*climbs on soapbox*
Okay, so I'm home alone today (minor food poisoning; might I recommend that none of you get the crispy honey chicken should you grace P.F. Chang's with your presence?) and taking a break from studying for the physics final I may or may not fail tomorrow, I go online and scan through theborogoves because moirariordan's fics always make me feel better.
So there I am, scanning, and I stumble across her Wizards of Waverly Place Justin/Alex mini-epic (editor's note: ' in fire, in ice'; go read it, you'll become a better person) and armed with the experience of having seen one episode once while waiting for Life with Derek to come on--me, ashamed? never--I went in.
And promptly died. Because it was beautiful and glorious and, like most of her stories, absolutely tore my heart out via my esophagus. The only problem is that, of course, she happens to ship siblings (not step-siblings, which I think is a distinction that a lot of Derek/Casey shippers like to make) within the bounds of this little bit of wonderful. And in the interest of forming a well-rounded hypothesis, I went and rustled up a bit more Wizards Justin/Alex fic, and found the not-necessarily-surprising fact that hers was the only story in which I could tolerate their being together, mostly because the writing made their coming together understandable and also sort of inevitable.
Which led, in tragically classic Bella thinking, to my beginning to wonder. With that wondering came some internet soul-searching, and with that soul-searching came the discovery of--surprise surprise!--a whole load of people who cannot tolerate kink or anything that they construe as kink within the bounds of fandom.
As most of those kink-haters are usually slash-haters, my chest swelled up with righteous indignation and off I went in a bit of a tizzy to dig up cases where I have not only tolerate kink, but actually borderline liked it within the setting of a beautiful story. Number one on the list obviously went to moirariordan's aftermentioned masterpiece, but also pandarus's ' Not Time's Fool', featuring incest and rabid genderbending (which I expected upon first reading to not only dislike but also kind of despise, and then I got sucked in by the very competent way she put Dean in a girl's body and explored the possibilities), and a whole host of others, most of which featured incest (I've noticed that Wincest, Ryan/Sharpay from High School Musical, and Drake/Josh from Drake & Josh seem to be favorites within all age groups. Notice that two out of three are children's shows. I think there's a point that could be made there, but making it would be like hitting you all over the head with a big, smelly fish that has "Hinty McHintsalot" written on it).
I could list all my favorite non-cest slash and femslash fics as well, but as I refused to see homosexual relationships as kink just because they happen to have a same-gender pairing, I think that's a can of worms we don't need to open at the moment.
All right, moving on to the actual reason for this rant. My question: what are the bounds of fiction? In real life--disregarding, for the moment, the fact that there aren't wizards in real life so all of this would basically be a moot point anyway--Justin and Alex having any sort of relationship would be, even to those fangirls who so assiduously prompt their ship, wrong in the most basic sense of the word. Derek and Casey's relationship would probably be a bit off as well, although they're step-siblings and haven't known each other their entire lives so I'm willing to quibble on that.
My point is, fiction allows us entry into a world where the writer, provided they're good enough, can deem what is and isn't "wrong." The best writers create situations where Alex and Justin, confronted with certain situations, find each other and it works because of what the writer has made. Are we the readers sick or disturbed individuals for acknowledging that a story is well-constructed? If we take this outside the realm of fandom (to the next person who mentions Flowers in the Attic in defense of incest: I will cut you. I'm talking about good literature here) and into, you know, actual literature, then you've got Brideshead Revisited for those who are anti-slash, anything by Sappho for the anti-femslash, Wuthering Heights for incest, and god knows for the supposedly tight-wad nature of their morality, the Victorians were basically up for anything. So there's a whole era of poetry, short stories, and literature that support the theory that as long as a writer is telling a good story--and telling it well--we should accept certain situations as byproducts of that story.
In other words: while I respect that incest is, you know, not something that we as a society accept, we as a society also don't accept, say, murder . . . rape . . . thievery . . . and yet a lot of the anti-slash and anti-cest people populating the fandoms don't seem to have a lot of problems with the Winchesters shooting, stabbing, and credit-card-scamming their way across the Midwestern United States.
I'm just saying. For a good story, we're willing to bend our morals quite a lot. Why should slash and incest be any different?
And that's where you, the f-list, comes in. Can we compromise our morals for the sake of a great narrative? Is it even considered compromising?
So there I am, scanning, and I stumble across her Wizards of Waverly Place Justin/Alex mini-epic (editor's note: ' in fire, in ice'; go read it, you'll become a better person) and armed with the experience of having seen one episode once while waiting for Life with Derek to come on--me, ashamed? never--I went in.
And promptly died. Because it was beautiful and glorious and, like most of her stories, absolutely tore my heart out via my esophagus. The only problem is that, of course, she happens to ship siblings (not step-siblings, which I think is a distinction that a lot of Derek/Casey shippers like to make) within the bounds of this little bit of wonderful. And in the interest of forming a well-rounded hypothesis, I went and rustled up a bit more Wizards Justin/Alex fic, and found the not-necessarily-surprising fact that hers was the only story in which I could tolerate their being together, mostly because the writing made their coming together understandable and also sort of inevitable.
Which led, in tragically classic Bella thinking, to my beginning to wonder. With that wondering came some internet soul-searching, and with that soul-searching came the discovery of--surprise surprise!--a whole load of people who cannot tolerate kink or anything that they construe as kink within the bounds of fandom.
As most of those kink-haters are usually slash-haters, my chest swelled up with righteous indignation and off I went in a bit of a tizzy to dig up cases where I have not only tolerate kink, but actually borderline liked it within the setting of a beautiful story. Number one on the list obviously went to moirariordan's aftermentioned masterpiece, but also pandarus's ' Not Time's Fool', featuring incest and rabid genderbending (which I expected upon first reading to not only dislike but also kind of despise, and then I got sucked in by the very competent way she put Dean in a girl's body and explored the possibilities), and a whole host of others, most of which featured incest (I've noticed that Wincest, Ryan/Sharpay from High School Musical, and Drake/Josh from Drake & Josh seem to be favorites within all age groups. Notice that two out of three are children's shows. I think there's a point that could be made there, but making it would be like hitting you all over the head with a big, smelly fish that has "Hinty McHintsalot" written on it).
I could list all my favorite non-cest slash and femslash fics as well, but as I refused to see homosexual relationships as kink just because they happen to have a same-gender pairing, I think that's a can of worms we don't need to open at the moment.
All right, moving on to the actual reason for this rant. My question: what are the bounds of fiction? In real life--disregarding, for the moment, the fact that there aren't wizards in real life so all of this would basically be a moot point anyway--Justin and Alex having any sort of relationship would be, even to those fangirls who so assiduously prompt their ship, wrong in the most basic sense of the word. Derek and Casey's relationship would probably be a bit off as well, although they're step-siblings and haven't known each other their entire lives so I'm willing to quibble on that.
My point is, fiction allows us entry into a world where the writer, provided they're good enough, can deem what is and isn't "wrong." The best writers create situations where Alex and Justin, confronted with certain situations, find each other and it works because of what the writer has made. Are we the readers sick or disturbed individuals for acknowledging that a story is well-constructed? If we take this outside the realm of fandom (to the next person who mentions Flowers in the Attic in defense of incest: I will cut you. I'm talking about good literature here) and into, you know, actual literature, then you've got Brideshead Revisited for those who are anti-slash, anything by Sappho for the anti-femslash, Wuthering Heights for incest, and god knows for the supposedly tight-wad nature of their morality, the Victorians were basically up for anything. So there's a whole era of poetry, short stories, and literature that support the theory that as long as a writer is telling a good story--and telling it well--we should accept certain situations as byproducts of that story.
In other words: while I respect that incest is, you know, not something that we as a society accept, we as a society also don't accept, say, murder . . . rape . . . thievery . . . and yet a lot of the anti-slash and anti-cest people populating the fandoms don't seem to have a lot of problems with the Winchesters shooting, stabbing, and credit-card-scamming their way across the Midwestern United States.
I'm just saying. For a good story, we're willing to bend our morals quite a lot. Why should slash and incest be any different?
And that's where you, the f-list, comes in. Can we compromise our morals for the sake of a great narrative? Is it even considered compromising?