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

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, Marna Nightingale wrote:

> More seriously, it seems to me we live in a pseudo-Dionysian age (no,
> not the Areopagite).
>
> Lots of tease and titillation, lots of consumerism and materialism, but
> speaking as a sex educator and activist, what we mostly have is pleasure
> in service to something else, usually selling things, not pleasure for
> the sake of pleasure.

Thank you, Marna.  Also, I don't see anything particularly
"Dionysian" about just letting people be themselves and be honest
about it.  There's nothing particularly hedonistic about a person
who wants to meet someone, court them, have a committed
relationship and a family life:  regardless of the genders and/or
number of persons involved, that goal involves planning, delayed
gratification and the ability to judge when it's necessary to put
someone else's needs ahead of one's own and then DO SO.

> I have many theories about 'why slash', all operating at once,
> the most recent being "because certain tv shows and books, many
> of which I for whatever reason like a lot, contain numerous
> cases of men behaving as no men on earth do, leading to plot
> and characterisation holes of a size and shape which can ONLY
> be satisfactorily plugged by assuming that the two buddies are
> in fact at it like crazed weasels."
>
> Due South comes to mind, as does Man From Uncle.

Supernatural comes IMMEDIATELY to mind, despite the fact that
they are brothers, although if one spends any time watching the
two men who play the parts of the two brothers when they are not
in front of a camera, one might suspect there is something going
on between THEM.  (I'm sorry, your average straight guys from
Texas who are buddies can keep their hands off each other longer
than that, don't constantly have to correct themselves in
interviews to not give the impression they make out with their
co-stars, and don't feel each other up.  Either they're shagging,
or they want their fans to think they are.)

> Slashers are not the only people who pick up on this sort of
> subtext between male characters, only the people who find it
> narratively or erotically intriguing enough to actually produce
> or go looking for fiction that deals with.

My best friend and co-writer on the SPN slash reports that her
boyfriend, who neither reads nor writes slash, was watching
Supernatural with her and said..."Hey wait, they're supposed to
be brothers?  Kinky."  A friend of mine who is not a slasher and
didn't know they were supposed to be brothers described it as
"The X-Files, rewritten by slashers."

~malfoy :)
****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley