hmpf: Cole and Ramse from the show not actually called "Splinter" (Default)
hmpf ([personal profile] hmpf) wrote2012-03-26 02:34 pm

Archive trawl inspiring puzzlement

There's still something I utterly don't get about slash in LoM fandom - and it's not the sex, although that still doesn't do anything for me. But I 'get' why the sex might be interesting for people.

It's the sense of out-of-character-ness. It's like there's this first (out of a whole line) of barriers in my brain that fics have to pass, called "is it more or less in character?" - and most slash doesn't seem to pass that, for me. Even a lot of the really well-written slash doesn't. (Sadly.)

I guess for slash readers it works a bit like Sirius/Remus used to do for me, though. You take some elements from canon characterisation, but you add another layer of your own to that that facilitates your specific reading kinks. So, in your mind, there may be two Sams, and two Genes - the canon version, and yours, and they're kind of distinct. So your Sam and Gene can be romantic lovers, or sex maniacs who go at it every opportunity they get, or openly out and all but married in a CID that consists of other gay couples, or pining, wallowing angst bunnies... (Incidentally, trueness to setting is part of the in-character thing.)

Sirius/Remus was definitely a bit like that for me (except with extra angst, instead of extra sexiness). But then, the two of them weren't very well-defined yet in canon in 2003, when I was into that pairing.

Cue argument about how we all have our own versions of the characters in our heads anyway... and, yeah. But still, I dunno. I'm not saying I'm always getting them *right* when I'm writing them - far from it, really; but I have this idea of *wanting* to get them right, as true to canon as I can make them - and I have a pretty firm sense of what they're like in canon, and that's what I seem to judge fic on when it comes to passing that barrier in my mind. And that's kind of non-negotiable. And there's at least a dozen or so [not an exact number ;-)] of LoM slash tropes that are just incompatible with that non-negotiable sense of canon.

My puzzlement (though really I shouldn't be so puzzled, see note about S/R above...) is akin to my puzzlement in HL fandom when encountering weak/girly/submissive Methos, which seemed a popular thing at some point. It's a puzzlement based on a feeling of, "what's the point, if the characters aren't recognisable as themselves?"

But yeah... on some level, I guess, I do get it - fanfic can be about projecting your own kinks onto (more or less) cyphers (with a few pre-installed character features, maybe) with certain characters' faces and bodies just as well as it can be about recreating preexisting characters and putting them in new situations. It's just a bit farther from my own tastes than other types of fic.

I'm pretty sure I've written something much like this here before. (For the past five years at least I've felt like I'm repeating myself incessantly here. It must be very boring. Apparently I only had enough original thoughts for about five years of blogging; after that, I had to recycle.) I vaguely recall this being part of my standard reaction to diving back into LoM fic after an absence. It's interesting that my sense of being puzzled by this particular feature of LoM fic doesn't seem to lessen. I should think it would, after a few years!

ETA: This post brought to you by Porntober and Pervember 2007 as reflected by mars_daily. :D

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