From: Lisa Williams lcw@dallas.net
just that there *is* evidence from canon for the characters' sexual orientations, they're not just blank slates.
Sure; I have no quarrel with that -- but they're not writ in stone, either.
Exactly how *do* you regard canon, then? I tend to regard canon as a very fixed thing: it's 52 episodes, and we have to take it as read, and that includes mistakes and lamentable casting decisions, etc. If Blake reveals in the series that he is 34 at the time of "Breakdown", I may go away and write a story saying that he's 55 at the same time-- but it's not going to fit the canon, however good a story it is.
I also note that different people received different impressions, and the whole lot could cite canon (generally along the lines of "He did this, which could mean that") in their favor.
Not exactly. For instance the discussion about the scene in "Duel" where Blake and Avon cling to each other in an explosion and stay clung afterwards. Betty cited this as proof of homoeroticism, as they cling to each other for an unusually long time. "Gosh," thought I, "maybe she's right!" But then I went back and watched it, and found that there *was* a more obvious nonhomoerotic explanation (the danger of being hit again had not yet passed, as Jenna had not given the all-clear, and as soon as the all-clear was given Blake and Avon sprang apart). Just because you can cite canon for something doesn't mean the citation can withstand argument.
Only the "he did this" is canon.
Yes. But within that canon there is a definite visual grammar for showing sexual interest, which can be both inferred from scenes in which the dialogue says that sexual interest is meant to be shown and extrapolated from there onto other scenes without such dialogue (but in which there is a possibility of sexual interest). In the end, a lot of it came down to looking at instances in which this grammar is employed by the principals-- and the canonical "he did this" of showing sexual interest cropped up in a lot of opposite-sex cases but no same-sex ones for the principals.
What it means is personal interpretation.
Um, no. It means visual, onscreen evidence for sexual interest, and when it is shown and when it is not shown.
There are people who can see possibilities for pairings (het or slash) which I find totally unbelievable, and those who can't see the ones that I'm willing to accept.
"Possibility" and that other word you use, "potential," is a lot different from "canon." You could, for instance, say to me "it is entirely possible, Fiona, that you were born in Madagascar." "Rubbish," I would say, producing my birth certificate. "I was born in Toronto." "Ah," you would say, "but it's still *possible* that you were born in Madagascar, but your parents falsified your birth certificate." I'd be forced to admit the possibility (although why my parents would do a complicated thing like that is puzzling), but on the Occam's Razor front I'd probably take the balance of evidence as being for my being born in Toronto.
Or, to get back to the slash front: as I said, yes, the slash interpretation can be made, has been made and will be made-- but retconning it back onto our screens is something else entirely.
When I see slash potential for a particular pair, it isn't something I'm inventing out of whole cloth and imposing on an unyielding framework,
No, but you're reacting to the canon as given within a particular way. There's a very interesting passage in Bacon-Smith where she describes an older fan introducing a new one to a TV series, with OF talking to NF, telling her how to interpret what's on the screen. Somebody else yesterday made the point about how reading a slash story changes how you view them afterwards, within the series as well as in fanfic. When people make an interpretation, they are doing it within a particular cultural framework, and according to the input they receive from other fans. If you made a slash reading, and your friends in fandom said "that's ridiculous" (as happens in DW fandom from time to time) you might find yourself rethinking it. We don't make our interpretations in a vacuum.
If I see it, it's because it's blatantly obvious to me, not because I'm making an effort to twist things.
Never said you were, but I'm also saying, 1) there is canon, and 2) that your interpretation is made within a particular social context.
There are cases where I can
*intellectually* understand how other people are arriving at a slash interpretation, but I just don't *feel* it myself and hence don't find it believable -- and there are cases where it leaps up and hits me right in the face. Nor can I tell you exactly why, barring a few conditions I've managed to figure out. Either I see it, or I don't. I don't expect other people to regard things the same way I do, but I do expect them to realize that these are *fictional* characters and open to *multiple*
But once again, as with the discussion earlier this month, it's all coming down to "feelings" and "notions." If you'd like to play the game with me, you yourself can try and come up with a hard-evidence example of same-sex sexual interest by one of the principal characters on B7.
interpretations, no single one of which is the One True Way.
And it's entirely possible that my parents are ex-KGB agents who have been working for thirty-odd years to destroy any evidence that they were on Madagascar in the early seventies. But I'm inclined to doubt it.
But to get totally off the slash topic, I've never liked the whole "there is no One True Way" phrase, I have to say. If the Allies, standing in liberated Belsen, had said "sure, the Germans killed off between six and ten million civillians in concentration camps, but it was entirely justified within their ideology, and because There Is No One True Way, we'll just let them get back to it," the world would be one denazification programme poorer. Or, would you say "[name of list member deleted] has just said some very offensive things about [name of other list member deleted] and made her very, very upset, but she doesn't have to apologise because There Is No One True Way?" IMO Do What Thou Wilt is *not* The Whole Of The Law, and some actions are more justifiable than others.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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