lirazel: An outdoor scene from the film Picnic at Hanging Rock ([ats] shanshu)
lirazel ([personal profile] lirazel) wrote2010-12-03 10:42 am
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thoughts I have

[livejournal.com profile] snickfic made an offhanded comment once upon a time that has been popping up again in my head lately because I seem to be getting sucked into Harry Potter fandom yet again (at least on tumblr) and questions have started to ~stew~. So I thought I’d get some insight from y’all.

Slash fandom baffles me. I mean, sometimes it makes sense. Spike/Angel, sure. I get where you’re coming from. Merlin fandom, from what I know of it, seems to get a whole lot of canon winks/support. Even Kirk/Spock makes sense to me. And Torchwood had slash for your big canon ship.

But there seems to be very little pattern to what makes a big slash ship and what doesn’t.

For instance. Harry Potter. Why is there not a huge Harry/Ron fandom? Heterosexual life partners, here. At least as much textual evidence to support them as to support Harry/Hermione. They even have their moments of hating each others’ guts (GoF, anyone?). And yet nothing, as far as I know (well, sometimes there’s OT3 action, which again, makes loads of sense. But not a lot). And there’s Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape out the whazoo (no wisecracks, please). And okay. People love enmity turning into sex. Got it. But still. Why one and not the other? Can someone please explain this to me?

Is Jeremy/Tyler big in TVD fandom? I am not deeply involved in that fandom, so I don’t know. And then there’s Spike/Xander which makes less than zero sense to me (well, Xander finding Spike attractive seems to be canon. But I can’t see it ever, ever going the other way), because there’s not a lot of outright hatred there, just weird contempt. Is Troy/Abed big and I just don’t know about it? If fandom always ships people who hate each other, where’s the Logan/Weevil? What about Wes/Gunn or Tim Riggins/Jason Street or Chuck/Nate or Tony/Sid? Some of those BFF pairings have really fantastic (platonic, in my eyes, but I could easily see it being otherwise for people) chemistry along the lines of Kirk/Spock or something. So what determines what’s going to take off as a pairing? How does fandom determine that in one fandom they’re going to turn the enemies into lovers and in another they won’t? Or that in this fandom they BFFs are TOTALLY DOING IT while in another they’re just friends?

Of course, one could ask the same thing about het pairings—why some are huge and others are not, but I tend to have much more of an instinct about which one’s going to be the big one (Jeff/Annie having a more active fandom than Jeff/Britta surprises me not at all, and I could have told you that people were going to ship Damon/Elena from literally their first meeting, for example, and the lack of Buffy/Riley—yes, I know there are a few of you out there, but I mean as an active fandom—is the least shocking thing ever). This instinct seems to be non-existent for me when it comes to slash, though (what’s the opposite of slash goggles? Whatever it is, I’ve got that).

This doesn’t really affect me in any way because slash = not my thing. I am just trying to find some sort of discernible pattern here, because I seem to be epically bad at predicting what will and will not be big. Thoughts?
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[identity profile] blackfrancine.livejournal.com 2010-12-03 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a theory, and I have NO idea whether it holds any water (particularly because I'm not someone who has delved into slash at all). But I'm just gonna throw it out there.

So. I wonder if for completely non-canon ships (as so many slash ships are), people are drawn to the idea of ~illicit sex. Which, to some extent, slashiness would count as illicit in such heteronormative texts regardless. But. I guess I mean that for non-canon stuff, people are seeking something a little bit deviant. This could be because it's trying to fit in (albeit perhaps subconsciously) with the nature of canon. ie, the non canon sex/ship isn't mentioned in canon not because it doesn't exist, but because it's something that society thinks we should be ashamed of. That the characters themselves would suppress and be ashamed of. They think of it as deviant.

The slash fan, however, wants to explore those darker urges. Wants NOT to be ashamed of them. Wants to disassemble those societal expectations. And the self-loathing that they induce.

So, therefore, the wholesome idea of life partners is less compelling than hate sex.

Just a theory.
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