thoughts on yaoi

[carmen_lj]

Because procrastination is an art, and keeping in practice is terribly important in art, I spent a ridiculous amount of time today making my journal pretty (not, y'know, actually writing any css meself, oh no, I browsed through layout comms, browsed like a wee procrastinating procrastinator.) It is now less pink and more purple. And now has what is surely the most eloquent use of the English language ever committed to celluloid emblazoned across the top of the page. Also there's like a whole new quote on my profile, and by new, I mean even older. And a pic of Babs. Babs is awesome. Sometimes I forget how awesome and then I see her in action and she is just splendid.

And apparently some dude has, yet again, discovered slash and come up with some eye-rollingly patronising bunkem as to why women slash. So here are my thoughts on yaoi: it entertains me. Sometimes it's sexy, sometimes it's lolarious, sometimes touching, or dramatic or cool or clever or any of the bajillion other things that fiction can be. I've never been short of female characters I love, or that I love to write about, and I've never seen slash as something subversive, but rather another way to tell stories and explore characters and it seems rather daft to me to limit the way one can explore characters in fic by sticking to a single type of relationship. Thus whether it's slash/het/femslash/gen is almost always of secondary importance for me compared to the quality of writing and the characters involved (in that, if I love those characters and they're written well, I have no particular preference over whether their relationship is being written as friendship or sexual or romantic.)

I think I'm going to see the new Star Trek tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it rather ridiculously because of the Uhura spoilers I've heard. I love Uhura. And I love the teeny wee arc at the beginning of TOS - back when we got the feeling that everyone on the crew was a real person and not just the Big Three - of Uhura/Spock flirtiness, with her trying to get him to flirt with her in The Man Trap, and then him playing the lyre while she sang (and teased him awfully) in Charlie X and he couldn't help smiling and it was adorable and awesome and I ship Uhura/Spock a wee bit and am a bit excited about what new Trek is going to do there, yo.

And, embarrasingly, I thought all the Maine support on the flist was to do with baseball or something. Ahrrrm. (If you're as oblivious as I, it's not, rather Maine and New Hampshire have both passed gay marriage legislation, well done them.)

Comments

[fyrdrakken]

Some time ago I came up with a hypothesis for slash: Women are given the coded message in female-intended media that the Soulmate (and hopefully eventually Spouse) is meant to be the most important person in their life, give meaning to their existence, etc. Men are given the "bros before hos" message, that women may come and go (though, granted, sometimes one runs across a really special one it's harder to replace) but buddies and partners are the most important and enduring relationship. Women trained to spot the Most Important Person to their fave character and expect coupledom to ensue watch media intended for a male audience and conclude that the male partner is the really important figure and the revolving door of women indicates the futile search for the person who is Right Beside Them the Whole Time.

Also of course there's the hot guy-on-guy action. And pretty pretty mens. And being able to "have" both of them at once. But I like the idea that it's a subversion of gender-coded double messages in our media.