The Death of Smarm

Meta
Title:	The Death of Smarm
Creator:	Lucy Gillam
Date(s):	September 26, 1999
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	fiction writing, Smarm, The Sentinel
External Links:	The Death of Smarm Wayback Machine version
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The Death of Smarm is an essay by Lucy Gillam.

Among other things, it quotes from, and discusses, the stories Moonglow by Ann Brown and Beach by Kitty and Martha.

It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.

Excerpts

What, you ask, is "smarm?" Well, maybe you don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway. "Smarm" is a particular variety of genfic which centers around (or at least heavily emphasizes) the intense friendship between the main characters. It usually involves verbal expressions of love and/or affection, and sometimes involves physical expressions of those feelings (this is called "glomming"). How exactly it got the name "smarm" is a source of some debate – I suspect at one time, the name had a kind of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, yeah we know this is over the top" quality. It has since lost that, and become a genuine jargon term, much like "slash."

Now, smarm can be a beautiful thing. Although I freely admit that I don’t read much genfic outside of TS (but that’s a whoooooole other column), within Sentinel fandom, I’m very bi-fictional, with a slight leaning towards gen. I find the friendship between Jim and Blair completely fascinating, and often more interesting than a romantic pairing between the two.

You sense the "but" coming, don’t you?

But … once upon a time, I wrote a little story about Blair passing his qualifying exams (if you don’t know what that is, you’ve never been in grad school, lucky you) and called it smarm. There was nary a hug in sight, and I don’t think the word "love" was used once. Just two guys making it very clear to each other in the oblique, roundabout, actions-are-better-than-words way of guys just how important they were to each other. And almost three years ago, that qualified as smarm (oooh, bad pun! No donut!).

I don’t think it would today.

Why? Because smarm … smarm has largely become the equivalent of the PWP. Plot is at best a flimsy contrivance to cause Our Heroes to proclaim their devotion, and at worst an annoyance to be utterly dispensed with.

Okay, so fair’s fair: PWPs are a staple of slash. Why shouldn’t genners have their equivalent? Well, partly because in the absence of, you know, sex, the story mostly involves two guys sitting around talking deeply (and often floridly) about their feelings. Which can be interesting enough the first ten or twenty times, but does start to pall after a while.

What I will do is respond as a reader, and say that I find the idea of two adult American men cuddling, kissing, contemplating one another’s beauty in the moonlight, endlessly declaring their affection in florid prose, in a totally platonic way, profoundly unrealistic. I’m a gaming nerd; I therefore hang around men a lot. And let me tell you, a Budweiser-esque "I love you, man," is about as much as you’re going to get unless someone’s dying. As for cuddles … ever noticed that your average guy can’t even hug another guy without either closing his hand into a fist or thumping the other guys back. Watch some time - no prolonged palm-to-body contact. It’s like a law. It has been suggested to me that the reason I get slash vibes from these stories (besides just being a pervert, which they say like it’s an insult) is that I don’t understand "true friendship." I have to say that I deeply, profoundly resent that particular argument. I’m not going to go into a long, detailed defense of my friendships. Suffice to say that of the people I would die for, the people I would kill for, the people who keep me going when the world is too much with me, the only one I french kiss is the one who put the rock on my left ring finger (not counting the occasional double-dog dare in a Cold Stone Creamery, but that’s another story).