excellent adventures in canon suburbia!

[reenka]

Man, posts like this & like this (and others) reeeeeally make me re-evaluate why I call myself 'a slasher' (when I bother to call myself anything; last time someone asked me to define myself, I said I'm a geek and I suppose that pretty much covers it). The whole idea that a) slashers don't care about the canon (or lack thereof) hehind their ship & b) they're in it for the specialized community-- ie, the slash itself-- rather than the fics (or the specific fandom)... man, that gets up my nose. However, I'm not sure if that just means I'm a slasher who doesn't get to call herself that 'cause she's not 'typical' or something :/

I don't think slash is inherently OOC, okay. When another slasher says so, I feel... I dunno, hurt a little, almost, but mostly frustrated. But then this gets into definitions of what 'OOC' is; I just don't think it's 'anything that's not explicitly stated in canon'. There's a range of plausibility-- a sort of canon suburbia (IC fanon) where you obviously know you're not in the City, but neither are you out in the Country. If you like the sort of funky, avant-garde area of suburbia where cock is GOOD and two cocks are better more than the parts where girls and boys snog behind tree-houses or make nest-eggs in the nice houses-- well, I figure you're a slasher. Though sometimes you take your cocks and you put them in a nice house too, but really (to me) that's not the point, it's just a possibility.

Really, what I'm trying to say is, these are extremes-- being 'just for the slash' and the whole 'to hell with canon plausibility' thing. Obviously, yeah, there are people like that, and yeah, they're loud, but there's no way I'd believe that's what slash is, 'cause then we're talking about definitions, not people themselves. People may not care about canon; slash itself is often a natural outgrowth. People may want to join a group; slashing itself is one fan's relationship to a source text multiplied across a group.
    Those of you who think you're not slashers 'cause you like other things too, or 'cause for you slashing depends on the presence of canon chemistry or subtext you can actually see, or because you 'don't fit in' with the other slashers-- it's your prerogative how you self-identify, but fact is nothing's stopping you from being a slasher but you. At base, slash is that thing I do when I read snippets of say, the Draco Trilogy and it's clear there's wink-wink-nudge-nudge going on but they're not really supposed to be Gay And In Love, but I DON'T CARE because DV!HARRY/DRACO 4EVA, BITCHES! It's right there, the t00by love & everything!!1 :P Um, so yeah. If I wrote it (and I made an effort), it would SO be in fucking character. In fact, you go & try writing DV!H/D out of character (if you're a halfway decent writer). It would be bloody difficult, y'know? Even though it's clear the Author's Intent is to stop at subtext. BUT SO WHAT (unless...uh... you care about that sort of thing *hides from blacksatinrose*). :P


Also, you don't need to go to the clubs & make friends with the funky natives to be a part of the atmosphere/culture-- all you need is to... I dunno... have similar mores & habits? Sort of fit in without necessarily mingling, I guess. Mingling (I believe) is never required. If you're a slasher by my definition, you just like to play with fictional boys & their cocks in the nice suburban neighborhood of slash, not too far from Canon Central but far enough that there's not as much smog or noise & you can smell the sea and see the sky. You also probably saw how the boys looked at each other funny in Canon City, but of course they didn't do anything; that's not how one behaves in Canon City. But then they came out to suburbia to have a little fun, do things they didn't get a chance to amidst the hustle & bustle, all the plot threads left dangling just for a little while as new ones pop up beneath their feet. They like to have fun, those Canon City boys. You know, let it all hang out :P

But these boys-- my boys-- don't like going to the wilderness that often. They're really City boys-- they know it's a bit embarrassing when you get caught with your pants down in the wild-- you just never know -what- will happen, and they like to hold on to at least -something- familiar. They know that some settlements of the Slashy Suburbs exist out there in the wild where really freaky things happen-- strange noises have been head. Boys have been seen running out of earthern huts screaming 'cause they've been turned into girls. Ferret!sex may be involved, not to mention those kitschy, sticky leather pants everywhere. Best to stick to the cute little suburbian cafes & just have the usual fun outing with one's mates to the Slasher's Pub, where the boys are always snogging and the girls are always watching. The last train home leaves on the hour, but they do like to stay for a long, long weekend, those naughty boys :P

And the whole idea that one has to be in the 'minority' if one likes to hang out in the Slashy district as well as the (somewhat quieter, but not really) Hetero district? And find the alleys and street corners on the border? That's bullshit. You don't have to exclusively hang out in one place, so why does being a slasher imply exclusivity? *groans* Can't you just prefer something one day and another thing the next? Does that make you less of a 'person-who-likes-to-do-that-thing' if you also like to do another thing?? God, it's like the 'you don't really like other girls if you like guys too' mentality. :/ Some people like pizza every day, some like it once a month-- but they both LIKE PIZZA, okay. If you like it enough to seek it out especially, even when you -could- have something else instead, at least sometimes-- then nothing but semantics & a sprinkle of moderation, a certain open-mindedness (and possibly sanity, you never know) separates you from the biggest fanatic.
~~

So, um. In other news, I've been reading the 'Watching the English' book where Kate Fox explains the general cultural quirks of current English behavior in the anthropological sense, and it's really starting to mess with how I think of actual people & characters. I know that reticence in talking about feelings is both English and typically boyish, so I've always tried to do what I could with that, but man oh man. The anti-earnestness, the circumspectness about money, the whining/moaning about things but never really having big outbursts/revolutionary explosions much (you know, that explains how the Wizarding World tolerated all the Death Eaters), the etiquette with strangers and the way guys bond by drinking... ahh, my head spins.

Trying to see any group of individuals (isn't that an oxymoron to most people anyway?) as being 'similar' in a cultural/anthropological/social sort of way messes with my head. People are just so -different-, it's odd thinking that a whole country has similarities to their personality & emotional responses. Though I should think the Malfoys would have the upper-class/working-class divide with the Weasleys, and I guess that makes both Harry & Hermione middle-class... ummm... *___*
    See, I don't think anyone within the US could get away with saying there's a single 'national character' for Americans, though foreigners obviously think there is. I mean, I'm familiar with the idea, obviously, and there has always been a Russian 'national character', but the ways in which it makes Russians similar is really subtle going by individual-- it's just hard to trace for an outsider by definition, even knowing all the 'rules', I think.