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]

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.