Canon het couples with extreme sexual dimorphism?

[gnatkip]

Belle/Beast (Beauty and the Beast), Liz/Hellboy (Hellboy), Betty/Bruce (The Incredible Hulk).

I've been thinking about this lately, the fetishization of the dainty woman and the hypermasculine man. He is gigantic, and violent, and muscled up into absurdity. He is dangerous to everyone else, but not to her -- whether because of some intrinsic

Comments

[gnatkip]

I completely forgot about Hagrid's parents. Of course that was ridiculous and not at all the Natural Order of Things.

I wondered how it plays out in same-sex couples, but I couldn't think of any in fanon, and certainly not in canon.

In other news, this is now in my feed reader, and I love it a lot. I hold you responsible.

"Makes me kind of glad my OTP right now are identical twins so I don't have to worry if my kink is okay" AHAhahaha ♥ I think my goggles are broken. I realize lately that whenever brothers appear, I have to slash them. Faramir/Boromir, Wolverine/Victor, those Darjeeling Limited people. Maybe "broken" isn't the right word.

[gnatkip]

Thank you! I had her talk bookmarked, but hadn't gotten around to reading it yet.

A REVOLTIN' DEVELOPMENT

[gnatkip]

Oh, ew. That sounds like the set-up for a horrible joke.

I wish I could remember what it was, but someone on my flist posted a novel cover with the hero and his love interest riding horses, and the size difference made her look like a doll riding a shetland pony.

[dbassassin]

I'm not a comics person, so can't comment in that regard. But yes you do see really exaggerated dimorphism in slash fanon, especially if there's a significant age difference between the partners, even if the younger partner is an adult in the fic/artwork.

I think it's all part of the heterosexism that underlies a lot of slash and that a lot of straight slash writers are, essentially, writing het fic (with the younger/smaller partner as a stand-in for themselves -- oops, did I say that? Me bad. :D). The way a lot of fanficcers who do this have one character fetishizing the other's smaller size kind of creeps me out.

The trope as a whole irritates the hell out of me, to be honest. I want the characters to be recognisable from their original canon, in all ways. If it's a het ship depicted that way in canon, it's going to completely turn me off the original source material.

[gnatkip]

In the comments on the DW post, there's a conversation about Sam/Dean in SPN, and how there's a lot of fetishization of -- not so much that one is smaller, but that one is bigger; they're both big men. (Also brothers, but that's beside the point. Ahem.)

I am reminded of that awful Fanlib ad, with the muscle-man and the 98-lb-weakling, that came across as so (unintentionally!) slashy.

[balistik94]

Well there is the classic Quasimodo/Esmeralda even though they're not a couple.

[gnatkip]

I couldn't remember that story earlier! But yeah, I think so; a pairing even if unrequited.

[dotfic]

There was one in Gargoyles--visually at least, Goliath/Elisa, although they didn't play out as her as fragile-protected, in fact that series frequently positioned her as his protector than the other. Maybe even more so, given the characters' circumstances.

I suspect they might have been playing with the trope a little. They even had an episode where she dressed up as Belle on Halloween--and she had a gun strapped to her thigh beneath the ball gown skirt. *g*

[gnatkip]

I've been watching Goliath/Elisa shipper vids on youtube to educate myself. :) I should watch that show! I've never seen it.

And she's black / native American, which might be another subversion? Because for the most part, this trope is "the fetishization of the dainty WHITE woman and the hypermasculine man." Of course female love interests in general are white, but maybe even more so for this trope, because it is white (and asian?) women who are idealized as being pure-gentle-delicate. While the sexuality of other women of color is often portrayed as promiscuous-fierce-hungry.

Maybe? I don't know.

[dotfic]

Oh, it's gooood. It went places some live action shows haven't even dared, and was one of the earliest animated series to have complex, interlocked, long story arcs. And it had a huge cast of good characters.

Huh, interesting point.

Elisa is certainly one of the better written female characters of color I've seen in a TV series -- I mean, she was an interesting character, and she was black/Native American. Her race wasn't ignored, but it wasn't made into a huge issue either. I don't know if they had that particular trope in mind, though -- they were more generally playing with the Beauty & The Beast imagery, I think.