Slash vs Same-sex pairings

[aadler]

 
Last week, frogfarm and I did a brief exchange of e-mails, discussing various aspects of our attitudes toward fandom in general and fanfiction in particular. With that individual’s permission, I’m posting my last note, as illustrative of part of my outlook.

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I offered to explain why your preferred pairing [frogfarm is an inveterate Faith/Willow ’shipper] didn’t fall within the category of things I dislike. You expressed interest in my opinion. That follows.

There is a tendency to interpret opposition to slash — not just “not to my taste”, but actual opposition and rejection — as indicative of or synonymous with that dread thing, “homophobia”. (A term I despise and the foundations of which I utterly reject. The word is just a way of saying, “Anybody who disagrees with me on this issue is stupid and wrong and repressed and hateful and bigoted and evil, and I don’t even have to prove those things because just applying the label automatically invalidates everything they say and everything they stand for and HA HA I WIN.”)

No, when I speak of disliking slash (and I truly do), I’m not talking about same-sex pairings per se, but using shorthand for something a bit more specific and limited. What I actually dislike and oppose, and for which I see no justification whatsoever, is the habitual, systematic, gratuitous, and artificial homosexualization of canonically heterosexual characters, for no good purpose. (Maybe the first time it was done, it was “breaking new ground”. Now it all seems to fall under self-titillation, pandering, jumping on the ho-yay bandwagon, or even deliberately designed to offend those benighted knuckle-draggers who dislike slash.)

Because of this, I don’t apply the same objections to Willow/Tara. Or Willow/Kennedy. Or even Willow/Faith. This is because those pairings are neither gratuitous nor artificial. Tara apparently was genuinely same-sex oriented. Willow (whether fundamentally lesbian, or a bisexual who thought it necessary to expunge any twinge of opposite-sex-attraction from her personality) was nonetheless canonically shown as part of two separate same-sex relationships. Faith, for all the fact that every bit of her demonstrated sexual activity was aggressively heterosexual, put out some deliberate and explicit overtures toward Buffy in Season 3. (Even if it could be argued that she didn’t mean it, and was just doing it as a kind of personal power-play, the fact remains that she did those things.)

As far as same-sex pairings are concerned, Willow is canonical. Tara is canonical. Kennedy is canonical. Faith is canonically plausible. I’m still not crazy about the whole business — for that matter, specific focus on ANY ’ship is boring to me — but those, and perhaps others, don’t require that familiar characters be twisted into knots to accommodate someone’s agenda.

So, no, I don’t have a lot of patience with femslash or any slash. For that matter, I have no interest in any story, same-sex or opposite-sex, that centers the story around sexuality; I have better things to do with my time. The [Willow/Faith] pairing you favor, however, while it doesn’t intrinsically appeal to me, doesn’t automatically trigger “don’t read” status.

And that’s where I come from.

Comments

[frogfarm]

Exactly; when an author writes something I like despite the presence of elements I generally consider neutral or negative, that's more of an achievement than if I go in fully expecting to have a good time. Although I'm pickier than most people and it's pretty easy for someone to write pairings I like in a way that I don't, whether in terms of characterization or the quality of their prose. Like my own writing is some stellar example, and I'm not one to subscribe to the labor theory of value, but I do try to take care in my craft and produce pulp that isn't pap or crap. And I always find it slightly more rewarding when someone says something to me like, I never thought I'd buy into this but you made me a believer. Of course it goes without saying I'm not trying to convert anyone; in my case, my primary audience is myself, and if anyone else wants to come along for the ride then I'll certainly enjoy the company.

(And on that note, keith5by5 is my freaking hero because I don't know if he gets a ton of feedback in email, but I see little to no comments on his posted stories and yet he just keeps putting it out there, hell or high water, year after year, and he's not even doing one series because I lost count of how many he had going. And no matter what else can be said about his work, good or bad, I admire that persistence and do my humble best to emulate it. If I could achieve even half his output without compromising my dubious quality, I'd seriously consider selling my soul. Or at least my left pinky.)