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

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Way back when I posted asking much the same WTF question about Numb3rs (where I fell in love with Larry/Charlie (who are definitely buddies) only to discover the fandom was incest-happy and thought it was just strange to pair Charlie up with a man older than him who wasn't his brother), I also noticed that canonical trend toward brother shows.

And it makes sense as the line in buddy shows has long been, "He loved him like a brother" (with the fraternal-like quality of the relationship invoked to protect it from a reading of the guys as gay). I remember when we got that line on Hercules, and how I laughed and laughed, because in the stories, they were actually cousins.

On Supernatural, having people think they're gay becomes just another attempt at defusing the reading, but it doesn't work, in the end, because slashers don't care.

Though I think it does work for the general audience, who've long enjoyed the homosocial charge of buddy shows but who had, over the years, as actual gay men have started to appear on TV, perhaps grown a bit uncomfortable with the way that it looked queer.

I guess for me, the problem is still that, at least from a political and psychological standpoint, an incestuous relationship is the socially isolating relationship, and unhealthy because of that, even setting aside issues of power and the potential for coercion and exploitation that come with mixing roles. Whereas we could always assume that Starsky or Hutch (or the pair of them) could find a sympathetic someone with whom to talk about the relationship (even Huggy was that, in some stories), and we knew that there was a community "out" there, to support them if they wanted that, with incest? None of that is really the case.

And for me, that pretty much trumps everything. Though on The Professionals, there was that joke about them being a mobile ghetto, there was always Cowley, and there was always the larger society in which they lived.

But a relationship where you can't talk about it with anyone in your life, at all? And one where there is such a potential for fucked-up-edness? That doesn't strike me as at all sexy, and I don't care how hot the guys are.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I had a conversation like this about one of my favorite pairings over in DC toonverse not that long ago. Where, after explaining to petronelle that perhaps the biggest reason I wound up shipping Clark and Tim was because they were extremely emotionally isolated from the rest of their worlds in some interesting ways. (Not ALONE TOGETHER OMG, but, well, emotionally unsupported -- by the other people in their lives -- in some crucial ways, with no real way to go about getting that support) In any way, because of who they were, a sexual relationship would -- you guessed it -- isolate them even more, until they were basically feeding on each other in between bouts of validating the other's existence.

Petra's entirely rational response: "GYAAAAAAAAAAH."
Te: "I know, but..."

And, see, that's the thing. It is horrifying. It's *not* sexy in and of itself -- unless you're kind of more of a pervert than usual (though not more of a pervert than me) -- but, well, it isn't supposed to be. (At least, not the way I try to write it.)

What's *supposed* to be sexy/gratifying/mmm-mmm-good? Are, well, the good parts. The relationship may be a staggeringly bad idea, but the alternative -- for those characters, at least -- is even worse. They do, in fact, suffer more in some ways by being in the relationship. It's just that they suffer much, much less in others.

For me, the appeal is in the... hmm. The triumph of an imperfect solution. It's not a relationship for healthy people, because healthy people understand they have options. It can *only* appeal to people who are at least a little sick in the head -- and who plan to stay that way forever and/or don't understand why they might not *want* to stay that way forever.

That said, there's still a cognitive leap of 'why' to be made which is a lot *easier* to make when the characters are particularly (and fascinatingly) fucked-up versions of Superman and Robin than it is if the characters are people who you *can't* see as being fundamentally attracted to each other and able to overcome the crushing societal taboos against the codependent wrong of the relationship for the sake of *not being alone*.

If you can, though... *shrug* The only job left -- if you're also a writer -- is sharing how that works in your head, as much as you can, with the readers.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

The relationship may be a staggeringly bad idea, but the alternative -- for those characters, at least -- is even worse....The triumph of an imperfect solution. It's not a relationship for healthy people, because healthy people understand they have options. It can *only* appeal to people who are at least a little sick in the head -- and who plan to stay that way forever and/or don't understand why they might not *want* to stay that way forever.


Yes, okay--thank you for putting into words what I wanted to say, long ago!

I remember being very into Mulder/Krycek back in the day (and wasn't that just a healthy relationship? *g*), and it made sense to me because they were both so messed up (esp. Mulder, I think) that I couldn't really believe they were in any state to choose a healthier relationship, even should one present itself. As for isolation, it wasn't just the physical (though Mulder's being consigned to the basement was suggestive of that) but also that Mulder's job and beliefs isolated him, even from Scully. Supernatural, like Buffy has a setup in which the weirdness suspends all the ordinary rules of healthy relationships, setting the people who "know" apart from those who don't.

But with Numb3rs, I absolutely don't believe either of those criteria (isolation, fucked-up-edness) are met, outside of fanon. And when writers write him that way, it always feels like a wank-job, a angst-wallow (which can be fun) that has to sort of ignore all the healthy things we see Charlie engaged in.

Sure, his mom's dead, and he's still mourning her, and figuring out how to mourn her, but he's also holding down a remarkably conventional job where being socially and emotionally available makes you better at it, and he's supposed to be a good teacher, not someone who spends all his time alone in his library cubicle.

And he has emotional support, in his father (who is also mourning, albeit a bit differently). And, even more important, outside of his relationship with his brother, he spends most of his day in an apparently very warm, healthy, friendly, fun relationship with a colleague and friend, with whom he does ordinary geeky things like build robots that pull cars. In fact, as much as his intellect may set him apart from the masses of people outside the university, he's not the only genius for miles, nor the only mathematician. He belongs to clubs and goes to conferences and hangs out playing scrabble with Dad and flirts with his mentee. And the guy with whom Charlie's slashed--his brother--isn't even someone he's forced to spend time with, or trapped with. There are options and he takes them. So....

In Supernatural we see 2 men in a car completely, utterly

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<i>The relationship may be a staggeringly bad idea, but the alternative -- for those characters, at least -- is even worse....The triumph of an imperfect solution. It's not a relationship for healthy people, because healthy people understand they have options. It can *only* appeal to people who are at least a little sick in the head -- and who plan to stay that way forever and/or don't understand why they might not *want* to stay that way forever.
</i>

Yes, okay--thank you for putting into words what I wanted to say, long ago!

I remember being very into Mulder/Krycek back in the day (and wasn't <i>that</i> just a healthy relationship? *g*), and it made sense to me because they were both so messed up (esp. Mulder, I think) that I couldn't really believe they were in any state to choose a <i>healthier</i> relationship, even should one present itself. As for isolation, it wasn't just the physical (though Mulder's being consigned to the basement was suggestive of that) but also that Mulder's job and beliefs isolated him, even from Scully. <i>Supernatural</i>, like <i>Buffy</i> has a setup in which the weirdness suspends all the ordinary rules of healthy relationships, setting the people who "know" apart from those who don't.

But with <i>Numb3rs</i>, I absolutely don't believe either of those criteria (isolation, fucked-up-edness) are met, outside of fanon. And when writers write him that way, it always feels like a wank-job, a angst-wallow (which can be fun) that has to sort of ignore all the healthy things we see Charlie engaged in.

Sure, his mom's dead, and he's still mourning her, and figuring out <i>how</i> to mourn her, but he's also holding down a remarkably conventional job where being socially and emotionally available makes you better at it, and he's supposed to be a <i>good</i> teacher, not someone who spends all his time alone in his library cubicle.

And he has emotional support, in his father (who is also mourning, albeit a bit differently). And, even more important, outside of his relationship with his brother, he spends most of his day in an apparently very warm, healthy, friendly, fun relationship with a colleague and friend, with whom he does ordinary geeky things like build robots that pull cars. In fact, as much as his intellect may set him apart from the masses of people outside the university, he's not the only genius for miles, nor the only mathematician. He belongs to clubs and goes to conferences and hangs out playing scrabble with Dad and flirts with his mentee. And the guy with whom Charlie's slashed--his brother--isn't even someone he's forced to spend time with, or trapped with. There are options and he <i>takes</i> them. So....

In <i>Supernatural</i> we see 2 men in a car completely, utterly <alone</i> (with each other). Sam and Dean have conviently had all family members die off or disappear, including the pesky girlfriend. And they have (strangely, considering that Sam is a seemingly sane person who got a college degree) no friends outside of each other.

And in taking to the road, they're choosing to further isolate themselves, so that any relationships they form with people they encounter are bound to be short-lived. Again, not healthy, but it does make for a more convincing incest setup in those terms. Though I still think that Sam, having *had* a successful relationship with a girlfriend, and having gotten a college degree, seems a bit too emotionally stable and, well, <i>normal</i>. He's just not Batman, y'know? I can't quite see him being as <i>resigned</i> to the "It's just you and me forever" thing, as Dean seems to be. Dean, I think, wants to be <i>Batman</i> (or James Dean, with little brother as his Sal.)

[ratcreature]

And they have (strangely, considering that Sam is a seemingly sane person who got a college degree) no friends outside of each other.

Well, Sam has friends who ask after him and with whom he stays in contact via email and such, we see this in the episode with the Shapeshifter, where he ends up helping one of his friends who was falsely arrested because that shapeshifter thing murdered his girlfriend wearing his face. Dean doesn't want to go just to help Sam's friend, because initially it's not clear that it's a supernatural thing, but Sam insists. So he tries to keep in contact with his friends, he just kind of edits "monster hunting" to "roadtrip with my brother" when he talks about what he's doing.

I agree with you on the incest fic in Numb3rs though. In Numb3rs I have an even harder time to buy brothercest than in Supernatural. I mean, they really don't come across as a dysfunctional family to me. And well, their lives are just quite normal too, and not in the creepy horror film way, where beneath the normal lurk all kinds of things either.