Slash rant

[dangermousie]

I hate the main idea of slash. I really do.

Nope, not homophobic. I exclude from my loathing of slash stories about same sex couples where it is merely continuing canon. All the fic in the world writing about Renault's Alexander and Hephaistion, or the two female leads of Deepa Mehta's "Fire" or even something where you could concievably read in a lover's relationship (e.g. Sirius and Remus. I don't see it, but I can see how one would) does not bother me one whit.

I mean all these stories where there is NO indication the canon characters are anything other than straight (and/or violently hate each other). Aragorn has faithfully loved Arwen for 60 years? Too bad, as in fanfic he is paired with Legolas. Harry Potter likes girls? Too bad. In fanfic he is Draco Malfoy's love slave (even though there is nothing redeemable about Draco in canon and the boys loathe each other. Harry/Neville would even be more plausible). Anakin is obsessive about Padme, and went to the Dark Side for her? But what do you know, fanon Anakin is too busy boinking Obi-Wan to care. Apparently, so many men are gay that it's amazing that the human race is managing to reproduce at all.

Basically, I find the notion that one cannot be really good friends (or even have a strong emotion like hatred) with a person of the same gender without wanting their naughty bits in one's mouth utterly revolting and a horrible (not to mention oversexed) view of the human nature.

I am very close to my best friend, who is female. We have been friends for almost a decade, talk on the phone every day, and share a hive mind on a lot of books, movies and other minutia. We help each other through problems and are hopefully there for each other. Yet, somehow we managed to avoid an unbridled lesbian orgy. I certainly don't think men are any different.

Hey, teenybopper girls who revel in slash between characters whose only claim to slashiness is that they are friends. How would you feel if everyone assumed you had sex with all your girlfriends merely because you hung out with them and were good friends? See? Absurd.

/rant

Flame away.

Comments

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Your argument sounds to me like you are mainly objecting to stupid/unfounded pairings. With that I completly agree. To me Draco/Harry is just as annoying as lets say Hermoine/Dumbledore.

It's not the fact that it's a homosexual relationship that makes unrealistic, it's the character set up.

I always object when a canonically strong relationship is just ignored for the sake of the author's prefered pairing. I don't really care if an author pretends that Clark never actually liked Lana because they want to write Clark/Lex or Clark/Chloe. Or, a main characters wife and kids miraculously disappear for he/she can have hot monkey sex with various other characters. Whether a het pairing or a slash pairing is the intended outcome doesn't matter, what matters to me is that they are going about it the wrong way. It's the same amount of annoying to me, not because I like the ignored pairing, but rather because I find it disrespectful to the characters motivations.

In Harry Potter all kinds of over the map pairings are rampant. It shows that all kinds of relationships are being sexualized, not just same sex relationships. If you take Hermoine/Hagrid or Ginny/Snape, the basic complaint is the same and it has nothing to do with slash. People shouldn't write pairings that make little sense, canonically, especially not without a huge amount of thinking.

That said, I think that a good writer with a long enough build up (and with a big enough universe) could make just about EVERY pairing or generally every situation work. They have to walk us through every step and address all our concerns, and then it just might work.

Still, one issue of mine is that a lot of those unrealistic pairings (slash or otherwise) sometimes feel like a rebellious reaction of people just not liking the presented cannonical pairing. People dislike the designated love interest for whatever reason and therefore look around of who else they could pair their favourite character with. And, especially if we are talking about an action oriented movie, more often then not there aren't a whole lot of interesting female characters to choose from. In fact, there often aren't any other female characters around at all (at least none with a sizable amount of charaterisation;). And of course there's the problem of characters who don't have a cannonical pairing at all. Jack in POTC, Obi Wan, Legolas, characters who are still fan favourites, so people want to see them in pairings.

If there are no canonical females available, there are really only two options, slash or Mary Sues. And slash has the advantage that you have at least some canon background, something familar that you can build things on.

Of course, the biggest stumbling stone is the "But wouldn't it be so much cooler" argument. "Wouldn't it be so much cooler if character X loved character Y instead of character Z" or "Wouldn't it be so much better/healthier if character X loved Y instead of Z". To that I usually can't say much, because it's just a very different understanding of canon and its relation to fanfiction.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

Tastes differ. *I* personally like slash only in small doses. In my mind, big time love stories never work for me in slash. Especially because they usually don't gel with canon. Not just if there's a canonincal pairing for either partner, but also, if these characters supposedly have this big larger than life love for each other, wouldn't we have seen more of it during the movie/tv show/book?

For example, one might be able to convince me that Anakin had something with Obi-Wan at one point and even feels torn between his love for Obi-Wan and his love for Padme, oh, only if I had not seen ROTS yet. But how on earth would one explain the events of ROTS if there was a more intimate connection between Anakin/Obi-Wan? It just wouldn't gel with the story, with the reactions of the characters we have been presented, with what they said and did.

Still, in my eyes, there are ways to sidestep canon facts, simply by making the pairings smaller. Not writing about that forever love or the bestest sex ever, but make it smaller. Not "Character X and character Z are screwing their brains out every second, every day.", but "Something happened between X and Z once at some time, somewhere in the past." One sided feelings, friends with benefits, one time encounters in a time of grief can be ways to do a slash pairing without upsetting the canon and the canon relationships too much (also, fantasies, dark stuff like abuse...). But that goes for both uncanonical het and slash pairings. And, no, it doesn't work for every character, but I do think that there's a certain amount of grey zone.

[katranna.livejournal.com]

You can always do a larger-than-life love story if you
a) pick non-main characters
b) have a reason for them to keep it secret.

Often, you can even work in canon into how they're keeping it secret, if you're good at writing around things.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

True. But that's probably because I have a personal dislike against such secret stories unless they are very plausible reasons for this in canon. For example Anakin and Padme have very canonical reasons for hiding their relationship. Same goes for technically any Jedi.

It's the reason why I used to like hero/villain stories because there is canonical reasons why they would have to hide the relationship/be ashamed of it (like how Buffy and Spike original hid their relationship). With slash parings, at this point, I would only really believe it if it took place in a particularly gay-unfriendly society (and no, I don't consider "our" Western society as extremely unfriendly, nor lets say the Star Wars universe) or if the characters work in a particularly macho oriented line of work.

If the characters were pretty normal high school or college students, I just wouldn't buy a "OMG, we have to keep it a secret" story.

But yeah, I generally dislike a lot of those secret stories because they either carry it too far (hiding it from canonically close friends, even if it makes no sense) or they steer into much into annoying overwrought melo-drama (character reveal their relationship to every other character in canon, always resulting in much crying or raging and general dramatics).

I guess that's also one reason why I like smaller pairings, because an isolated incident would be easier to hide than a full blown affair. [if we are talking sex here; of course purely emotional romantic affairs without a sexual component are a whole different deal. After all love is blurry. If you write a big love story between Legolas and Gimli without any sex, is that slash? If the characters love each other and are devoted to each other and express that either to themselves or even to each other; but it just never has a sexual component... is that still slash?] Also, if something was just an isolated encounter one would be more willing to hide it than one would be to hide the love of ones life. Again, all applies to slah and not-slash.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

always object when a canonically strong relationship is just ignored for the sake of the author's prefered pairing. I don't really care if an author pretends that Clark never actually liked Lana because they want to write Clark/Lex or Clark/Chloe. Or, a main characters wife and kids miraculously disappear for he/she can have hot monkey sex with various other characters. Whether a het pairing or a slash pairing is the intended outcome doesn't matter, what matters to me is that they are going about it the wrong way.

Yes. That is exactly the crux of the matter. You can make an un-canon ship plausible. But many authors don't bother. If it's AU weird ship I still won't read and love it, but at least I won't think the author is someone with the writing skills of a 5 year old.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

So, I guess I shouldn't write that Luke/Wicket saga of 10,000 words of undying love between the Jedi-leaf and the Ewok-leaf and their growth under the trees.


Yes, I'm being silly.

Then again, I swore on my mother's hallucinatory snakes I would not write Jar-Jar stalking Yoda. (I went the secret admirer angle. To quote Yoda: "Disturbing, this is becoming.")

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I'm completly with you on that. To me the fascination, the art of fanfiction is bringing as much canon as possible. Taking canon and builing on it, drawing from it.

I can buy a pairing that goes against a canonical pairing, but not if it just blindly pretends that the canon pairing doesn't exist. I can buy it when it draws from the canon relationship, like when it causes angst, guilt, or (for example, if we were for example talking Clark/Lana here) a sense of growing and moving on (and no, I don't mean that in the "cannonical love interest suddenly turns into a raging bitch/abusive bastard", I think you can write a character moving on from a previous relationship, without bashing the old relationship).

After all, not all relationships in canon are larger than life, characters that are perfectly happy with each other. Not all relationships are as iconic as Aragorn/Arwen or Crichton/Aeryn. So, there are canonical relationships that might have certain loopholes, places where another relationship could enter and play a role as well.

To me, the best and most satisfying fanfiction story is one that only tweaks, but does not abuse canon. That takes something that is not covered by canon and manages to sneak it in that it does justice to canon. Something that fits in.

It's like a game. All characters are like a set of rules. Rules with certain facts about them. Like:

- Clark loves his parents.
- Clark likes his friends a lot.
- Clark spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to understand and to get Lana.
- Clark lies to people.

I could never buy a Chloe/Clark story that pretends that Clark always secretly hated Lana and thinks that she's a bitch. Nor could I like Clark/Lana story that pretends that Clark secretly has always hated Chloe and thinks that she's a bitch. Nor could a buy a Clark/Lex story where a un-RedK-ed Clark yell "Toodles! See, yah!" to his parents and runs off with Lex.

To me good fanfiction is like a puzzle game. You have a certain set of characters, a certain set of rules about them, and you have to contruct a story using this set of rules*.

(* that's the reasons why Mary Sues do less than nothing for me. To me it's people making things easy for themselves by inventing something, rather than using the material they have at hand. It might be good fiction, but it's not good fanfiction to me.)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

A good fanfiction uses as many of these character rules as possible. And I think that you can still write a good fanfiction if you focus only on some and not all of those character rules. As long as you still obey enough of those character rules, your character can still be recognizable even if the story takes a very unusual path.