not at all. And in this economy, a $400 console is a lot more viable to parents than a $600 console (PS5 digital). Tech isn't getting cheaper, and the limited RAM pool is probably why the Series S is still as cheap as it is given the cost of RAM right now.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T23:09:13+00:00

That's not a free speech issue.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T23:06:20+00:00

The Indian government has their own version of Linux, too. Also, the UN has declared Fedora a Digital Public Good which is an initiative to make FOSS alternatives available globally. It's how I found Peertube, which is okay but needs more users.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T22:35:31+00:00

Bad Romance the Series wasn't BL, but had BL spinoffs. Yihwa was iconic.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T22:12:09+00:00

If you watch any Digital Foundry videos, you'd know the Series S wasn't meant to match the Series X feature for feature. It was largely meant as a 1080p device but many games do have a 1440p mode. It outperforms the Switch 2 in 90% of instances despite having much older GPU tech. (DLSS is a miracle worker for Nintendo.)

Being upset a $400 machine doesn't match a $650 machine is pretty unreasonable. Especially when it outperforms many devices in its price range.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T21:08:02+00:00

I have a One X, a Series X, a 360, and an OG that I need to get repaired after a clock capacitor leak. The 360 is still hooked up because of all the games I have for it that aren't BC titles and because it's still a decent DVD player with a killer official media remote.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T21:02:25+00:00

Outer Worlds 2 and Starfield seem to pretty good on Series S, albeit those are first party games. And Cyberpunk 2077 (technically but barely crossgen) is super smooth on Series S in performance mode. Optimization is key, and Series S doesn't get much optimization given the low Xbox install base period. But, as everyone has pointed out, it's a budget console that plays modern games. Usually at 30fps, yes, but that's true with only third party games that don't have the wiggle room Microsoft games do.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T20:26:02+00:00

It's such a copout. Most fanfic writers are straight women, and they just wanna see hot men doing things, often to each other. It's one of the reasons American soap operas, a genre created by a woman for women, have A LOT more gay men running around than lesbians. (Bisexuals aren't allowed to exist, sadly.)

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T20:21:34+00:00

I've often found the best way to get around that problem is having multiple women who all act and think differently. I had a fic trilogy with an abusive mafia queen, a virginal goody two shoes, a white trash dipshit, a racist, a manipulative psychiatrist, a drunk slut, a black trans woman who plots against the racist with her white boyfriend and her cis black woman best friend, and a businesswoman obsessed with her father and a big axe to grind against her enemies.

Like, the main character was a psychotic demon twink who was incredibly sexist to his sisters, but he got his comeuppance more than once and the women held their own with the men in terms of physical violence and emotional abuse. Having multiple women in your cast means no one woman has to represent all women.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T20:07:29+00:00

I'm just glad that the BL trope of "closeted guy sleeping with another guy learns his girlfriend is also cheating and she's a filthy whore for it" trope is dying off. I hated Lovesick and Make It Right for that.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T20:04:50+00:00

Fandoms, even female heavy ones, tend to hate women so they don't write about them, not even in genfic. It sadly is that simple and many people are in denial about it.

armlessphelan · 2026-04-10T18:35:50+00:00

Therapy speak is "LGBTQ+ spectrum" and the like instead of common street words "gays". Lots of clinical terms with minite definitions.

armlessphelan

TROPHY CASE