[rambling on about nothing as usual.]

[reenka]

You know, before I spent too long in fandom, I had squicks. Now I just have preferences and a whole lot of pet-peeves, where it's just that you'd have to work harder to please me if I've a peeve about it. Like, y'know, I remember in the good old days, where Kirk/Spock sex pretty much squicked me, even if I liked the idea of the pairing a lot; I couldn't get over my adolescent vision of them. I remember when Ron/Draco and Snape/Draco and even Harry/Hermione seemed Deeply Wrong... and now I just don't prefer them. I remember when H/D was the alpha and omega of my fannish universe and I had all these ideas about how it 'should' and 'shouldn't' be done (and okay, I still have those), but I've become quite lax about thumping my chest and hyperventilating, alas.

Anyway, I meant to talk about a specific comment in this Wincest squick post, but it also made me think a bit, 'cause yeah, the sheer prevalence of that reading of a show's canon bothers me a bit-- though that's my 'canon, bitches!' thing, not any anti-incest squick, exactly; actually, I don't think I've ever had a 'traditional' squick in the sense that it's based on my real-life beliefs (I mean, I tend to like characters in fiction I'd probably clobber in real life, for a start). Like, if it's well-written, anything challenging or transgressive can only make the story more interesting, as far as I'm concerned; for examples, look to the many instances of incest in classic literature and also some of the best genre lit of today (okay, mainly Song of Ice and Fire). I cannot imagine seriously reading something good and then stopping and going, 'but this is WRONG, HOW COULD THIS BE??! NOOOoooo'. If I really felt like that, I mean, I wouldn't have graduated from books for toddlers, because isn't there always something unpleasant and 'wrong' and unfair even in (good and/or classic) children's books?

    (Btw, this is where some of my friends woujd just say I'm not a critical enough reader, so I clearly suck. Hehe. Because yeah, while I was careful to say 'well-written' and 'good' stories, the truth is I also suspend a lot of judgment/personal issues/disbelief when reading stuff I just... like a lot for whatever reason. I wouldn't call it a 'kink'; like, I don't have a 'kink' for HP canon, y'know? Most of the time the only reason I'm critical is when I either really love something or really hate it, usually because of aesthetic/story-construction reasons. This mostly applies to stuff that's really bad. How do I explain it. It applies to purple-prosey fantasy books with ass-stupid names & the majority of post-OoTP fanfic I read, hahaha; it very rarely applies to content, in other words, and only to execution-- the big exception being OOCness in fic and stuff I find relentlessly bleak. Because I'm a huge romantic dork. But I try to keep that under control. :P So yeah, it's a personality issue, basically, and one I can't really do anything about, so nyah.)


In any case, I'm veeeery touchy about actually projecting slashiness on any canon... and in fact I can't think of any where I would do so with all honesty. There's liminal cases like Star Trek, The Sentinel and Gundam Wing, but I wouldn't go so far as to explain anything that happened with the characters through that lens. It's just subtext, take it or leave it.

Aaanyway. It's funny because I have the exact opposite reaction-- usually if something squicks me in text/theory, it squicks me less in a visual representation, because I'm more of an aesthete-- I always look at art as an 'art piece' first and a 'statement' second; in other words, I can easily disengage any moral/ethical/other biases and just enjoy the pretty because pretty is what matters with visual media to me. This is why I have no hard pairing preference with fanart, for instance, and why I tolerate and enjoy extreme cheesiness in fanvids of the sort that'd make me run screaming from a fic.
    Coincidentally, it's also why the 6A/LJ wank sticks in my craw like mad. It's really the art-critique aspect that drives me mad, the double-standard where fanfic is okay but fanart isn't-- fanart needs to be judged by outsiders who don't have the first clue what they're looking at. That just drives me mad. Visual art just... the idea of judging it in such pedestrian terms without even realizing that's what you're doing-- it makes my blood boil.

Regardless, I meant to just quote harriet_spy's comment:
    To be honest, there's no way you can take a dynamic that hinges even a little bit on transgressiveness, have ten thousand squeeing fangirls stampede over it, and have anything left but flatness.

I just thought that was really... very true. And it really applies to some of my favorite pairings (*cough!*) rather than just Wincest. It's not that I hate fluff... it's that I'm just so bored & frustrated by the sheer glut of narratives that make the transgressive and raw as acceptable and 'easy' as possible. Actually, the reason I wouldn't ship Wincest is probably because you can't reasonably expect it to be remotely healthy or resolvable in any positive way-- and I'm still a romantic. It's kinda figures that the incest is intinsically everyone's problem, but yeah. This definitely reminds of the sheer flatness I felt before I stopped reading H/D altogether; this sense that the pairing has become... completely predictable and 'easy' (in fandom, not in canon). I can't really think of a transgressive pairing that actually consistently captured its own problematic areas... which is why I'm really way too wary to read S/L, but oh well.

Comments

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

I guess I thought she was saying it's not the concept, it's the execution

Still epically missing the point.

Wincest is that kind of incest where we work with canon so ripe it's fit to burst. It's like barely a step down from anime twincest.

So of course the execution is going to be "obvious, duh". Because that's how it is, duh.

someone said somewhere in comments to that post that what's 'slashy' for platonic friends isn't slashy for brothers who're close, which seems true.

I bet these are the same people who say things like, "I don't like slash because young women write men like young women."

Well, here's the thing: even brothers who are fantastically close don't act like Sam and Dean.

like, there was a ghost priest killing people or something

Which is like, one of the mildest subtext episodes ever.

Let me put it this way: Supernatural is the kind of show actual grown men (heterosexual and otherwise) watch and say, "That's pretty gay." It's the kind of show mainstream media reviewers review and say, "That's pretty gay" (except they dress it up in pretty words about how their being brothers cancels it out, or something). So it's not just the fangirls, and it's not just projecting. They crack jokes about pretending to be a "couple" and Dean overcompensating and all the other stuff that equates to "gaying it the fuck up so consciously" which I mentioned before. And we have two lovely actors with enough chemistry (and I'm talking platonic, here) that they burn a hole through your TV.

So really, you have to watch it to understand. If you haven't watched it, you won't get it.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well, to be fair, grown men are probably knee-jerky about 'teh gay' for different reasons than fangirls, especially in the US, especially if they're manly men, ahaha. But thinking of very slashy shows like the original Star Trek & The Sentinel, say, shows where I myself feel the weird lovey vibes and the chemistry burn up the screen... I'd still say it's subtext & not text, I guess, because to me it's so contextual, so dependent on the characters and their world and their history in terms of how they act and whether it's normal for them as opposed to normal for whoever else or Average Joe in the same situation.

I mean... this sort of situation where you've got mutual dependence and us-against-the-world and no-one-else-for-consistent-emotional-support... that sort of breeds emotional incesty vibes that you couldn't compare to 'normal' familial relationships successfully, is what I tried to say. I say this from experience as someone who was in this weirdly 'too close' us-against-the-world relationship with my mom, growing up. And I used to actually wonder if there's something wrong with me or I was messed up, because other people aren't this close to their mothers, etc, and I used to be afraid one day I'd wake up and be ilke 'hey, my mom's attractive' simply because so much (well, -all-) of my emotional world revolved around her.

So I can see where -that- sort of (basically unhealthy but possible) dynamic may very well be intentional. People call it emotional incest sometimes, but it's not the same thing as -gay-, I guess... like... simply because something like that is such a huge step, still, no matter how much they emo together or how often they hug. I'm not surprised Dean would overcompensate though, but this is within the realm of something one would do with a heavy emotional connection to a family member, a form of futile rebellion like teenagers who date bad boys to spite their controlling or just very -present- or emotionally dominant mothers or fathers; not the same, clearly, but it's not necessarily totally different, I don't think.

When it comes to me personally, I probably would say 'omg that's intense/slashy' because I did even with that ep I watched with the drunken promises and the ghost priest. It was intense; too intense. But at the same time I wouldn't boil all that emotion and ambiguity & chemistry down to 'gay', is the thing, because to me that wouldn't explain it. If it was gay, it'd be situationally gay of the sort where these two people really -aren't- but are so fucked up they can't be with anyone but each other; but is that really 'gay'?

I mean, I don't know; like you said, I can't judge until I saw much more, so I'm not judging and just sort of thinking about possibilities. If there's actual intent (on the part of the actors or creators), then... well, yeah, that's conscious and irrefutable, though sometimes it gets fuzzy if only one person is meaning to act as if that interpretation is true and the other person acting doesn't know, say. And/or if people are aware and there's some fan-service in the show (like The O.C.) but they don't really 'mean it' seriously and in the end never really take the show in a compatible direction. I didn't mean to be dismissive, just skeptical, in other words. :>

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

I'd still say it's subtext & not text

I never said it was text.

that sort of breeds emotional incesty vibes that you couldn't compare to 'normal' familial relationships successfully, is what I tried to say.

I got that, but still, even us-against-the-world brothers aren't like Sam & Dean.

with the drunken promises

Oh yes, the infamous "almost kiss" scene. XD

but is that really 'gay'?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

And/or if people are aware and there's some fan-service in the show (like The O.C.) but they don't really 'mean it' seriously and in the end never really take the show in a compatible direction.

Inserting fan-service is "meaning it". Otherwise they wouldn't do it at all.