Meta: Reality's Subtext

[alixtii]

Via voleuse: hth_the_first on what makes a couple slashy, and liviapenn responding (not really rebutting) with "normal behavior isn't slashy."

See, the thing is: yeah, normal life is slashy. It's 'cesty. It's a lot of things, some of them things which even fandom doesn't have words for, that we don't see because we're not used to looking at a life-text that way. I've lived in

Comments

[thelastgoodname]

This is a completely unsubstantive comment:

I wish more people wrote Rosalind/Celia, because I totally root for them to end up together every time I read the play.

[alixtii]

Oh so do I, definitely. Indeed, it's the only thing that makes As You Like It bearable for me.

Fanfiction as Schroedinger's Cat.

[hermionesviolin]

Too tired to read the full post at the moment, but I saw fanfic as Schroedinger's Cat here and have been frequently referring people back to it.

Re: Fanfiction as Schroedinger's Cat.

[alixtii]

Thanks for the cite; it's nice to have the link attached to the post.

[spuffyduds]

Oh my. I was enjoying the struggle to keep up with your very thinky brain, and then there was a punchline! Yay you.

[alixtii]

*takes a bow*

I'll be here all week. And then some.

[inalasahl]

I have doubts as a het male how often this type of behavior actually happens outside of television, but that's neither here nor there.
I realize this is the least important part of your very interesting essay, but I thought I'd share my personal experience in the matter.
In middle school, showers were not required so no one ever took one. So no towels. In high school, showers were required, but if we were lucky we only got about 10 minutes between heading to the showers and the end of class, so usually it was quite a frantic race. Nobody ever *stood around* in a towel, because that would mean ten less crucial seconds to fix your mascara or your hairspray. However girls did chat while changing and doing their hair and makeup. It's been long enough that it's starting to go hazy, but I think there was a sort of etiquette about it, though. One would never do one's makeup wearing just a towel, but a bra and shorts were acceptable.

[alixtii]

That sounds just about what I would have expected to hear. In both junior high and high school we weren't required to take showers, so yes, no one ever took me. (Perhaps athletes showered after practices/games, but I wouldn't know.) The situation you describe

Of course the reasons for the irrealism one sees in television are obvious, and is done with boys as often as girls, so I don't particularly have a problem with it--the television version is, in some sense, more fun to imagine, and I'd have no problem perpetuating it in my own fic (which never really aims for realism anyway). But it's nice to know the reality so one can understand how the fantasy functions, so thank you for sharing your experience.

[reallyreally]

Oh, wonderfully written! I've been thinking, lately, that the work that comes out of queer theory criticism is a sort of academically approved slash, and this post sort of discussed the other side of that thought. I agree to 100% :)

[alixtii]

Yeah. I suppose it's not all that surprising that someone (i.e. me) relatively well-versed in critical theory (for an undergraduate) would go to that place for a theoretical foundation to what we do in fandom (and it'd take a theory geek just to feel the need for a theoretical foundation), but it is nice how well the two fit together, isn't it?

Thank you for the compliment, and I am glad that I managed to expresse myself to you (at least?) effectively.