Slash me, baby redux
Note: I posted this earlier today for about five minutes, but there were a couple of things I couldn’t add at the time, so I made it private until I could do the rewrite.
cissasghost asked me what it is that I find in slash but not het when it comes to characterization, but I may have misled her with my initial comment. It’s not only characterization that I’m concerned with. The dynamics of the relationship the character is in are hugely interesting to me. In a standard het pairing, there are certain societal expectations regarding gender and power. In fic of any sort, the man tends to be physically stronger while the woman tends to be emotionally stronger, and the story proceeds from there with very few exceptions.
Slash, however, takes that particular gender dynamic away. When same-sex characters are in a relationship, it’s easier for me to explore a particular character’s strengths and weaknesses in a given situation. I don’t have to watch for gender bias, because there really isn’t any (unless you count the manesses in particularly bad slash). Instead, a character brings with him his experiences and prejudices which may or may not clash with the experiences and prejudices brought by the other character of the same sex. There’s still a power dynamic, but it isn’t gender based beyond a touch of testosterone poisoning.
Take Isolated Elements, for example. When the story starts, Giles is in denial about Buffy’s death, and he’s being forced to go to Las Vegas or risk deportation. Gil is still dealing with the fallout from Catherine having killed Syd Goggle to save Gil’s life. Both men are under tremendous stress. How does Giles behave, once he’s no longer required to be the adult in a given situation? When that situation changes unexpectedly, how does Giles react to Gil, an expert in his own right, when both are thrown into a situation that falls under Giles’ purview? For that matter, how does Gil cope with a radical realignment of what he thought he knew about himself and the world? What happens when Giles no longer has to be the “strong one” and finally has breathing room to grieve? Ultimately, the real question for me was how do they fall against one another so that they can keep themselves both mostly upright?
I pick on Giles in Dark Haven as well. I want to know what happens to him when he’s forced by circumstance and his own biases into a relationship he wouldn’t have chosen for himself. How does he tolerate not being the one with all the answers? What does he do to shore up what little power he has in the relationship? How does it affect his relationship with Dawn and Buffy? How does it affect his view of himself, especially when falls head over heels in love with a woman he just met? How does Jean-Claude react?
Once gender politics are removed (or reintroduced to form a triad), I’m forced as a writer to move away from societal stereotypes and mores. I feel like I can get closer to the heart of the characters and develop their relationship more deeply than I would otherwise. As a reader, the slash I love keeps the characters as close to canon as possible, even as sexual orientation has been changed (arbitrarily or based on comments of the creators or writers outside of canon) and they negotiate a new kind of relationship. What I despise is slash where the male characters are little more than stand-ins for the woman who wrote them (i.e., unending angst and emo).
Another reason I love slash is that occasionally, I’ll find the perfect WTF? story. It’s the one where Character A and possibly Character B are going along, perfectly confident in their sexual orientation when suddenly, they aren’t. Some event, small or large, has triggered a change in how they view themselves and each other, and the writer explores what that change means. There are two beautiful examples of this that I can think of offhand.
The first is Aristide’s Foreign Territory, in which Ray K. and Fraser of due South discover (somewhat to their mutual confusion) that maybe gender doesn’t mean as much as they thought it did when it comes to matters of the heart. The fic, told from Ray’s POV, never devolves into maudlin sentimentality. Ray has his freak-outs throughout, as he and Ben move herky-jerky from one step to the next, but his freak-outs are sensible, and they never lead to angst. They lead to all sorts of other places, but never to angst.
The other (others, really) is Bone’s Territorial Imperative series in the Sentinel fandom. In this case, the slash is half a heartbeat from canon, but Blair and Jim go through the same confusion of WTF? Bone does a beautiful job of keeping the characters in character while at the same time taking a look at their reactions to the changes in their relationship with one another.
In the BtVS fandom, I look at Tara/Giles or Spike or Xander the same way I look at the more typical slash offerings. The reason is that there’s been a sudden shift of orientation (on Tara’s part), and that has to mean something to her -- how does she deal with a radical redefinition of who she is? In Wilby Wonderful, Duck/Dan is the canon pairing, but Duck/Buddy and Duck/Sandra are the two slash pairings I’d most like to see, again because of the redefinition of self.
Are there other ways to go about this in fiction? To force a character to reassess who he or she is? Of course there are, but typically, they involve taking a lot (everything) away from a character, and that way can lead to angst. Forcing character growth with sex is way more fun.
What about everyone else? What are your views on slash if you read and/or write it? If you don’t, how do you feel about the gender politics in het? Do they interest you, bore you? Pull up a keyboard and tell me.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should also point out that I write and read slash because it turns my crank like nobody’s business. Het can sometimes manage it, but it takes a really good writer - one who can avoid the stereotypes of society and canon and still write good sex.
cissasghost asked me what it is that I find in slash but not het when it comes to characterization, but I may have misled her with my initial comment. It’s not only characterization that I’m concerned with. The dynamics of the relationship the character is in are hugely interesting to me. In a standard het pairing, there are certain societal expectations regarding gender and power. In fic of any sort, the man tends to be physically stronger while the woman tends to be emotionally stronger, and the story proceeds from there with very few exceptions.
Slash, however, takes that particular gender dynamic away. When same-sex characters are in a relationship, it’s easier for me to explore a particular character’s strengths and weaknesses in a given situation. I don’t have to watch for gender bias, because there really isn’t any (unless you count the manesses in particularly bad slash). Instead, a character brings with him his experiences and prejudices which may or may not clash with the experiences and prejudices brought by the other character of the same sex. There’s still a power dynamic, but it isn’t gender based beyond a touch of testosterone poisoning.
Take Isolated Elements, for example. When the story starts, Giles is in denial about Buffy’s death, and he’s being forced to go to Las Vegas or risk deportation. Gil is still dealing with the fallout from Catherine having killed Syd Goggle to save Gil’s life. Both men are under tremendous stress. How does Giles behave, once he’s no longer required to be the adult in a given situation? When that situation changes unexpectedly, how does Giles react to Gil, an expert in his own right, when both are thrown into a situation that falls under Giles’ purview? For that matter, how does Gil cope with a radical realignment of what he thought he knew about himself and the world? What happens when Giles no longer has to be the “strong one” and finally has breathing room to grieve? Ultimately, the real question for me was how do they fall against one another so that they can keep themselves both mostly upright?
I pick on Giles in Dark Haven as well. I want to know what happens to him when he’s forced by circumstance and his own biases into a relationship he wouldn’t have chosen for himself. How does he tolerate not being the one with all the answers? What does he do to shore up what little power he has in the relationship? How does it affect his relationship with Dawn and Buffy? How does it affect his view of himself, especially when falls head over heels in love with a woman he just met? How does Jean-Claude react?
Once gender politics are removed (or reintroduced to form a triad), I’m forced as a writer to move away from societal stereotypes and mores. I feel like I can get closer to the heart of the characters and develop their relationship more deeply than I would otherwise. As a reader, the slash I love keeps the characters as close to canon as possible, even as sexual orientation has been changed (arbitrarily or based on comments of the creators or writers outside of canon) and they negotiate a new kind of relationship. What I despise is slash where the male characters are little more than stand-ins for the woman who wrote them (i.e., unending angst and emo).
Another reason I love slash is that occasionally, I’ll find the perfect WTF? story. It’s the one where Character A and possibly Character B are going along, perfectly confident in their sexual orientation when suddenly, they aren’t. Some event, small or large, has triggered a change in how they view themselves and each other, and the writer explores what that change means. There are two beautiful examples of this that I can think of offhand.
The first is Aristide’s Foreign Territory, in which Ray K. and Fraser of due South discover (somewhat to their mutual confusion) that maybe gender doesn’t mean as much as they thought it did when it comes to matters of the heart. The fic, told from Ray’s POV, never devolves into maudlin sentimentality. Ray has his freak-outs throughout, as he and Ben move herky-jerky from one step to the next, but his freak-outs are sensible, and they never lead to angst. They lead to all sorts of other places, but never to angst.
The other (others, really) is Bone’s Territorial Imperative series in the Sentinel fandom. In this case, the slash is half a heartbeat from canon, but Blair and Jim go through the same confusion of WTF? Bone does a beautiful job of keeping the characters in character while at the same time taking a look at their reactions to the changes in their relationship with one another.
In the BtVS fandom, I look at Tara/Giles or Spike or Xander the same way I look at the more typical slash offerings. The reason is that there’s been a sudden shift of orientation (on Tara’s part), and that has to mean something to her -- how does she deal with a radical redefinition of who she is? In Wilby Wonderful, Duck/Dan is the canon pairing, but Duck/Buddy and Duck/Sandra are the two slash pairings I’d most like to see, again because of the redefinition of self.
Are there other ways to go about this in fiction? To force a character to reassess who he or she is? Of course there are, but typically, they involve taking a lot (everything) away from a character, and that way can lead to angst. Forcing character growth with sex is way more fun.
What about everyone else? What are your views on slash if you read and/or write it? If you don’t, how do you feel about the gender politics in het? Do they interest you, bore you? Pull up a keyboard and tell me.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should also point out that I write and read slash because it turns my crank like nobody’s business. Het can sometimes manage it, but it takes a really good writer - one who can avoid the stereotypes of society and canon and still write good sex.