~~slash & pondering gay!ron.

[reenka]

wah. i rambled on so much re: franzeska's post about the question of whether or not ron is "gay" on her journal, that i feel i may as well make it a post. obviously, i have issues with classifying any canonically straight character as "gay" to start with, but it's an even more interesting discussion with ron, because most people think of him as straight. and there are really several reasons for that.

i think lasultrix made a great point, about ron being an average straight bloke, but what about the loads of people who slash manly men? how gay -is- clark kent? (well, aside from The Looks, i guess). and then there's stargate, star trek (jim is "gayer" than ron? heh), the magnificent 7(!), homicide, oz, sentinel, highlander, due south (not that i've watched it, but i think they seem kinda ...normal), st:tpm (i dunno how "gay" qui-gon is, necessarily, and yet he's not like ron, or anything, but still).

i think slash also has a lot to do with whether you (as a mostly straight female) perceive the character as sexy or sexual, and whether you have an investment in him being straight (ie, you ship him with a girl).
    i mean, yes there are stereotypes and yes they're not necessarily automatically false just because they're generalizations, but i don't think slashers -care-, really, if they see "possibilities" that get them hot.
    i see no other reason for slashing some of the people that get slashed.

i think ron (to me) is straight. firstly, i don't have any attraction to him (visually or as a character), and secondly, i have some sort of affection (god knows why) for him being with hermione (who's also straight in my mind-- not because she -can't- be lesbian, but you know-- she's not-- she's with ron, and there isn't anyone to slash her with-- i think that's important, too, btw. if there's no one who really -fits- a character of their own sex, or if there's an overwhelming fit with the -same- sex, that character gets perceived as sexually oriented in that direction by fanficcers, a lot of the time).

    
thus, some characters are just "gay" in people's heads. i mean, in my own head, the majority of people-- in real life and in fiction-- is potentially bisexual. i just like to think that, and i don't necessarily base it on any evidence (indeed there's plenty of evidence to the contrary). there are people who just -are- one way or the other, no matter what-- naturally, among the many possibilities, that one is also present. but for a large number of people, what determines one's -actions-, ie, whether one -acts- straight, gay, or bisexual, to me, is circumstance. you need a catalyst, and if you're in an environment where all the stimuli are of a certain nature-- ie, the overwhelming heterosexuality prevalent in most culture-- you need some strong catalyst, something to jar you from your complacency, to challenge your perceptions.

i suppose this is sort of saying that you are straight or gay in relationship to other people, not in some sort of vacuum. thus you bear a certain resemblance to those other people, if you're a part of society in other ways as well.

i suppose there's a question here of how well you fit into your niche, and what your niche actually -is-. say, your main companionship and "society" is a same-sex group that you spend most of your time with. you don't even have much recourse to say, members of the opposite sex. it's the whole prison phenomenon. people are stuck with the options they're dealt, and suddenly, in isolation, the cards fall differently.

if you're an outsider-- separate from society-- you're more likely to try new things, as you said. if you're an insider in a small same-sex society-- like a prison, a boy's dorm, a fighting group, a team of some sort-- you're more likely to try all sorts of things, within that group.
    i love franzeska's idea of ron not being gay to people because he's working class. there's definitely something to that-- but i don't know if it holds as a theory beyond hp. ie, plenty of slash made of all classes, and so on.

i mean, sirius and remus get paired with each other more than anything, and they're not rich or "weird", simply -matched- together. slash isn't about postulating whether someone's seeming gay or not at -all-, in most cases, and that's why i think the question is bloody stupid and made me v. v. angry when asked on a list (ie, "are harry & draco gay"). that is just bloody -offensive- to me. slash is about pairing people that aren't canonically paired, but are having chemistry and would be "hot" together. gayness has -nothing- to do with it. you could be the straightest straight boy that ever fucked 1000 girls (ie, jim kirk), and you'll be slashed to high heaven because you have more serious -chemistry- with spock than anyone else. jim is not gay, and thus he wants spock, to slashers. he just wants spock, and thus he may be gay.

canonically they are ALL straight. gar.
    fanonically, they are gay IF you pair them -successfully- and they show chemistry (in your head or in a story) with a same-sex character. all wonderings outside of that are just... gar. a bit... pointless and inherently doomed to circular subjectivity.
    EDIT - let me amend that. if you pair a canonically straight character (say, harry), and have him be attracted to a member of the same sex he's not automatically -gay-. he -may- have been "totally deluded", but that is unlikely with a book where you don't really have an unreliable narrator. basically, it means he's bisexual to a significant degree, is all. gar.

i don't know -why- people bring gayness and not-gayness into it in the first place (but i can see why, it's just... stupid). since slashing isn't -about- sexual orientation as much as... er... sex itself, in a way.
    gayness as an identity issue may be -related- but it's not really... necessarily within the scope. though it could be, if you wanted it to be, within a particular story. but overall, i don't see how slashing is "writing about gay people". that's just ludicrous. thus the gayness of the characters is almost irrelevant as a precursor and an initial identity. it doesn't -matter-, then, if ron is gay or not. it only matters that he's gay as soon as you pair him with whoever, in slash.

and it does sort of bother me, that people feel they -need- to make those clumsy attempts at dealing with "gay issues" and shove it into the "real world" whether it fits there or not. i mean... i'm all for realism-- to a degree. but in a certain way, slash is fantasy by nature. people don't usually act like that. you can say-- oh, well, we're just postulating that these people are -gay- and -gay- people act like that (ie, get attracted to members of the same sex), but that's just bullshit.
    it's silly to pretend we (as mostly-straight-mostly-female slash writers) are writing about "real" gay men. hopefully, they're not complete mary sues and blubbering examples of extreme femininity-- yes. hopefully they're in-character (and here you make the assumption that one's character is the same whether you're gay or straight or sexually attracted to mice, though that last one, i'd wonder about). but there's a difference between writing about a romance between two males who're hopefully in character, and writing about two "gay men" in society. hogwarts in particular isn't really "society" as we know it, quite, but for slash in general-- i can see how you -could- bring society into it, but why? that's not the initial motivation, anyway. not the "point" so to speak.

of course, i don't know if writing about "gay men" or gay anyone as a separate sort of "realism" (ie, the general realism and the specifically "gay male" realism) is all that much of a good thing. i like things to be realistic-- believable-- i like stories that come alive. i've written fantasy fiction, mostly, in my life, but i've written it, several times, with two female characters who are attracted to one another. i was never writing "gay fiction". and yet it wasn't -slash-. it was just two characters who're attracted to one another. what's the big deal? why do they need some separate realism, some separate identity as "gay", rather than just two girls who happen to be in love?
    i realize this is just me, in a way. plenty of people in modern society have a "straight" or "gay" identity (er, well, those people aren't me and i wouldn't know how to write about them, but that's beside the point). i'm just me. i like to think of people as "just them", possessed of a number of traits, quirks, opinions, preferences, and attractions. if you box yourself in and label one cluster of those as "straight" or "gay", more power to you, go ahead, what do i care. but as to whether i would characterize you differently in consideration of your "straightness", were i to write about you, is a different story. no one IS gay or IS straight, whatever they think. they just -are-, are attracted to members of the opposite sex as far as they know, or are attracted to members of the same sex, or both. it's a fact about you, okay. it has a relationship and a connection to other facts about you, and it makes certain behaviors more or less likely. sort of like being russian makes me more likely to know who pushkin is and being american makes me more likely to have a weakness for french fries than if i was a mongolian herder.

when you take slash to be some sort of gay liberation movement, then it just becomes ludicrous.
    does anyone actually think they're "outing" draco by writing him as in love/lust with harry? does anyone think they're making a statement about gayness?
    i mean.... that's not why one slashes, right? one slashes because it's -hotter- and more -right- and more... pretty and happy that way-- because they're meant to be together, because we want them together, because we're perverted like that-- but not-- not because we realize, in a flash of light, that they're actually -gay-. i mean. that's just silly -.-

so yah, from that pov, ron's being "too straight" to be slashed is the funniest thing ever. as if the others are "gay enough" to be slashed. ha.
    on the other hand, you can be slashable and -not- slashable. based on whether you're having chemistry with someone of the same sex within your universe/show/book.

gar. i'm so verbose. stopping now.

Comments

*c&p's reply to you from Franzi's LJ*

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I didn't say Ron was 'manly', I said he was 'your average straight bloke'. Duncan from HL couldn't be further from 'your average straight bloke', though he's certainly manly... *drool* I mean, the man's been alive 400 hundred years. I don't care how many women he shags in canon, to me that just shows he's a very sexual creature. He's tried it on with men too.

I don't know anything about most of the other fandoms or indeed canons you mention (the things you miss when you don't get lots of American TV shows - sigh) but I'm sure it holds there too. Manly men can still have the gay vibe, very easily.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hee! yah, i know. i was -kinda- saying that. my initial thing was... er... well "manly" is a bad word, but a lot of those characters are pretty typical guys, if a bit on the er... heroic, swashbuckling side. as i said later, it doesn't -matter- to slashers how many women jim's with, or how "manly" or typical he acts, just that he has chemistry that's slashable, so yah, i definitely agree with you on the manly men having a "gay vibe", i just don't know if i'd call it a gay vibe, exactly, more like a -slashy- vibe, y'know?

i mean, gay is too loaded of a term, i think.
having a vibe is what makes us slash them, but it's not because we deduce somehow, that they're gay, y'know?
because canonically, they're -not- (er, usually), we're just using chemistry (existent-- as with clark & lex, to many people anyway-- or non-existent or made up, as with say, tom & hagrid or marcus & oliver or whatever, i dunno) to create fiction.

that's why 6th season buffy & spike is slashy.
it doesn't mean we think spike is straight, or whatever. just that he wants buffy. heh~:)

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Aye.

(yep, that's all I have to say.)
Am currently running round LJ telling people that I'm typing "Methos Kronos slash NC-17 rape" into Google while wearing pink fluffy pyjamas with polar bears on. I think this is funny. I also think I should go to bed instead. :p

*goes*

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*giggles*
tell me if you find any (good stuff, that is). ahahaah. because, er, yah. i liked it ;)

except something tells me that most people would totally mess that up, somehow. i mean, rape stories in general and ancient raiders and rapists who rape each other in particular. *laughs*

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it seems to me like Methos/Kronos is pretty easy to get right.

Um. You HAVE to read Olympia's stuff. This (http://www.seacouver.slashcity.net/illuferret/likegods1.html) is possibly the hottest fic ever. oh. OH. ooohhh. Highlander is O's true fandom, and ye gods does it ever show. I mean, just read and read on her fic page. I particularly recommend the AU 'Fantasies' if you're into the Duncan/Methos/Kronos like I am, as well as the fic linked above.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

gaahhh... but that has duncan... acting (inexplicably) eeeeviiiill..... gaaaar.

*hides*
see, the thing about that last fic... i thought it was pretty in-character. the evil people were evil when they were supposed to be, but they were also human, understandable. i mean, especially set in the past, in the middle of all the raiding and raping-- it was emotionally possible, to me, it didn't contradict the person methos became later and was even giving him softness that wasn't implied him having back when he was one of the horsemen, though i'm not sure about that.

i mean, they were none of them completely sadistic. it was more of an emotional power-play. i mean, obviously kronos was mad and totally obsessed with control and hurting people and such, but i found the mind-fuck aspect of it convincing, which is i think, essential-- the resistance, the rage, the emotionality, the -passion- of it.

come to think of it, what made the kronos/methos bearable was the cassandra aspect-- she was there to spark them, to show both the depths of tenderness and sadism methos found himself capable of. without it, he's just sort of... bland. either submitting or dominating. it was the interchange between one and the other, the fighting that i enjoyed.
i mean, the brutality doesn't do much for me... but i like the torment of it all. the way methos was attracted to him while hating him, the way his whole personality shifted and changed under his influence, and the way he resented that and eventually ended it-- thus he was never really dominated in any permanent way, and it was just an abuse of power on both their parts.

i also liked the contrast of duncan in that fic, the way he was (i thought) pretty in character, though perhaps the crying was way over the top, though i forgave them that. he was never wanting to hurt methos, and he felt bad about having to kill cassandra (which i assume he did), and he was having all those moral dilemmas where he wondered -why- he wanted to let methos live-- i thought that was in-character and set up an important component of essential believability i need to "buy" things enough to get lost in the scenario.

gah, a mean/abusive duncan is just... gah. wrong, wrong, wrong. i mean, even connor is more mean than duncan. more weary and cynical. but if connor ever -did- do something really sadistic/unforgivable according to his code of ethics, he'd like, go mad or something, though i'm not sure duncan would.
and having methos/kronos in the present rings false to me. or at least, it makes more sense, and is hotter if it's emotionally valid in my head. when methos was a murderer/rapist, before he changed or became the person we see on the show, okay, i can see him participating and even exceeding kronos in his power-plays and viciousness. but. i think he kind of resents him and wants him dead in the present, no? well, and then he -was- dead, i'm assuming.

so yah, a kronos/methos story and even moreso a threesome, would have to retain the sort of emotional valences i imagine them having, that's why it'd be hard to find, i imagine. duncan would have to remain idealistic and moral and brash and so on. methos would have to remain strong, and forceful, and dominant in his own right. kronos would have to not really dominate methos permanently, or if he did, methos would have to get revenge or resent him or have his mind attacked somehow. rape is such a simplistic thing, really. i liked that in `shades of gray', it wasn't. it was rape, sure, but in those circumstances, it wasn't what one usually thinks of as rape. more... mutual power-struggle and mind-fucking and mutual aggression and so on. it was -violence-, sure, but it was mutual, and i think that's pretty rare, heh.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Oh! You read that fic so differently to me!

Well, all the actual Duncan-torturing-Methos was in the dream. And we all have pretty fucked up dreams sometimes. I don't think you could say the dream stuff was OOC for anybody. I mean, it was pretty clear that Duncan's brain was in a very hazy state in the dream - not remembering a hell of a lot of stuff from wakefulness, losing a lot of lateral thinking ability...

And the d/s stuff he suggested when they were all awake wasn't torture. It was just d/s. And Methos went along with it.
You see, I saw all those suggestions as born from, firstly, an inferiority complex about Methos, which is totally believable, seeing as Methos has been alive for an unimaginably long amount of time, and wouldn't any lover of his fear that he would leave them?
And as well as that, there was a frustration about the relationship. Perhaps also born from Methos' casualness about love. Duncan felt it wasn't going anywhere, felt it was sameish, and wanted to gain control again. God knows we take out our exasperations on the ones we love when we feel they're hurting us, though they don't know it.

And you see, he didn't realise how far he was pushing it. He didn't realise how much Methos could really take. He didn't realise how unwilling Methos was. I truly believe that if Methos had ever 'just said no' Duncan would have stopped, horrified.

Ah, but he didn't, and it went on until Methos snapped into another part of himself (because with Methos there are practically infinite parts) and turned it all around.

But they still love each other. Methos is just teaching Duncan a lesson he needs to learn.

Um, does all that explain why I think Like Gods of the Sun is a masterpiece of characterisation as well as being incredibly hot semi-con smut?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

yeah, um, i wrote most of that before reading very deeply. i kinda read the first chapter or two and went EEK!! and so on ><;;
so i see what you mean.

on the other hand, i stand by my feeling of it lacking (for me) the component of emotional satisfaction, by which i usually mean conflict, progression, climax, resolution. see, it was kinda at a remove, less emotional and intense than the other fic, which left me more of an observer who could feel distaste and judgement.

i mean, really, `shades of grey' was much more brutal and insanely violent, really, but i could accept it and while i don't get -off- on killing the people you're using sexually (ahem), it seemed... passionate, emotionally valid and heated. i mean, rather than cold.

it's the difference between -play- and serious torture, and i think if i had to pick i'd choose serious torture~:)
mostly because it's more -real- and emotional and intense. there's hatred and fear and anger and lust and all that good stuff (heh). i think if you have high emotion happening, if things are intense-- then you could swallow a lot more, in terms of things you wouldn't normally want to read about and don't normally seek out or want.

this is my issue with s&m fics in general, to any degree (even `weather' series level). if you don't have it set in some sort of wildly dionysian frenzy, you're depending on the reader -wanting- these things to happen to the characters, regardless of the reader's identifying with the character's emotions or not. and i personally am not too picky-- i identify with emotions if they're strongly -there-, and it also really helps if they're passionate and involve either love or hate.

i'm just a sentimental freak, i guess ><;;
i mean, i don't want the -story- to be sentimental-- ok, maybe a little. but you know, more-- instead of submissiveness, what i want is a show of vulnerability and weakness. instead of dominant role-playing, i'd want aggression and anger and y'know, a psychotic need to control and mind-fuck and destroy, or what have you. but in the end i want there to be elements of both in both. so that both display vulnerability as well as rage and anger and love. i don't know if that's realistic-- especially not in modern-day "games"-- but it's what makes it more immediate and personal for me, and allows me to transcend my personal barrier against such things, by tapping into the underlying emotions directly.

i'm not sure if this makes me hard-core or a wimp ><;;

i suppose what i'm saying is, `shades of grey' was much more your usual sturm-und-drang soap opera :D ahahahaha
whereas olympia's fic was much more... emotionally distant and cerebral, i mean, even accepting all the sexuality of it, it was a different sort of sexuality, even if on the surface it had similar themes.

but i definitely agree with methos not being any one aspect of himself. i think i'm just beginning to fully recreate the show in my head the more i think about it~:)
wah. makes me want to watch some ^^;

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was restrained, yes, but I didn't see it as cold at all. Well, the dream part had a - dreamlike, I suppose, quality, the Duncan domming bit was fairly clinical, but the Methos domming! Ye gods! I burn, woman, I burn!

And Methos's speech! "Why aren't you in leather?" That one - I could be your whore? Oh, oh, I want to read it again now!

So yes, less Sturm und Drang, but still emotionally real.

just checking...

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

You did see that it was a dream, yes? Because you were referring to it as 'Methos/Kronos in the present'. It'd obviously be completely OOC if the first couple of chapters weren't a dream.

And the other Kronos/Methos/Duncan of O's I wanted you to read was an AU set around 1600. The Horsemen still ride, and Duncan's become Immortal in secret and still lives with his Clan.

And in canon, it's not really a case of Methos having changed since he rode. He has different phases of being, but they all live within him, and they're all capable of coming to the surface. He isn't the Adam Pierson character now. He just wears the Adam Pierson cloak for a while, and he knows he's only wearing it. I don't mean to say that he's not good, or that the benevolence he shows in present-day canon is a facade. But it's only one part of him, and he knows that its dominance is only temporary.

Am loving this discussion. :))

[marbletables.livejournal.com]

canonically they are ALL straight. gar.
fanonically, they are gay IF you pair them -successfully- and they show chemistry (in your head or in a story) with a same-sex character. all wonderings outside of that are just... gar. a bit... pointless and inherently doomed to circular subjectivity.

*smirks*

I'm glad you pointed that out. I think that's sometimes a concept that so many people mix up. Take Harry for example. There are actions and thoughts that JK mentions in the books that basically prove that he is straight, even though slashers tend to look deeper than that and piece together vague hints and concepts to prove credibility in their slashing him with another male. The point is, is that there is more evidence that he is straight than gay - which makes me queasy in general and very annoyed in how people are such rabid slash shippers.

*shrugs* Just some thoughts.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

well... as i was trying to say. there is a separation between canon and writing slash. slashers hopefully pay -attention- to canon, but the sexual orientation in canon doesn't matter as to whether you slash or don't slash your character. all that matters is your perception of that character and another character of the same sex, and whether you feel their chemistry.

now, it wouldn't be -slash- if it was canonically supported or reasonable or what have you. you slash because you think those two characters are meant to be, are hot, are great together, what have you. you do -not- slash because you think they're straight, gay, or "other" in canon, so the question of "credibility" simply doesn't apply.

you are -not- saying they like gumdrop-flavored beans in canon simply because those are their favorite in a fanfic you write. it doesn't -matter- if there is or isn't evidence for their gumdrop preference. you could have the character -married- and you could still slash them. it doesn't matter.

being a shipper simply means you -want- those characters together. it doesn't mean you think they -have- to be together, -will- be together or anything else. no one goes around saying those books actually -are- about gay characters, right? of course not. you get people saying that draco does have a crush on harry in canon, true. and i think that's possible because we don't get contradicted in any way. you do -not- have people saying that harry has a crush on -draco- in canon. because that's obviously -not- true.

as i kept saying in the post (gar, repeating myself), it doesn't matter if they're straight or gay. in fact, those are limited and stupid definitions in the first place, but let's not go there. by writing draco & harry together, you're not necessarily implying harry is gay. harry merely wants draco. he's not "more gay than straight" and he's obviously not "more straight than gay". he is merely also attracted to draco, which is called bisexual, if it's called anything.
you can be attracted to boys -and- girls. you can be attracted to only the opposite sex for years and then a catalyst comes along and boom! you discover you want a member of the same sex. it happens, in real life. -everything- happens, at some point, in real life, i think. heh. you could like that particular person and no other member of the same sex. or you could suddenly discover you like him and him and him and him and him. this also happens. does this mean you were never attracted to girls?

er. no. not in a book with a reliable narrator ^^

but yah. wow, i ramble on about this stuff.... ><;;

[marbletables.livejournal.com]

Whew.

You've touched on so much, but unfortunately I don't have time to respond to it all (or the right wits about me to say what I truly want to convey).

now, it wouldn't be -slash- if it was canonically supported or reasonable or what have you.

I'm not sure I fully agree. But there are some people who will outright disagree with that statement. The origins of the term "slash" are quite skewed these days anyway. And most often, that's not how people veiw slash.

by writing draco & harry together, you're not necessarily implying harry is gay. harry merely wants draco. he's not "more gay than straight" and he's obviously not "more straight than gay". he is merely also attracted to draco, which is called bisexual, if it's called anything.

In slash in general, people will cling to their slashing because they've already decided that they believe a character is of one sexual preference over the other. I'll have to agree with you in that slashing isn't about slapping a sexual preference on a character and sticking by it ( my reasoning at least) - but I'm saying a lot of times that's the intent behind slash writing. So in the event that such is the reasoning behind why some people slash, and since people do go back to the books to prove their point (i.e. "Oh look what Harry did here! He's obviously gay!" [ personal pet peeve of mine ])- if they really want to look at the facts that JK lays down for her readers about a character's sexual preference, most likely they'll find that they all lead up to the character being straight.

In terms of slash shipping, I think some rabid shippers will disagree with you. That's what annoys me - claiming their ship is better than another's because by their logic, their prefered ship is the only ship that's relevent and true and that's how it's supposed to be.

Er... I doubt I've conveyed what I wanted to, but oh well! I'll try again later?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

wow. people are weird. ahahaha. i mean, i knew that, but i must cling to the intelligent circles in the fandom so tightly that i ignore and don't pay any attention to the general drift of things, because i've never actually read people expounding on those opinions ><;;

the term `slash' began as merely the term for pairing two characters not paired in canon. it began to kirk/spock and describe the "/" between their names, meaning the -pairing- of them in a romantic way. thus, for most of x-files' existence, you could classify mulder/scully fanfic as slash.

so if it's canonical, then it's not um... necessary to slash. thus, writing 6th season spike/buffy is slash (you could replace this with same-sex names in some show that allows it, plot-wise), but 7th season buffy isn't.
say-- i agree with mamadeb on this, and think it's rather obvious. for example-- `queer as folk' isn't slash-- isn't even slashy. it's got established gay relationships-- and that's the key word-- established. there's no trangression, no subversion or reinterpretation of text in order to pair people that are already paired together or even implied to be.

thus slash, by nature isn't canonical, otherwise you just have a show/book about gay people.

since people do go back to the books to prove their point

hmm. there are all sorts of issues here.
people do use canon text to prove all -sorts- of things that the author probably didn't intend to say within the text. this is rather standard lit-crit practice, and i did have a post where i wibbled on the whole idea of "meta", ie, altering a text like that to suit your theory.
on the other hand, in a way it doesn't matter what the author wanted and only matters what you can logically prove in an argument. because you're kind of re-creating the text, reinterpreting it, when you analyze it in any way whatsoever, since it's silly to pretend lit-crit or analysis is ever "objective".

it's not like this is science or anything. so yes, you can go ahead and say anything you want (and a lot of people do), as long as you back it up and try not to be too stupid (as silvia, i think said-- as long as you don't say things like-- but harry loves the dursleys and hates quidditch, and merely use hints and clues and circumstantial evidence to show that there could be sub-currents there, that the book is "saying" more things than what is literal).

i mean... the book -is- saying things beyond the literal interpretation, i think it's fair to say. simply because you can't just end analysis at that level-- you need a reader's understanding, and every reader is different and will read the same thing slightly differently. the only person who really "knows" what the words -mean- to an exact degree is jkr (or, in general, their author), and even there-- the question of whether authorial intent -matters- is a thorny one for literary analysis. it does and it doesn't, depending. it's really...er... up in the air, i think. also, as i've said in another post, there is the question of whether you truly "know" -everything- you say in a particular piece of fiction. some of what you say is subconscious, incidental, accidental, and so on. you're not the all-knowing all-controlling omniscient god of your fic. er. usually~:)

and fanfic in particular makes a text a communal thing, opens it up to reinterpratation and re-imagining.
although claiming that any one interpretation is "right" is silly, though of course, human nature :D

[marbletables.livejournal.com]

Hehe, still no time!

But oh, just needed to say that you always make so much sense. I agree with a lot of what you've said - it just makes so much sense! *smirks* I honestly do look forward to your entries!

*runs off to be busy again*

[conversant.livejournal.com]

There are two things I notice in the thread that is developing out of your post. (This post grew so long, I'll have to split it. I apologize.)

First, there are (at least) two different reasons that fans write fic: some write to extend JKR's as-yet-unfinished work and 'guess' at what will really develop in Books 5-7; others write to imagine plausible alternatives to the plot trajectory that is most likely for Books 5-7. Slash falls in the latter category.

We live in a world where there is little literature and less film/tv centered on gay characters. One of the things that writers do when they slash is to imagine the homosexual alternatives to whatever canonical source they are working from. In HP fandom, such writers recognize that JKR is simply not going to write a central character as gay or bi. She'd be nuts to. Her editor would have a coronary. Warner Brothers would run screaming. That doesn't mean that a world is unimaginable where some of her characters are either adolescents whose sexuality is not yet fully realized by the end of Book 4 or closeted homosexuals in canon (Snape, perhaps, but any character whose sexuality Harry would not observe and which we would not learn given the limited pov and the limited objectives of JKR's plot & genre). Slash is a practice of 'deconstruction' in lit crit terms or of reading against a grain established in deference to a reading public that remains uncomfortable with homosexuality.

Part Two

[conversant.livejournal.com]

Second, I'm intrigued by the assumption that some (including you, if I read you correctly, reenka) are expressing that slash fiction is a sub-genre of romance or erotica and might not also be a sub-genre of other types of literature (adventure or drama, for instance). Perhaps that's overstating your position, but it seems that you assume that slash will or should be mostly concerned with telling a story about a (sexy) relationship. I find that I'm most interested in longer fics that are not exclusively about the slashed relationship (which obviously will not be absent if the fic is slash) -- fics that have a larger plot. This is a matter of personal preference: I'm not particularly attracted to romance fiction whether in print or in fandom. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy and desire an interesting, sexy love story within the larger plot of stories I read, it's just not the primary thing I want. It's not enough to satisfy me.

In your post, reenka, I'm sticking at the section where you say the following:
and it does sort of bother me, that people feel they -need- to make those clumsy attempts at dealing with "gay issues" and shove it into the "real world" whether it fits there or not. i mean... i'm all for realism-- to a degree. but in a certain way, slash is fantasy by nature. people don't usually act like that. you can say-- oh, well, we're just postulating that these people are -gay- and -gay- people act like that (ie, get attracted to members of the same sex), but that's just bullshit.
it's silly to pretend we (as mostly-straight-mostly-female slash writers) are writing about "real" gay men. hopefully, they're not complete mary sues and blubbering examples of extreme femininity-- yes. hopefully they're in-character (and here you make the assumption that one's character is the same whether you're gay or straight or sexually attracted to mice, though that last one, i'd wonder about). but there's a difference between writing about a romance between two males who're hopefully in character, and writing about two "gay men" in society. hogwarts in particular isn't really "society" as we know it, quite, but for slash in general-- i can see how you -could- bring society into it, but why? that's not the initial motivation, anyway. not the "point" so to speak.

I'm not sure what you mean when you speak of fics that clumsily deal with "'gay issues' and shove it into the real world whether it fits there or not." Is your emphasis on the clumsy? or do you not wish to read fic that shows gay characters facing hostility and discrimination (or worrying about AIDS or using condoms)? Are any of those the things you have in mind? And what do you mean by "real world" here? Do you mean fics that move HP characters out of wizardom into Muggle society or fics that show wizardom to be a homophobic society analogous to the world the writer lives in? Why shouldn't fanfic deal with those issues? Are you defining a genre boundary? (For instance, do you mean that slashfic should be romance fiction and that in romance fiction it is just un-sexy to introduce unpleasantness or worries about prejudice or disease or violence?)

I'm guessing that my puzzlement stems from the fact that my generic expectations and preferences differ from yours. I'm interested in JKR's universe because magic and spell-craft are rich fields for play. I'm interested in slash because I want to imagine an alternative to the hetero-centric version of that world insisted on in canon. I'm also interested in slash because it is sexy (for what you and others have suggested are a complex set of reasons). I find it worth the effort to write fanfic, however, because I think that in a world filled with JKR's sort of magic there is great potential for exploring real world issues in a fresh context, in the new light shed by a situation both like and unlike the real world. JKR does this with race/ethnic prejudice. Why not do it with gender and sexuality? (So I guess all of this has been a long-winded way of answering your "Why?" with "Why not?"

Re: Part Two

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

well. i dunno if i meant to say (directly) that slash is a sub-genre of romance... but if i think about it and according to the evidence of most fics i've read, i'd say that's true. does it have to be -only- romance or -primarily- romance, even? er... no. but it has to have romance -in- it. i think there's an interesting discussion somewhere (i don't remember where) as to whether one slashed pair in a mostly-het romance or gen story makes it "slash". i think i agree with the answer that it's not "slash" it's a slash pairing in a gen/het story. you can have slashed or gay relationships in any story-- to have it -be- slash, you have to be making a point of -slashing-. ie, there's an -act- of slashing involved. it's not a genre so much as an act of reading/viewing/understanding an original text. you can be "a slasher" who "slashes" without writing any fic yourself. this isn't true for any genre, really. you can't -do- mystery or adventure or scifi. so a "slash" fic is really a written fantasy-- a slashing. to me anyway. it can be within a setting that's romance, angst, parody, humor, deathfic, anything really. but its concern (as a slash fic) is yes, the romance~:) i'm not saying that romance alone is "satisfying" or all one needs/wants necessarily. well, i'm not talking about me here, anyway. as far as i know, most slash fic -is- in fact, mostly romance. almost 90%, i'd say. anything other than romance i'd usually classify under the heading of "plot device" ahahah. there are -very- few fics that are slash romance and yet -equally- something else. all i can think off of the top of my head is ishuca's `plague of legends (http://ishuca.kaerichi.net/slash/pol.html)', which is one of my favorite h/d fics and which i'd rec to you~:) but, almost -all- the famous/well-written h/d epics are romance, mostly. so it's not that it -has- to be, it just -is-~:)

and yes, the emphasis is on the "clumsy". this is, again, not about what i personally want to read in a fic. i mean, to me personally it doesn't matter, i suppose, as i'm in it for the characters being together, and not the "gay" aspect, so that's all extra. i was saying i think (observe) that people don't slash to deal with Issues, they slash for fun and sexy rompiness and idealism, sometimes. and it's ok to leave it at that. it pains me when people -force- things and write about things they can't really handle or deal with very well. it's -difficult- for straight usually white middle-class american 16-year-old girls to write about gay british wizards coming out and facing persecution. this isn't a necessary theme, i feel, and usually just burdens a fic with all sorts of stupid baggage that feels extraneous and painfully unrealistic.

this whole thing about dealing with issues... it's a worthwhile goal. i definitely would encourage it and i do want to see it. i too adore creative uses of magic (and er... i think i even wrote a post urging such things), and i do think the new dynamic created by slashed characters has fascinating ramifications and consequences.

so it's not that it -shouldn't- happen. i don't tend to use the words "should" and "shouldn't", as they seem moralistic and confining and not in the spirit of fun, eheheh. and it's -definitely- not that i think slash romance (or any romance) is only good when it's worry-free and existing in some perfect universe. i'm not -that- naive, ehehehe.

just, i guess this does have to do with expectations. as with silvia's latest post (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=silviakundera&itemid=612482)-- some people just...er... fail, shoot too high. it's painful. heh. the -need- to somehow make it "more realistic" only hurts them. it's difficult. it's not -necessary-. it's... beyond the mental scope and writerly ability of most fanfic writers ><;;

Re: Part Two

[conversant.livejournal.com]

I've read many of the painful stories you have in mind. And mostly I back out quickly and read something else instead. I don't actually think that the problems with such fic would be dramatically improved by their avoidance of issues. The problem is that the authors are unskilled writers. Fanfiction on the internet is a very democratic thing: anybody can post anything. There are no editors and no publishers making decisions about what will sell and what will uphold the dignity/status/brand-value of their publishing house. So perhaps 90% of what's available at ffnet and elsewhere is poorly written. In theory, I'm glad that young authors have a forum in which they can practice writing; I just don't feel any compunction to be a reader of those works.

To my mind the most uncomfortable thing about inept slashfic is that it is raw sex fantasy. (The emphasis here is on 'raw.' ;}) It is so uncrafted; it lacks artfulness. I find that I have no interest in reading a 16-year-old suburban American girl's dream journal, partly because those fics are virtually indistinguishable one from another. They are little more than a collection of set pieces (poorly written) in the potions classroom, on the Quidditch pitch, in detention, in the midnight hallways of Hogwarts. There are antagonistic words exchanged, bodies jostle, and in pretty short order tab A fits into slot B, followed either by cuddling or recriminations.

I'm not bemoaning the existence of those fics. I just ignore them when I think of what slash is and can be. Certainly, they are a significant part of the phenomenon which is slash, but I'm not here to study that part of the phenomenon. So mostly I overlook it.

I have read Plague of Legends and I'd place yr awen's H/D in the same category where the romantic level of the plot is in relatively equal balance with (in this case) the fic's exploration of the creeping fascism of post-Voldemort wizardom. I would argue that The Metamorphosis of Narcissa and its prequel are slash, by the way, despite the tentative, unconsummated nature of the H/D relationship, because the romantic interest of the central character is crucial to the plot. But to take this back to our larger conversation about genre, I don't in fact insist on equal proportions or on the romantic interests of the protagonist(s) being subordinated to the rest of the plot. I'm simply most pleased when there is an important, well-constructed, richly textured 'rest of the plot.' In this category, I'd place Lasair's Veela Magic, though it's not H/D yet and so not slash yet, but it's also far from finished. What I find so interesting about VM is its exploration of fanaticism and politics. I do care about her characters and I do look forward to seeing H/D develop (and I keep wondering if Lasair is really going to provide that or whether I'm deluding myself with that assumption).

In general, I agree with you that a fic is not slash simply because it contains a homosexual pairing somewhere amongst the characters. Slash, I think, describes fic where the romantic or sexual interests of the protagonist(s) are directed toward a same-sex mate. Within my definition, I do allow for fics where development of the romantic or sexual interest of the protagonist is not the plot's primary/sole objective. And within my favorite fics list there are stories where the romantic pairing is the main plot line, but those fics also have other layers and textures of plot to reward my attention and to differentiate the story from the basic "tab A/slot B" action. In this latter category, I'd place Aja's Love Under Will and Maya's Underwater Light. (I have a nasty feeling I've exceeded the comment word length again, so I'm going to leave it at that.)

Re: Part Two

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I do care about her characters and I do look forward to seeing H/D develop (and I keep wondering if Lasair is really going to provide that or whether I'm deluding myself with that assumption).

*laughs* One day, I promise!

*schnoogles you for your nice words about VM*

Re: Part Two

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hmm. yesh, i suppose when i think about genre and trends in fic, i think about the majority of fics written-- even though gahd knows -i- try not to read them too. and i'd say -every- worthwhile fic, luw as well as anything else i'd enjoy, would have some other layer of meaning that'd make it interesting beyond "slot action", heh. i dunno. i've written short stories-- i think, even though in my original writing, i write fantasy and only somewhat romance, i've written overwhelmingly romance-type things in fandom. but the slot thing-- i don't think i've ever done it, quite :D
although i -like- snarking and shagging when done with a light touch-- usually comedic/fluffy pieces. i'd say they're redeemed not by any brilliance of plot but rather by brilliance of language and pacing and storytelling. fics like amalin's and silvia's and rhoddlet's, i guess, where the whole "rest of the story" is more abstract and emotionally impressionistic.

well, that's the type of thing -i- usually write, so i suppose i'm partial to it, hoping there's actual value there ^^

but yah. i tend to observe larger trends, when i define things or trends in fanfic. making a list of the "big" epics in h/d, i'd say 80% of them are overwhelmingly romance. i think it's the pairing, also-- i mean, it's so big and popular and it's usually the first thing an hp slash writer tried their hands on. i mean, say, penelope is a good example. i adore her writing-- and i love `the untold want'. but it's a good representative of your usual (though well-written) h/d epic-type-thing. most of them are like that (though not as well-written). most slash i've read in -general- isn't really 16-year-old's fantasies, not in more mature fandoms like star trek: the phantom menace, voyager, highlander, smallville. there's a heavy emphasis on sex, yes, and drama and angst and soap-opera-type melodrama ending in either death or snogs.

i mean, the sixteen year olds are very common in hp and in gundam wing and other things that were originally targeted to younger audiences, but in general, you don't necessarily have as many "set pieces", where you have as much staging as with hp, with the quidditch pitch sex and the corridor sex and the abandoned classroom sex, and so on.

i'd say non-romance slash is uncommon. as with actual romance fiction that gets published, though, there's of course all sorts of back-plots and "historical romances" and "fantasy romances" and surrealistic romance, and so on. as far as differentiating a story-- there are lots of factors that can do that, i guess. good writing first and foremost, heh. it's weird, separating slash from what it mostly -is- from what it -could- be. i suppose talking about definitions one sticks to what it -could- be, in order to be more wide-ranging. just, i think the -intent- of most slash authors in -writing- slash is um... of a "get them together" nature rather than "let's write a story, and btw have them be together"~:)

and though i dunno if author intent counts, -being- one of those "let's write a story to get them together" slash writers probably skews my perception ^^;

[pink-faerie.livejournal.com]

Have I told you how much you make sense lately, dear?

*TUBA*

No, but seriously, it's beautiful and oh-so-what-needs-to-be-said. I mean, besides my famous harry!hate this goes back to why I don't slash in HP and why I do in say, Sailor Moon. Yeah, yeah I was part of all that. I'm a total H/M (Uranus/Neptune) shipper and not just cuz they are actually gay or bisexual or whatever. They are so right together. There's understanding, there's chemistry, it's hot and it's -right-. I also ship Moon/Starfighter because it is beyond right. Sure, all signs point to moon being straight but that's not what slashing here is about. It's about how Seiya gives her not only the protection she needs, but the fire, the fun, the chemistry, the undestanding, the love. So sad that was unrequited. Bah. Plus, Seiya is hot. And I'll rp, or write fic shipping them even if I know making it all fluffy and two sided is uncanon. Sexual orientations don't matter. A fic is my own little fantasy world to a degree anyway and as long as the charas are IN and it makes sense and the grammar is there, I don't think whether whoever is gay is relevent.

Now how this relates:
Slash in HP doesn't do it for me because I don't see the chemistry and I don't find guy/guy er..hot. I find it sweet a lot and angsty and what have you. Maybe it's because I can't..er relate? Take the girls in HP. You can slash about Hermione, Pansy, Cho and Ginny, I guess but none of those work for me. I don't see any of them having what the other needs, I can't see any of them fascinated or lusting or anything else.. Same with the boys. I mean, Draco just seems...slashable to me because he's all loud, in your face and has all those social restrictions with him that would make finding chemistry or discovering dynamics with other people easier but I guess it just makes him a clearer character to write because it's easy to predict where he'd take a situation in general. But I can't think of anyone that fufils my chemistry requirements for THE OTP or just flirting even. I can see where people could get H/D from but to me, a lot of the time, it just seems like it's what people want to be there rather than what really is. AKA: a very OOC harry. I always see the two of them getting bored of eachother really fast which you could say is very uncanon of me since they're both fascinated with eachother, you could say. But, I dunno, I think if you put them on good terms they'd have one good bang and go their seperate ways.

Plus: It's 8:00 and I still hate Harry.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

eheheh. thankees :D
i'm so happy when someone understands what in the world i'm going on about >:D<
although, you know, like when you said, "just because you want to see it", that's also definitely a part of slashing, you know?

we slash because we want to slash, eheheh.
and that's pretty subjective. i mean, suuuure, people go on about how there's actually "evidence" for harry/draco, but hey, people slash percy/tom, snape/sirius, snape/lucius, lucius/james, tom/hagrid, bill/draco(!!), ron/harry (but we -know- they're not hot for each other, and so on), etcetc. no evidence needed of it working out, being plausible, or even sane (ie, i've seen dobby/sorting hat, ahahahahah. okay, nevermind).

i think the "rightness" is more for otp'ing, and that's -really- subjective and depends what you want out of your otp. y'know? like, i recently linked to darklites' descriptions of what people are looking for by shipping a certain slash couple. people want different things, and see relationships in certain ways that are best exemplified by different pairings and dynamics.
it's not that anyone is seriously saying, "ok. harry & draco are the most likely-to-work-out couple since adam met eve", ahahah. no, we just WANT them to work out, and that's how it is with everyone we ship. it would be (to the shippers) so hot, so good, so right, so everything.
if you're -not- a shipper, then it wouldn't be, obviously~:)

i -do- think that harry & draco are meant-to-be on a larger level than just in my own head. but, that's still my own head. shipping and romance aren't (sadly or not-so-sadly) calculus, you know. no definitive answers there.
you tell the story and however you tell the story is how it is. there's no "right" or "wrong" story, there's only a well-told story, you know?

and btw, that thing that was afraid made no sense wasn't the draco characterization post, it was this (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=reenka&itemid=84418)~:)

[pink-faerie.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, I mean, not everything is about being THE SHNUGGLE BUNNY OTP in the end. It tends to be for me but I'll slash to explore a certain dynamic I see could form or just because it's hot and that's all fair game too. And then again it's all so SUBJECTIVE as you said. Obviously. I don't see any part of H/D really and there are mobs who do, for example. So I guess what makes someone slashable is just...opinion, in the end. Preference.

Like, I'm messed up. I'm at a point where I really look at everything in a logical way. I used to be this fluffball who went around talking about love and energies and how it all didn't have to be logical but somewhere there I got cynical and now it's all about the sense. But there goes subjective and preference anyway.

Hell, let's do what we like but the bottom line I guess that canon sexual orientation isn't really a gripping factor for a lot. If a series had 2 gay characters and I didn't see ANYTHING I wouldn't slash just cuz.

Sometimes even a beautifully told story won't fly with me. Again, preference opinion. I have to SEE it at least a little bit.
Ok, that post messes with my mind, I'll admit.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

ahahaha. i'm a fluffball, aren't i then :D

and, ehheeh! if even a beautifully-told story won't fly if you don't see it, does that mean that you -do- see h/d?? ahahahah

but yah, i know just what you mean, because obviously i mostly only read h/d and tiny bits of h/s (i mean, i don't "really" see harry/snape, but enough to buy a well-written story, i guess, which is a whole 'nother category, it seems). whereas, i just -don't- see harry/bill (yep, i saw one) in any way, shape or form, so there ain't no way i'm finding harry/bill sex hot, y'know.

so yah, i haveta see it. since i read fanon before canon in hp, i suppose i "saw" h/d, like, immediately, and i dunno why, it just worked. it was cute. i read cute stories where the dynamics worked for me, and the dracos were cute/snarky/sexgoddy and the harrys were good foils.
i like the dynamic. now, with... harry/ron... i can see it... but no, i don't like the dynamic. with lots of things, i can see it-- i mean, anything can happen. but i usually don't like the dynamic enough to get excited or anything. it probably has to do with how much i identify with the characters and how much i -want- that sort of relationship myself and how attractive i find them together. or, in the case of tom/hagrid, i guess sometimes i just think something is adorable even if it's wrong~:) (or is that -because- it's wrong? eheheheh)

[pink-faerie.livejournal.com]

Hm. Good point in a way but I was seriously blocking Harry out of those drabbles, missy. And I think liking form isn't liking the entire story as a story..er. Yes, coherency, where the hell are you?! I guess to say it may fly but on broken wings. I'll like a part of a big part but I've yet to find H/D that has made me read more than a page. Unless a friend wrote it but even then I give up after a chapter. So I guess, I can like parts without enjoying H/D. And liking parts doesn't equal liking it as a whole or what it stands for...er...yeah...It all makes sense in my mind.

it probably has to do with how much i identify with the characters and how much i -want- that sort of relationship myself and how attractive i find them together. or, in the case of tom/hagrid, i guess sometimes i just think something is adorable even if it's wrong~:) (or is that -because- it's wrong? eheheheh)

I don't think I could say it any better. Cheers. :D