Meta: Reality's Subtext

[alixtii]

Via voleuse: hth_the_first on what makes a couple slashy, and liviapenn responding (not really rebutting) with "normal behavior isn't slashy."

See, the thing is: yeah, normal life is slashy. It's 'cesty. It's a lot of things, some of them things which even fandom doesn't have words for, that we don't see because we're not used to looking at a life-text that way. I've lived in an appartment with two other men, and I've lived in a house with my family members. And there have been perfectly innocuous events (doing the dishes even!) that if they were to appear on a television screen then yeah, I would read them as slashy or 'cesty.

Which is not to say that I wanted to sex with my roommates or my family members, or that they wanted to have sex with me. When we're looking at life, we tend to get caught up in the ding an sich, in issues of "what really happened." It seems perfectly sensible to wonder "How many children had Lady Macbeth?" when you've just had Lady Macbeth over for tea.

But literary texts don't work that way. Lady Macbeth has a dozen children and no children at the same time. The cat is both dead and alive. (Fanfic opens the box and collapses the eigenstates, so to speak. And this metaphor is so not my own; I remember wisdomeagle using it, but I doubt that it's hers either.) While for the most part we conveniently and deliberately forget that our life-text is a floating signifier (which doesn't mean that it isn't real or is radically modifiable or any other pomo nonsense, just that it's eternally cut off from the thing-in-itself), we can't forget that about our fannish texts. We can (and possibly should) argue over what is the most straight-forward interpretation of canon, or even the best interpretation, but not the right one. "It's just a story." (Real life is sort of story, too, but we don't usually look for morals in it, do we? And if I said, "The rain outside is a metaphor for racist intolerance" people would look at me funny, wouldn't they?) (Of course, sometimes we do treat life events as metaphors, like with tarot cards. But this is seen as an unorthodox response--and just not plain understood by some people.)

I mean, this is half the reason why RPF exists. Because John Kerry and John Edwards were slashy. Because William Moseley and Anna Popplewell really are het-tastic sometimes. (Sometimes as a deliberate choice on the part of the photographer, least as I construct the photographer-function.) Sometimes the subtext is a hint to "what really lies beneath" the floating signifier, as in the Lance Bass case, but I think that for the most case we (for at least the "my flist" value of "we") recognize that Kerry and Edwards weren't sexually attracted to each other, and that Will and Anna have almost certainly never had sex with each other. But because the signifier is floating, we can imagine it being attached to a completely different "what lies beneath," like Anna being a Vampire Slayer or Jason Dohring and Krsistin Bell breaking Katie Holmes out of a Scientologist fortress. (And OMG there's a sequel?! *goes to read*)

Do we really think that the only reason Simon could possibly have done what he did for his sister was if he were sexually attracted to River? And if we don't think this, does that mean their relationship isn't 'cesty? Because I think we can all agree that their relationship is 'cesty as hell and, if you privelege authorial intent or use interviews when constructing the author-function, deliberately so.

Reading subtext/slashiness/'cestiness isn't like finding out whodunit in a detective novel. Because whodunit is revealed at the end of detective novel (although I'm sure there's some postmodern detective novel out there that doesn't reveal whodunit) and, y'know, that's text. It's only subtext if there is no explicitly right or wrong answer.

Cinematic texts have elements like the camera work and the soundtrack which influence the way we read a text without changing one whit "what really happened." But these elements are objective features of the text, and part of the communicative mechanisms which make up the medium. Reading a text is more complicated than just figuring out "what is really going on."

So reading subtext/slashiness/'cestiness into/out of a text is a response to the floating signifier, to the text qua text, not to the Events Themselves. In Real LifeTM, if a brother accidentally enters a bathroom while his sister is getting out of the shower, that doesn't mean he wants to jump her bones (or vice versa). It just means they live in a house together and she forgot to lock the door and he neglected to knock or she didn't hear him and so he, completely by accident, saw his sister naked. That's what "really happened" (we say). And it happens. No big deal, although the sister probably isn't going to be very happy.

(Nor the brother, probably, who's likely to be actively repulsed by a combination of social taboos and the Westermarck effect. But we can read that repulsion as a performative act, either a deliberate dissimilation and pretense or as a less conscious Freudian denial. And of course this is why Freudian analysis is so much more popular in literary analysis than in, y'know, empirical psychology.)

And then, that evening, in the course of doing his wash, that brother takes his sisters' bras and panties out of the dryer and he puts them in a laundry basket. Hell, maybe he even folds them. This is Standard Operating Procedure in pretty much every family across the world that has its own washer and dryer.

But if I'm watching a forty-minute show and thirty seconds of it is devoted to each of these events, then yeah, it Means Something. Because things don't "just happen" when read as part of a literary text. Because we--if you let me channel Jubal Early for a moment--imbue them with meaning. We give it a purpose. We construct an author-function, and we decode a message, and yes, the decoder ring is jury-rigged so the message will be sex, sex, sex. The mechanism of literary (and within literary I include cinematic and other modes of artistic criticism) criticism is predisposed to read sex out of a scene, in large part because literary critics like thinking about sex. And so do writers, so they play along.

Let they who are without sin throw the first stone.

A long expositionary dialogue conducted while two female characters are dressed in towels in the girls' locker room is femslashy. Because yes, Virginia, the all-female space does queer the relationship, despite the fact that this is Perfectly Common Behavior and having conversations dressed in a towel in a locker room doesn't make one a lesbian. (I have doubts as a het male how often this type of behavior actually happens outside of television, but that's neither here nor there. Because, as I've said, "actually happens" isn't the point--there 's a system of cinematic signification and realism doesn't really play into it all that much at all.) (Plus we can't forget the camera as a placeholder for the het male gaze, which sexualizes things even further. I should probably have used two male characters in a boy's locker room, but that's not so much fun for me to visualize. But the point would be the same.)

When I watch Buffy and Faith in season 3 and see them as femslashy as hell, when the heart that Faith draws isn't a love-heart at all but really a vampire heart (with a stake through it), and besides teenage girls use that sort of heart imagery to each other all the time without meaning anything at all sexual by it (although I still think those interactions are femslashy as hell too), I'm not illegitimately reading my own interpretation into the text. (Although if I were reading my own interpretation into the text I don't see necessarily why that should be illegitimate, but I probably wouldn't write an essay for a grade on the Anne/Violet 'cest in Man and Superman just because there's not a lot of textual evidence.)

I'm using a more-or-less agreed-upon system of deciphering textual cues, regardless of whether cues were intentionally put in by the writer. (Are Rosalind/Celia so gay on purpose? Probably, but who cares if it's not deliberate? It's a facet of the text that's there. It even meets the non-visual criteria of hth_the_first's slash texts--and when I imagine it, it meets the visual criteria as well. Which is not to say that we would at all assume that two cousins who were that devoted to each other had to be sexually attracted to each other if it were happening in "the real world.")

And when someone points out that hermeneutic I'm using to interrogate the fictional text isn't the same one I'd use to interrogate real life, I answer: whyever the hell should it be?

And then I imagine them making out with their sister.

Comments

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

This is a completely unsubstantive comment:

I wish more people wrote Rosalind/Celia, because I totally root for them to end up together every time I read the play.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Oh so do I, definitely. Indeed, it's the only thing that makes As You Like It bearable for me.

Fanfiction as Schroedinger's Cat.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Too tired to read the full post at the moment, but I saw fanfic as Schroedinger's Cat here and have been frequently referring people back to it.

Re: Fanfiction as Schroedinger's Cat.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the cite; it's nice to have the link attached to the post.

[spuffyduds.livejournal.com]

Oh my. I was enjoying the struggle to keep up with your very thinky brain, and then there was a punchline! Yay you.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

*takes a bow*

I'll be here all week. And then some.

[inalasahl]

I have doubts as a het male how often this type of behavior actually happens outside of television, but that's neither here nor there.
I realize this is the least important part of your very interesting essay, but I thought I'd share my personal experience in the matter.
In middle school, showers were not required so no one ever took one. So no towels. In high school, showers were required, but if we were lucky we only got about 10 minutes between heading to the showers and the end of class, so usually it was quite a frantic race. Nobody ever *stood around* in a towel, because that would mean ten less crucial seconds to fix your mascara or your hairspray. However girls did chat while changing and doing their hair and makeup. It's been long enough that it's starting to go hazy, but I think there was a sort of etiquette about it, though. One would never do one's makeup wearing just a towel, but a bra and shorts were acceptable.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

That sounds just about what I would have expected to hear. In both junior high and high school we weren't required to take showers, so yes, no one ever took me. (Perhaps athletes showered after practices/games, but I wouldn't know.) The situation you describe

Of course the reasons for the irrealism one sees in television are obvious, and is done with boys as often as girls, so I don't particularly have a problem with it--the television version is, in some sense, more fun to imagine, and I'd have no problem perpetuating it in my own fic (which never really aims for realism anyway). But it's nice to know the reality so one can understand how the fantasy functions, so thank you for sharing your experience.

[reallyreally.livejournal.com]

Oh, wonderfully written! I've been thinking, lately, that the work that comes out of queer theory criticism is a sort of academically approved slash, and this post sort of discussed the other side of that thought. I agree to 100% :)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I suppose it's not all that surprising that someone (i.e. me) relatively well-versed in critical theory (for an undergraduate) would go to that place for a theoretical foundation to what we do in fandom (and it'd take a theory geek just to feel the need for a theoretical foundation), but it is nice how well the two fit together, isn't it?

Thank you for the compliment, and I am glad that I managed to expresse myself to you (at least?) effectively.

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

But if I'm watching a forty-minute show and thirty seconds of it is devoted to each of these events, then yeah, it Means Something. Because things don't "just happen" when read as part of a literary text. Because we--if you let me channel Jubal Early for a moment--imbue them with meaning. We give it a purpose. We construct an author-function, and we decode a message, and yes, the decoder ring is jury-rigged so the message will be sex, sex, sex. The mechanism of literary (and within literary I include cinematic and other modes of artistic criticism) criticism is predisposed to read sex out of a scene, in large part because literary critics like thinking about sex. And so do writers, so they play along.

I don't think I understand where you're trying to go here. Does this mean that there are no meaningful relationships being written today that aren't meant to be viewed as sexual? Everytime we take a pause to have a character moment in a tv show/movie/book, we're mean to view it is slashy, shippy, or incestuous?

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm claiming there are no meaningful relationships being written today (or ever, since it's today that we're doing the interpreting) for which we cannot sensibly and legitimately imagine ourselves to be meant to view the relationships as sexualized. To me it seems that to ask anything about we're "meant" to think beyond that is to come dangerously close to priveleging authorial intent, or at least to giving the text much more power and agency than it actually has. (The text can't make us think anything; we can always close the book or use its pages to wallpower our kitchen, after all.)

There are rules (not solid ones, but guidelines at least) as to how we typically go about interpreting a text, of course, and I do think that the (eminently breakable) rules of much modern-day criticism priveleges sexualized interpretations (which is a lot of fun). And many writers know this and thus deliberately throw in references they know the critics will catch and decipher--not that this process is necessary, but it does it make easier in a way.

I'm not really sure what you are asking beyond this.

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

I'm claiming there are no meaningful relationships being written today (or ever, since it's today that we're doing the interpreting) for which we cannot sensibly and legitimately imagine ourselves to be meant to view the relationships as sexualized. To me it seems that to ask anything about we're "meant" to think beyond that is to come dangerously close to priveleging authorial intent, or at least to giving the text much more power and agency than it actually has.

Okay, I guess that the problem is that I am not equipped with the proper vocabulary to have this coversation: When you say that writers "play along" I took away that you were saying that all authors are hoping that the audience will read the situation as sexual. I'm not sure I know how to use the term "meant" in a way that doesn't stand in for "it is the author's intent". (Outside of the prism of what the author wants you to take away, what does 'meant' mean?) So, I took you to mean "meant" in a way that implied you cared, and gave primacy to, the intent of the author.

I think your second paragraph is saying that the author is intenting to say one thing, but throwing in other things that lit (or tv or film) critics can interpret in other ways, for the fun of having a secret language, and that authors and critics love that things mean two things at once.

Am I at all getting warm?

Part I

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

You seem to have a pretty strong grasp on what I'm saying. Lit critics care less about what a author meant than about what they wrote, although of course knowing what the author meant might be useful in deciphering what they wrote. But often texts function in ways their author never would have or could have intended. Sometimes this is a good thing, when the author merely intended to create a piece of propaganda, for example.

Since fiction is always written in a voice which is not strictly speaking the author's, by writing a fictional narrative the author is problematizing the question of their intent.

To explain, I work in a field where intent of the author is primary and critical, and thus authors use their language with extreme precision. Clarity of intent is the gold standard, by which your success is measured -- losing that intent could cost someone their life, cost you your savings, bring down a government, etc. So, understanding a world where 'authorial privelege' is not important is like learning a whole new culture.)

I don't know in what field you work, but sometimes fields which seem at first like they should privelege intent for the sake of clarity don't always actually do so. That is to say, I think authors being clear is prized in all contexts, but it's not so straught-foward what we should do after that clarity is lost. (In theory it is lost in all cases, but in practice it is lost more badly in some than in other.) Take American constitutional law, for example, which certainly can be a matter of life or death (forgive me for boring you with our politics if you're not American, but the examples that pop to my mind are the ones from my experience). A conservative textualist like Justice Antonin Scalia looks to what an average reader in 1800 would have read a word like "person" as meaning, and more liberal justices see meaning of the text as changing and evolving--but no tries to guess what the Congress was thinking, on the theory that that way lies madness.

I can think of cases where it would be important to know the intent of the author--if reading a treasure map, it's more important to know where the author thought the treasure was than to know where, strictly speaking, the map says the treasure is--but it was too specifically exclude cases like this, in which we are concerned with "what really happened" (where the treasure is really buried) rather than "what the text is saying" (where the map says the treasure is badly), that I made the point that literary criticism isn't trying to answer "whodunit," but "whatsaidit."

Re: Part I

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

Your choice of example is interesting because I am a lawyer. Most of the time making your intent clear and not having any subtext/room for interpretation is the most important element in your work because you don't want a judge taking the opportunity to go litcrit on you and come up with a result that you didn't intend (unless you don't really care which heirs get your money, or what the terms of your employment contract are -- in which case, go ahead and let some random judge decide for you).

Re: Part I

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I actually quoted Justice Scalia in my honors thesis, because literary critics really are actually a lot like judges in what they do (deciding what things mean), except literary decisions have less practical effect on the world, and vying legal interpretations don't coexist quite so peacefully.

I don't think anyone opposes an author choosing their words carefully, but the very reason such precision is called for is that they will ultimately be judged upon what the words mean, and not what they wanted them to mean.

Part II

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I think your second paragraph is saying that the author is intenting to say one thing, but throwing in other things that lit (or tv or film) critics can interpret in other ways, for the fun of having a secret language, and that authors and critics love that things mean two things at once.

I don't think it's as simple as having one meaning for the simple people who "speak the language normally" and another for the critics with their strange games. (I'm admittedly hyperbolating what you said a little.) For one thing, I think that people not schooled in critical theory are perfectly schooled in how to pick up on slashy and 'cesty subtext just by being literate in their culture--they might not take it to quite the extremes to which a member of fandom or a queer theorist might take it, but one doesn't need a Ph.D. in literary crit to see the Frodo/Sam relationship in LotR as somewhat homoerotic. Our culture (and here I'm not sure if I mean American culture or English-speaking culture) as a whole isn't really any less sex-obsessed than litcrit people, and so are just as likely to read sex into things where they might not in "Real Life."

It's not that there's a simple meaning (for normal folks) and a complicated meaning (for critics), because every meaning is complicated and tentative. The author isn't so much as trying to "say one thing" I think as they are trying to tell a story, and sometimes the author recognizes that their story will mean more than one thing at once, and sometimes they don't.

Outside of the prism of what the author wants you to take away, what does 'meant' mean?

Texts can "mean" independent of what the author intended them to mean. If I draw a chalk heart on your door to signify that I love you, and a gangster tells a hit man to burn down every house with a chalk heart on the door, then my chalk heart "means" that your house is going to be burnt down even though I didn't mean that. It's because the mark is being interpreted under reading conditions that I didn't anticipate. But when the hit man burns down your house, it's not that they're reading the mark incorrectly, because for them chalk heart = house gets burned down.

Am I at all getting warm?

I think you have the basic idea, yes. Am I making myself clear?

Re: Part II

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

I think so. I think you're saying: text, because it exists, has meaning to those who view it, even outside of what was intended by the author, because we come to it with baggage and will impose a meaning on it (which might or might not match the intent of the author). So, you can say "this means X" even outside of the author's meaning, because of the mere existance of the text.

Given that we live in a hypersexualized culture, we've privileged sexual meanings over other meanings, so it's possible, even likely, that a lot of people are going to read characters doing normal stuff or having a deep but platonic friendship (or family relationship) as a sexual relationship.

Re: Part II

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much it.

Re: Part II

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

Hallelujah

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I do think that sure, you can intrepret any scene any way. Two charcters can pass each other in the hallway and you can interpret it as anything from hate to indifferent to tru luv. Still, some situations are going to lean into one direction more than the other. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, of course you can still conclude that it's actually a goat, but most of the time the interpretation is going to go toward duck.

There is one situation that you can interpret a multitude of ways, still, sometimes 80% of those interpretations are going to be romantic and sometimes more like 20 or 2 percent.

I think the posts you quoted were specifically about relationships that were rather uniquely slashy in a way that it is hard to interpret it another way without going against canon, to the extent where random, non fandom people see them and identify them as romantic.

I have to admit, I do consider shipping a bit of a puzzle. No, not a puzzle with just one right answer. In fact, I'd compare it more to an open system of equations. Like: x + y = 100

There is an endless amount of ways to interpret the same thing, it can be (50,50), (80,20), (0, 100), (100, 0), (200, -100), (99.5, 0.5). Endless possibilities. But at the same time, the answer can not be (10,10) or (100, 5) because it would go against canon. Let's say we watch another episode, that gives us new information. Like x is not a prime number. Or y is positive. Still, you can fill it any way you want, as long as you don't actively negate any of the things that have been laid down. There might be certain tendencies (like, people are more likely to pick lower numbers rather than higher ones, even rather than odd, secret romance rather than secret hate interpretations).

Personally I think the charm is coming up with very creative and maybe unlikely interpretations that still fullfill the prompts. But ideally, they should still fullfill at least most of the prompts.

Of course, no fic can fullfill all parts of canon. For one, canon is rather frequently not completely consistent in itself. But still, I think that trying to hit for a high percentage of consistency with canon is a good thing. You can try to go for 80% in canon or 60%. Or 90%. You can pick a pairing that is 100% supported by canon and write both of them so grossly out of character that you still hit only 10%. You can pick a pairing that maybe even goes against what we have seen in canon but both characters are so amazingly in character that you still end with 90% canon consistency (and that's why good authors can make any UC pairing work).

Most canon is rather open to interpretations (more open than mathematical equations for example). It rarely nails down anything, but at the most excludes certain things. (for example X dates women, doesn't mean that X can't date as well; just means that writing "X doesn't show any interest in women" would go against canon) Not to mention people seem to think that some things laid out by canon are less valid or more worthy to be ignored (usually with references to hack writers).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm not just talking about the ways in which we can interprete a pairing as meaning anything we want. Sure, I can interprete the Simon/River relationship as being a metaphor about vegetables if I want to; nobody is going to stop me. But that'd be an idiosyncratic interpretation.

The 'cest interpretation of Simon/River is not an idiosyncratic one. I hold it, most of fandom holds it, and Joss holds it. (Which is not to say, let me make clear, that we think that Simon and River "are really" having sex, but that they produced an incestual vibe. There's a difference.) We're reacting to something real in the text.

I'm arguing that living in a hypersexualized culture as we do, the system of decipherment we use to read texts is such that seeing sex in every-day situations (like helping out with doing the dishes) isn't an idiosyncratic interpretation at all, and isn't an instance of fans utilizing their interpretative freedom to come up with a reading that is particularly subversive. It is them properly understanding how the system of signification is working in the text that they are viewing.

Personally I think the charm is coming up with very creative and maybe unlikely interpretations that still fullfill the prompts. But ideally, they should still fullfill at least most of the prompts.

This is great fun, and I do it all the time, but it's not the sort of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about when what we do as fanficcers is a response to something real in the text--to slashiness or 'cestiness. Indeed, what we do when we write fanfic is completely irrelevant to my argument, because I'm not talking about fic writing at all, but seeing slashiness and 'cestiness in texts.

Most canon is rather open to interpretations (more open than mathematical equations for example). It rarely nails down anything, but at the most excludes certain things. (for example X dates women, doesn't mean that X can't date as well; just means that writing "X doesn't show any interest in women" would go against canon) Not to mention people seem to think that some things laid out by canon are less valid or more worthy to be ignored (usually with references to hack writers).

But canon is made up of facts, and slashiness/shippiness/'cestiness is made up subtext, i.e. of resonances and associations, so I'm not 100% sure what the two have to do with each other. A relationship can be homoerotic (as I'm using the word here) without being homosexual. I'm not interested here in asking "Lady Macbeth" type questions like whether Frodo or Sam would doing it on the way to Mount Doom, or even whether they wanted to do it--as you say, then it's a question of how well it fits in canon. That's being concerned with "what really happened," which is a game we sometimes play as fans, treating the texts as if they described an actual world.

But asking whether Frodo and Sam are slashy together is a different question altogether, as I see it.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

The problem with subtext (to me) is that it is probably even more inconsistant than canon. It can be created by accident (most popular offender: bad acting). It can be totally different depending on which writer or director is at the helm that day. Subtext arcs might be changed radically when a new writer comes into power. Some writers are playful and might insert some sort of subtext in an almost joking manner in one episode (fe "X and Y are acting like a bickering old couple") and then go back to the status quo in the next. Or they might use a certain metapher or theme because it suits a certain episode, but it really exists only for this particular episode.

So to me subtext is even less reliable than canon. You can't go to me and tell me "Wait, in episode 1x09 they used the romantic music while Buffy was talking to Xander and therefore they were always romantic and all other relationships don't count (even though subtext was used in all their other outside relationships as well)". Sometimes subtext just doesn't mean anything in particular. And if writer intentions did matter, which I realize they usually don't, their intention behind a scene (with zooms and angles and all) is probably mostly to express that a relationship is supposed to be very deep or very special. How deep and how special (and whether special in the sexual way) is usually up to the viewer to decide.

And that is the problem. If the writer just includes vaguely grave scenes between a variety of characters who is gonna decide who the "deeper" one is? Like does the subtext between Simon/River, Simon/Mal or Mal/Inara matter more? Does the subtext even say anything about the characters?

I tend to think that the intentional subtext is eventually going to be followed up by actions. (for example in episode 1 X greets Y with "Hello matey" we deduce that they have an unusually tight relationship. In episode 55 we find out that X/Y actually had a stormy affair going on before the show started. Or subtext beween X/Y says that they have a very special relationship, which is later supported by Y saving X's life, X trusting Y over everybody else, X and Y sharing things with each other. If a relationship is supposed to be meaningful to character X's life then the other person will be around for various core scenes.) At least to me, tons of subtext, but bad and inconsistent canon doesn't make a good couple to ship. Again, especially since I'm aware that plenty of writers are very aware of subtext and throw it around randomly and without much care and understand (see: Smallville).

Don't get me wrong, I don't disapprove on slashing or cesting. Just the opposite. But Simon/River have a very special relationship, even if you were to just cite the facts to somebody who has never even seen the show.

Maybe we just aren't completely in tune on what canon facts are and what subtext is. X and Y shared this scene and it furthered their relationship is fact to me. At the same time you could argue that specifically X and Y were chosen to have that scene is an example of subtext. I think that major reactions of characters are facts (X is really worried then Y is gone). Others might claim it is subtext.

To me association and resonance (OMG, Clark looked sadly at Lana! How romantic. Or Clark yelled at Lex, how romantic!) is personal preference (based on independent personal experience) and not subtext.

Just like it is my personal preference that I find couples that are all based on subtext very dry. Don't get me wrong, I don't want or need every couple to get actively romantic on screen. But I would prefer them to have an actual (preferably special in some way, even if it is not in a romanctic way) relationship in canon.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Let me reiterate one point: analysis of subtext is not part of extrapolating from canon. When we are asking ourselves how many children had Lady Macbeth (so we can put it in a fanfic), subtext is irrelevant. Only facts count, so discussion of subtext would be completely foreign to the game which we are playing with the text.

The problem with subtext (to me) is that it is probably even more inconsistant than canon. It can be created by accident (most popular offender: bad acting).

Well, yeah, that's what makes it so interesting. Subtext enriches a text by creating ambiguity.

I'm not sure what it is that you are trying to get from subtext that you feel it has to be reliable. (Or even what it would mean to call subtext "reliable.") Sure, if canon isn't consistent, that gets annoying fast (X-Men movieverse, I'm looking at you). But why should subtext need to be?

And that is the problem. If the writer just includes vaguely grave scenes between a variety of characters who is gonna decide who the "deeper" one is? Like does the subtext between Simon/River, Simon/Mal or Mal/Inara matter more?

I'm afraid I don't get what you are trying to ask me here at all. I don't know what you mean by "deeper," nor why we should feel the need to decide who it is. And I'm not sure what you mean by the subtext "mattering more"--matter more for what? for whom?

Sorry.

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

Because I think we can all agree that their relationship is 'cesty as hell and, if you privelege authorial intent or use interviews when constructing the author-function, deliberately so.

Wow! Where can I see what you're referring to? Anywhere online? Did Joss intentionally make their relationship incest-ish?

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I tried to find some hard cites but unfortunately my google-fu failed me. But I am fairly certain that he has said that he sees the 'cest in the Simon/River relationships and that he likes it there. He may even have gone so far as to say he put it in there on purpose, but as I said, I can't find a cite. Sorry.

from metafandom

[my_daroga]

What a fantastic essay. I probably wouldn't have thought about it this much--my fandom activities tend away from the analytical at the moment--but your take is fascinating. Once a choice is made in the text--about setting, characters, gesture, costume, etc--it is open to interpretation, because it did not happen organically for real-world reasons. Authorial motivation must be questioned; a given scene's inclusion in a work with a discreet amount of time in which to communicate must be considered essential, and therefore subject to speculation outside the realm of "normal" behavior.

As someone who moved in with her cousin (as roommates) and was subjected to several months of being 'shipped by her friends--a ship which actually did happen and has lasted to this day--I must also attest to the possibilities (sometimes)=reality opinion, as well.

Re: from metafandom

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm glad my argument made sense to you!

[pervyficgirl.livejournal.com]

Hi. You don't know me, but I'm here via the first two journal entries about the "criteria" for slash is above. And I just wanted to say that I love you dearly. In a "yes, I absolutely agree" kind of way, not a creepy, weirdo stalker way.

I especially love this:
And when someone points out that hermeneutic I'm using to interrogate the fictional text isn't the same one I'd use to interrogate real life, I answer: whyever the hell should it be?

Because yes. My fandoms are sci-fi/fantasy and for me to read an essay about how I can/can't pick a slashy pairing if I wouldn't see them as slashy in the real world makes me scratch my head and/or roll my eyes.

But literary texts don't work that way. Lady Macbeth has a dozen children and no children at the same time.
*Exactly.* And, frankly, when speaking of slash, we're digging where there's technically nothing there at all in order to say, "Look what's here."

I just - this was really, really smart and I enjoyed reading it in so many ways. I felt like I did in college whenever we'd finally come across an intepretation that I agreed with, after reading so many that made me shake my head and say, "WTF?" I feel that I should possibly say something more *intelligent* on the matter, but I just wanted to say thank you for so accurately laying down what I feel. ;)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad I was able to communicate myself effecttively to you and that you enjoyed reading it.