Back Fence Ramblings

• 13:26 Dragon Age Fandom Moment of Fear #1: LJ community entitled 'Pornzamarr'. #

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Shipping Out

I haven't been really involved in a fandom - I mean really involved in a fandom, with fic and all the rest of it - in a very long time. Ten years, give or take. It's actually really interesting to be getting into fandom again, particularly when trying to decide whether the batshit has actually got weirder in the last ten years or if it's just that wider use of the internet means that more of the batshit is in public view.

Not that it's all batshit, mind you. I'm still amused at fandom's propensity to latch onto a secondary character and elevate them to the status of Pure Awesome for ... well, no apparent reason. At least none that I can generally see. That was actually pretty prevalent in Daria fandom; Stacy Rowe was sort of a prime example, but there were others - Andrea, Mack to an extent, various of the teachers ... fandom looked at these three-line wonders and turned them into Awesome. I'm still not entirely sure why. Just like I'm not entirely sure why the Dragon Age: Origins fandom has elevated Bann Teagan to 'the ultimate in sexy'. Maybe it's just that I don't lust after the pixellated (when I do romance, I'm in it for the romance, not the badly rendered quasi-sex; apparently you can get mods to make that look more realistic but ... yeah, no).

And then there's the shipping and the slashing. There were the 'Shipper Wars' when Tom Sloane got thrown into the mix, but that stayed relatively civil and was more a joke than anything else ... not like the sort of stuff that gets Chuck fans writing the network demanding that the current canon relationship(s) get scrapped. As for slash, it didn't turn up all that much in Daria fandom, and that was mostly femslash ... probably because most of the cast was female (though you did occasionally see the odd bit of Trent/Jesse, but the only one I remember had to do with Trent being a heroin addict and Jesse being a literal man-whore). It feels so much different today, when I actually see people whingeing about how they haven't got a slash pairing for a fandom like it's a major flaw, or asking before they read/watch something whether there's any pretty-boy action to slash-pair. I get why one would want eye candy. I like my eye candy as much as the next girl. What I don't get is this need for sexual relationships that transcend canon to the point of lunacy sometimes. I can buy Draco/Harry hate!sex, where it's a whole power struggle/mind game thing, but I cannot get behind "Their love is TRUE and CANON and DEEP!" Neither can I really get behind most friend!ships. Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke, for example. (I have a bit of leeway on Remus/Sirius, but that would be bcause Rowling barely bothered developing Remus/Tonks at all and at least there was a big deal made in PoA, book and film, about Remus and Sirius embracing.)

I wonder when sex and love because so inextricably linked. I suppose it's a non-sexual sex fantasy, in a weird sort of way - people desperately want that kind of relationship and they want sex and the ideal is to have that all in one package because then life is complete with just that one person. Or maybe it's just that they've never had that kind of relationship and imagine that it must involve sex because of the love and the trust. Honestly, though? I don't buy it. I have friends that, if you asked whether I'd hit that, there'd be an instinctive "no chance in hell" no matter how physically attractive I think they are or how much I adore them. In fact, it's sort of because of how much I adore them that having sex with them is such an odd idea - they're like siblings. Umsiblings, as it were.

...But then there's Wincest. See, that's where it really starts getting weird. This need for a sexual relationship based on trust and love and chemistry and all that gets to a point where people are rooting for incest. Wincest. Petrellicest. Weasleycest (twincest or otherwise). I'm not really judging - or at least I'm trying not to. I'm just wondering if maybe a healthier outlook on relationships is in order, society-wise. Separating love and sex - at least to the point where platonic love is actually seen as a viable option rather than "OMG THEY MUST BE DOING IT", and where sex can happen without TWU WUV being involved - seems like the healthy thing to do. Seems unlikely, mind you.

The entire thing sometimes makes me feel very alone. I don't see Neal/Peter (or even the Neal/Peter/El OT3). I don't see any of the slash pairings that my fandoms tend to support. I see awesome friendships, not lustbunnies ... and I love those awesome friendships. But sometimes I feel like I can't say that because rabid slash-loving fangirls would rip me to shreds. There's so much investment in slash pairings in fandom that if you say you don't see it, there's a genuine risk that someone will call you homophobic. This despite the fact that I thought that the Willow/Tara thing on Buffy was really well done and that they made an awesome couple. I have less love for Willow/Kennedy, but that was a really sloppy relationship set-up. And on the subject of sloppy relationship set-ups, biiiiig confession: I thought that Jack/Ianto had no chemistry whatsoever as as long-term couple, and that the relationship as something more than sometimes!sex was sloppily established, and that Jack did love Ianto in his way but not nearly as much as he loved Rose and the Doctor and even John Hart. And that most of his tears and guilt and fleeing were because of that rather than Losing His One True Love OMG. Also that pigeonholing Jack Harkness as gay defeats the entire point of the character as established in "The Empty Child" - what is wrong with being bi?

Okay, I've said my piece. This is one of those topics that I sometimes just have to speak out over because I really Do Not Get It.