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Daily December-->January #iforget: Slash and Me
Why does writing/reading slash appeal to me? How do I get past the OOC potential in slashing canonically straight characters? (for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alphaflyer)
This got a little long, so the tl;dr version is:
fanfic is all about the 'what if...?' for me
sexuality =/= straight until proven otherwise.
Disclaimer: This is really all about me--other slash fans' mileage will most certainly vary.
Okay, I have to start with how "canonically straight characters" can (very often) mean less that and more "presumptively heterosexual." For example, in the MCU, we were halfway through Coulson's fourth movie before he ever mentioned a relationship. I don't have to automatically assume that he's straight until shown otherwise—-and even now that we've established Audrey as the cellist, I still don't have to assume he's a Kinsey 0. He had a relationship with a woman; that doesn't preclude him also having had a relationship with a man. And MCU Hawkeye is still wide open on the sexual orientation scale—-he could be straight or gay or bi or ace or anything in between, especially given that his relationship with Black Widow, the one deep relationship he's shown having in the movie was shaded heavily away from the romantic. I can choose to nudge that toward romance with Nat (which I did in Come Near) or I can keep it at a deep, caring partnership and set him up with Coulson (doesn't matter if i bleed) or with Darcy (you need a rock not a rolling stone.) (I know that 616-Hawkeye has had more than his share of relationships with women, but 616-Bucky was a 12 year old hanging around Camp Lehigh when he met up with Cap, 616-Natasha was an infant rescued from the Battle of Stalingrad, and 616-Fury was a big blond guy with both eyes, so clearly we're not bound to that canon.)
And now, okay, let's talk about slash -- taking two same-sex characters and putting them together in a romantic relationship. We used to say (back in the Stone Age of fandom) that if you could take two characters, switch one gender, play a scene from actual canon exactly the same & have no problem seeing them as involved romantically/sexually, then there you go. That's slash.
Kirk & Spock & the glass between their hands as Spock dies and Kirk is having to be held back. Sherlock and Watson, in virtually every portrayal, doing their best impression of an old married couple. I'm not even touching the Winchester brothers. Castiel, 'just waiting here.' Erik Lensherr dying in Charles Xavier's arms, whispering brokenly about all the wasted years. Samwise Gamgee following Frodo literally to the end of the world, blushing when Frodo tells him he couldn't have done it without him (yes, I know Tolkien's spinning in his grave. While we're freaking JRRT out, let's not forget Legolas getting all emotional when Aragorn comes back from the dead in TTT or how he's fighting desperately to get to Aragorn in the final battle. OR how he defied his entire culture and took Gimli off with him. That Legolas--he sure had some feelings.) In the original Hawaii Five-O (ie, the "*less* bromance-y" version), there's a scene where Steve McGarrett, who is an absolute stone-face of the show-no-emotion-EVER variety, tries to get to Danno (his second in command and presumably a cop who can take care of himself) by storming a guy with a gun using a trash can lid as a shield. Three episodes into the reboot and I could see that same scene playing out with Steve taking out the kidnapper with an RPG. And let's just copy and paste virtually every Steve/Bucky interaction in CA: TWS. I can look at any of those and see a depth of emotion that can absolutely be romantic love.
And yes, it doesn't *have* to be romantic love, it could be that Steve Rogers loves Bucky Barnes like a brother, but what is fanfic if not a "What if...?" What if small, sickly Steve Rogers loved his charming, handsome, heroic, protective friend, so much that he never really could work out a relationship with anyone else? (Yes, Peggy, I adore her, but x days after Bucky dies, Steve's ditching in the Atlantic even while Peggy is frantically trying to tell him they can figure something out. I can hang a romance on a hell of a lot less than *that*.) I mean, Natasha is throwing every woman she can think of at Steve, he's horribly awkward with Sharon, but once Bucky's on the scene, he is one thousand percent emotionally committed. Brothers? Sure, I can see that. Absolutely. But I can see lovers, too.
I can ship Clint Barton with Natasha Romanov in the MCU, even though I love her with Bucky in 616. I can ship him with Bobbi Morse, with any luck in both the MCU & 616. I can look at some of the fantastic fic that grew out of the 47 seconds of snarky, work-related banter in Thor and ship him with Phil Coulson, too. I can step back and look at how Hawkeye and Hulk interact in A: EMH and say, 'ok, what about Clint and Bruce?' I can get sidetracked with him and a certain sarcastic intern that he's never shared a scene with, but with whom I think he'd be fantastic. Or I can stumble across an amazing Clint & Natasha partners story and totally buy that he's asexual. To me, that's kind of the point of fic. How does this character work with these other characters, whether it's romantic or not?
Also back in the Stone Age, I remember people being very careful to explain just how and why this attraction between these two men happened. (For some reason, I remember a lot of this in The Sentinel fandom, where, for goodness' sake, the characters lived together. When the big tough cop was all but going insane, the only person he'd let near him would be nice hippie doctor (who, coincidentally, wouldn't let anyone else take his place.) They were emotionally bonded by canon with the whole Sentinel/Guide set-up, but we still felt it was necessary to very carefully explain how that tipped over to sex. Mulder and Krycek somehow required less explanation than Jim and Blair.) Now, I think it's just a shrug and a 'yeah, we can go there.'
Sometimes I'm in the mood for characters figuring things out about their sexuality (which actually works really well with, say, Natasha, as well as a slash pairing) but more often these days, I want to see how someone is exploring how two characters fit together without their Kinsey Scale being the point of the story. Sometimes I want a first-time story, sometimes I want an established relationship. Sometimes I want a good case fic (but I'm a die-hard romance fan, so mostly I want the relationship.) I don't see where that's any different if both characters happen to be the same sex.
alphaflyer)This got a little long, so the tl;dr version is:
Disclaimer: This is really all about me--other slash fans' mileage will most certainly vary.
Okay, I have to start with how "canonically straight characters" can (very often) mean less that and more "presumptively heterosexual." For example, in the MCU, we were halfway through Coulson's fourth movie before he ever mentioned a relationship. I don't have to automatically assume that he's straight until shown otherwise—-and even now that we've established Audrey as the cellist, I still don't have to assume he's a Kinsey 0. He had a relationship with a woman; that doesn't preclude him also having had a relationship with a man. And MCU Hawkeye is still wide open on the sexual orientation scale—-he could be straight or gay or bi or ace or anything in between, especially given that his relationship with Black Widow, the one deep relationship he's shown having in the movie was shaded heavily away from the romantic. I can choose to nudge that toward romance with Nat (which I did in Come Near) or I can keep it at a deep, caring partnership and set him up with Coulson (doesn't matter if i bleed) or with Darcy (you need a rock not a rolling stone.) (I know that 616-Hawkeye has had more than his share of relationships with women, but 616-Bucky was a 12 year old hanging around Camp Lehigh when he met up with Cap, 616-Natasha was an infant rescued from the Battle of Stalingrad, and 616-Fury was a big blond guy with both eyes, so clearly we're not bound to that canon.)
And now, okay, let's talk about slash -- taking two same-sex characters and putting them together in a romantic relationship. We used to say (back in the Stone Age of fandom) that if you could take two characters, switch one gender, play a scene from actual canon exactly the same & have no problem seeing them as involved romantically/sexually, then there you go. That's slash.
Kirk & Spock & the glass between their hands as Spock dies and Kirk is having to be held back. Sherlock and Watson, in virtually every portrayal, doing their best impression of an old married couple. I'm not even touching the Winchester brothers. Castiel, 'just waiting here.' Erik Lensherr dying in Charles Xavier's arms, whispering brokenly about all the wasted years. Samwise Gamgee following Frodo literally to the end of the world, blushing when Frodo tells him he couldn't have done it without him (yes, I know Tolkien's spinning in his grave. While we're freaking JRRT out, let's not forget Legolas getting all emotional when Aragorn comes back from the dead in TTT or how he's fighting desperately to get to Aragorn in the final battle. OR how he defied his entire culture and took Gimli off with him. That Legolas--he sure had some feelings.) In the original Hawaii Five-O (ie, the "*less* bromance-y" version), there's a scene where Steve McGarrett, who is an absolute stone-face of the show-no-emotion-EVER variety, tries to get to Danno (his second in command and presumably a cop who can take care of himself) by storming a guy with a gun using a trash can lid as a shield. Three episodes into the reboot and I could see that same scene playing out with Steve taking out the kidnapper with an RPG. And let's just copy and paste virtually every Steve/Bucky interaction in CA: TWS. I can look at any of those and see a depth of emotion that can absolutely be romantic love.
And yes, it doesn't *have* to be romantic love, it could be that Steve Rogers loves Bucky Barnes like a brother, but what is fanfic if not a "What if...?" What if small, sickly Steve Rogers loved his charming, handsome, heroic, protective friend, so much that he never really could work out a relationship with anyone else? (Yes, Peggy, I adore her, but x days after Bucky dies, Steve's ditching in the Atlantic even while Peggy is frantically trying to tell him they can figure something out. I can hang a romance on a hell of a lot less than *that*.) I mean, Natasha is throwing every woman she can think of at Steve, he's horribly awkward with Sharon, but once Bucky's on the scene, he is one thousand percent emotionally committed. Brothers? Sure, I can see that. Absolutely. But I can see lovers, too.
I can ship Clint Barton with Natasha Romanov in the MCU, even though I love her with Bucky in 616. I can ship him with Bobbi Morse, with any luck in both the MCU & 616. I can look at some of the fantastic fic that grew out of the 47 seconds of snarky, work-related banter in Thor and ship him with Phil Coulson, too. I can step back and look at how Hawkeye and Hulk interact in A: EMH and say, 'ok, what about Clint and Bruce?' I can get sidetracked with him and a certain sarcastic intern that he's never shared a scene with, but with whom I think he'd be fantastic. Or I can stumble across an amazing Clint & Natasha partners story and totally buy that he's asexual. To me, that's kind of the point of fic. How does this character work with these other characters, whether it's romantic or not?
Also back in the Stone Age, I remember people being very careful to explain just how and why this attraction between these two men happened. (For some reason, I remember a lot of this in The Sentinel fandom, where, for goodness' sake, the characters lived together. When the big tough cop was all but going insane, the only person he'd let near him would be nice hippie doctor (who, coincidentally, wouldn't let anyone else take his place.) They were emotionally bonded by canon with the whole Sentinel/Guide set-up, but we still felt it was necessary to very carefully explain how that tipped over to sex. Mulder and Krycek somehow required less explanation than Jim and Blair.) Now, I think it's just a shrug and a 'yeah, we can go there.'
Sometimes I'm in the mood for characters figuring things out about their sexuality (which actually works really well with, say, Natasha, as well as a slash pairing) but more often these days, I want to see how someone is exploring how two characters fit together without their Kinsey Scale being the point of the story. Sometimes I want a first-time story, sometimes I want an established relationship. Sometimes I want a good case fic (but I'm a die-hard romance fan, so mostly I want the relationship.) I don't see where that's any different if both characters happen to be the same sex.
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I am firmly in the camp that feels that humans have always taken the stories of our culture and added specific shadings and nuances, until that somehow got twisted into the passive media consumption of today. The participatory side of culture is my way out of that passivity. And I think that if we're writing our own interpretations of the characters and themes of whatever stories we as a culture are enjoying, then sexuality is fair game for those interpretations, too.
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The idea that slash is inherently out of character is an incredibly annoying one to me, personally, because not only does it assume a default heterosexuality (as you said) in characters who perhaps haven't been shown to have ANY preference to date, it also assumes that sexuality and sexual preference are completely STATIC. And even for someone who maintains a strictly hetero or homosexual preference for their entire sexual life...there's flux and flexibility in there.
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Your post also actually invokes some reasons why I'm not very interested in slash or any kind of shipping (I am interested, but it's nowhere near the top of my list of fic interests): most of those examples you mentioned, about Kirk and Spock, or Sam and Frodo, or Holmes and Watson -- one of the biggest reasons they appeal to me is because they're not romantic. If they were romantic...well, the fact that it's a m/m romance would be exciting because m/m romance is so rare, but no matter the gender configuration, feelings that are expected in romance rarely get to me the way strong feelings in friendships get to me.
Perhaps that's another aspect...whether it's the gender configuration of the relationship, or the type of love in the relationship, that make more of a difference for different people? I myself am straight and was raised in a super-liberal environment where ever since I was little I was told homosexuality was totally natural and normal but it had no personal impact on my life, so the excitement of that particular "what if?" is not very strongly wired into my subconscious (whereas I moved a lot as a child and have been repeatedly torn away from close friendships, so that IS wired into my subconscious). Partly a privilege thing, I guess, but slash has a huge appeal for lots of straight women so it can't all be that. It's such an interesting topic...
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I do love a romantic story with a happy ending (when people tell me it's not 'realistic' I have my canned response about how if I want to hear about how life doesn't work out that way, I can just pick up the phone and call my cousins, who someday will end up on whatever show is picking up Jerry Springer's legacy) but that ebbs and flows with the characters. In fact, unless I was deliberately writing a get-together story with the Winchesters, it hardly mattered to me what their relationship was on the outside, because they were so emotionally intertwined anyway.
I've heard a lot of theorizing about why so many straight women write slash, whether it's from the lack of available female characters (back in the Stone Age), or it was to deliberately screw with 'love-interest' dynamic that was often the only reason there even *was* a female character, or to not reduce the few non-love-interest female characters to one (Scully springs to mind here--my goodness, the shipper wars in X-Files were legendary) or just to side-step the 'of-course-it's-a-self-insert' accusation that too often comes along with writing a heterosexual romance... or, just the ooooo, hot factor. I know there's a lot of dreck posted, but everything I've learned about writing a sex scene (in whatever variety) I learned from fandom, because I sure as hell wouldn't have learned it in the mainstream world.
My absolute favorite moment of 'oh, right, this is so not the norm' happened a couple of years ago when I was at a fannish gathering. We were all hanging out in a club, with no visible ties to our little fandom ties, and the guy who was singing had all these 'risque' songs, and he and his friends/fans were so clearly pleased with their 'daring' at what were nothing but smarmy, frat-boy level lyrics. I could not keep from rolling my eyes and barely refrained from beating my head on the tables. One of the couples came over to tell me that they were sorry they were embarrassing me, but wasn't it awesome that they could express their sexual openness this way and I just couldn't help laughing, because I really do look like a soccer mom, but I had just that morning posted a flash fic that was not only gay, but slightly kinky (hi, happy spanking story) and so had three or four of the other women in my group. But y'know, there was no way they'd never believe that I wasn't disapproving of the content, but more at just how badly it was presented--so we just shook our heads and let them have their little moment of faux superiority.
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The most recent time this happened to me - getting in trouble for having a non-canonical gay pairing when the comm specifically allowed non-canon background pairings - there was a mass defriending of the suddenly revealed homophobe, which was rather nice.
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I still find it fascinating, from a sociological standpoint, just how relatively much m/m slash is written by women. I suppose part of it is to try the unknown? When I played D&D I only played male characters (because I was female, so thought I'd do something else. And my character ended up having an affair with a female druid, who was played by one of my Lesbian friends. We both found it interesting "because that's the only way I'll ever get to have sex with a guy/Lesbian" ... ;-)
As for me, I'm not sure I'll go there in my writing though. I've written a gay character ("Shards"), but he wasn't a POV one. I'm a deep-POV writer, and I guess I simply don't have the confidence to make the perspective believable.
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I've seen a lot of explanations for why women write m/m slash, everything from stepping away from the prescribed and acceptable expressions of their own sexuality, to co-opting the male gaze, to analytic studies of how there weren't female characters of equal depth to play with so we ran an end-around.
Or, y'know: oooooo, hot.
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TL;DR: great post, I completely agree.
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