A Few Thoughts on Slash Fandom

(Note:  in particular today, I’m looking at non-canon slash ships borne out of canon friendships.  I know good/evil ships have a huge following too, but that’s not really my focus.)

The last time I rewatched The Lord of the Rings, I was indulging in my mild fanvid addiction on YouTube and found myself back at my usual challenge:  looking for videos about a friendship and mostly settling on romantic ones that were just ambiguous enough to read platonically if I squint.  When I’m looking for fanvids about a duo instead of a single person or a show/film as a whole, it’s a challenge I encounter often enough, but it does seem to crop up most tenaciously with male-male pairs in a canon friendship.  I’ve already found this with the likes of the Second Doctor-Jamie and Steve-Bucky – now it was time for the same with Frodo-Sam.

That got me thinking about the popularity of slash in fandoms.  From Sherlock-John to Harry-Ron (as well as female/female pairings like Kara-Lena,) they can easily be found pretty much anywhere.  I’ve never been too big into shipping non-canon couples in general, but I do understand the appeal in plenty of slash pairings.  I won’t get into the various threads that have been brought up in assorted thinkpieces – however, for me, on the most basic level, I get why there are fans who gravitate to the storytelling possibilities of slash.  First of all, while LGBTQ representation in movies and TV has been growing in recent years, it’s still pretty few and far between.  A given show is just as likely as not to have no same-sex pairings (and that’s even truer for movies,) and in the ones that do, the pool is limited and it might be tougher to find a couple that’s well-written and acted all around. 

(Even then, a lot of networks are leery about depicting LGBTQ affection – there can be a sense of a same-sex couples kisses being “rationed,” seeing them merely hug in emotional moments when other couples would kiss, and I still remember the stark contrast of the highly-explicit first season of Game of Thrones suddenly getting coy with Renly and Loras.  Paradoxically, a non-canon slash pairing may get to be more touchy-feely with one another onscreen than a same-sex couple in a canon relationship.)

What’s more, there’s a certain appeal in the complex nature of the friendships (or frenemy relationships, etc.) that often get slashed by fans.  Rather than trotting out the same coming-out romance narrative, hammering home the simplistic notion that this is a “gay romance” storyline, or just being relegated more to background status while the straight couples get the juicy drama, there’s great fodder for storytelling in a lot of these popular pairings.  I mean, look at Steve and Bucky, longtime friends and comrades in war who are separated for decades, one believing the other to be dead.  Both are pulled out of their own time and reunite unexpectedly on different sides, with Bucky having been mindwiped and brainwashed into oblivion.  Watching Steve fight for Bucky’s humanity is so compelling, and it’s arguably next to impossible to find a canon romance between two men that meaty and engrossing.  These are the types of stories that same-sex couples so rarely get to have, but they’re not as closed to straight couples, and slash fans can latch onto them for precisely that reason – someone could easily argue that, if Frodo had been a woman (or vice versa,) she and Sam would’ve most likely fell in love at some point in the trilogy.  Hell, to use the Steve-Bucky example above, Marvel’s TV branch basically did just that with Matt and Elektra in The Defenders!

But while I understand all that, I still don’t tend to ship those kinds of pairings myself.  There’s the rather simple reason that, if I like two characters’ relationship on a show, I usually like it for the relationship they have and don’t really want to see anything different (i.e., if I like two characters romantically and they’re not currently in a relationship, the show is probably intentionally sending will-they won’t-they vibes – and major ones at that, since my asexual butt doesn’t always recognize the subtler stuff.)  But more than that, I do feel like the popularity of slash can at times undervalue platonic friendship to an extent.  I get the argument – relationships like these in fiction are overdue, and if fans ship so many, it’s because they’re eager for at least one to become reality.  I understand, and I’m not out to ship-police anyone.  But when every pair of close male friends in particular garners a strong shipper following, it feels a bit to me like, because they’re close, they have to love each other romantically.  Like that’s the best and truest way for affection to exist, like it ought to be an inevitable conclusion to the care these two have for one another.

And that bums me out a little, because I love friendship.  I love that Steve risks everything for Bucky, that Two and Jamie have the time of their lives tooling around the universe together, that Kara and Lena make one another stronger and smarter when they lean on each other, that Sam goes to the end of the world with Frodo.  I love that, as shown onscreen, the bond between each is strong and important, no less so for not being romantic.  I think there’s so much value in friendship, and I appreciate when movies and television celebrate it.  I’m not saying there’s no room in fiction for the types of relationships that are popularly slashed, not at all.  Basically, I just want both, and I feel like that’s maybe the answer:  if shows and movies start offering more same-sex canon pairings that have the meat, emotion, and complexity that make fans gravitate toward non-canon slash ships, there might be more room be deep/intimate friendships to be enjoyed for what they are.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is fandom we’re talking about here – no matter what, there’s gonna be someone shipping every possible configuration known to man – but when slash fans are less starved for content, non-canon ships become less of a need and more a personal preference.  More varied depictions of human relationships, with strong writing and acting all around and sincere emotion, can only be a good thing, right?