about Supernatural fanfic...

[ratcreature]

I'm not feeling particularly fannish about Supernatural, but I have watched most episodes, thus while I was bored I looked around for Supernatural fanfic to read. I was mostly interested in gen, and while of course I knew that there's Sam/Dean slash I was actually surprised how common it is, from my first impressions even more widespread than gen (though I could be wrong about that). And I just don't get it. Personally I just have a hard time seeing Sam/Dean slash.

It's not that I'm particularly squicked by sibling incest, but the story has to somehow work harder to make that kind of thing work than other pairings. Not only because it has to make me buy that they would act on a sexual attraction despite incest taboos, that is similar in a way to other "relationship obstacles" in romance stories, but because it has to make me buy that there would be attraction in the first place. With most pairings I can buy that the author simply has a character feel attraction, inappropriate or not, and then the story goes from there, but for me (and I suspect most people) thinking about close family members with whom you grew up with, like your own siblings or parents and sex together is, well, sort of icky. Not just incestuous sex, but even the fact that your sibling or parent has sex with anyone, that's the kind of thing you don't want to contemplate in much detail. At least I don't, and I suspect I'm not alone in that.

I tried reading a couple of Sam/Dean stories, but they seemed to be much like regular slash in the way that it assumes that the reader buys the possibility for attraction between the guys in the first place. I don't quite get what makes this plausible for Sam/Dean shippers just from watching the series, and yet it seems very common. Which leaves me puzzled. I looked whether there was an essay on this pairing at ship_manifesto to provide me with some insight, but there doesn't seem to be one yet. So does anyone know of any Supernatural meta that would explain to me where the Sam/Dean shippers are coming from?

Comments

[ratcreature]

I tend to think fandom would be a happier place, in general, if more people's first response to bizarre-to-them 'shippy behavior is to go to ship_manifesto

Yeah, absolutely. In my mind posting how one doesn't get a ship or something like that without first trying to find meta about it in the well-known multi-fandom / fandom-pimping places at least is kind of like inviting a "read the fucking manual" response, you know? It's not like I do indepth research or anything before posting about a corner of fandom I'm not familiar with, but more like first trying to find the FAQs and such, because who wants to be the obnoxious newbie who posts the umpteenth fic search request to the fiction only list? *g*

Your point about the decline of the "buddies" concept on tv, and how it's replaced with brothers is interesting. I can see brothercest as a meta response to that, but meta and production explanations don't tend to extend well for me when I'm trying to understand the source internally. Even with obvious production constraints or continuity errors when they just missed something, I'm always happier to find an explanation (even a convoluted one) that works fully on the fictional level.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

Even with obvious production constraints or continuity errors when they just missed something, I'm always happier to find an explanation (even a convoluted one) that works fully on the fictional level.

*nods* I hear that.