On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Fiona Moore wrote:
Like you, I also object to people saying "you're wrong to view it that way," whatever that is. But thing is, and one reason why I may have been coming across rather anti-slash lately, is because I also don't like the "anything goes!" attitude which basically holds that one can read anything into the text, and it can't be contradicted because all interpretations are valid (I blame the extreme elements of the postmodernist movement myself, grumble grumble). People can interpret whatever they like, but to my mind there's some that fits the text, some that fits the text with a bit of stretching and straining, and some that doesn't fit the text at all, and these should all be acknowledged as such.
Basically, this is the difference between fanfic and litcrit. Fanfic is a creative exercise which takes the show as a starting point and then diverges in some direction or other from it. Litcrit is an attempt to find a sound critical interpretation of the text, where soundness depends on such things as consonance with the textual evidence, parsimony, coherence, and all that.
In fanfic, pretty much anything _does_ go. That's half the fun. In litcrit, however, one is far more constrained, and if an interpretation struggles to fit the text that's a mark against it.
For example, I've just written an essay for my political philosophy course on whether the position Machiavelli adopts in 'The Prince' is moral. Now, there's nothing in that book to prove that it wasn't inspired by the Doctor, when he chased the Master to ground in 15th century Florence. In fact, that might make a pretty fun story. However, I'm pretty confident that I would have got poor marks if I'd made that the basis of my essay. Instead, I made all sorts of (I think) reasonable arguments based closely on plausible readings of the text.
Similarly, slash is fine as fanfic. It's just pretty poor litcrit. When it's advanced as if it were litcrit -- when someone seriously proposes a physical relationship between Avon and Blake as an interpretation of the show -- then it's right to criticise that position. When it's done as a fun bit of fanfic, though, it should be allowed a good deal more latitude.
Iain