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

[aliterati.livejournal.com]

And point (B) is short. You say that the problem with slash is that it isn't based on canon--it's not believable in context of the original story. I've just said that slash doesn't have to try to place itself within the original canon. But a confounding variable is that very well-written slash sometimes makes you recognize the author's recontextualizations in the original story. I'll reference the story above. The author makes a point of saying that her work is an absolute re-imagining of the series. Having seen the show, I don't think that there is actually any slash in it. But her story is so good, so thorough, and so well thought-out that I almost have to place the original show in its context, because it makes so many parts of the show more profound or more logical than they were in the original canon. Nothing against the original show--I'm not saying it's bad or thoughtless. But her work actually makes it better.

And, hey, let's ignore the fact that there is no such thing as canon, that there are no such things as original stories, and that all stories exist only as interpretations. You always end up choosing an interpretation of a work, which you then come to believe in as the 'true' story. I'm choosing the interpretation of 'Trauma Medicine' for my true Firefly because it's actually better than the original interpretation I formed after watching the show. And if even one slash story in a thousand is good enough to do that, I have to love the entire practice.

P.S.

[aliterati.livejournal.com]

Re: the main idea of slash being that two men can't be just very good, intimate friends without being erotically in love with each other. I agree that this is a problem. It bothers me. It bothers me more that sometimes my own slasher tendencies follow that exact psychological pattern. This is actually a bit of cognitive dissonance that I'm currently in the middle of ironing out, because I do love pure friendship between men, and I do attach a lot of value to it.