FairestCat ([info]fairestcat) wrote,
@ 2006-07-05 23:12:00
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Entry tags:het/slash, meta

I am once again reminded of exactly why I love [info]commodorified so much.

Because she posts meta like this and completes a thought I've been trying to articulate for months, and that I know I haven't discussed with her.

*kisses the clever redhead*

What she said was this:

When we pick up on het subtext, I think the way it feels to the brain is usually that we're solving the puzzle, doing what people have always done reading porn. Finding what the creator hid there.

With slashy subtext (and maybe with rare het pairings, cross generation pairings, or some of the more exotic cross species stuff in the SF fandoms) there's a feeling of having rebuilt the puzzle. We're finding what by and large wasn't supposed to be there. Hacking the system.

They're both fun ways to play the game. Some people like one more than the other, lots of people like both. I like both, but let's face it, by experience and inclination I'm a system hacker, a rock-tossing anarchist.

And see, I've been thinking about and trying to pull together a meta post on my reading preferences for forever, and struggling to find the words to explain exactly this phenomenon.

When I read slash, I read all sorts of stuff, but I do gravitate towards the big main pairings for the most part. When I read het on the other hand, I gravitate towards the obscure pairings, the cross-generational stuff, the characters who never even meet on screen, in other words, the ones I have to work for the same way I have to work for slash. I like the het pairings that I'm not supposed to be seeing, stuff like Rodney/Teyla and Kitty/Edrington. The one big het fandom I was ever in was Labyrinth, which is a cross-generational, semi-enemies pairing, not so much your typical stuff.

And I think it's exactly for the reasons Marna articulates here. I like the pairings where I have to hack the system. I like the other type of pairing too, the solving the puzzle type pairing, but I get that out of my regular fiction reading. The stuff I have to hack for I only get in fanfic, and so that's what i gravitate towards.

I think this also might explain why I tend to read het written by writers who also, or mostly write slash. It makes sense that the same dynamic that draws me to read rare het would be what draws predominately slasher writers to write it.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

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[info]pentapus
2006-07-06 05:11 am UTC (link)
This was an interesting post to read because I've read several explanations over the years as to why people read slash and identified with them more or less. But what commodorified says about "hacking the system" doesn't resonate with me at all. Not to say that I find it impossible to believe someone would read slash for that reason, but it's not why I read it.

I also prefer het by slash writers, but for me, the main reason is that slash writers have practice writing stories that don't rely on gender-based romantic cliches, which can drive me up the wall faster than an antigravity machine.

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[info]fairestcat
2006-07-06 06:21 am UTC (link)
I think there are almost as many reasons for reading/writing slash as there are slashers and it's not surprising that our reasoning doesn't coincide.

Actually, the lack of gender-based romantic cliches is another reason I prefer het written by slashers, so it's a sort of combination of factors.

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[info]commodorified
2006-07-06 06:45 am UTC (link)
I'm not TOTALLY sure they're unrelated. For me, that is, not contradicting your experience.

Not necessarily 'gender based cliches', but cliches, tropes and conventions in general -- I'm armoured against them to a degree. Which acts against enjoyment, yeah. Even when they're not ones I find objectionable, I end up critiquing and comparing just because I've come to have so many expectations and assumptions... if that makes sense.

And this is especially an issue with romance and erotica, because either it kicks you in the emotional and sexual squids or it doesn't, and that's that. If it doesn't, you can still admire it, but it's not going to actually give you the experience you went there for.

But system-hack stuff sneaks up on me, and I like that. Like in the Marlowe I linked; you know, this is an incredibly trope-laden romantic description:

His dangling tresses, that were never shorn,
Had they been cut, and unto Colchos borne,
Would have allured the vent'rous youth of Greece
To hazard more than for the golden fleece.
Fair Cynthia wished his arms might be her sphere;
Grief makes her pale, because she moves not there.
His body was as straight as Circe's wand;
Jove might have sipped out nectar from his hand.
Even as delicious meat is to the taste,
So was his neck in touching, and surpassed
The white of Pelop's shoulder. I could tell ye
How smooth his breast was and how white his belly;
And whose immortal fingers did imprint
That heavenly path with many a curious dint
That runs along his back...

But because it's a man writing about a man, using tropes usually used for a man about a woman, it sneaks past my guard and I go "DAMN" before I know where I am. And I love that.

This is aside from the artistic reasons to do it; I mean, I love me some subversion, too. Just as art. But also, it gets under my guard, whereas conventional het romance has to work very very hard to get through it.

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[info]sjkasabi
2006-07-06 05:54 am UTC (link)
Yes indeed. It puts the finger on lot of stuff for me too. Like you, I like the fanfic that makes me work - I really like gen too, but my favourite sort is the rare stuff that runs off unexpectedly with something minor in canon, or which manages to stay true enough to canon in some dimensions but turn it on its head in others, preferably in ways which provide an interesting commentary on the original text or its assumed reception ([info]executrix is one of my favourite B7 writers because slash, het or gen, that's what she does). As you say, there are plenty of the pedestrian pleasures of textuality availble in mainstream published fiction, the fic that's fun is the stuff that can do something else.

And actually, to take your insight to another medium, I think that's why I like art movies and genre movies and not much of the mainstream mediocrity that lies in between. I enjoy watching stories where variation within an expected form is what you get to appreciate (plus, of course, they will often have spaceships or big explosions, hurrah!) and I enjoy movies which deliberately play with, or refuse to meet, your expectations.

Hmm. Wish my head wasn't so full of snot. This is really interesting.

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[info]lonelywalker
2006-07-06 10:47 am UTC (link)
This explanation by and large makes sense to me too. I often view writing both het and slash as "solving the puzzle", although I've never thought about it in exactly those terms before.

The one thing I'd quibble with slightly is the idea of slash "hacking the system". In some fandoms we can never be 100% sure that the subtext we pick up on wasn't intended to be there. But I would accept that usually any seen or imagined slashy subtext does tend to be buried deeper and is less obvious than het subtext (with some exceptions, of course).

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[info]dsudis
2006-07-06 11:24 am UTC (link)
I find that this actually meshes well with why I think I keep gravitating to incest slash pairings - because even some slash pairings feel expected to me now (too much hanging out with slashers, clearly), so that when 'everybody knows' that a particular pairing are boyfriends, I find myself staring at a blank page thinking, "Yep. They sure are boyfriends." With brothers, there's automatically something to work against. *g*

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