On Fandom Relationships

[dexfarkin]

Andraste had a rather large post about the nature of slashing characters that are traditionally considered straight (even when there is no explicit canon to justify it) that got me thinking about something. I've noticed in fandom generally that there is a rather immature view of relationships.

Let me change that. No immature but rather underdeveloped view. In a group where bisexuality, polygamy and all ranges of fetishes, lifestyles and beliefs are touted as the new culture, we see a mostly adolescent view of interpersonal dynamics.

To clarify, skipping through all sorts of fandoms, you see a vast (one might say overwhelming) flood of pairings; slash, het, canonological, alternative. But rarely do we ever see representations of relationships with any depth outside of the traditional romantic or sexual models. A character and B character want to sleep with each other because they looked a little too long at each other, or they invaded their personal space, or they displayed an aspect of physical intimacy. All sorts of 'clues' to draw them into a romantic or sexual circumstance because obvious that is what they are doing, right?

Very very rarely do you see an exploration of deep relationships without those (I'm sure all of the wannabe subverters of the hetro-fascist sterility conspiracy will hate this) highly traditional and endless clichéd norms. It reminds me of being a boy, and hearing that because Tom and Mandy walked home together on Friday, they must be in love and want to get married. That's an overly simplistic view of the actual situation, but it does carry to correct gut emotive response.

There are few stories exploring the deep relationships and emotional bonds of friendship. There are very few that explore those bonds forged in extreme adversity, such as war, disasters, and constant challenge. The highly complex dynamics of non-sexual friendships between the opposite sex. All of them extremely fascinating and crucial in many of the greatest stories told, often ignored for a more simplistic answer.

I remember having a conversation with Rossi on the slashing of 'best friend' characters, like Iceman and Beast, and she bought up an interesting point that why she reacted so negatively to such portrayals is because "they fail to allow the (Aussie) 'Mate' relationship to be valid". The idea that there is always a sexual quotient in any relationship is an extremely common one in most fandoms. Even relationships with a great degree of physical intimacy, say for example, the classic 'officer and his batman'. Extremely close relations, often forged in blood and violence, and holding all of the elements to allow for a sexual relationship, yet without the slightest inclination for it.

The doctor/patient relationship is also similar. A doctor is able to access all of the most intimate and vulnerable aspects of a patient's body and psyche during the rehabilitative stage, and yet the taboo between crossing those boundaries is one of the strongest in any professional practice. In fact, transference due to the 'Florence Nightingale' syndrome is a common enough issue to be covered by nurses and doctors during their schooling.

The mentor/student relationship, one of the most commonly abused relationships in fandom. To many people, it seems a natural extension of the admiration and trust required in such a relationship to develop on a sexual level. Buffy/Giles, Obi Won/Qui Gon, Batman/Robin, Wolverine/Jubilee, Kitty, and Rogue; all of which are hugely popular pairings despite the fact that sexual relationships of such types in reality are very rare without them showing elements of manipulation, abuse of trust and guilt.

I wonder if there is a specific reason why the deep emotional bonds that do not translate into a sexual desire or a traditional romantic relationship are so often ignored or 'reinvented' to fit into the more traditional modes. Is it simply a lack of interest or is it a lack of understanding? Has the process of 'fandom' itself reinforced the idea that all relationships can (or should) be boiled down to a sexual level, be it hetro, bi or homosexual?

Opinions?

Comments

[marag.livejournal.com]

I'd love to have something witty and brilliant to say, but I'll just stick with saying "Word."

Yeah. Uh-huh. What you said. Twice, even.

Maybe somebody will write me friendship fic now?

[nel-ani.livejournal.com]

*This* was an interesting subject. This is mostly why some ship pairings bug me: it seems that people are just putting characters together because one of them is a guy and the other a gal.

I think that the reason people generally want to write sexual relationships (either one of het, bi or slash) is because it's seen as the most "important" relationship. Your friend may stick by you your entire life, but your lover will be the front figure.

I'm not saying that it's necessarily true, but I think that's how a lot of people think. Not really surprising when nowadays being single is a cause for depression.

[andraste]

I wonder if there is a specific reason why the deep emotional bonds that do not translate into a sexual desire or a traditional romantic relationship are so often ignored or 'reinvented' to fit into the more traditional modes. Is it simply a lack of interest or is it a lack of understanding? Has the process of 'fandom' itself reinforced the idea that all relationships can (or should) be boiled down to a sexual level, be it hetro, bi or homosexual?

I think the first cause for this is that we live in culture where we're constantly told that romantic relationships are the most important relationships. Think about what we see on TV and movie screens, the songs we hear on the radio, and it's not hard to see why people think that romantic love is the most important feeling in the world. It gets elevated far above the platonic love between friends or the love of a parent for a child. Our media is saturated in messages extolling the wonders of sexual/romantic love. This hasn't always been the case; as late as the 19th century the platonic bond between male friends was the relationship praised and elevated above all others.

Personally, I think this is a load of crap - I'm single, and happy to stay that way. There are plenty of non-sexual relationships in my life that I value highly. Nevertheless, I can see where people get the impression that a relationship is of secondary value if it doesn't have a sexual element.

The other thing you have to remember, though, is that although fandom as a whole things that everyone is shagging there aren't that many individual fans who believe this to be the case.

Take me as an example, since I know my own body of work the best. I get off on enemies-who-used-to-be-friends relationships. (Or friends-who-used-to-be-enemies. Or friends-who-snark-at-each-other-incessently. I'm not actually that fussy provided the ideological conflict is there.) Most of these are found in slash, for reasons I've discussed at other times.

Sexualised mentor/student relationships, on the other hand, squick the hell out of me. I run a mile from Buffy/Giles or Xavier/Scott. Best friend pairings like Frodo/Sam or Iceman/Beast I can usually see either way - I don't have much interest in writing them, but it doesn't bug me if other people do.

So there's a certain type of relationship that I tend to percieve as sexual, and other types that I don't, and others that repell me. I think most fans are probably in the same boat.

[ex_amurderofcrows752]

I think it's a lot of what others above me have said -- that it's a cultural bias, big time; nothing is pounded home like 'you're worthless without a mate' and 'your mate determines your successfulness in life'. Etc, etc.

But I also think that it's because, when you get right down to it, a lot of ficcers are currently lacking these elements in thier personal lives. The stereotype of a lonely keep tapping away at the keys fantasizing about two people in love/lust/each other/whatever is drawn up because a stereotype has basis in real life.

This is not to say that all ficcers are lonely geeks pining for their eternal soul mate, so they externalize their issues and express them dirty Buffy and Spike shagging, or maybe they're dealing with the fact that the men in their lives seem unattainable, so Legolas and Aragorn get some elven oil and suddenly become so much more accessable.

But this isn't the only reason; I think it's just part of the picture. I've written my share of smut, and I've written my share of notsmut. And I've written series of fics dedicated to the changing relationships -- romantic, platonic, and professional -- in various fandoms.

Primarily, my smut (so far, only three 'published' works, two finished in the Inu-Yasha fandom and one unrelated in the Fushigi Yuugi fandom) is post-'fandom', the relationship is usually canon, all the work has been done for me, I just have fun with it.... or I write deranged, demonic, unhealthy yaoi and get reviewers completely missing the point, or possessed masturbation necrophila fics and then win awards for them; I didn't write that for SMUT or RELATIONSHIP I wrote that to DISTURB PEOPLE. And they gave me an award! Go figure.

So there's my two cents. I think it's a lot of the above, plus filling a personal gap. After all, we all have personal reasons for writing fic; we're not making any money, so it's for the love -- or the deviancy -- of doing so.

[mice.livejournal.com]

This is a fabulous topic. Especially since I'm tired of the amount of feedback I'm getting for whatever fic I'm writing including, "Make it Bobby/Jubilee!"

I did write a bit about Bobby and Jubilee having sex - I did it to illustrate how bad of an idea this was and the effect it would have on a relationship like they had. I did a similar bit with Bobby and an original character and Jubilee and an original character - and both ended badly because it was in both canon characters to have unsuccessful relationships with others, no matter what other elements were presented.

Pairings - no matter the sexual preference - is a science. To use a chemistry analogy, you don't combine helium and mercury and conclude that you have salt - just as you don't combine, for example, Jubilee and Marrow and say that it's true love. It's a good pairing and I'd love to see it written, actually. It'd be violent, self-deprecating and humiliating - if the writer was true to the characters. Most likely, it'd be a pair of golems who just had similar names and did the same fantasy that the writer has.

I know when I was younger, I thought everything equaled that ultimate pairing and romantic ending. Observation, time, and experience have helped in my perception of that. It's also a lot of work. "Work" also has the same affect of saying "it" to the Knights Who Say Ni. But that's more of my opinion (though my opinion is proved throughout most of fanfiction.net's archives.)

And Bobby/Hank encourages me to take a page out of Oedipus.

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

I'm usually amused by how fandom does in fact sexualize most forms of relationships between people, and yet still somehow manages to stigmatize or disaprover of casual sex. Almost every "fling" I've seen in fic is either a prelude to a romantic relationship, an unhealthy affair that causes relationship angst, or some other type of "mistake". For all the highly politicized sex that you see in fic these days, it still somehow comes out as prudish.'

[tieleen.livejournal.com]

Well -- regardless of personal opinion about casual sex, isn't that what Western society in general tends to do? (Western society, or Hollywood, or the media, however you want to call it.) The obsession with sex, with or without romance, and the extreme prudishness about it have been living happily side by side for more than a few decades now. Fandom definitely reflects that, but we didn't really invent it.

Taking a long path to simple agreement,

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

I have two main fandoms. I hang out in others occasionally, but mostly I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel and X-Men. People have gone on so much about the similarities between these two that I think it's necessary to dwell on the differences.

The most important thing is that Joss Whedon has stated, repeatedly, that there are no non-sexual relationships on his shows. This worries me, especially when you factor in Joyce Summers, Connor, and the Buffy/Giles relationship. There are good Buffy/Giles stories, but they tend not to depict anything like a healthy relationship. For the rest, Joss took a collection of hormonal teenagers and traditionally sensual Creatures of the Night, at the time still working off the Anne Rice associations, and set out to write a comic soap opera with horror elements. Under such circumstances random coupling is inevitable. Even so, it seems to have gone out of control.

Pick any two characters who have been regulars on Buffy, and you'll probably find multiple archives dedicated to that pairing. Some of these I find profoundly disturbing, but a significant majority can make sense within the context of the characters. They were designed this way; all interaction is sexual on at least some level, especially when it involves Giles or Faith (Tony Head and Eliza Dushku seem to have dealt with Whedon's policy by simply having chemistry with everything else on screen at once. Not that I'm complaining). There are almost no canon relationships on this show that don't have at least some element of sexual tension involved. Willow/Cordelia and Oz/Buffy are the only exceptions that spring to mind, and I've seen these written well, if not convincingly.

My point is that within the framework of the Buffyverse, there is almost no such thing as innocent friendship. Everybody wants to fuck everybody else.

Set against that we have the X-Men. Most people point to Wolverine, but I would say that Scott is completely, comprehensively, unslashable. He's not homophobic, he's not repressed, and if I knew what it meant I'd probably be able to assert that he's not metrosexual either. He's just straight, and in love with Jean. An affection he shares, to some degree, with half the other male X-Men.

Which doesn't quite bring us to what was, for a time recently, the central relationship of New X-Men. Scott and Wolverine. I can think of few more convincing fictional friendships, and from my perspective it's totally free of slash. Scott and Logan are not going to sleep together, ever. Not even in a threesome with Jean. They've gone from crazed animosity to absolute respect without stopping for empathy along the way. Their friendship is based on acceptance of their differences, on mutual reliance, and, above all, on respect. There is no slash there, and the X-Men currently more or less orbit around these characters.

X-men has a history of open love triangles. In Buffy you have the undeniable homoeroticism between Angel and Spike, even as they alternately vie for Buffy's attentions, and the almost overwhelming lesbian subtext of any shared scene between the main Slayers that, when it boils over, results in Faith having sex with or at least pursuing one of the men in Buffy's life. In X-Men, you have Jean and Scott and you have Jean and Logan. You have Scott and Jean and you have Scott and Emma. And you have a token gay character who, never mind that he's highly intelligent, a successful businessman, a disgraced Olympic athlete, a long-term and highly experienced superhero, one half of a fucked-up family, a bereaved parent, and an arrogant prick, is currently characterised almost exclusively as 'the gay one'. The moment he shows the faintest trace of attraction to one of his teammates, he's shot down, with out of character homophobia to boot.

Why, then, finally getting to my point, do the X-Men, both comic and movie, attract almost as much random romance as, to pick an example not-actually-at-random, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

I don't have an answer, unfortunately. But just writing this has made me think some, and with luck reading it will help others think some more.

And, for the record, I regard Wolverine/Jubilee romance to be utterly contrary to all established incarnations of both characters.

if I recall correctly, what Joss Whedon actually said was...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

"romantic", not "sexual". Which makes a difference. "Friendship is love without its wings", etc.

Oh, and he also said "Bring your own subtext".

What people said and...

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

One thing that initially drew me to the X-Men was Wolverine's ability to be close to both women and men without there being romantic attraction involved. I firmly believe in (and write) close relationships that don't involve romance or sex.

Sex is sometimes used to signify the level of intimacy between characters, ie, that they are so close that no other, no lover can come between them. Which, when you think about it, is mildly ridiculous, since one doesn't have to have sex with, for example, one's brother to have a deep connection with him, one that is independent of other romantic relationships. Sex is not the final stamp of approval :-) And seeing that quite a lot of people go through life having sex with plenty, but trusting only a few, I'd say that trust is what's harder to come by. If it coincides, all is good.

However, if one were to accept the idea that sex is the ultimate expression and proof of emotional connection (which it certainly can be), the reverse still doesn't apply. It can apply, if it's written that way, but it cannot just be assumed that a connection founded on romantic interest supercedes one of friendship, mentorship or other. Some of love's guises are completely separate from sex.

The mentor/student and doctor/patient relationships and their boundaries can be written very interestingly if the issues and taboos are explored. Having overdosed on JAG and LFN fanfic, where Harm/Mac or Michael/Nikita romance stories are 90% of everything written, I have an unusual low tolerance for the average romance story, het or slash.

On the other hand, go visit the M7 fandom, where men are brothers and women are an afterthought, and you'll find that the brothers-in-arms relationship can be overdone too. Several of the best stories in the M7 ficdom are slash stories that don't duck the taboos and issues of being gay while working in a close-knit group and in law enforcement to boot.

And this, boys and girls...

[redhawk.livejournal.com]

Is why I'm 95% out of fanfic.

Because I really can't stand the sorts of things you're talking about here, for the reasons that you mentioned.

Amen, brother.

Redhawk

[darkmark.livejournal.com]

I'd say, lad, that it's a lack of understanding, possibly combined with the secret (or not so) desires of said fict writer. For one thing, given the amount of adolescents or young adults writing fanfic, their hormones converting them into a sexual internal combustion engine (and how's THAT for an awkward metaphor?), they're not interested in writing about friendship as much as they're out to write about GETTING IT ON!!! After all, pornography wouldn't be the billion-buck biz it is if they just showed people being friends. (Although wouldn't that be a nice change?)

But I have a feeling that most fic (or at least a darn good part of it) represents the writer's urge to have a relationship with a character through Mary Sue / Marty Stuism. At such an age, that's likely to be a sexual one. (If you were, say, 11 years old, you'd probably just wanna be Captain America's or Batman's best friend.) Since "pairing" seems to be the be-all-and-end-all of the majority of fics (God help us if PLOT were required, or ACTION, or STORY, or...well, fuggedaboutit), all they can do is posit a sexual relationship, vying with each other to stake out the next Forbidden Territory, until...well...there doesn't seem to BE an until.

It takes a little perspective to be able to write about friendship, familial relationships, even business relationships with any accuracy. I've always contended that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were able to do such a convincing "family" take on the Fantastic Four because both of them were married and had families, and had them for a long time, by the time they started the book. Some things you just can't fake. Or if you can, you're damned good.

That's just my take on it.

[dawnkiller.livejournal.com]

Well, speaking as someone who had her "Stupid Kid Phase" online, I think there's a part of it that's just . . . expectation. It's like you go into writing with some kind of mental checklist with things like "Action, Adventure, Angst, Anxiety, and Amour" (nice alliteration, no?). Now, in X-fic especially all this stuff is kind of built into the genre, so -- at least when I went into it -- I went into it with the impression that this is the kind of thing a story "had" to have.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find that -- especially when I was younger -- I needed to read some sort of "gateway" piece before I could really wrap my idea around something. We all start by learning from example, so, naturally, we need examples that are worth learning from -- especially if we don't have (or don't recognize) firsthand knowledge of a subject. As others have pointed out, the prevelant form of relationship-stories (in movies, tv, comics, etc) seems to focus on romantic sort of relationships. I didn't realize I could write about relationships that weren't either mentor-student or family member-family member (both of which I had experienced), or else boyfriend-girlfriend (which I'd seen a lot in other stuff, especially comics). Being a kid I didn't write the latter particularly well, but I was at least aware that it was an option.

Friend/friend, though? Not much on that, even in the comics themselves. And honestly, I was an insular kid -- before I started fanfic I didn't have a lot of experience with those types of relationships. As I gained friends, though, I began to realize that, hey, this is a great subject to write on, and in fact is actually a lot more interesting than romantic love. I mean, most of the time romantic love seems to happen for no particular reason -- some combination of chemistry and personality just makes two people click, even if they don't seem like they should be right for or attracted to each other at all. It is, to a degree, inexplicable. Friendship, on the other hand, is stimultaneously easier to break down and more challenging to portray convincingly, because you actually have to justify it.

Romantic love, IMO, is kind of a cop-out because you can't fully explain it, even if you can show the basis for it . . . and that, I think, is one of the reasons why people gravitate towards it. It's just easier to handle -- though I'm not going to say it isn't difficult to realistically depict the courtship, reactions of the people, reactions of the people around them, the problems in spite of it, and perhaps even its eventual dissolution, because it IS a complicated issue. However, that's just it: the interesting thing about love isn't that it's there, it's how everyone involved with it and the people who feel with it deal with it. No one wants to read about how someone else feels when they're in love -- or at least, not unless they're going to display it in a very clever, entertaining, and original way. Love is love -- it's a universal type of warm fuzzy. Platonic love between two people, though, is very specific, and at times very complex, as the sensation itself, not just in its consequences.

Okay, that went off on a weird tangent, but I just finished my first day back at school and I don't feel very coherent. Basically what I think it boils down to (at least in part, along with wish-fulfillment and being indoctrinated in the importance of romance and blah blah blah) is inexperience on the part of the writer. A lot of fic writers are young -- probably they've had or are having crushes before, but maybe they haven't yet realized the importance of a good friend, or had a real mentor-student relationship (which is entirely possible; I mean, I think I just stumbled into my first real one this past year, since before this I considered teachers as either equals or simply instructors, which is a different dynamic), or some such thing. Emotional complexity comes with time, I think . . . so until we find it, we have a tendency to break the world down into more managable chunks. :)

To concentrate on a part of your arguement...

[doqz.livejournal.com]

I know that there was more to your arguement than that, Tap, but this part caught my eye... :)

I don't know how far you can take the learning by example explanation. While romance is a frequent, some would way everpresent, fixture of the most stories -it's not the ONLY fixture. Both in visual media (how many buddy cop movies have you seen before you were ten?) or literature (Dumas, Jack London, Jules Verne) or even canon material (Buffy-Willow or Hank-Bobby) all put heavy emphasis on the friendship aspect of the relationship.

If learning from cultural memes was the explanation that logically we should have seen the stories flip the roles, thus a fic about Remy/Bobby romance would have a depiction of Storm-Remy friendship as a background. This is not usually the case in my experience. Although that does happen in GOOD stories, to a variety of degrees.

There is a prevalence of romance stories because that's what people want to read. Occam's razor:) Most of these stories are less comparable to porn, as DarkMark suggests but rather to romance novels (that also enjoy considerable popularity lest we forget) Whether that's escapism - an attempt to find in literature that pure, absolutely romantic, overcome all obstacle passion that is not present in every day life. It is also futile to consider this topic without taking in consideration the peculiar demographics of fanfiction both in regards to male-female ratio and the considerable prepondarance of the writers aho either gay, bi or are fairly-to-militantly tolerant of alternative lifestyles. Again these argue convincingly, imo, for the escapist/activist aspect of the phenomenon. Or it might be due to the fact that people view love as a topic that is complex enough to embody both the intricacies of romance and friendship, hard to say.

Re: To concentrate on a part of your arguement...

[mice.livejournal.com]

Hell, I'm one to talk. I thought all fics were like the first one I read -- Mharie. So, for my first fic, I used that as an example.

And hilarity ensued.

Re: To concentrate on a part of your arguement...

[dawnkiller.livejournal.com]

Nah, it wasn't all -- I was talking about me specifically. As I mentioned, I was an insular kid, and had not been exposed to a lot of buddy movies because most of them are action movies, which isn't a genre I was very interested in. Ditto with the literature -- I realize many ficcers are well-read, but how many of your average Legolas/Aragorn teenyboppers will have read any of the authors you listed? :) While I'm probably in the minority, I doubt I'm the one one who was like that, and thus threw in romance because I thought it was expected. (BTW, for time-frame reference, Buffy was still two or three years in the future. Remember, I started fanfic back when I was thirteen. It was very much the Stupid Kid Phase. :)

To focus on something YOU said, the buddy pairs you listed (Hank-Bobby and Buffy-Willow) were both same-sex. Despite the preponderance of slash nowadays, I think it's telling that there's not a lot of really close m-f buddy pairs in media -- or at least, not any that can't or won't eventually turn into romances at some point (or, like Zoe and Mal, are prevented from becoming such by an episode placed there specifically to deny romantic attraction, which I thought was hillarious ;). Hell, even Spike-Buffy turned romantic -- at least, on one side of the equation. It's 7:30 am right now, so maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought one of the points in Dex's original post was the bizarre tendency to turn all close m-f relationships into romantic ones. That doesn't explain the slash couples, of course, but there is a good chunk of het on the net, so. *G*

I confess, I haven't really talked about the (obviously important) wish-fulfillment factor because I never had that phase or impulse, and thus have a lot of trouble relating. I've never read romance novels for fun, never really been interested in reading them, and don't read 'ship fic unless I really, really like the author. Nothing about seeing ANY two characters get together like that appeals to me unless it's written in an exceptional manner -- my standards are actually much higher for romances because I'm pretty indifferent to the entire genre. I think the reason I'm attracted to buddy-fic is because that, more than romance, is where I get my wish-fulfillment in (and also the fact that I think psychological interaction is inherently fascinating, but hey); I've always been much more preoccupied with getting good, solid friends around me than going on dates and getting a boyfriend. But then, I am a freak of nature. :)

[ex-thissuga.livejournal.com]

too.. many.. comments.. to.. read.. so I'll just reply quick.

for someone who could (and, no, isn't, but just sayin', could) take this as a direct reference to 90% of what I've written, all I can say is - sometimes you feel like the sexual creeps into every relationship you have. seriously. you can't look at someone without wondering what kind of sexual relationship they'd want out of you. what kind of obligation there would be in that kind of intimate setting. and thus every single person you meet ends up having every kind of shade of sexual/romantic/friendly dynamic to your interaction with them. having this ends up making it hard to write people's complex interpersonal dynamics *without* having those boundaries continually cross over each other, because in your own life you don't have those boundaries either.

is this the likely reason most people write like that? do most of the writers we know have these boundary issues? It's possible. I certainly know a few. it's certainly why I tend to lean towards exploring the kind of complex dynamics between people that are colored by every possible relationship they could have. --well, I should say "attempt to explore", since it's a fifty-fifty chance that I'll succeed.

so that's one why that someone might write in this manner. is this boundary issue a childish way to view relationships? I can't say, struggling with it myself. someone else probably would probably say it is, and heh, I'm not going to argue. but just because those boundaries are crossed, that doesn't mean they're going to end up in a good place because of it. I think that's the truly childish view.

but what do I know?