Subject: Can somebody explain the association between bears and gay?
Author:
Posted on: 2018-08-06 01:06:00 UTC
Nobody ever told me the history behind this, and I haven't been able to figure it out myself. It's been puzzling me for a while. Thank you and sorry for being uneducated! :P
-Twistey
https://www.wattpad.com
Wattpad is a site for all kinds of writing, kind of like the Pit. Also like the Pit, it houses a wide variety of fanfic, and by extension, a wide variety of badfic. It's basically the Pit with original!fic, art books, books being used as blogs, and lots of stuff that doesn't count as writing.
With the general consensus of enough Boarders, this site shall be known as the Other Pit of Voles, or the Other Pit for short.
While we're on the subject, I have a question: Where does the "Voles" in "Pit of Voles" come from? Does it come from "plotholes?"
I mean, we've already got Uber Pit of Voles for Adult Fan Fiction, which makes sense because it also has fan fiction in the name.
And then there's the Circle of Lemmings, a.k.a. Quotev.
Seems to me Wattpad should be another squeaky thing. Marmots, perhaps? Gerbils? Jirds? I just learned "jird" is a word. I vote for that one because it sounds funny. ^_^
~Neshomeh
I don't know, but I'd say that one.
. . . the degu, aka, the #bestrodent
(They're wild gerbils.)
—doctorlit, the #worstrodent
Not only are they wrinkly and have their teeth outside their mouth, but they have creepy mind-controlly family dynamics like eusocial insects do. And they build their own homes in tunnel form—their pad if you will. So . . .
. . . How about Naked Mole-Rattpad?
—doctorlit, promptly with dumb ideas every other day
It was derived from calling AdultFanfiction.net the Über Pit of Voles, as I was unaware that another writing site was called the Circle of Lemmings.
My vote's on Naked Mole-Rattpad.
One thing's for sure, though: We need to decide on a nickname before we can make a page for it, so that nickname can be the title of the page like with the Pit.
Take the log out of your own eye, sir, before criticising the plank in the eye of a beautiful naked mole rat friend!
The better for cranial air conditioning in summer. But humans, of course, are not for fluffing, especially those of us with very short hair.
—doctorlit at a goodbye dinner party for another zookeeper
...Although I'm pretty sure most of me is covered in hair at the moment. So it could be worse.
With the exception of the palms and soles of the feet and possibly the scalp.
Some people are more floofable than others, of course.
And then some people are bears. Or would be if they particularly enjoyed wearing flannel and kissing other men. ^_^
~Neshomeh
Because, who are we kidding, we all knew that was coming from someone. :-P
Okay, to be fair I was talking to Nesh as this was being written. But I still saw it coming before that. :-)
...On an only vaguely related subject, why don't I have any flannel right now? It's warm and cozy and nice to wear during the cold New England winters.
*Goes off to find flannel while not kissing men.*
*...Well, not WHILE finding the flannel, anyways.*
Nobody ever told me the history behind this, and I haven't been able to figure it out myself. It's been puzzling me for a while. Thank you and sorry for being uneducated! :P
-Twistey
A bear is a type of guy. Its precise meaning varies, but the general idea is large (either with fat or muscle—typically a mix of both) and covered in hair. According to Wikipedia, hairy men of any build were referred to as bears until the terms "otter" and "wolf" arose to describe men of medium and slim builds. According to The Advocate, they coined the term in 1979, although it can be said for certain that the term gained traction in the 1980s, with the creation of Bear Magazine, the founding of bear groups, and the like.
In 1995, the International Bear Brotherhood flag came to be. I only knew of this flag until now because of a sidenote in Gengoroh Tagame's genuinely excellent (and family friendly, unlike his other stuff) manga "My Brother's Husband", which I would highly recommend to anyone who likes adorableness. Unfortunately, the excellent "Mike's Gay Culture Lectures" segment I got that fact in were cut from the official English release (I read a scanlation before I got my hands on it), presumably on the assumption that readers in the more gay-friendly US and Canada would already know this stuff. :-(
So why does the term exist? Probably because the guys look kinda like bears. Or maybe it morphed from the term "beards", another term referencing hairy men at the time. As for why it refers to gay men, that would be because the term lriginated and gained popularity in gay cultural circles, and thus became associated specifically with gay men.
I hope that makes sense.
...to put it in the bluntest of terms, really big, hairy, manly men who are gay. There’s a bear pride flag, even. I believe they have their own sub community of the LGBT+ populace, but that’s not my area of expertise, so I can’t really say much beyond that.
Smaller, hairy guys are called otters, in the same vein.
...as FFN itself, which I always assumed was the reason why it became the Uber Pit of Voles. It's also the same format, and a bunch of authors posted on both sites, as far as I recall.
~Z with the trivia!
Because it's too easy.
(Things I Know Because Of Warrior Cats #75)
Is there anything you have against Wattpad (I'd like to know so I can get an account on there and/or Quotev), or are we just trying to make fun of all writing sites equally?
-Twistey
P.S. I image searched voles. They are rodents. But why voles? Voles are actually cute! I guess they're still considered a pest, though. Lookit dat face.
Voles also show the ability to empathize with each other- they'll spend more time grooming a vole who's been treated badly.
It deserves the snark, though. Thanks to Sturgeon's Law, it houses a lot of badfic, including lots of missionable fanfic and non-fanfic (I wouldn't call it original by any means) alike. As I said, it's like the Pit with more stuff that isn't fanfiction. I'm just trying to evenly split the snark.
And yes, I did search voles after posting this. Awwwwww.
FIMFiction.net needs representation, too. It's basically "Fanfiction.net except exclusively for the My Little Pony fandom", right down to the "F__fiction.net" name for the site.
Pit of Moles, perhaps? It's one letter away from Pit of Voles, just like FIMFiction.net is two letters away from Fanfiction.net...
I have no authority. But I do like talking nicknames. And insulting AO3. My favorite diminutive nicknames for AO3 are The Relatively Shallow Hole Full Of Wolves, or, more succinctly, ABO3. But I think that has more to do with my... personal grievances.
^_^
I feel as though I may regret asking this, but what's your beef with AO3?
As the users. No, not you, don't worry. The badfic writers. No, still probably not you.
AO3 is the most popular pure-fanfic repository that allows for sexually explicit content. As a result, it is the first port of call for a lot of smut writers. As in, according to the tagging system, just over 1 in 10 fics on AO3 contains sexual content. This wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that the vast majority of that stuff is awful.
And combine this with the commonness of bad slash my documented hatred of Yaoi tropes, and burning-with-the-force-of-a-thousand-sons hatred of ABO (less common but pretty much everything I hate in one convenient package)... yeah.
I don't read smutfic at all and never plan to (I'm just not interested in it in the slightest haha), so I'll take your word for it. I'm sorry it's all so trashy.