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

[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.