New rant, same as the old rant

[selenak]

Nothing that hasn't be said before repeatedly, but every now and then one feels like venting, which is what an lj is for. There are few more guaranteed turn-offs for me in the midst of enjoying a slash story than a variation of the following: "X realised he had never loved/desired *name of female canon love interest* anyway/ X realised that his feelings for *name of woman* could never compare with the true love/ overwhelming desire he felt for *other name of slash pairing*".

At which point I go "sorry, author, that's you speaking, not X" and remove myself from the story.

Now, in all fairness, there are het variations of this as well, i.e. stories where character X, male or female, realises he/she never loved canon love interest Y of the opposite gender, but really only ever *insert name of other half of pairing*, and that's just as annoying. But if we're talking m/m combinations, there's that whiff of "ewwww, women near my boys" feeling from the authors which is an additional turn-off. In either case, though, it seems to spring from the conviction that you can't write a pairing without declaring any or all other romantic connections any half of said pairing has or had as inferior and not as worthy, and I just don't understand why. I mean, I get prefering Adam and Bob to Carol and Bob, finding Adam and Bob more interesting to write about etc. But if canon has shown Bob in a relationship with Carol for quite some time, even happy in a relationship with Carol, then "Carol Who? Pfff, never cared for her anyway and sex with her was so INFERIOR" is just not going to cut it. Even not mentioning Carol altogether is better than this.

I'm tempted to add "what's wrong with Adam/Bob/Carol anyway?" but I realize this is not always an option. For example, it wouldn't work for me with Spock/Uhura/Kirk because Uhura not being sexually interested in Kirk at all was a pretty important part of her ST XI characterisation. IMO, interpretation may differ, etc. And Carol being the saintly sort, recognizing the superiority of Adam and Bob's love and withdrawing isn't that good a solution for me, either. Canon girlfriend as saintly yenta is better than canon girlfriend as evil bashed obstacle to slash pairing, but only by a degree. I think the only time where "Carol, realising that Adam and Bob have the hots for each other but are for various reasons unable to face this, sets them up" worked for me as a scenario was in Highlander, because Duncan and Amanda have a non-monogamous relationship where they constantly move in and out of each other's lives anyway, and Amanda is absolutely capable of setting him up with Methos. (Except, being Amanda, you can't tell me she wouldn't want a threesome out of this at some point.) My current favourite solution is "Adam loves Carol, and he loves Bob. Maybe he has sex with both, and maybe with neither, but both relationships are important to him, and he wouldn't devalue one in favour of the other. Neither person, however, is his sole point of existence. Carol actually has a life beyond worrying about Adam and Bob, though both are important to her, and if someone told her she's supposed to acknowledge the superiority of Adam/Bob, she'd laugh. Bob is not about to do himself in, cut himself or bursting into tears at regular intervals because Carol exists and is important to Adam. Maybe he's into Carol himself and thinks she's magnificent, and maybe he finds her irritating and trieds to avoid her, but he's accepted that she's part of what makes Adam Adam. Also? Bob has a life beyond Adam (and Carol) as well."

I'm trying to think whether this would also work for me with f/m/f instead of m/f/m, but the only f/m/f threesome which immediately comes to mind that I'd love to read being written in a convincing manner - where canon already has the f/f as the firm established relationship so that there wouldn't be an implication of the two women just being together for the guy's sake - is Xena/Ares/Gabrielle. Ah, ye olde days of New Zealand filmed fantasy shows. (Maybe I should give the recently cancelled Legend of a Seeker a go, but I really don't have the time for a new show.) But then, I don't think f/f slash has the same tendency to include "Loving Barbara, Anna realised how inferior her feelings for Charlie had been" type of statements. Or stories where Charlie is either revealed as an evil scumbag undeserving of Anna or turned into a saint acknowledging the superiority of Anna's and Barbara's love. Correct me if I'm wrong; admittedly I do read more m/m than f/f.

In conclusion: off I go to look for my equally valued alphabet again. This is why sooner or later, I end up with gen once more...

Comments

[lilacsigil]

The end for me is always "Ah, I'll just go read some gen." Femslash *does* seem to have less of the "Anna/Barbara means Charlie always sucked!" problem, but it's still there sometimes, and more often extends to "ALL MEN were AS NOTHING to Anna now!"

[selenak]

Bisexuality: really does exist in a universe near you. *sigh* Seriously, though, do you think it's more a question of OTPnes (i.e. writers don't want any other relationship to have meaning beyond this one) or of orientation crusade (character X must only love girls/boys)?

[lilacsigil]

In femslash, there used to be a lot of Orientation Crusading, but I think the more female characters there are around, there more it's OTPness, though not usually between a popular het ship and a popular femslash ship. In Law & Order, for example, there's Olivia/Eliot (m/f) vs Olivia/Alex (f/f) - but there's also a solid subgroup of Olivia/Abby (f/f) shippers, and I don't see so much "no men ever!" In shows with just two main female characters, like Merlin, I see a lot more "girls only!"

It should work the other way around - if you only have two women, there shouldn't need to be orientation crusading, because it's not like they're going to run off with a third woman - but it doesn't!

[jesuswasbatman]

I think that the reluctance to acknowledge bisexuality in f/f has a lot to do with prurient male fetishisation of Hot Lesbo Action coupled with "all they need is a real man". It's something I struggle with a lot as a straight XY person as to whether various canon or heavy-innuendo-quasicanon f/f pairings are to be applauded or whether they are too tainted by the spectre of fanboyservice.

[selenak]

I know what you mean, which is why I used the Xena example, because the Xena/Gabrielle relationship is so central in show and fanfiction alike, the thing the entire show revolves around, that you can write a threesome without any questionable implication.

[crabapplered]

It doesn't even have to be a question of fanservice. I remember playing a recent game when I finally had the canon option to romance a female NPC with my female PC, and I told my friend how happy I was to at last have lesbian options, and he launched into a very passionate tirade about how this NPC was not a lesbian, she was bi, and that she also liked boys. Boys, boys, BOYS!

I'm a lesbian, and I was crushed by this speech as it ruined the whole delight of the thing for me. So much so, in fact, that I actually had to restart the whole game and play the male gay option through instead because every time I went to try and further the romance between the two girls, all I could hear was "She likes BOYS." My friend was happy to STFU and let me tag those boys as gay, at least.

This incident solidified something that had only been nebulous before then. I have a very hard time accepting or enjoying a great many bisexual characters because I always hear that chorus of "SHE ALSO LIKES THE COCK" in the background. I'm tired of having to settle for a character who the creators can shove into a hetero pairings if they start feeling the heat from censorship boards. I'm tired of having my carrot dangled in front of my nose and then tugged out of reach. I'm tired of never getting a character like me.

D'you know, I can name slews of characters who fall under the bi spectrum thanks to subtext and character interactions and outright fanservice, and almost every single one of them has a hetero partner somewhere in canon so the creators can remind us that they aren't that gay. So that other fans of the series can plug their ears and go "THERE'S NO GAY IN MY FAVE SHOW! IT IS ONLY FRIENDSHIP! SHE/HE (ALSO) LIKES THE OPPOSITE SEX!"

Faced with this sort of nonsense again and again, you bet I want to do some shouting back, if only in fanfic! I know better then to do it outright, but yes, I still slip it in here and there. It's a problematic toward bisexuality, yes. But sometimes it's all I get to make myself feel better.

Sorry, that wasn't aimed at you

[jesuswasbatman]

Posted it to the wrong comment.

[allangtegek]

I think that the reluctance to acknowledge bisexuality in f/f has a lot to do with prurient male fetishisation of Hot Lesbo Action coupled with "all they need is a real man".
Uh, ok. Point granted.

But what if us bi/pan/not-monosexual folk want to see ourselves?

[jesuswasbatman]

I'm not talking universally here, but there are some specific cases where I get particular worries. In particular I'm suspicious where you have a work that is not primarily aimed at a female audience, but there are lesbian/bisexual female characters who heavily outnumber gay/bisexual male characters and/or whose sex lives are treated with significantly greater story attention and explicitness than the same-sex sex lives of the men.

[elspethdixon]

*raises hand* I am bi, and "character A realizes that no human on earth is as important to them as character B" (or, in specialized cases, "as B and C," if it's an OT3) is actually one of my ironclad kinks, and it applies equally to my het OTPs and my slash ones. So I suspect that there is a hefty helping of OTPness in there.

It's often done dreadfully ("and then female character C attepts to murder male character B for stealing A from her, because it's not enough that A simply love B more -- C has to be a murderous psychopath because God forbid A even like her or that she have any positive qualities at all. She must be punished by the narrative for displaying interest in A!"), and in fact, I'd even go so far as to say it's usually done dreadfully, but a lot of emotional kinks frequently are. Like, you know it's trash, but it's trash that satisfies something deep within your psyche that less fiercely monogamous, more balanced, probably more realistic stuff where the Beloved is only one among many important people and isn't more or less important than anyone else doesn't. There's something about one character being another character's Most Important Person that does it for me every time, whether it's in ship fic or in gen (like Sam and Dean's sibling bond in the early seasons of Supernatural), and whether it's just two characters (the purest version of the kink) or the sort of nakama/team bonding gen version where a small group of characters are the "us against the world chosen-family."

I suspect it's related to the Terribly Misjudged kink, since it probably appeals to the same adolescent need to have your worth as a person vicariously validated by having the character/the pairing validated.

[selenak]

You know, I'm not immune against the allure of "you mean more to me than anyone else" myself in some pairings, BUT what spoils it for me is when it's accompagnied with "nobody else means anything to me at all" - that's when my anti-kink sets in. "You and me against the world" also has appeal, whether you is plural, as in tiny group of friends, or singular - but again, when it changes from "...because we live in a hostile environment" to "...because there is nothing else to enjoy in the world anyway", I lose my taste for it. Happens in canon, too, at times. For example, in Farscape, I wasn't actively shipping John/Aeryn (the main pairing) in the sense of seeking out fanfic, but I found the relationship at first interesting and appealing enough on screen. By the time the fourth season rolled along, however, it had gotten to the point where the other characters mostly were reduced to Greek chorus both on a Watsonian and a Doylist level, nobody counted but the pairing, where the angst felt as artificial as the reunion, and where it was hard to see what good they did each other except to make each other miserable. (In fairness, the final Farscape miniseries thankfully changed that.) And nothing is more guaranteed to drive me off a pairing.

Weirdly, this turns up in het RomComs (also from metafandom)

[karmakaze]

("and then female character C attepts to murder male character B for stealing A from her, because it's not enough that A simply love B more -- C has to be a murderous psychopath because God forbid A even like her or that she have any positive qualities at all. She must be punished by the narrative for displaying interest in A!")

One of the things I often find disconcerting in straight, mainstream, romantic comedies is how often the previous relationship is totally demonized. I often get to the point where I think, "Well, I totally get what A sees in C, but I'm really starting to wonder how A was in a relationship with B for that long without minding at all that B's a violent psychopath. If A has that kind of judgment problem, maybe C should stay away." The ex (male or female, I see it both ways) is shown as such a extreme caricature of a horrible person that it defies belief that our angelic viewpoint character somehow failed to notice this until the story begins.

Re: Weirdly, this turns up in het RomComs (also from metafandom)

[elspethdixon]

Just because something is het and has a female main character unfortunately doesn't mean it can't be sexist or misogynistic (I would pay hard cash to never encounter an evil slutty psycho-killer woman in a romance novel again. Or at least for writers to make her evil and non-slutty once in a while, just to mix things up by skipping the madonna/whore thing where she's the good, innocent heroine's evil skanky foil).

I've run into it in professionally published lesbian fiction, too, actually, either in the form of "evil abusive male ex who is evil and male and also never gave the heroine an orgasm" (romance novel heroines are allowed to have sex with others prior to meeting their One True Love, but apparently only as long as it wasn't *good* sex. Which is weird to me, because it's the emotional primacy of the OTP that matters, not the sex, but romance novels often equate True Love with instant uncontrollable lust and effortlessly perfect sex) or as "evil female ex who never appreciated her and who is frankly such a bitch that, absent the narrative stating that bitchy ex has a body like a goddes and is stunningly good in bed, and/or that it was an emotionally abusive relationship that the heroine was trapped in, one wonder why on earth she stayed with bitchy!ex for so long when she was apprently deriving no benefit from the relationship at all."

One movie that I thought actually did the "heroine realizes that ex is a douche" plot well was Monsters vs. Aliens, where the news anchor fiance's continual placement of his own interests and goals before the heroine's gradually escalates as the movie goes on, so that the audience realizes that he's always going to put her second to his career at the same time she does. Except she leaves him for a life of B-movie superherodom instead of for another man. And he never goes insane and tries to kill people, so it's a vastly more realistic kind of douchbaggery.

Re: Weirdly, this turns up in het RomComs (also from metafandom)

[selenak]

Oh, the tendency of canons to make the soon-to-be-ex in a relationship either the bad guy/girl from hell or treat him/her as a walking cardboard without feelings that could matter is something that ticks me off as well, which is why I wrote a rant about it years ago. *g* Among many other things, as you say, it makes A look idiotic.

[minoanmiss]

Well said! I'd rather not see Carol in the story at all than see her denigrated. I'd even rather see her dead and fondly remembered than alive and villainized (though I like best of all stories where Adam and Carol are timesharing Bob or stories about an Adam/Bob/Carol threesome, and that's what I tend to write).

[selenak]

Even death isn't the only way if someone is absolutely unwilling to write a threesome or a timesharing arrangement, or to deal with Carol as a character because they don't think they can write her. There's also in many (though admittedly not all) cases the possibility of a break-up set pre-story and referenced in a non-bashing way. Doesn't take much time. As in, for example:

"Bob had just gotten to the point where, when asked about how Carol was doing, he could reply with an unfaked smile that according to her latest email, she loved her new job in Singapour, when his old friend Adam showed up at his doorstep..." something like that. No more details are necessary. Acknowledges there was Bob/Carol, doesn't blame either of them for the break-up, and clears the way for the author to show us Adam/Bob becoming lovers in the rest of the story.

(If we're talking about a canon where Bob and Carol could not possibly break up because their society/the nature of their relationship doesn't allow it, and doesn't allow a three-way arrangment, either, and the author is still not willing to write her, then yes, Carol dead and fondly remembered would be preferable to Carol denigrated or turned into a villain.)

[msilverstar]

That works for me!

you've been metafandomed...

[dharma_slut]

That need to explain and rationalise why your universe is the right universe, and the universe we all share isn't that. Oh yeah. It happens in all sorts of ways, but when it's about love and sex it's so much uglier...

I remember way the hell back, when Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis had just had their second child, and a friend of mine was making a total asshole out of herself, trying to fantasize Vanessa out of Johnny's life (just in case, you know, she ever got the job as makeup artist for a film he was working on.)

She did work her way out of that phase, eventually... And at least she never committed any of it to print,or I would poke her at it with some regularity.

That was a het woman going after a het fantasy. It's more insulting, IMO, when someone takes a dump on a whole class of sexuality for the sake of one imaginary couple.

here via Metafandom...

[schemingreader]

I'm with you. I find it hard to suspend disbelief when people play with that trope. I'd much rather have the slash pairing be just what the character needs now--now that the love has gone out of their marriage, they've gotten divorced or the love of their life has died. I just prefer that something have happened that leaves their heart open to love again. And then it's OK if they decide they like the sex better, that's all right. It's the denial of love that bothers me.

Being metafandomed: slightly intimidating, to be sure

[selenak]

Same here. I have no problem if a story positions A/C broke up at the start, then proceeds to get A and B together, as long as it doesn't fall into that annoying trap of believing that in order to make A/B happen, C must be bashed and it must be denied A and C ever had something good going between them. Why not focus on what makes A/B great instead?

[aedifica]

Here via metafandom.

I agree with you--just last night I was reading some slash about a noncanonical pairing I like, but the author felt the need to diss one character's canonical pairing at the same time. It took away from my enjoyment of the story--I'm happy to read the noncanonical slash, I don't need to insult another beloved character to make it work!

[selenak]

Exactly. It really takes me out of the story, and it doesn't just happen with badly written stories but with otherwise superb ones. I really wish people would stop falling into that trap.

[tetsubinatu.livejournal.com]

I agree. As someone who writes Bob-centric stories in a fandom where he has a canon relationship with Carol I have been surprised quite a few times to receive specific comments on how I haven't demonised Carol in my slash fics. The first time it happened I was taken aback but then I noticed that there are a lot of fics which do demonise her. In my fics they are most likely to split up and remain close friends - which is what I think they should have stayed in canon anyway - and luckily neither of the characters is canonically written with the sort of mean streak that would prevent that from happening. I have also written dead Carol and A/B/C threesomes.

Hey - perhaps I SHOULD try mean Carol, just for variety! *just joking!*

[selenak]

I was recentily hit by nostalgia for one of my earliest fandoms - Highlander - where canon did a pretty good job of showing that you can remain friends with your ex, breaking up does not mean there never was any love to begin with, and that one can love more than once in one's life. I guess that helped imprinting me on wanting sympathetic Adams, Bobs and Carols at the same time. (Though admittedly HL fanfiction, as opposed to the actual show, could go into the OTP "I never loved anyone before I loved you!" direction, which with characters several millennia old could feel quite absurd.) So I'm always delighted to find writers who provide them!