[LMB] Re: Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta

[Elizabeth Holden]

Interesting discussion.  

I have yet to be convinced by arguments about
Appollonian/Dionysian modes of thought or culture; and
I'm not sure whether it's that I have generally found
most discussions of the matter unconvincing as they
stand, or whether I simply don't understand them
fully.

> Lois remarks at the ***...
> 
> *** They could, but then it would be genfic.  Of
> which there are also tons out there.  

Yes. The existence of one genre does not make another
genre mutually exclusive.

LMB again:
> There's a definitional thing going on, here.  Don't
> miss that turn, or you'll be unnecessarily 
> confused.  Genfic, hetfic, slash, three 
> different things.  There may be yet more categories
> that have escaped my attention.  ***

There are subcategories, and sometimes alternate names
for them.  It can be confusing but I also think it's a
good thing - the anarchic nature of it all is very
liberating from a creative point of view.

Kirsten said:
> To which I reply (as she no doubt expects me to)
> that we live in a Dionysian age, those of us 
> in the West (the rest of you can pipe up
> with your local zietgeist, of course) and hence have
> rather more use for Apollonian correctives.

Er wot?  This is where I get confused, and running to
Wikipedia for clarification didn't help.  (at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysian, if anyone is
interested.) How are we a Dionysian age?  Any more or
less than any other age? (If this can be briefly
summed up....)  Who should I be reading to get more
info on this - Camille Paglia?  Neitszche?  Ayn Rand?
(I thought I'd read all her books...)

LMB:
> *** We might if they were correcting the right
> things.  Alas...  ***
 
Heh.  Yes, alas.  

Kirsten:
>  I would also like to add that the
> "so they're boinking?" is probably best applied to
> homo-sexual
> stories (aka "slash"--?) as the sex therein really
> does seem to
> fly as an uncomplicated layer in the relationship

I'm not quite sure I understand this, but insofar as I
do understand it, I think you're totally wrong!  The
levels of psychological complexity I have seen in
slash are mind-boggling.  No, slash isn't always
complex (or even coherent) but it lends itself to
various kinds of complexity. As does any literary
genre that is heavily based on human psychology.

> *** Slash is seriously not about real live gay
> lovers.  

Good heavens no.

> My current 
> theory is that it is about hijacking characters to
> carry out stories 
> about the emotional concerns of the female writers. 

Well, so it is, because it's playing to female
fantasies. 

LMB:
> Which, granted, is 
> also done in genfic and hetfic.  

And in most fiction, surely.  One way ot another.

LMB:
> And yet, why slash and not Mary Sue?  

All fiction reflects the mind of the author of that
fiction. (This is true also in things written by a
group of people, like television of comics, but in a
different way.)  Those who enjoy fiction of a certain
genre will seek out that genre, whatever it is. 

Mary Sues are particuarly blatant and clumsy examples
of writing - stories that don't work because the
imagination of the author has hindered the plot by
connecting it to the self-image of the writer, rather
than enhancing it by transcending the self-image of
the writer.

LMB:
> What does slash do that a Mary Sue story does not
> do?  

Nothing intellectual, I think.  This is where I argue
it's sexual brain chemistry.  The reader looks for two
related kinds of emotional pay-off in slash: one
relating to the emotional or intellection concerns of
the reader as expressed through the minds and actions
of the characters; one relating specifically to the
homoerotic content.  The second aspect intesifies the
first.

Kirsten:
> Veronica Mars Marathon. 

What fun!  I love that show.

Kirsten:
> Only in our modern Western age have we been able to
> divorce the sexual goodies from the big messy 
> human family package 

Perhaps, but not entirely true. Homosexuality has
never been particularly tied to the
child-bearing/rearing package.

Kirsten:
> Think about it. How many romances do you read in
> which the heroine
> and the hero have their kids in the picture? 

Many.  A rather high percentage.

LMB: 
> When the children happen, the tales move out of the
> marketing category 
> of "romance" and into the category of "women's
> fiction", generally 
> domestic dramas.  There's boatloads of them out
> there, too.  Towing  barges. 

Not to mention the subcategories of family sagas.

LMB: 
> Again, watch out for how definitions fundamentally
> constrain the 
> selection of data points. ***

Yes, and we each filter the concept of what's out
there by our own experience and taste.  No one can
read everything on the market.  What we know of what
is out there is determined by what we read, what we
see on the shelves of the bookstores and the
libraries, what we see in the catalogues and review
magazines and papers.  What we really notice is the
material that is to our taste.

> s
> p
> o
> i
> l
> e
> r
> 
> *** Indeed no.  You will see in Volume 2 why it
> could not have been the 
> book I wanted to write about the themes I wished to
> grapple with had events gone another way.

What an intriguing comment. Consider me teased.

> 
> s
> p
> o
> i
> l
> e
> r

Kirsten: 
> The question simply doesn't arise with slash. 

But it does.  I don't know any slash fandom of any
size in which there's aren't stories in which the
slash heroes adopt or bear or raise a child.

> Anyhoo. Am I on to something here--?

No, you are simply inexperienced in the breadth and
variety of slash subgenres.  

LMB:
> *** Nope.  Your database is too small to balance a
> theory upon.  So, for that matter, is mine.  

A statistical analysis is theoretically possible, but
I imagine that considering the random and unstructured
nature of slash fandom (not to mention its years of
secrecy), such a study would be difficult. As with the
concept of "everything that is published", the world
of fanfic is way too large for any one person to cover
even if you read it 24/7.

LMB:
> I'm still scratching my head over an entire
> sub-genre or trope (crossing 
> many fandoms) of slash about male pregnancy.  Why
> take all that stuff out, and then turn around 
> and put it all *right back in*?  What are 
> these writers *thinking*?  And why?

I put it down (again) to brain chemistry. I'm not into
mpreg myself but I have friends who adore it.  It
pushes the right emotional buttons for them. 
Combining the homoerotic elements with maternal
instincts, perhaps?  Even in the mundane and straight
world I have seen echoes of this - ads on television,
for example, featuring attracive young men tending
babies.

namaste,
Elizabeth