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In my ongoing bafflement as to why I’m apparently the only person on earth who doesn’t think Sheppard and McKay are particularly slashy, I was of course taken back to ye age-olde question, What exactly *does* it take to be slashy? Well, let me answer in four parts, with the fourth part first and the third part last, and– Okay, it was admittedly funnier on Sports Night. The point, though, is that I’m trying to be critical of how I arrive at the point where I’m comfortable saying these two characters are/aren’t slashy, so I came up with some broad categories of things that set my slash bells ringing. But first, a few disclaimers:
1) For “slashy,” it’s probably more accurate to read “Weird About Each Other,” which is how I’ve mostly come to conceptualize this idea over the past few years. “Slashy” to me implies “open and/or begging to be slashed,” so definitionally it requires a certain extra-canonical reading right from the start. What I like about saying two characters are Weird About Each Other is that it can (theoretically) be a point of agreement regardless of what you think might be going on between them off-screen. So for the most part, Weird About Each Other contains and encompasses slashy, but also brings in other characters, including het pairings and sibling acts, and then allows people to believe whatever they want about their sex lives, while still all agreeing that there’s something uniquely charged and interesting about their interactions.
2) I’m thinking here primarily about subtext, but the reality of course is that sometimes on tv, what used to be subtext suddenly turns into text. So while for the most part I’ve tried to avoid using canonical couples as examples, or even people who canonically seem to want to be couples, it’s a little tricky. What about all those Veronica Mars episodes back when we were supposed to think that Veronica hated Logan, or all the good years of the X-Files? What if only half the couple’s interest is clearly canonical, a la Hex? What about when nobody’s exactly sure if their sexual relationship is canonical or not, like Stuart/Vince or Xena/Gabrielle? Those are crucial studies in subtext, so I hate to discard them, but just be aware that I’m distinguishing the textual from the subtextual elements of those relationships and, as much as I can, dealing with the latter in isolation.
3) No, I’m not doing this to be mean to McShep fans. It only had its origins in me feeling mean about McShep fans (and by “mean,” I don’t mean that I don’t love y’all, I just mean frustrated by the hard sell that is the bread and butter of this fandom). I actually really got interested in subtext, and particularly in how and why people read canon so differently. This is my attempt to nail down how *I* read canon(s), which isn’t a better or a worse way, but it is mine.
4) This is NOT NOT NOT in any way to be perceived as a guide to what people should or shouldn’t be writing or digging on. Hell, I’ve made a fan career out of writing pairings that don’t rise to my own standards of slashy/Weird About Each Other – Giles/Oz, Ray/Ray, Ronon/Rodney, and that’s not even to mention the crossovers – and I love my fellow weirdos who do the same. I truly believe that anyone is slashable, and you can get good stories and bad out of any pairing. What I see as inherent in canon affects what makes me squee as a fan, but the two aren’t synonymous, nor are they supposed to be.
Onward!
Pairings that I’m willing to accept as canonically slashy/Weird About Each Other exhibit one or more of the following traits:
1. They are life partners
In broad strokes, I mean by this that they share living arrangements, they plan to do so as far ahead as the eye can see, and that canon recognizes that any change in this situation is a moment for extreme dramatic tension – a breakup or divorce, essentially. I am, however, willing to expand the definition to people who have a shared career/mission although they maintain separate residences, but only if canon indicates that they don’t have much of a life outside the career/mission, making it the functional equivalent of “where they live.” Under the primary definition, you get Jim/Blair (The Sentinel), obviously, and Xena/Gabrielle (Xena: Warrior Princess), who are almost anyone’s gold standards for ridiculously slashy, as well as Sam/Dean (Supernatural) and Vince/Eric (Entourage). Under the second, I would include Dan/Casey (Sports Night) and Mulder/Scully (The X-Files), Joe/Billy (Hard Core Logo) and Holden/Banky (Chasing Amy). This category is complicated by the fact that a lot of shows require communal living spaces and shared “missions” by their very set-up – everyone on Firefly lives on Serenity, everyone on SGA lives on Atlantis, everyone on Angel is part of the mission. However, being part of the same team is not the same thing as being Weird About Each Other – although I might argue that the latter is basically just a refined and juiced-up version of the latter. Part of the definition of being Weird About Each Other, though, is that there’s sort of a closed system between two people, where they understand certain things as belonging to “us” and affecting “our” future. So to use the Sports Night example again, both Dan and Casey are bonded to everyone else on the show by their shared investment in Sports Night and by their friendship, but even in the pilot episode, Dan can say that the one thing he knows about his future is that he’ll remain partnered to Casey; Dan’s commitment to SN is real and meaningful, and so is his loyalty to Dana and especially Isaac, but right from the first episode, he has that priority – he can give up Sports Night if that’s what he has to do, but he won’t give up Casey. Later on we see that Casey has already gone through that process, giving up national late-night tv to work with Dan on Texas local news. Holden and Banky’s conversation on the front steps of their office building is like the Idiot’s Guide to Weird About Each Other, where Banky explains in slow, small words that his entire life rides on being the emotional centerpiece of Holden’s life, and that if he isn’t that anymore, then they aren’t just the-same-only-different, their relationship is actually broken. Being canonically equivalent to life partners requires that the characters’ decisions expressly define whether or not they’ll continue to be with/have the love of their partners – Blair *can’t go* to the jungle with his mentor because it means leaving Jim, Sam *can’t quit,* move back to California and call his brother once a week because they’ve both come to view that level of distance as unacceptable (although Dean more than Sam, which is the emotional conflict at the core of 1st season Supernatural), Billy *can’t play* with Jenifur and keep HCL around as a side-gig. This isn’t supposed to denigrate other tv relationships – obviously, lots of people on tv are friends, and the health or unhealth of their relationships with each other are a (the?) primary source of dramatic tension – but just to say that there’s another level where two people have assumed joint responsibility for a life that they realize they share.
2. They’ve mastered the art of the eyefuck
This is the most freeform category, and it’s the one people are going to try to abuse to sneak in all their favorite pairings *g* Sexual chemistry is fairly subjective, so I only permit entries under #2 if it’s at the highest possible level of stunningly obvious. And actually, even “chemistry” is probably a misleading term, because it often seems to be one character who smolders, probably because those actors just naturally bring that hypersexual element to the table. In the world of fandom, it’s like having It. Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) has It. So does Peter Wingfield (Highlander). Take an actor like that and give them a script that calls for them to show distinct interest in another character, and that interest becomes instantaneously sexualized, whether it was supposed to be or not. If the character is supposed to be interested in an opposite-sex character, frequently the subtext is whomping enough that it eventually gets cannibalized into the text, giving rise to pairings like Logan/Veronica (Veronica Mars) and Spike/Buffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The world being what it is, if the intense interest is supposed to be in someone of the same sex, it tends to stay subtextual. I usually consider the subtext in this type of case canonical if non-fans notice it of their own accord. I can’t remember who told me this story, but when somebody in fandom took a totally non-slashy friend to the last Highlander movie, in the midst of trying to puzzle out wtf was going on (a common problem while watching Highlander movies), the friend leaned over during one of the three minutes Methos was on screen and said, “So is he that other guy’s boyfriend?” I mean, if you’re not even sneaking it past the newbies, then come on.
3. They touch each other in somewhat inappropriate ways
This one is a little more complicated than it originally seems. I’m basically opposed to the simple touching=sex that can be so prevalent in this culture, but I do think that a willingness to be deeply and intimately inside someone else’s personal space indicates a certain level of trust and making oneself vulnerable. This means that different levels of touch register as meaningful for different characters, depending on what their baseline is. Aaron Sorkin characters are habitually touchy; they can hug everything in sight and it doesn’t necessarily mean all that much. If something Weird is going on in a Sorkin show, you have to kick it up a notch – like having Jed kiss Leo from his hospital bed (West Wing). For the most part, a kiss on the face is a gesture that carries enormous canonical weight and totally counts for purposes of establishing Weirdness – Buffy and Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) both kiss each other at different times, Krycek kisses Mulder (X-Files). I tend to view hands as intimate almost on the level of faces, so that I put a fair amount of weight on clasped hands, particularly when the cinematography emphasizes it, such as Wes/Gunn in “Thin Dead Line” (Angel). A less inherently loaded gesture, however, can locate characters in this category if one or both of the characters tend to be protective of their personal space. Pembleton and Bayliss (Homicide) are so damn slashy because Pembleton hardly touches anyone of his own free will except his wife and Bayliss, so that the physical closeness they share particularly in “Life Everlasting” with their foreheads together and his hands on Bayliss’ face, which would be pretty striking with any characters, leaves you slightly gobsmacked. Thelma and Cassie (Hex) are also frequently filmed to emphasize their physicality with each other, particularly that rather iconic shot of them lying curled toward each other inside the protective sigil. It’s an emotionally intimate posture that implies something about the relationship and makes them look Weird About Each Other. Mulder was always very touchy with Scully, these little, protective gestures like putting a hand in the small of her back and leaning over her to be nearer to her eye-level when he talked – none of them expressly sexual, but all of them highly contact- and connection-oriented.
4. There’s no one else in the world that matters as much
Again, this doesn’t mean that their friendships with other characters aren’t real, but for some characters, there’s clearly one person who is *the* person they trust and value. Due South was a slashy show because there was never more than one person at a time who had a personal friendship with Fraser. Likewise, Pembleton could hardly bear anyone’s company but Bayliss’. Sam and Dean are a closed system because of their history and their ideas about what family means; no one else can ever come into that relationship and as things stand now neither of them have any outside relationship that can rival it. To my mind, Simon/River (Firefly) fall into this category even though they both have other friends, because it’s beyond my imagining that Simon in particular would ever go as far for anyone else as he would for River (I feel the same way about River, but there’s less canonical reason for me to think so; it’s just an instinct). Logan used to have a larger stable of people he cared about, but death and felony kidnapping have thinned the herd, and he’s basically down to just Veronica. Janeway/7 (Star Trek: Voyager) were slashy because for a long time 7 didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought except Janeway. A lot of the people I’ve already discussed come in under this heading as well – who’s in Thelma’s life except Cassie? Who’s in Mulder’s except for Scully, or Joe Dick’s except for Billy? Kevin Smith is particularly fond of writing these kind of relationships between men, from Loki and Bartleby (Dogma) to Dante and Randal (Clerks), the last of which has a very affecting speech in Clerks 2 that literally boils down to, don’t leave me, you’re the only person in my universe. I always count Murphy and McManus (Oz) because, although we don’t know a ton about Sean’s private life, it doesn’t seem like he has much of one, leaving the long-standing friendship with Tim pretty much his lone emotional connection (Tim doesn’t have any *functional* relationships except Sean, either, which sort of counts).
There’s a temptation to establish a category for a canonical willingness to die for each other, but I think that’s a lot like the touching issue: it depends on the character. You can’t get mileage out of it with a character like Buffy or Sheppard, because they have self-images that require them to take burdens like that on themselves as a matter of duty. In fact, heroic/action shows tend to define their heroes by a willingness to be self-sacrificing; it’s almost SOP, and if it happens often enough, it’s hard to assign it much weight – we tend not to embrace characters at all if we think they aren’t willing to die for the people who depend on them; we’re usually not even comfortable with characters who won’t put themselves on the line for strangers/innocent bystanders, let alone anyone they even remotely like. Even McKay, who’s allegedly so self-protective, puts himself in potentially mortal danger in “Hide and Seek,” the very second episode of the series, to save Atlantis as a whole, and continues to do it on a relatively regular basis, so none of those instances strike me as particularly “for” anyone, or as meaning anything more than McKay’s essentially a brave and honorable man who doesn’t realize that about himself. Just so you don’t think I’m cheating, I rule out Thelma’s self-sacrifice on similar grounds; she doesn’t set herself up to vanish into the afterlife *for Cassie,* she does it to protect the world from the release of the Nephilim – though she dies initially in a scene where both she and Cassie offer themselves up explicitly in exchange for the other’s life. Super ultra mega bonus points, however, for self-sacrifices that aren’t even about saving the other person, but just about being willing to stand with them even through death – Simon sharing River’s pyre, Xander’s unconditional love for Willow in “Grave,” Sam and Frodo at the end of all things.
What you may notice about this is that a lot of shows I love don’t make many appearances on the list, because I tend to like ensemble casts, which by definition skew away from the focus required to make two characters canonically Weird About Each Other. I don’t think of shows like Buffy and Firefly and Stargate:Atlantis as especially slashy, because they work so hard to establish the primacy of the team-relationship over the pairing-relationship; you have to bring someone in from outside, in a sense, someone whose connections to the team are shakier (Faith, Simon and River to a large degree, although if the show had lasted longer they probably would have been further integrated into Serenity and maybe become less Weird About Each Other), in order to establish a canonically slashy pairing. West Wing has the same dynamic among the staff, although Jed’s position removes him from their camaraderie in such a way that he can be Weird About Someone without disrupting the balance within the core cast – you already can’t be all-for-one-and-one-for-all when they all serve at your pleasure. Atlantis to me is a notably un-slashy show, with every potential slash or het pairing failing on almost every count: none of them nurture a partnership over and above the general good of Atlantis, none of them are very overtly sexual, none of them tend to touch each other, and all of them have close relationships with multiple people.
All of these shows are great for fanfic, specifically because canon doesn’t push writers into one pairing at the expense of others. There’s a lot of affection running in a lot of different directions, so it’s easy to lock onto the characters you like best and build around them. That makes them slash-friendly, in a sense, without ever being slashy.
1) For “slashy,” it’s probably more accurate to read “Weird About Each Other,” which is how I’ve mostly come to conceptualize this idea over the past few years. “Slashy” to me implies “open and/or begging to be slashed,” so definitionally it requires a certain extra-canonical reading right from the start. What I like about saying two characters are Weird About Each Other is that it can (theoretically) be a point of agreement regardless of what you think might be going on between them off-screen. So for the most part, Weird About Each Other contains and encompasses slashy, but also brings in other characters, including het pairings and sibling acts, and then allows people to believe whatever they want about their sex lives, while still all agreeing that there’s something uniquely charged and interesting about their interactions.
2) I’m thinking here primarily about subtext, but the reality of course is that sometimes on tv, what used to be subtext suddenly turns into text. So while for the most part I’ve tried to avoid using canonical couples as examples, or even people who canonically seem to want to be couples, it’s a little tricky. What about all those Veronica Mars episodes back when we were supposed to think that Veronica hated Logan, or all the good years of the X-Files? What if only half the couple’s interest is clearly canonical, a la Hex? What about when nobody’s exactly sure if their sexual relationship is canonical or not, like Stuart/Vince or Xena/Gabrielle? Those are crucial studies in subtext, so I hate to discard them, but just be aware that I’m distinguishing the textual from the subtextual elements of those relationships and, as much as I can, dealing with the latter in isolation.
3) No, I’m not doing this to be mean to McShep fans. It only had its origins in me feeling mean about McShep fans (and by “mean,” I don’t mean that I don’t love y’all, I just mean frustrated by the hard sell that is the bread and butter of this fandom). I actually really got interested in subtext, and particularly in how and why people read canon so differently. This is my attempt to nail down how *I* read canon(s), which isn’t a better or a worse way, but it is mine.
4) This is NOT NOT NOT in any way to be perceived as a guide to what people should or shouldn’t be writing or digging on. Hell, I’ve made a fan career out of writing pairings that don’t rise to my own standards of slashy/Weird About Each Other – Giles/Oz, Ray/Ray, Ronon/Rodney, and that’s not even to mention the crossovers – and I love my fellow weirdos who do the same. I truly believe that anyone is slashable, and you can get good stories and bad out of any pairing. What I see as inherent in canon affects what makes me squee as a fan, but the two aren’t synonymous, nor are they supposed to be.
Onward!
Pairings that I’m willing to accept as canonically slashy/Weird About Each Other exhibit one or more of the following traits:
1. They are life partners
In broad strokes, I mean by this that they share living arrangements, they plan to do so as far ahead as the eye can see, and that canon recognizes that any change in this situation is a moment for extreme dramatic tension – a breakup or divorce, essentially. I am, however, willing to expand the definition to people who have a shared career/mission although they maintain separate residences, but only if canon indicates that they don’t have much of a life outside the career/mission, making it the functional equivalent of “where they live.” Under the primary definition, you get Jim/Blair (The Sentinel), obviously, and Xena/Gabrielle (Xena: Warrior Princess), who are almost anyone’s gold standards for ridiculously slashy, as well as Sam/Dean (Supernatural) and Vince/Eric (Entourage). Under the second, I would include Dan/Casey (Sports Night) and Mulder/Scully (The X-Files), Joe/Billy (Hard Core Logo) and Holden/Banky (Chasing Amy). This category is complicated by the fact that a lot of shows require communal living spaces and shared “missions” by their very set-up – everyone on Firefly lives on Serenity, everyone on SGA lives on Atlantis, everyone on Angel is part of the mission. However, being part of the same team is not the same thing as being Weird About Each Other – although I might argue that the latter is basically just a refined and juiced-up version of the latter. Part of the definition of being Weird About Each Other, though, is that there’s sort of a closed system between two people, where they understand certain things as belonging to “us” and affecting “our” future. So to use the Sports Night example again, both Dan and Casey are bonded to everyone else on the show by their shared investment in Sports Night and by their friendship, but even in the pilot episode, Dan can say that the one thing he knows about his future is that he’ll remain partnered to Casey; Dan’s commitment to SN is real and meaningful, and so is his loyalty to Dana and especially Isaac, but right from the first episode, he has that priority – he can give up Sports Night if that’s what he has to do, but he won’t give up Casey. Later on we see that Casey has already gone through that process, giving up national late-night tv to work with Dan on Texas local news. Holden and Banky’s conversation on the front steps of their office building is like the Idiot’s Guide to Weird About Each Other, where Banky explains in slow, small words that his entire life rides on being the emotional centerpiece of Holden’s life, and that if he isn’t that anymore, then they aren’t just the-same-only-different, their relationship is actually broken. Being canonically equivalent to life partners requires that the characters’ decisions expressly define whether or not they’ll continue to be with/have the love of their partners – Blair *can’t go* to the jungle with his mentor because it means leaving Jim, Sam *can’t quit,* move back to California and call his brother once a week because they’ve both come to view that level of distance as unacceptable (although Dean more than Sam, which is the emotional conflict at the core of 1st season Supernatural), Billy *can’t play* with Jenifur and keep HCL around as a side-gig. This isn’t supposed to denigrate other tv relationships – obviously, lots of people on tv are friends, and the health or unhealth of their relationships with each other are a (the?) primary source of dramatic tension – but just to say that there’s another level where two people have assumed joint responsibility for a life that they realize they share.
2. They’ve mastered the art of the eyefuck
This is the most freeform category, and it’s the one people are going to try to abuse to sneak in all their favorite pairings *g* Sexual chemistry is fairly subjective, so I only permit entries under #2 if it’s at the highest possible level of stunningly obvious. And actually, even “chemistry” is probably a misleading term, because it often seems to be one character who smolders, probably because those actors just naturally bring that hypersexual element to the table. In the world of fandom, it’s like having It. Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) has It. So does Peter Wingfield (Highlander). Take an actor like that and give them a script that calls for them to show distinct interest in another character, and that interest becomes instantaneously sexualized, whether it was supposed to be or not. If the character is supposed to be interested in an opposite-sex character, frequently the subtext is whomping enough that it eventually gets cannibalized into the text, giving rise to pairings like Logan/Veronica (Veronica Mars) and Spike/Buffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The world being what it is, if the intense interest is supposed to be in someone of the same sex, it tends to stay subtextual. I usually consider the subtext in this type of case canonical if non-fans notice it of their own accord. I can’t remember who told me this story, but when somebody in fandom took a totally non-slashy friend to the last Highlander movie, in the midst of trying to puzzle out wtf was going on (a common problem while watching Highlander movies), the friend leaned over during one of the three minutes Methos was on screen and said, “So is he that other guy’s boyfriend?” I mean, if you’re not even sneaking it past the newbies, then come on.
3. They touch each other in somewhat inappropriate ways
This one is a little more complicated than it originally seems. I’m basically opposed to the simple touching=sex that can be so prevalent in this culture, but I do think that a willingness to be deeply and intimately inside someone else’s personal space indicates a certain level of trust and making oneself vulnerable. This means that different levels of touch register as meaningful for different characters, depending on what their baseline is. Aaron Sorkin characters are habitually touchy; they can hug everything in sight and it doesn’t necessarily mean all that much. If something Weird is going on in a Sorkin show, you have to kick it up a notch – like having Jed kiss Leo from his hospital bed (West Wing). For the most part, a kiss on the face is a gesture that carries enormous canonical weight and totally counts for purposes of establishing Weirdness – Buffy and Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) both kiss each other at different times, Krycek kisses Mulder (X-Files). I tend to view hands as intimate almost on the level of faces, so that I put a fair amount of weight on clasped hands, particularly when the cinematography emphasizes it, such as Wes/Gunn in “Thin Dead Line” (Angel). A less inherently loaded gesture, however, can locate characters in this category if one or both of the characters tend to be protective of their personal space. Pembleton and Bayliss (Homicide) are so damn slashy because Pembleton hardly touches anyone of his own free will except his wife and Bayliss, so that the physical closeness they share particularly in “Life Everlasting” with their foreheads together and his hands on Bayliss’ face, which would be pretty striking with any characters, leaves you slightly gobsmacked. Thelma and Cassie (Hex) are also frequently filmed to emphasize their physicality with each other, particularly that rather iconic shot of them lying curled toward each other inside the protective sigil. It’s an emotionally intimate posture that implies something about the relationship and makes them look Weird About Each Other. Mulder was always very touchy with Scully, these little, protective gestures like putting a hand in the small of her back and leaning over her to be nearer to her eye-level when he talked – none of them expressly sexual, but all of them highly contact- and connection-oriented.
4. There’s no one else in the world that matters as much
Again, this doesn’t mean that their friendships with other characters aren’t real, but for some characters, there’s clearly one person who is *the* person they trust and value. Due South was a slashy show because there was never more than one person at a time who had a personal friendship with Fraser. Likewise, Pembleton could hardly bear anyone’s company but Bayliss’. Sam and Dean are a closed system because of their history and their ideas about what family means; no one else can ever come into that relationship and as things stand now neither of them have any outside relationship that can rival it. To my mind, Simon/River (Firefly) fall into this category even though they both have other friends, because it’s beyond my imagining that Simon in particular would ever go as far for anyone else as he would for River (I feel the same way about River, but there’s less canonical reason for me to think so; it’s just an instinct). Logan used to have a larger stable of people he cared about, but death and felony kidnapping have thinned the herd, and he’s basically down to just Veronica. Janeway/7 (Star Trek: Voyager) were slashy because for a long time 7 didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought except Janeway. A lot of the people I’ve already discussed come in under this heading as well – who’s in Thelma’s life except Cassie? Who’s in Mulder’s except for Scully, or Joe Dick’s except for Billy? Kevin Smith is particularly fond of writing these kind of relationships between men, from Loki and Bartleby (Dogma) to Dante and Randal (Clerks), the last of which has a very affecting speech in Clerks 2 that literally boils down to, don’t leave me, you’re the only person in my universe. I always count Murphy and McManus (Oz) because, although we don’t know a ton about Sean’s private life, it doesn’t seem like he has much of one, leaving the long-standing friendship with Tim pretty much his lone emotional connection (Tim doesn’t have any *functional* relationships except Sean, either, which sort of counts).
There’s a temptation to establish a category for a canonical willingness to die for each other, but I think that’s a lot like the touching issue: it depends on the character. You can’t get mileage out of it with a character like Buffy or Sheppard, because they have self-images that require them to take burdens like that on themselves as a matter of duty. In fact, heroic/action shows tend to define their heroes by a willingness to be self-sacrificing; it’s almost SOP, and if it happens often enough, it’s hard to assign it much weight – we tend not to embrace characters at all if we think they aren’t willing to die for the people who depend on them; we’re usually not even comfortable with characters who won’t put themselves on the line for strangers/innocent bystanders, let alone anyone they even remotely like. Even McKay, who’s allegedly so self-protective, puts himself in potentially mortal danger in “Hide and Seek,” the very second episode of the series, to save Atlantis as a whole, and continues to do it on a relatively regular basis, so none of those instances strike me as particularly “for” anyone, or as meaning anything more than McKay’s essentially a brave and honorable man who doesn’t realize that about himself. Just so you don’t think I’m cheating, I rule out Thelma’s self-sacrifice on similar grounds; she doesn’t set herself up to vanish into the afterlife *for Cassie,* she does it to protect the world from the release of the Nephilim – though she dies initially in a scene where both she and Cassie offer themselves up explicitly in exchange for the other’s life. Super ultra mega bonus points, however, for self-sacrifices that aren’t even about saving the other person, but just about being willing to stand with them even through death – Simon sharing River’s pyre, Xander’s unconditional love for Willow in “Grave,” Sam and Frodo at the end of all things.
What you may notice about this is that a lot of shows I love don’t make many appearances on the list, because I tend to like ensemble casts, which by definition skew away from the focus required to make two characters canonically Weird About Each Other. I don’t think of shows like Buffy and Firefly and Stargate:Atlantis as especially slashy, because they work so hard to establish the primacy of the team-relationship over the pairing-relationship; you have to bring someone in from outside, in a sense, someone whose connections to the team are shakier (Faith, Simon and River to a large degree, although if the show had lasted longer they probably would have been further integrated into Serenity and maybe become less Weird About Each Other), in order to establish a canonically slashy pairing. West Wing has the same dynamic among the staff, although Jed’s position removes him from their camaraderie in such a way that he can be Weird About Someone without disrupting the balance within the core cast – you already can’t be all-for-one-and-one-for-all when they all serve at your pleasure. Atlantis to me is a notably un-slashy show, with every potential slash or het pairing failing on almost every count: none of them nurture a partnership over and above the general good of Atlantis, none of them are very overtly sexual, none of them tend to touch each other, and all of them have close relationships with multiple people.
All of these shows are great for fanfic, specifically because canon doesn’t push writers into one pairing at the expense of others. There’s a lot of affection running in a lot of different directions, so it’s easy to lock onto the characters you like best and build around them. That makes them slash-friendly, in a sense, without ever being slashy.
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Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-17 01:29 pm (UTC)From:Definitely not the only one. I don't get it at all.
This post is really interesting. I agree with a lot of your points, and 'weird about each other' is a good way of putting it. I also agree that sometimes I don't necessarily ship because I think the characters are actually shippy. Sometimes for me the what-if is part of the appeal. This happens particularly when I just don't see any shippiness between any characters at all, and most commonly when dealing with ensemble shows.
One thing I wonder about: you pick out a couple of sibling pairs as qualifying for the 'weird about each other' standard: Sam/Dean and Simon/River. I'm curious about that, because Sam/Dean choosing to live with each other and having an unusually strong emotional attachment, and Simon being obsessively protective of River, to me are marks of siblinghood, not shippiness.
It's not that I don't see the possibility of shipping siblings, either, it's just that to me siblings are going to be a much harder sell because they have built in, non-shippy reasons to be weird about each other. Those two pairings in particular are hard sells because from what we've seen in flashbacks they've always been very close, have always had a strong emotional investment in each other. Also, the way they act as adults pretty much matches the way they acted toward each other as children, the main difference being that due to the more extreme nature of their adult lives and dangers (i.e., not due to incesty lurve) the sibling relationship gains more intensity.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I wonder how you factor the established weird-about-each-other-ness of siblinghood into the context of shippiness? If at all?
Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-17 04:33 pm (UTC)From:Jumping in for Hth here, but in the case of Sam/Dean, I think it's the contrast between the way Sam and Dean view the relationship that pings some people. (Not me in particular-- I mean, I do see where people are *getting* it, but I don't see it as being in character myself, exactly.) Sam wants to have a normal sibling relationship, the kind where you grow up and move away from home eventually. You don't lose touch, you call and e-mail and sometimes visit and definitely come help if there's trouble, but you have a *separate life*. Maybe you even marry someone and that new person becomes the most important person in your life.
But Dean totally doesn't want that. He wants Sam to never leave, he basically wants to live "at home" (using hth's metaphor of the mission as home) with Sam forever. Which is weird enough so that I can see why people think they're weird about each other.
Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-18 04:08 am (UTC)From:Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-18 07:57 am (UTC)From:As far as s1 goes, yeah, I think Dean is WAY weirder about Sam than Sam is about Dean (there are some other pairings in my examples that I feel the same way about: Krycek is weirder than Mulder, Banky is weirder than Holden, Joe is arguably weirder than Billy -- or else Billy just hides it a lot better). However, I sort of mentally apply TV Logic to guess where SPN is going. Since they want the show to go on for a number of years, I'm thinking they'll probably just by default make Sam more and more comfortable surrendering the rest of his life to being a part of the Winchester Til Death Do Us Part Traveling Salvation Show -- with occasional OMG, Will Sammy Leave?!? moments to spice up the drama, all safely resolved by Sam choosing Dean and their ancestral mission over everything and everyone else. I can predict this, because the show's set-up basically demands it. So I kind of leap ahead in my mind and see Sam as a guy who's struggling against it now, but is ultimately going to give in and admit that the weirdness is mutual. If they were real people, I wouldn't be so sure I knew how Sam was going to prioritize his life, except it's tv, and I totally do know *g*
Never talk to me, for I ramble
Date: 2006-08-18 09:22 am (UTC)From:They might be unique to each other in different ways, but it's still unique (like like "A loves B because B gives him peace, but B loves A because A gives him adventure" or "A loves B because he sees B as redemption, but B loves A because A is their first love"; the sides have uniquely different motivations [and that too can lead to conflict]).
The problem with some pairings is that there is a definite weird, but it's lopsided. I see that Dean is weird about Sam, Wilson is weird about House and Lex is weird about Clark. I see one side being much, much stronger than the other. House/Wilson is a great example where both are unique to each other in different ways. Wilson is obviously gaga about House to a normally unreasonable extent. Wilson is important to House because he is his only friend, the only one who stuck around, the only one he is willing to open up to. Still, to me Wilson's behavior can not be explained plausibly through anything other than "being weird/romance". House's behavior I can see from a sane POV (being lonely, being indepted to Wilson).
Same with Sam/Dean. Dean's behavior can most plausibly be explained by something "weird/more than normal.". Sam on the other hand is much more over the place. Sam is obviously everything to Dean, but Dean is not everything to Sam (he is in competition with "normal life" and "revenge for Jess" for one). Just like House is everything to Wilson and while Wilson is important to House (just like Dean is indoubtedly important to Sam), I'm not sure if I buy yet that Wilson is everything to House. Don't get me wrong House's life would definitely be poorer without Wilson and I could totally see him regret and grief, but again, House has a variety of interests (being right, saving people) and special relationships (Cuddy, Stacy, the ducklings, random guest stars). Wilson might be the most important one of these but (1) in my mind because Wilson made it that way rather than by House's choice and (2) not in the *blow everything else to smitherns in comparison* important.
Same with Clark/Lex. Lex was definitely weird about Clark. They sold it as, Clark was Lex's only friend. But Lex isn't Clark's only friend. He had a minor friendship with Pete, he now shares his secret with Chloe, pursued Lana through several seasons. Superman has a variety people he is close to (Lois, Batman) and other villains (Braniac, Darkseid). F.e. Batman/Superman is to me a much more compelling example of both being unique to each other, than Clark/Lex are.
It boils down to the idea that for Wilson/Dean/Lex House/Sam/Clark is their main and sometimes only interest, but House/Sam/Clark have a variety of interests. Thereby making the relationship unequal. From the Wilson/Dean/Lex side, them "getting" House/Sam/Clark makes sense because that's the thing they truly want. But from the House/Sam/Clark side writing for Wilson/Dean/Lex to be their everything works less because for one they want a variety of things and secondly I'm not sure if this "everything" could be achieved without obliterating things that are integrat to their character (Sam's desire to be different from his family, Superman's desire to be good, Clark's connection with the community, House's cynical nature). It's just less supercoup-ly to me when I always wonder if it isn't just mainly A wanting B and B at the most indulging them, because they do like them, just not as nearly as much. (again, I like tragic onesided loves. But tragic onesided loves and supercouples are just something very different; Is is slashy, yeah. But it's slashy because one side is obviously slashy, but not necessarily the other side (and I don't think that just accpeting the other's slashiness is enough to make them slashy themselves))
Part II
Date: 2006-08-18 09:23 am (UTC)From:Parnter pairings are generally 'easier' because it's more likely that there isn't going to be much competition when it comes to important relationship, because the partner relationship will be shown most consistently.
Again, to me the sort of special story is if you can tell it from either side and reach the same result. And the problem with lopsided pairings is to me it just might not be the case for both sides (plus, too much of me watching the show and seeing A pine away for B and B treating A badly or generally not feeling the same way or giving them the cold shoudler).
Like when I watch lets say SPN, I often see (1) Dean acting slashy/yearny and (2) an unhappy pairing. Yeah, they all (of the listed pairings) have their happier moments, but their unhappy moments are usually based on A wanting it more than B.
(don't get me wrong, one big part of me is that I like a variety of pairings and I don't need them to be each other's everything or for them to be 100% mutual to make a compelling story; there's a variety of interesting concepts and not all have to be 100% OMG Each Other's Everything and Supercouple!!)
Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-18 07:59 am (UTC)From:Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-18 12:20 pm (UTC)From:My (badly phrased) question was more...why why. Why do some people see the weird in these intense, tv sibling relationships and say weird = sex, rather than weird = PTSD-forged non-sexual codependency or something equally platonic. Hth's reply to me below really nails it, I think, and is a great way of sort of quantifying the subjective nature of text/canon.
Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-18 07:50 am (UTC)From:I realize this probably sounds more subjective than you would like, but it comes up for me because I know lots of people with siblings, and *none* of them act like those two sets do. If I had to pick adult tv siblings who strike me as realistic in their relationship (inasmuch as tv is ever realistic), I might go with Ross and Monica -- close friends, completely caring and protective, but they would certainly fail on all four of my proposed benchmarks. They love each other like regular siblings do, but they aren't Weird About Each Other.
As I was saying to Livia, the suspicion begins when two characters who are supposedly friends clearly act like something else is happening: they're Friends+X, and you solve for X. Sam/Dean and Simon/River are Siblings+X. The +X is what makes them Weird About Each Other, whether you solve for X=incestuous tendencies or X=forged together by massive family trauma and shared PTSD. I think either option is plausible, and I support people going either way (for my own part, I tend to read the Winchesters as platonically Weird About Each Other and the Tamlings as a little bit Crazy Space Incesty -- but that's instinct and preference, not clearly a canonical distinction).
The Serenity DVD has some discussion on the commentary tracks about exactly this issue -- that for whatever reason, Simon and River sort of come off as -- well, they don't say Weird About Each Other, but that's the upshot. *g* There's a great quote from Summer Glau about her ideal character to play that ends with "Someone who's in love, but this time not with her brother." The thing for me is that I think you can privilege other readings of *why* they have such strikingly off-kilter physical and emotional boundaries with each other, readings that aren't sexual -- but what I think you can't do is write it off with "well, that's how brothers and sisters are." I think in most cases, it's totally *not* how brothers and sister are.
Also, the thing about flashbacks and whatnot -- what that proves is that they were *always* Weird About Each Other...not because the relationship was always sexualized, but kind of the reverse -- you can conceive of the relationship having grown into something sexualized because of what's already their canonical pattern. Or I can, at least *g* I know some people basically think all incest is out of character for non-psychotic characters, and I wouldn't argue one way or another on that, really. But again, it's the X factor that's significant, and I'm just arguing that what we call "slashy" or "shippy" or whatever is often just a way of solving for the canonical X.
Re: Here via some rambling route or other
Date: 2006-08-18 12:07 pm (UTC)From:Well, I know lots of siblings, and am a sibling, and I can't say what they or we'd be like if we'd had Sam & Dean's or Simon & River's lives. And I think that follows what you say here:
The +X is what makes them Weird About Each Other, whether you solve for X=incestuous tendencies or X=forged together by massive family trauma and shared PTSD.
If massive family trauma and PTSD are discounted by preference or interpretation (by how an individual solves for X), then yeah, incestuous tendencies would be the other most likely option. And I think that's an excellent point.
You said that your answer is probably more subjective than I'd like. Honestly? I think people are maybe kinda misguided if they think they can explain textual interpretations of *anything* in a purely objective and universal manner. Ditto if they think they can peg any one interpretation as definitively right or wrong. Interpretations are by nature subjective, which is why I really, really like the way you explain yourself here. I completely agree, but I've never been able to explain myself usefully.
they're Friends+X, and you solve for X. Sam/Dean and Simon/River are Siblings+X. The +X is what makes them Weird About Each Other....
it's the X factor that's significant, and I'm just arguing that what we call "slashy" or "shippy" or whatever is often just a way of solving for the canonical X
Succinct, logical, accounts for subjectivity. Nice!