My thoughts on slash - because I'm grumpy and slash and it's defense is always good for a rant.
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| Title: | My thoughts on slash - because I'm grumpy and slash and it's defense is always good for a rant. |
| Creator: | fandom me |
| Date(s): | March 8, 2007 |
| Medium: | online, LiveJournal post |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | online here, Archived version |
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My thoughts on slash - because I'm grumpy and slash and it's defense is always good for a rant. is a 2007 post by fandom me.
Note: the post is untitled. The title used here on Fanlore is the first line of the essay.
The post has 68 comments.
Some Topics Discussed
The Post
My thoughts on slash -- because I'm grumpy and slash and it's defense is always good for a rant.Every time I stumble across a rant about slash there is the argument made that it has nothing to do with sexuality; the real problem is that taking characters who are straight in canon and making them gay renders them OOC. It confuses the ever living snot out of me - and it pisses me the fuck off.
Unless canon provides specific, detailed and direct information about the character's sexual orientation there is nothing canon breaking about pairing someone with a person of the same gender. Evidence of an attraction to the opposite gender does not negate attraction to someone of the same gender.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I keep wanting to beat that into people's heads with a side of scientific method - until your hypothesis is proven wrong it is valid.
Until I am shown, one way or the other, Bobby Drake's response to oranges either on screen or in a comic panel I am free to assume he either deeply loves them and has one for breakfast every morning they're available, or eating one will cause him to break out in hives and his throat will swell shut.
"In a straight relationship != straight forever and always" I'm married. I've got kids. I've had relationships with women in the past and I may have more in the future. I didn't turn in my "women are hot" card when I got married and people - I just ain't that special.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Disclaimer: None of this negates the fact that there's some slash out there with characters that make my eyebrows crawl into my hairline. I can't, however, think of a single case where the sexuality is what makes me make the "o.O" face. Usually it's poor pacing, development, character-voice and/or support of the relationship. I've seen canon het relationships written just as badly.
Actually, I've seen canon het. relationships written badly more but that's another theory for another day.
Comments at the Post
[theashgirl]:
See, and I think that your mantra needs to be continued. As in "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so if there's no evidence, *write your own*."I think there are a lot of people who take it too far and say well, there's no proof that X doesn't take it up the ass offscreen, so I'm going to just assume that they do. Rather than working from what we know to what they want to happen. I mean, if you only see a character for thirty seconds every six episodes of a television series, then sure, do pretty much whatever you want with them. But while I can, say, buy that Buffy could at some point end up with her face between some girl's legs, it's doubtful that I'm going to buy that she and Cordelia were totally having hot lesbian sex in the library after hours in high school. Waking up one morning and deciding that Buffy should be a big old dyke does not, in fact, make her a big old dyke. Especially when she's a boy crazy teenager who gets herself in lots of trouble in all kinds of ways because of boys.
I think the real trouble is poor writers. And we want to lay out these rules for writers so they have something better to go by, but honestly, there's so many loopholes and fine lines and exceptions.
I still agree with your rule. I just don't want to throw it at the bad writers because they'll just take it and use it for their own, poorly punctuated designs.
[fandom me]:
There are definite problems with badly written *everything* wherein people don't support what they want to happen. That actually is something I've seen more in *het* *canon* relationships. "What do you mean they have to work to make sure things stay plausible and believable - canon already did it!"Uh, no. It doesn't matter what the story is, you have to write the support structure or it falls down in big, bad, awful, ways. That's what I meant by it not being about the sexuality, really. It doesn't matter what you want to introduce, you have to work for it. Sexuality, a kid, a marriage, or - you know- plot.
I just can't stand the auto-assumption that it's out of character if what's being introduced is sexuality, no matter what the handling is - because it's sexuality and we all know that has to be black or white and it never, ever evloves, changes, or includes more than two choices.
...That said I only wish that was my rule. I'm quoting from some amusing science book I read and have now forgotten the name of. Something about debunking myths.
...I like the amendment though, because yeah - obviously you have to write in the support and evidence or there's going to be AN ISSUE.
God, yes. I hate that argument so much. "Being gay is OOC! Slash is always, by definition OOC!" What? Most canons we only see a small slice of a character's life, and we're not presented with their thoughts at all. Even if they make homophobic statements or act like straighty mcstraighterson, you don't actually know what they're thinking. There's this thing called denial, being in the closet, etc. I really don't think there's any character a good writer couldn't convincingly portray as being gay or bi.
[testickles]:
I think there are characters who I would have trouble seeing, but I think that's less "if I look at canon and look at this really well written story it makes no sense" and more "this is my view of the character and GAH I don't like that one". Which is a different thing, but I think part of the reaction people are having when they go "omg nooooo".... I've written well, all sorts. I can write het as happily as slash or femmeslash. Even if my view of a char is 100% straight I've never felt the need to bitch if someone else sees them as more fluid because really, it's not that huge of a deal. If I really don't like it, I avoid reading it. That goes for RP as well, but I know not all games are set up so you can do that easily.
[sodzilla]:
That happens to me too. Sometimes your idea of their sexuality IS so closely entwined with the idea of the character as a whole that seeing them straight/gay/poly/mono if you don't FEEL they are will feel off even if the story is otherwise great.My problem, though, is with some people who ALWAYS seem to have sexuality as such an integral part of perception. "I like this character, therefore s/he can't be gay!" Or even "I like this fandom, therefore none of the characters can be gay!"
It always makes me laugh how slash-unfriendly people accuse the rest of us of placing too much emphasis on sex.
Oh yes. There are characters that I personally cannot read/see as gay/straight/bi/poly/mono/kinky you name it. But I'm entirely aware that that's completely my personal perception and baggage, nothing more.
[testickles]:
Yeah. If something doesn't work for you, the internet comes with this handy thing called a back button. Being offended by the existence of a different viewpoint is just. Kind of silly. In my opinion.
[merriman]:
This reminds me of the mad scramble that happened in some circles of HP fandom when Remus/Tonks became canon. For months my friendslist was full of posts titled "SPOILERS! - It's okay, really!" which were full of detailed explanation for how Remus could be dating a woman and still have the hots for Sirius back in high school. But the weird part? Very few people made it as simple as "Whatever, maybe he likes both." Instead it was all justifications based on grief and being confused and Tonks being an evil bitsh who sank her claws into Remus while he wasn't looking. People do similar things in HL to "explain away" Methos' 68(9) wives in order to stick him with Duncan (or Kronos, or Byron, or every male on the show, but my rant about slut!Methos will wait). "Both" doesn't seem to be a valid option. I'm just not sure how much of it has to do with people being unwilling to accept that it IS a possibility, both in fic and in life, or whether it's more that people find it easier to write a character who's settings are rigidly defined.
[fandom me]:
You don't have to villify the woman (women) or make a guy who's otherwise very aware of who he is have a sexual identity crisis late in life. Sometimes it just IS. Sexuality has more than two settings!
[immlass]:
I tend to come at this from a historian's POV. "Homosexuality" as an identity is a modern construct. For most of the history that we know anything about sexuality during, it was all about individual acts anyhow. I think that's still a valid approach for fic or rp.
[immlass]:
I agree totally with your rant. On the other hand--and I think this aside goes directly to the comments in your disclaimer--sometimes I think slash is driven as much by the inability of some writers (who, for ones I'm thinking of, shall remain nameless) to write het relationships, particularly from the male side, without bringing their baggage about gender to it. That's not a slash problem per se, but it's one of the things that drives me crazy about "everybody is gay at Hogwarts", frex.
[non_chieda]:
I have problems with badly-written anything.In my "primary" fandom, LotR, I just don't read slash because it just isn't my thing. Not that I particularly like het fics for LotR either, seeing as a solid 93% are pure asscrap. It's just that LotR slash is not my scene. I trawl for Mary-Sues and attempt to push corks into the holes of a sinking ship.
There are other fandoms where I'm more than happy to play around with character sexuality. While I can vaguely imagine a good Legolas/Aragorn fic impressing me, I can much more easily envision (and write) something like Shigure/Ayame or House/Wilson.
[moonmip]:
I have myself touted the argument that technically a lot of slash is AU, but I'm not so sure I would go so far as to say it's OOC. And even when I tout the argument that it's technically AU, that doesn't stop me writing slash and gleefully posting it without an AU tag.Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I do feel compelled to point out that absence of evidence, while most certainly not being evidence of absence, is not proof either. At most, it's ambiguous; we simply don't know either way. It can also lead into all sorts of twisty arguments over what is assumed and implied and just how explicit and detailed about a character a show needs to be (do we seriously expect them to show us every detail of their character? Hell, no! that ruins all the imaginative fun for the rest of us!).
Every time I stumble across a rant about slash there is the argument made that it has nothing to do with sexuality; the real problem is that taking characters who are straight in canon and making them gay renders them OOC.
So are these anti-slash people who are saying that the OOC factor is why they don't like slash? Interesting. I tend to move exclusively in slash circles, so I haven't come across stuff like this much. I encounter anti-het people more!
[thelana]:
I totally agree. Though I do think that slash can be OOC if it just ignores canon love interests. I'm all for explaining away canon love interests but if character X says in canon or otherwise makes it clear that he is deeply in love with female character Y then him randomly falling for anybody (male or female) without an explanation would be OOC.
[fandom me]:
Ignoring the presence of canon love interests *pisses me off* as little else can. That's not OOCness because of the slash present, that's just bad story telling, IMO. Really bad story telling, and bad writing. There's no reason - at all - for it. It's just the sexuality I'm having a nice foaming at the mouth rant about. *G* Honestly, and actually - why the hell does everyone have to 'discover' they're gay. Why can't they ever just, you know, be bi?
YES. Thank you for this. I get so frustrated by people who use this argument; I am completely willing to accept that someone may read my favourite slash pairings as totally totally straight, and even that someone may not like the idea of homosexuality (though I have much less sympathy for the latter). But to claim that you don't like it because it's "out of character" - I don't know, it's like saying "I don't like the sky because it's wet", it's just beside the point. They assume that all slash is out of character, and then condemn it for being so.
[fandom me]:
I really have no problem if people don't like my pairings, regardless of the gender of people involved, but yeah - once "It's [[|Out of Character|out of character]] for them to have a same sex relationship" I want to start throwing things - because the question "According to WHAT?" always gets answered with the name of a canon love interest. Then I get annoyed and flail around a lot and wonder if my husband is canon evidence that I'm straight, and if so who I have to kiss in front of an audience to prove otherwise.
[pensnest]:
[katydidnt98]:
By that argument, a character being heterosexual is always OOC unless the character is canonically shown in a het relationship.
[carmarthen]:
I suppose the answer to that is that heterosexuality is more statistically plausible. But I wouldn't argue either. Absence of evidence doesn't make something out of character, or giving a character a fondness for chocolate mousse when we've never seen him eat it in canon would be OOC.
[blueinkedpalm]:
Bravo! There are so many ways to make a character engage in same-sex action with another given character, especially since most fandom worlds either have or can be argued to have social reasons for a character to hide same-sex attraction--it's usually ridiculous to say X-could-never-happen because some clever writer's bound to write it well with AU or sex pollen or whatever, but assuming sexual orientation because they act like Manly Man or Womanly Woman and/or have had one or two opposite-sex partners is just ridiculous. Canon partners need to be fairly treated, of course--but think of bisexuality!