Oh, look, homophobia.
I love it when people I otherwise agree with drag "ew, homosexuals" into a discussion where it's not even relevant. Makes me want to defend the stupid story just because the complainant is an ass.
I mean, it's not like Beatles MPREG isn't terrifying in and of itself.
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 thursday_next
2003-09-21 13:17
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This might be a very good chance to ask an intelligent question and get an intelligent answer. Why in the world is slash so popular with straight women?
My attitude to slash is that it's not my cup of tea, but I don't have a problem with people writing it as long as it is credible. If there are two characters who could reasonably, within the original storyline, have a gay relationship, then writing slash about them is a legitimate development; I won't read it, but I won't object to it either. I do, however, object very strongly to it if it appears to run counter to the spirit of the work on which it is supposed to be based, not because of the sexual element but because it's doing violence to an existing story. I should object equally strongly to (for example) Tolkien fanfic in which, say, Legolas betrayed his companions. Because, in the original, Legolas quite clearly would not and indeed could not have done such a thing, the distortion of the character would really anger me, and that's how I feel about a great deal of slash.
I first ran into slash in the context of Blake's 7, and that has yet further implications because it was a TV series and the characters were therefore played by real flesh-and-blood actors, who put a lot of thought and care into their performances. I don't think any of the regular cast were gay, but I do know that several of the supporting cast were and so was the original producer of the series, who was very much loved (in a non-sexual way) by all those involved. There wasn't, therefore, any atmosphere of homophobia, but nonetheless most of the actors were deeply upset to discover that people were writing slash about the characters they played. They saw it as a lack of appreciation of their performances; they were quite clear about what they had, and had not, put into the characters, and if they'd wanted to suggest homosexual inclinations they would have put them in (as, indeed, Scott Fredericks - who is straight himself - did with the minor but memorable character Carnell). Paul Darrow - who has played homosexual characters with tremendous understanding and sympathy - was particularly aggrieved, because he'd seriously considered playing Avon with bisexual undertones and eventually rejected the idea. I don't know in detail why he rejected it, but I think it was possibly because of his great respect for the producer, Vere Lorrimer; he didn't want to reinforce the current negative stereotypes about gay people, from which Vere must have suffered, by projecting a dark and morally ambiguous character as possibly gay. After all the thought he put in, he absolutely hates it when people write his character as something he simply wasn't (and he dislikes Mary Sue stories as much as Avon-slash, for exactly the same reason).
Despite the fact that the attitudes of the actors are well known - let's say I'm not exactly breaking any confidences here! - B7 slash is still immensely popular among a certain subset of fandom, and they are almost all straight women. As I discover other fanfics, I find that, without exception, they all have slash, and much of it is completely out of keeping with the original story. Not all of it is, by any means; very often the characters are not already defined sexually, leaving room for interpretation, which is fair enough. I will, however, reserve the right to scream the next time I hear someone has put the faithful Aragorn into a slash pairing. It was bad enough having him flirting with Eowyn in the film, for goodness' sake, without having him doing the horizontal mambo with anyone of either sex. Yet so many people seem to want to read about it!
As for men getting pregnant... pfffft. That's not even just bad fiction. It's bad science, and that, I fear, is simply inexcusable. Given the facts as they were outlined in the comment thread, I'm not remotely worried about the slash element, but anyone who wants to do MPREG had better have a very good background in writing plausible pseudoscience, otherwise they might just as well write about the Beatles flying over Liverpool by flapping their arms.
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manon
2003-09-21 16:26
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This might be a very good chance to ask an intelligent question and get an intelligent answer. Why in the world is slash so popular with straight women?
For as many reasons as there are straight women writing slash.
Among the more common reasons given are: because they like men, sexually, therefore two men having sex attracts them as two women having sex attracts straight men -- the more naked guys, the better; because there aren't enough interesting female characters in TV and movies, so they work with what they've got; because it lets them explore a point of view that they have no way of experiencing in real life; because it's subverting the text and is therefore a political/empowering/feminist thing to do.
Enter "why do I write slash" into Google and you should get a whole bunch of answers.
My attitude to slash is that it's not my cup of tea, but I don't have a problem with people writing it as long as it is credible.
That's pretty much my feeling too, as somebody who both writes and reads slash, het, and gen. If I can see it, I'll go for it. Sometimes if the pairing intrigues me enough, I'll bend my brain around until I can see it :), but generally, I'm only interested in the stuff I find plausible.
My slash mostly involves the students from Les Mis, who are so sketchily characterized that they could be having nightly orgies for all you ever knew. (Also there's a pair who are described as "sharing everything, even a girlfriend" and "sleeping together", which is waaaay too easy an opening *g*)
There are other people in Les Mis fandom who slash Valjean and Javert, which I will NEVER EVER get. o_o Not just because they're past middle age and I really don't find it aesthetic, but because they both ping as completely straight/asexual to me.
I first ran into slash in the context of Blake's 7, and that has yet further implications because it was a TV series and the characters were therefore played by real flesh-and-blood actors, who put a lot of thought and care into their performances.
*refrains from bringing up the RPS thing, then. O_o*
Litslash runs into much the same problem with people like Tamora Pierce, who apparently encourages Mary Sues but thinks slash leaves "dirty handprints" on her characters, and Anne Rice, the Queen of Homoerotic Histrionics, who throws hissy fits when anybody even thinks about writing fanfic about hers...
The thing is, the Powers That Be cannot control what fans do with their media. Fans, however, can and should control how openly they flaunt their messing around. [/tangent]
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