Lust versus Love versus friendship versus slash culture versus blah blah blah
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| Title: | Lust versus Love versus friendship versus slash culture versus blah blah blah |
| Creator: | Aja |
| Date(s): | December 18, 2002 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Lust versus Love versus friendship versus slash culture versus blah blah blah |
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Lust versus Love versus friendship versus slash culture versus blah blah blah is a 2003 essay by Aja.
It is part of a 2002-04 series of essays. See About Writing.
"The following was just supposed to be short, but I found that the more I wrote the more I had to say, so it turned into a very long, ultimately very bitter rant."
Some Topics Discussed
- a mention of Cassandra Claire and (The Draco Trilogy) of Harry/Draco as a sort of canon
- devaluing certain relationships: "that "oh, you're a slasher" stigma"
Excerpts
Why does mentioning the word "lust" when talking about a relationship automatically make people think you're cheapening the relationship? Why is it that people think lust in itself is some sort of lower emotion? I don't know about the rest of you, but I've pretty much always felt deep lust only for people I already had a strong emotional bond with. And yet it feels like whenever you even mention lust in a conversation about love, people assume that you're putting whatever relationship you're discussing at the time on a level with high schoolers ogling Justin Timberlake in a Seventeen magazine at a sleepover.
And for that matter, who's to say that anybody ever even knows the nature of a relationship save the two people who are in it? All of us, who are going on and on about how DV Harry and Draco need to be together romantically in order to be happy, or crying that introducing romance would ruin everything and drastically alter the kind of relationship they have--who are we to say what kind of relationship that is to begin with? For all any of us know, save Cassie, Harry, and Draco themselves, they've already privately acknowledged further depths and unexplored sexual/romantic aspects of their relationship with each other, and have built upon those things as well as on the things we've seen. For all we know, they could have acknowledged long ago that they love each other as brothers and the idea of anything more existing between them is absolutely the weirdest thing ever and all ewwwy, and moved on. They could be telepathically jumping each other's bones in their sleep each night. We don't know. But am certain that if they've ever felt lust towards one another, it would never make them any less deeply devoted, passionate, tender, loyal, or love-filled towards one another than they already are.
The beautiful power and love inspired by true friendship is deeply satisfying, and no less moving than that that leads to romantic feelings. But I hate that every time anyone even *acknowledges* the possibility of more existing between two friends who are deeply devoted to one another, we always hear somebody responding with "what's wrong with just friendship? why does it always have to be about romance?"
Well, why shouldn't it be, if there's evidence that it exists? And in a loving relationship with someone you already care about so deeply, why would lustful, passionate feelings automatically make the deep friendship you already feel for them less cherished or pure or sincere? It wouldn't, as far as I'm concerned.
I maintain that that Look Elijah gave Sean was the most inviting, I've-got-your-number, shag-inspiring look of the year. And hey, I was surrounded last night by a huge audience of straight guys who burst into applause when I yelled what I did. So if a huge audience of straight guys can see it, I'm thinking it's a credible possibility. I'm not seeing it because I want to see it, in the case of Frodo and Sam, or DV Harry and Draco. I'm seeing it because it's there.
I hate, I fucking hate, that because I choose to engage in some sort of public discourse about the legitimacy of a pairing, I get maligned from non-slashers because I'm trying to inject slash into something that doesn't outright state "AND THEN HARRY AND DRACO FUCKED LIKE RABBITS"--and then, haha, I get maligned from other slashers because my rabid shippiness is so annoying.
According to the rules of this fandom I'm not really even a slasher. I should quit calling myself one. I like male-male pairings when I see evidence for them. But I'm sick of being lumped in with some sort of huge homogeneous group of people that live only to slash everything they see. I don't give a fuck about Snapeslash. I don't read stories just for the slashy interaction. I don't skip the plot of a story just to get to the next Harry/Draco scene. I don't give a damn about James/Sirius or Lucius/Harry or Ron/Bill, any more than I do about het ships. I've gotten to the point where I don't even like to put "slash" in the disclaimers of my stories because once you say "slash" there's no way you can have your story interpreted on its own merits because it's already got that "oh, you're a slasher" stigma attached to it--the same way it feels like whenever I bring up DV Harry and Draco in a general mixed arena like PoU, all the het shippers are rolling their eyes going, 'oh, she's a slasher,' and automatically writing off whatever it is I have to say.
< disdain> Because, I mean, god forbid Harry/Draco ever have as much textual validity in the Trilogy as Draco/Ginny. </ disdain>
You know what? The way I see it, it's probably too much to ask that the general populace accept homosexual subtext, ala Frodo and Sam, as valid and likely the way they accept heterosexual subtext, ala Mulder and Scully. It's probably too much to ask that people might refrain from automatically rolling their eyes whenever somebody makes an offhand but serious comment about how so-and-so must have intentionally been playing up that particular bit of subtext in such-and-such movie. It's probably too much to ask that slash relationships be discussed in comparison with other similar heterosexual relationships, and not always with other subtexty slash relationships that bear little or no resemblance to one another, except in the fact that, hey, they're both male! And it's probably WAY too much to ask that other slashers get over the tendency to mock the ones of us who just want to focus on one relationship.
I just hope that someday people will to make that final distinction between "slash" and "pairings," and stop making blanket judgments about each, so that when we try to talk about things like lust versus love, there won't be this overhanging issue of "oh, you're just trying to turn it into slash" that inevitably haunts fandom discourse.