Noncanonical Slash vs. OOC Slash
Please note: what I'm about to say about slash applies equally to het.
I'm one of the people groaty is talking about over in fanfic rants, because I oppose slash that violates canon.
I'm not opposed to slash per se. Actually, I'm not even (horrors! a PPC agent admitting this!) opposed to noncanonical slash. I simply don't like slash that doesn't make sense.
To give an example from Buffy fandom, I don't mind Giles/Ethan slash, even though Rupert Giles' two key relationships on the show were with technopagan computer teacher Jenny Calendar and with Olivia. Giles was wild in his youth. He and Ethan had apparently known each other quite well in his youth. There's some history between the two, even though they are enemies now. There could have been a relationship once. It's possible.
My mind balks, however, when I see a pairing like Giles and Principal Snyder. Snyder. A kids'-hating, Giles-hating, ugly, rat-faced man once described as "a tiny Nazi with a bug up his ass the size of an emu." The two cordially loathed each other. No way I could see them as a believable couple. No WAY.
Or take a common AU pairing--Giles and his biological teenaged son, William, the erstwhile vampire Spike. Giles has always been presented as a man of integrity, courage and character. He has no biological children, but if he did, he would not sexually molest or rape his own son.
What you have in that pairing is a character who happens to have the same name as Giles; you don't have Giles himself.
Some characters fit well into slash. Highlander's Methos, for instance, can be put into almost any slash or het pairing; it's not likely that the Immortal would have many sexual inhibitions left after five thousand years. However, some pairings just make hash of the original storyline. I really can't see Lord Voldemort sneaking onto Hogwarts campus expressly to have sex with Albus Dumbledore, his long-time lover.
Interestingly, that reflects a pattern that occurs often in slash nowadays--pairing up canonical enemies or rivals and putting the two in bed together. I can't understand that. I can understand slashing same-sex friends, but why would people who don't like each other (and who are, half the time, mortal enemies) WANT to have sex? There's rarely an explanation that exceeds: "I've been trying to deny it for years, but I've loved you all along."
I have trouble with that. A lot of trouble. Call me crazy, but I don't believe that someone trying to kill you for years constitutes foreplay.
The "I have been trying to kill you repeatedly but I really love you more than life itself" slash phenomenon bugs me because it is chillingly reminiscent of a man who beats his wife within an inch of her life...and then tells her afterward that he loves her and is really really sorry. Apparently it's okay to try to kill somebody as long as you tell the prospective victim that you love him/her. That makes it ALL better.
Femslash, like male/male slash, can make sense, but often doesn't. I have no objection to, say, a f/f pairing involving Willow and Tara (or Willow/Kennedy--I don't like Kennedy as a character, but the pairing is canonical). I can even see Faith the Other Vampire Slayer in female/female pairings--while never paired sexually with a woman onscreen, Faith always gave the impression of being available for anything sexual and anything fun, be it slash or het.
On the other hand, I have trouble with Buffy/Willow slash, especially in stories where Dominatrix! Willow is punishing Buffy for being a psycho bitch and rapes her. (Presumably with a dildo, though with some scriveners you are never sure.) I object to this not only because it's out of character for Willow to physically victimize others (psychically and magically, now that's a different story), but also because it turns Buffy into Weak Helpless Victim Buffy, ignoring the Slayer's strength, agility and willingness to pound a few heads into the ground in any given fight. Buffy simply would not lie there and take it. She would punch, kick, bite, claw and headbutt, and she wouldn't pull her punches. She never does in a crisis. Turning Buffy into Weak Helpless Victim violates the whole point of the show--that any girl, even a blonde cheerleader from California, can make a stand and fight evil. That girls don't have to be the victims.
Equally strange is reverse femslash. This most often happens with Tara, as Willow has had a couple of male/female relationships. In reverse femslash, a canonically gay character has sex with the hottest guy on the show (in the scrivener's opinion) and is instantly converted to heterosexuality.
This twists Tara's personality into a pretzel, and not only because the notion of instant sexual conversion is both absurd and psychologically incorrect. Tara was a lesbian, yes. But she also deeply loved Willow, and wouldn't have stepped outside the relationship to have sex with someone else. That wouldn't have be right, in her estimation--and Tara was all about playing fair and acting responsibly, in word and deed.
Of course, there's also child/adult slash and femslash (Snape/Harry and McGonagall/Hermione leap to mind). Such a pairing in real life would get the teacher fired and hit with a lawsuit, as happened to a female schoolteacher in New Hampshire who had sex with a thirteen-year-old male student. But somehow, in slash stories, what would be child molestation and exploitation of a position of authority in real life becomes a story of willing seduction--even if the kid is doped up on a love potion. (Love potions, I'm afraid, always make me think of Rohypnol.) Whether the teacher is threatening to lower grades or put the child in detention for the rest of the year or expel the student does not matter--no physically or psychological pressure matters. The child/adult pairing is commonly presented as being one of Twu Wuv, on both sides. The physical, mental and emotional consequences of a child being coerced or blackmailed into sex are explored by very few writers.
Not only does this violate the personalities of the characters involved, it violates logic. It contradicts everything we know about the consequences of sexual abuse. And the fact that in most cases the scriveners who are writing about child sexual abuse are kids themselves...well, it's disturbing, and it raises some troubling questions.
I think the attitude toward incest is worse, though. Especially femslash incest. Male/male incest is at least seen to be hurtful, disturbing and exploitative. Femslash incest is usually presented in glowing, ecstatic terms.
"A true affirmation of a loving relationship" gushed one scrivener of a Joyce/Dawn story. This creature apparently extrapolated Joyce's sexual interest from one quote in the show: "My little pumpkin belly." Now that's just a silly nickname for a baby. Most parents have them. But the scribbler went into raptures about how Joyce wouldn't have even noticed Dawn physically if she hadn't been sexually interested. So clearly there was passion, and fire, and Joyce's One True Love.
That story spawned a huge argument. The scribbler and her (for the scribbler claimed to be female) friends on one side and two or three supporters of Joyce on the other. Then one day the site just died, as sites do. I don't know what happened to it, the story or the argument. I do remember the scribbler saying that if she (the scribbler claimed to be female) ever had children, she would be PROUD to have sex with them, and would tell the world.
I don't know about you, but I find that rather disturbing.
Of course, not everyone who writes incest slash would be proud to have sex with his or her kids. But the idea presented by incest slash is that this is just another kink that the public should tolerate, and that it is all right. Possibly even beneficial.
Sounds like the child molester's creed to me.
No, it's not slash I dislike. It's not even uncanonical slash. It's slash that violates the personalities of the characters, the principles of logic, the premise of the fandom and/or the laws of society and morality. I don't like slash in which the characters are so unlike themselves as to be unrecognizable, in which the girls rape each other or in which the males are mere spittoons for each other's sperm.
I don't like True Love being touted as an excuse for every OOC moment, every abuse, every piece of exploitation. Love is not reason enough. People remain themselves, even when in love.
I want the characters in fanfic to be the characters that I love. Put a canonically straight character in a slash relationship if you will, but make me believe it. Make me believe that the character I know so well from the show, the movie, the book would have a reason to behave this way, and would choose to behave this way--while still remaining wholly himself.
And if the character would NEVER behave that way--such as Joyce, who would never sexually molest either of her daughters--then drop it. Not all stories work.
Characters whose personalities are intact and whose thoughts and actions fit both the established personalities and the situation in which the characters find themselves. Non-exploitative sexual scenes that are NOT the soft-core porn of romance novels or a male/female love scene grafted onto two males or two females.
Good, believable, quality fiction.
In Heaven's name, what's wrong with that?
I'm one of the people groaty is talking about over in fanfic rants, because I oppose slash that violates canon.
I'm not opposed to slash per se. Actually, I'm not even (horrors! a PPC agent admitting this!) opposed to noncanonical slash. I simply don't like slash that doesn't make sense.
To give an example from Buffy fandom, I don't mind Giles/Ethan slash, even though Rupert Giles' two key relationships on the show were with technopagan computer teacher Jenny Calendar and with Olivia. Giles was wild in his youth. He and Ethan had apparently known each other quite well in his youth. There's some history between the two, even though they are enemies now. There could have been a relationship once. It's possible.
My mind balks, however, when I see a pairing like Giles and Principal Snyder. Snyder. A kids'-hating, Giles-hating, ugly, rat-faced man once described as "a tiny Nazi with a bug up his ass the size of an emu." The two cordially loathed each other. No way I could see them as a believable couple. No WAY.
Or take a common AU pairing--Giles and his biological teenaged son, William, the erstwhile vampire Spike. Giles has always been presented as a man of integrity, courage and character. He has no biological children, but if he did, he would not sexually molest or rape his own son.
What you have in that pairing is a character who happens to have the same name as Giles; you don't have Giles himself.
Some characters fit well into slash. Highlander's Methos, for instance, can be put into almost any slash or het pairing; it's not likely that the Immortal would have many sexual inhibitions left after five thousand years. However, some pairings just make hash of the original storyline. I really can't see Lord Voldemort sneaking onto Hogwarts campus expressly to have sex with Albus Dumbledore, his long-time lover.
Interestingly, that reflects a pattern that occurs often in slash nowadays--pairing up canonical enemies or rivals and putting the two in bed together. I can't understand that. I can understand slashing same-sex friends, but why would people who don't like each other (and who are, half the time, mortal enemies) WANT to have sex? There's rarely an explanation that exceeds: "I've been trying to deny it for years, but I've loved you all along."
I have trouble with that. A lot of trouble. Call me crazy, but I don't believe that someone trying to kill you for years constitutes foreplay.
The "I have been trying to kill you repeatedly but I really love you more than life itself" slash phenomenon bugs me because it is chillingly reminiscent of a man who beats his wife within an inch of her life...and then tells her afterward that he loves her and is really really sorry. Apparently it's okay to try to kill somebody as long as you tell the prospective victim that you love him/her. That makes it ALL better.
Femslash, like male/male slash, can make sense, but often doesn't. I have no objection to, say, a f/f pairing involving Willow and Tara (or Willow/Kennedy--I don't like Kennedy as a character, but the pairing is canonical). I can even see Faith the Other Vampire Slayer in female/female pairings--while never paired sexually with a woman onscreen, Faith always gave the impression of being available for anything sexual and anything fun, be it slash or het.
On the other hand, I have trouble with Buffy/Willow slash, especially in stories where Dominatrix! Willow is punishing Buffy for being a psycho bitch and rapes her. (Presumably with a dildo, though with some scriveners you are never sure.) I object to this not only because it's out of character for Willow to physically victimize others (psychically and magically, now that's a different story), but also because it turns Buffy into Weak Helpless Victim Buffy, ignoring the Slayer's strength, agility and willingness to pound a few heads into the ground in any given fight. Buffy simply would not lie there and take it. She would punch, kick, bite, claw and headbutt, and she wouldn't pull her punches. She never does in a crisis. Turning Buffy into Weak Helpless Victim violates the whole point of the show--that any girl, even a blonde cheerleader from California, can make a stand and fight evil. That girls don't have to be the victims.
Equally strange is reverse femslash. This most often happens with Tara, as Willow has had a couple of male/female relationships. In reverse femslash, a canonically gay character has sex with the hottest guy on the show (in the scrivener's opinion) and is instantly converted to heterosexuality.
This twists Tara's personality into a pretzel, and not only because the notion of instant sexual conversion is both absurd and psychologically incorrect. Tara was a lesbian, yes. But she also deeply loved Willow, and wouldn't have stepped outside the relationship to have sex with someone else. That wouldn't have be right, in her estimation--and Tara was all about playing fair and acting responsibly, in word and deed.
Of course, there's also child/adult slash and femslash (Snape/Harry and McGonagall/Hermione leap to mind). Such a pairing in real life would get the teacher fired and hit with a lawsuit, as happened to a female schoolteacher in New Hampshire who had sex with a thirteen-year-old male student. But somehow, in slash stories, what would be child molestation and exploitation of a position of authority in real life becomes a story of willing seduction--even if the kid is doped up on a love potion. (Love potions, I'm afraid, always make me think of Rohypnol.) Whether the teacher is threatening to lower grades or put the child in detention for the rest of the year or expel the student does not matter--no physically or psychological pressure matters. The child/adult pairing is commonly presented as being one of Twu Wuv, on both sides. The physical, mental and emotional consequences of a child being coerced or blackmailed into sex are explored by very few writers.
Not only does this violate the personalities of the characters involved, it violates logic. It contradicts everything we know about the consequences of sexual abuse. And the fact that in most cases the scriveners who are writing about child sexual abuse are kids themselves...well, it's disturbing, and it raises some troubling questions.
I think the attitude toward incest is worse, though. Especially femslash incest. Male/male incest is at least seen to be hurtful, disturbing and exploitative. Femslash incest is usually presented in glowing, ecstatic terms.
"A true affirmation of a loving relationship" gushed one scrivener of a Joyce/Dawn story. This creature apparently extrapolated Joyce's sexual interest from one quote in the show: "My little pumpkin belly." Now that's just a silly nickname for a baby. Most parents have them. But the scribbler went into raptures about how Joyce wouldn't have even noticed Dawn physically if she hadn't been sexually interested. So clearly there was passion, and fire, and Joyce's One True Love.
That story spawned a huge argument. The scribbler and her (for the scribbler claimed to be female) friends on one side and two or three supporters of Joyce on the other. Then one day the site just died, as sites do. I don't know what happened to it, the story or the argument. I do remember the scribbler saying that if she (the scribbler claimed to be female) ever had children, she would be PROUD to have sex with them, and would tell the world.
I don't know about you, but I find that rather disturbing.
Of course, not everyone who writes incest slash would be proud to have sex with his or her kids. But the idea presented by incest slash is that this is just another kink that the public should tolerate, and that it is all right. Possibly even beneficial.
Sounds like the child molester's creed to me.
No, it's not slash I dislike. It's not even uncanonical slash. It's slash that violates the personalities of the characters, the principles of logic, the premise of the fandom and/or the laws of society and morality. I don't like slash in which the characters are so unlike themselves as to be unrecognizable, in which the girls rape each other or in which the males are mere spittoons for each other's sperm.
I don't like True Love being touted as an excuse for every OOC moment, every abuse, every piece of exploitation. Love is not reason enough. People remain themselves, even when in love.
I want the characters in fanfic to be the characters that I love. Put a canonically straight character in a slash relationship if you will, but make me believe it. Make me believe that the character I know so well from the show, the movie, the book would have a reason to behave this way, and would choose to behave this way--while still remaining wholly himself.
And if the character would NEVER behave that way--such as Joyce, who would never sexually molest either of her daughters--then drop it. Not all stories work.
Characters whose personalities are intact and whose thoughts and actions fit both the established personalities and the situation in which the characters find themselves. Non-exploitative sexual scenes that are NOT the soft-core porn of romance novels or a male/female love scene grafted onto two males or two females.
Good, believable, quality fiction.
In Heaven's name, what's wrong with that?