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

[cocombat.livejournal.com]

The feasibility of the Incest dynamic in supernatural:

Especially since Sam is a few years younger than Dean, and that age difference would be quite significant for kids and teenagers, even if they were forced by circumstances to spend a lot of time with each other rather than friends or age mates. If they were just a year apart I could maybe see them fooling around with each other as kids and experimenting with each other more easily, seeing how removed they could have been from peers, and then I could maybe see the incest more easily between them as adults as well, I don't know.

Er,
I could summarise it as, I can see this. Or rather, I can see it really easily, because I've seen something really similar.
Warning: don't read the following if you think the explanation might freak you out (ie real life incest).


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I actually know a couple of brother who are 3-4 years apart, weren't able to hang out with other kids outside school, so tended to spend all their time hanging out together, and - yeah. Incest. As soon as the older one figured out how to masturbate (11ish?), he immediately showed his younger brother, 'cause it was neat, right? And so to mutual masturbation, and then actual sex. At that age, the older one knew it was kinda wrong, but hadn't quite figured out how wrong, i.e. he thought it was about on par with doing it with guys, which he'd then been told wasn't *really* that bad. Anyway, by the time they were really old enough to figure out it *was* actually 'wrong', it seems it was something of a habit, and a way of getting off, and continued for about a decade. It was of course still fucked up, and towards the end, as the younger one would only fuck the older one, saying it was because the older one was 'gay' (he's actually bi, and heavily more interested in girls), and the younger one especially, seems more guilty or repressed about it.
Other than/despite that, they're highly competitive, fairly similar, but still seem to get on ok and value each other's opinions.
*Shrug*

I can definately see many of the same events/dynamic with Sam/Dean, except that in most of the fanon, Dean is *very* much Sam's protector, which to me, would vastly increase the guilt and decrease the likelyhood of Dean letting anything like that happen, even if it did happen once, he'd probably feel too bad about it to continue. On the show conversely, they actually seem to relate on a more equal level.
Personally, that's why I see more of the fic having Sammy start it, because they see it as more wrong if Dean were to 'take advantage' of Sammy, and against his role of protector.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I notice that in a lot of incest fic that the big stepping stone is less "We can't do that because we are related", but "I can't do that with you because I'm supposed to protect you." from the older brother to the younger.

Which is why it's quite frequent to portray the younger brother one as the one who seduces/initiates. In Sam/Dean that is actually slightly watered down/not that one note because Dean comes across as fairly playful or open minded.

Not to mention that Dean comes across like he is still defering a lot of the "protector" responsibility, at least theoretically, to the father, even if he's absent. In Dean's mind the father is still the boss of them. Which means that in his mind the power imbalance might not be as big.

Though I'm guessing that the problem of this discussion with ratcreature is that she's asking "Why?" and we are mainly giving reasons for "Why not?" (at least characterisation-wise. Outside of that the main arguments are "Because we can." and "Because they are pretty.").