gender and sexuality in three SGA stories

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I'm really interested in the way fanfiction uses, changes, and inverts tropes that are readily available in popular culture as well as the ones fanfic itself has created. I've argued elsewhere about fanfiction being repetition with a difference¹, and looking at narrative tropes offers one way to instantiate both the repetition (in the way tropes repeat basic plot structures, archetypal characteristics etc.) and the difference (in the way every story fleshes out the trope but even more so in the way the trope gets altered and shifts in a given story but also over time).

One trope I'm particularly interested in is WNGWJLEO (We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other), which to me is the archetrope of old skool slash (i.e., I'd argue that the underlying structure is one that can be found in a large number if not the majority of traditional slash narratives even if the trope itself is not actually visible). I've recently talked at length about WNG and the way I think the underlying motivations have been updated to rid the trope of much of its homophobic sentiments (though I'd maintain that even as some of the stories were indeed violently homophobic, the trope itself never has been as I read it).

Three stories that came out recently illustrate to me the way in which this trope does and does not function. In the following, I want to look at thingwithwings's always should be someone you really love and then briefly at trinityofone's You're Pretty Good Looking for a Girl and toomuchplor's Straight As a Circle. The reason these three stories struck me as interesting (beyond all three being meaty, well written, longish McShep romances :) is the way they ultimately are *not* what I'd expect them to be given a brief plot summary, and each one uses versions of WNG to challenge and subvert the trope in interesting ways.


Always Should Be as inverted WNG
always should be someone you really love (ASB) not only announces its WNG thematic in the title (the emphasis on love as the driving and overwhelming feature is something that I consider central to WNG), it actually, literally, employs WNG in its plot, i.e., John and Rodney are straight, get genderswitched, start having sex as women with one another, get switched back and, after a time, realize that they do want to continue/return to being involved with one another. On the surface, this evokes the basic WNG premise: two seemingly straight guys realize for one reason or other their deep and abiding love for one another and decide to express that love physically even though they were not/are not/still do not consider themselves to be "gay." It plays with some of the common WNG subtropes, i.e., the virgin to sex/gay sex/penetration, and does so twice over as both John and Rodney are literally virgins in their female bodies and (to gay sex) in their male bodies.

community belonging vs individual transcending love
And yet ASB is exactly the opposite of WNG. WNG is built on the overwhelming force of individual attraction/love overcoming societal/cultural expectations and constraints (and here I'd also include stories where the lovers defy external prohibitions for the lover that they previously had obeyed, i.e., John knowing he was gay all along but only for Rodney deciding to risk DADT or Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon defying the Jedi prohibition against overly deep emotional involvement or Bodie and Doyle risking being torn apart as partners because their love is stronger than their responsibility to CI5,...). ASB, on the other hand, is less about individual love than about community and finding one's own, one's tribe, people like oneself. This is what ASB is for me as John and Rodney do not overcome their "wrong" bodies for their deep love as much as they actually retain their desires for long sections of the story. In a way, then, it is the story's focus on bodies that makes it so very queer. In terms of WNG the problem for me here is that there's little emphasis as to why John desired Rodney specifically and their love is incredibly bound to the bodies they actually inhabit and have sex with rather than being a love that transcends (and thus, in a way, ignores) bodies and orientations. Of course, many slash stories use external situations (AMTDI, drugs, bonded) as a means to make the OTP realize that their strong affection is something more indeed. But I would contend that the emphasis is less on becoming aware of the other as potential mate as it is about both of them sharing an experience. The emphasis throughout is on the way they themselves are changing rather than the way their relationship is (i.e., much of the internal growth and increased awareness is about themselves rather than their responses to the other).

"Two men can defy the world."²
This reading is clearly the most contentious part of my argument. trobadora read a first draft and commented how she read the story as a fusion of the fuckbuddies and WNG trope - the "against our normal orientation" part of WNG with the "coming together through sex" part of the fuckbuddies trope. She suggests that the shared experience changesand sexualizes their relationship but that it is not the *basis* for it. I'd argue that given the fact that fan fiction tends to foreground and emphasize the friendship, that we tend to accept the OTP as clearly meant to be together, ASB seems to work *against* that easy acceptance. Clearly community is not all there is; they are close friends and everything that always seems sufficient to make me accept that they fall into bed together in any other slash story. The fact that there is no discussion of their changed sexual object choice yet a lot of discussion of their shared experiences makes me read this story against a more typical slash reading. Finally, the fact that's it's only two of them seems sufficient to me to argue for a community reading--because two men *can* defy the world :)

loving (as) women
At the beginning of the story, when John and Rodney become women, they retain their male identity and female object choice. In fact, during their first sexual encounter, John says you are really gorgeous as a woman and Rodney responds You’re completely my type. Sex initially is described very much in terms of having sex *with* a woman, though their experiences clearly queer them in interesting ways. As they masturbate their female bodies they become both subject and object. This is hinted at in the very beginning when John describes his ambiguous feelings in regards to his new body: He can’t tell anyone, not even McKay, how much he loves this, this body all new for him, beautiful and unworn. But he’d been almost glad of that; it stays his secret, delicious and perverse. And as they move towards fucking, they seem to fully accept their sexuality as becoming something that's not binary any more, i.e., whereas before they seem to primarily have sex *with* a woman, they're now fully having sex *as* a woman. So when John fantasizes about having a cock to fuck Rodney, Rodney agrees with him I mean, what the hell, this body seems to like having, uh. God. Having things inside ii, thus accepting the cognitive dissonance in both of them between their physical and intellectual desires. [Or, to reference Wittig,³ they define themselves as lesbians, and thus, in a way, as *not* woman--though, of course, neither are they not *not* woman :)] What the story does then, is mix and merge and twist sexual identity and sexual object choice; but any sense of straight or gay requires a certain stability in both. Neither John nor Rodney have that and their sense of identity as sexual beings is constantly changed as they remain in their female bodies and as they begin having sex with one another. Whereas the beginning is them noticing one another as attractive females (thus retaining their initial straight object choice), their own bodies clearly make their sexual encounters "gay," but it is the awareness of their bodies as these multi-erogenous zones that can give and receive various forms of pleasure that complicates any clear position for identity or desire at the end of their tenure as women. In fact their discovery of their own "polymorphous perverse sexuality,"⁴ functions as a mirror, disrupting the genital obsession binary as their changed genders disrupt traditional gender binaries: the acceptance of the spectrum of gender identity is doubled in the spectrum of the bodies as sexual zones in toto.

no return
So we have the very queer male lesbians and then they get their bodies back. And it is the second violation, the second shift that moves both of them completely into territory where noone can connect with them fully, where they only have one another to relate to. They have been both male and female, have had desires and experiences as both male and female, and the disconnect (a little heavyhandedly symbolized via the vertigo that follows the identical phrasing of both changes) is repeted in the second switch, which suggests that they're not just back in their bodies without having been affected. John's masturbation scene was quite problematic for me at first. I read his trying to fuck himself and not enjoying it as a weird way to bring in that deep Rodneysexualness that WNG sometimes implies (a reading that the rest of the story didn't support, however). thingswithwings suggests that the reason he couldn't enjoy it was that he tried to replicate the penetration and enjoyment of his *female* body: I'd say that it's more about the melancholia, the feeling of loss. No one who puts a dildo in their ass and wants it to feel like vaginal intercourse is going to enjoy it. And John is still in that place where he's getting used to his male body again [source].⁵ This would further suggest that his change created an identity that could never fully return to only male but would always retain an aspect of female desire. So if he was trying to have sex as a female getting fucked, trying to recapture what he'd lost, he couldn't enjoy his male body and ass but instead was trying to regain the feelings and sense of self he'd gained as female, was experienced his loss of his vagina. The fact that he'd want that penetration as female is a wonderful way of showing how much he'd already changed, how much his identity and sexuality already had changed.

doubled bodies
When they finally get back together, their doubled identities and desires get represented in the overlaid image: John is overwhelmed by double-vision: Rodney’s strong masculine jaw shadowed by the gentler curve it’d held two weeks ago, his broad, furry chest reminding John of his beautiful soft breasts.. So rather than the very detailed focus we had when they were loving each other's female bodies, we're getting a mix of the body and the person being desired, the doubling of their sexual identities both in themselves and their lovers. Looking at the sex scenes and the conversations between the two, I read their connection less about the deep transcending love of WNG as about multitudes of desire, about the coming to terms with sexual bodies being multiple and a polymorphous perverse desire where all parts of the body become erogenous zones. I'd like to think that that's what they learned as women--the story very much emphasizes breasts and other non genital parts of the bodies they touch and inhabit. So, if they as men suddenly realize the entire body as a canvas of potential desire then their male bodies, suddenly rediscovered as they're as alien as their recent female bodies have been, can become a more plural playing ground. The author in comments describes John and Rodney as "fairly uncritical middle-aged heterosexual men ho think in terms of gay/straight, at least for most of the story" [source] ; nevertheless, both have already understood in their behavior much more than they could possibly articulate. So they may *think* that they're not gay but just love each other, but we see a different story. Just before they get back together, for example, John smells Rodney's familiar smell, thus suggesting that his senses are way ahead of him in terms of what he does or doesn't want: It’s heartbreakingly familiar: Rodney’s smell, and his blue eyes, and his warm body against John’s.. It is the emphasis on familiarity that most suggests a reading that foregrounds their love, the sense that Rodney and John are still the same underneath their bodies, but most of the body descriptions to me suggest that in this story they *are* their bodies, that it is exactly the vertigo and doubledness that brings and keeps them together.

alien queer radical gender terrorists and tarin
One of the most enjoyable meta aspects of the text is the way the author doubles herself into the text: clearly she violates John's and Rodney's genders in writing the story, thus becoming the alien queer radical gender terrorist she creates. Moreover, she offers an ever so brief history of queer life and the importance of community in the figure of Tarin as heyiya observes, I want to know Tarin's life story; he's such an interesting, enigmatic character, and I hope I'm not wrong in seeing a nod to all the lonely passing/ftm/butch stories of lesbian literature [source]. It is in the figure of Tarin and hir loneliness that we can see the community of two that John and Rodney have created. After all, much of John and Rodney's initial relation is about finding someone who understands (and it's telling that they go to one another rather than the women they know, that they help each other through their first menses rather than asking Teyla etc.), who shares this unstable and complicated sense of self.⁶ So to me, Rodney and John deciding to become lovers after the second genderswitch is as much about being with the one person who is both male and female and who understand being both male and female as much as it is about some imaginary "love" that they've discovered when sleeping together. (And, of course, the question then becomes what "love" actually is, with love getting constructed somewhere between desire and identity and community and that nebulous thing we call attraction :)

physicality: metaphor or not?
Likewise, ASB's excessive emphasis on physicality in and for itself is in direct rejection of one of the more typical WNG aspects: WNG, after all, foregrounds the emotional intimacy and transcending/transcendent love over physical embodiments. The reason the partners may not consider themselves "gay" is often expressed in their realization that they are not attracted to other guys or, at least, that they wouldn't be willing to defy whatever rules or norms they're defying were it not for the love of the other. I'd suggest that a crossover trope of WNG is the way sex and physicality per se mark intense relations in their intellectual and emotional intimacy [and I say crossover, because even though most WNG employs it, I'd argue it's even more pervasive, b/c a lot of fuck buddies falling in love also uses it, where we begin with (possibly even anonymous) sex and make our way to the emotional intimacy, where the sex begins as just sex and then morphs into something altogether different, i.e., the *quality* of the sex functions as metaphor]. Interestingly, it's not even only sex which figures utterly central and carries much of the metaphoric weight but simple physicality that stands in for other things.⁷ ASB does not follow that pattern. Its physical focus (and there's plenty) rarely ever function metaphorically (i.e., John contemplating Rodney's breast as a symbol of his growing love for him) but tends to be very much *about* the bodies (and female ones at that :). There's no transcending awareness and *knowing* the partner's desires before/better than the partner does but instead experimenting and curiosity and a fair share of just plain desire in/of the female body. The sex scenes are erotic and sexy but they stand in for themselves rather than their growing love. In fact, the final scene we have is of the non-erect penis, which works nicely as a a deemphasis of the phallus as the center stage of their identities and desires, as the primary means of pleasure. If their female desires are multiple and not as genitally focused, then their doublegendered/multigendered new identities and desires should exceed the phallus as well.

noone's gay as genderqueer utopia?
So, if there is any way to read the story as WNG, I'd suggest it's rather a version of NIGWAJLEO (Noone Is Gay; We all Just Love Each Other), which, of course, is one underlying aspect of WNG, i.e., the ideal that we (should?) love people and not the bodies in which they come. Read like that, the trope does posit a near utopian space that could maybe be read as very genderqueer, i.e., where the individual rather than the sex is loved. In that sense, the story is doing that, though it's not something specific to Rodney and John's love but it is very specific to Rodney and John's particular experiences. In that reading, the ancient device that forces every ancient to experience both genders might have created a society of intersexed/multisexed/multidesiring subjects, but in the story, only Rodney and John have had that experience and that sense of understanding, of belonging, is a strong aspect of searching one another out, of their love!



You're Pretty Good Looking and the vicissitudes of bodies
"You're Pretty Good Looking for a Girl" presents us with another double gender swap, this time Laura Cadman and Rodney get stuck in different bodies. The most interesting response to me is Cadman's who seems to adjust to the change with a certain ease not exhibited by Rodney: She had no problem with it: her movements were easy—had been, from almost the beginning. This could simply be the author's focus on Rodney as point of view character, but I'd suggest that Cadman might simply be more genderqueer, more at ease with her male side even before the switch. She's an explosion expert in the Marines, a predominatly male area in a fairly male field. Unlike Rodney who's invested in his masculinity and mourns it, Cadman adjusts more easily (which also might suggest that changing "up the social ladder"'s easier than down?). Rodney's concerns are both the different (i.e., female) body as well as his apparently biological responses to John: He was aware of Sheppard—or rather, he told himself frantically, this body was aware of him. So in the figure of Rodney we see an emphasis on biological determination as he suddenly seems to find John attractive in ways he previously didn't (or didn't let himself acknowledge?). Sadly, once John and Rodney get together, we see less of Rodney's issues about having sex with a man than we see about John, whose identity and orientation issues are central to the last parts of the story.

We're Not Straight and John's queer identity politics
In the discussion to the story cesperanza coined the term We're Not Straight, We Just Love Each Other (WNSWJLEO) to describe the moment where John decides to be with Rodney even though Rodney's gender is not John's preferred one (i.e., Rodney's female and John gay) and in the way bodies and their centrality are configured in the story: conventionally, bodies both do and don't matter in the characters' worlds--WNGWJLEO insisting that the characters, while straight, love each other enough to "get over" and "come to love" the "wrongly gendered body"--just as you did here, which is why it's a WNSWJLEO; but on the other hand, the bodies in slash matter very much to the largely female audience who is frequently drooling and noting the [actor/characters] bodies in obsessive detail [source]. Just like in traditional WNG, Trin's characters love one another so deeply that genders and physical embodiments become secondary to physically expressing this deep love. In fact, the emphasis is on what's really inside that body, separating body fro identity in certain ways: Sheppard stared at him, into him, like he was searching for the last remaining spark of light at the center of a black hole; Rodney didn't break the gaze as with a sigh he stepped forward into the palm Sheppard instinctively uncurled, cupping it gently around Rodney's breast. "This is me." Moreover, one could argue the story's even more complicated insofar as John's hesitancy to sleep with Rodney as girl is as much grounded in politics and community as it is in John's same sex desire: [Rodney] closed his eyes. "It wouldn't mean..." He opened them again; he had to look, had to see Sheppard's face. "Wanting me, like this—it wouldn't mean giving into your father, or society, or...or The Man. It would just mean..." He shrugged, helplessly, giving up. "It would mean whatever you want it to mean.". His gayness and ultimate willingness to have "straight" sex thus is already complicated as not only being about biological desires but also about community allegiances. Meanwhile, however, Rodney's not-gay narrative (i.e., the fact that at the beginning of the story he self-identifies as straight yet in a woman's body desires another man) ends up getting oddly elided in a mixture between his body desiring males (thus leaving him oddly straight) and him desiring John (which would return to WNG territory, i.e., his love for John overcoming his straight desires in not wanting to sleep with other men). You're Pretty thus plays with WNG by embracing it (in Rodney), inverting it (in John), and rejecting it (in the way John is troubled by betraying his hard-won queer identity rather than the actual sex with Rodney).



Straight as a Circle as gay romance
Likewise, "Straight As a Circle" draws on the WNG trope yet complicates and inverts it in really interesting ways. Here we do not switch genders as much as orientation in the subversion of yet another trope, namely the "X woke up gay" one. John, happily gay and partnered with Rodney⁸ encounters an ancient technology that makes him straight. Here biology overrides their love, but it is the juxtaposition of the two that evokes WNG in this story. If the underlying impetus for WNG is indeed the true love that leads to them having sex even as they may have not thought of other men/may not have found somone who was worth it before, in "Straight," we find a John who loves Rodney so much, he desperately wants to overcome the biological impreative that keeps him from Rodney. In fact, he has sex with him a few times even as it repulses him, *because* he loves Rodney. The disconnect between love and sexual desire undermines WNG whereas the love that makes John willing to overcome it moves it closer. In fact, in the sex scenes it's made very clear that the only thing that potentially begins to overcome John's non-reaction to Rodney *is* his love: he comes, for example in their first "straight" encounter when Rodney tells him he loves him and the comfort he takes in it being Rodney who blows him: a blowjob is a good thing, no matter who’s giving it. // And it’s Rodney, John thinks brokenly, reaching down to pat at the short soft hair, all his instincts flooded and submerged. It’s Rodney, thank fuck. Moreover, it is his separation of emotion and bodily responses that makes him more aware of his own and Rodney's feelings: Rodney obliges, determined now. John closes his eyes shut and feels a great warmth blooming in his chest, struck suddenly by how much Rodney wants to make John feel good, how important this is to him. How had he never realized it before? In fact, much of John's realizations are indeed about the depth of his feelings: Then it strikes John that he never has kissed Rodney’s jaw, not the way he wants to now -- just a touch of lips, careful like the placement has to be perfect, holding Rodney steady with John’s hand carded through the hair at the nape of his neck. Three years, and John is only now realizing that he never took as much time as he should have..

community and identity
At the same time, just like in Trin's story, John's gayness is not just about biology but is also a cultural identity. Unlike Trin's John, who is well aware of the fact that he purposefully, consciously, and happily self-identifies as gay, this John only comes to understand that his identity truly is *his* when he gets a chance to experience "normal" desires, to not have to hide any more. There's a strong motif of secrets and hiding throughout the story, and it is both John's sense that he's still hiding a secret (albeit a slightly different one) when turned straight as well as his relief and acknowledgment of himself and his love for Rodney when turned gay again that functions as an interesting symbolic inversion. And the dream becomes a nightmare, both because it is on some fundamental level not him but also, it seems, in part because of Rodney. So while sexuality here is almost exclusively biological, identities and desires are a bit more complicated, and love is transcendent even when it's counter to actual biological responses. As such, "Straight as a Circle" is not truly WNG, but its foregrounding of John's love above and beyond biological and social demands draws from similar underlying tropes, which made this story immensely satisfying for my WNG taste :) In fact, in response to my reading, graycastle suggests that "Straight" ilustrates a powerful description of where-the-queer-goes in those narratives of choice and fixing, AND of where-the-queer-goes in those narratives of biological determinism. Which is to say, it doesn't go away, it keeps leaving troubling little remnants behind. As a recovered Lacanian,⁹ I love the fact that possibly the remainder/reminder of the Real of what gets excluded in a thoroughly constructivist model of choice may be the very things that haunt John in this story.



we've come a long way, baby
While these three stories explore different aspects of sexual identity and object choice and situate themselves in different places in regards to the role of biological hardwiring vs constructed desires for either, what they clearly share is a sense of awareness that none of these things are simple, that bodies and desires, gender and sexuality are more than binary and rarely simply constituted. Moreover, what all three stories share is an awareness and an engagement with fannish history and fannish tropes, a playful repetition with a difference that to me testifies to the vibrancy of fan fiction, where even the most tired cliche doesn't need to get dismissed but instead can be taken up and reinvigorated, and where stories participate as much in meta discussions as theoretical analyses do. WNG gets rediscovered and inverted; waking up straight gets played with; gender and body swaps become the premise on which these fascinating explorations into our characters' identities and sexualitis takes place. thingswithwings's male lesbians, trinityofone's genderqueer Cadman and politically queer John, and toomuchploor's John who ultimately chooses his queerness as much for himself as for Rodney all are examples of queer identities that do not align neatly along gender and identity lines, that are not biologically predetermined exclusively but always already exist in the interplay between nature and culture, sex and gender, bodies and cultural constructions--they are truly queer subjects!


Notes
1 I take this concept of “repetition with a difference” from deconstruction, in particular, Jacques Derrida’s notion of the inherent non-identity of repetition. See, for example, Signature, Event, Context. go back to text

2 graycastle quoted this line from E.M. Foster's Maurice, and it perfectly illustrates to me that two indeed *is* already a community, defying the loneliness of one. go back to text

3 Monique Wittig famously has declared that lesbians are not women, See, for example, One is not Born a Woman. go back to text

4 I'm referencing the author here, because claiming this interpretation of that particular passage as my own would be plagiarism. The mod has okayed this "due to the essay format, the link to the source and the prior approval of the author who made the statement." go back to text

5 This Freudian concept describes the state of the infant before focusing on genital sexuality. It describes a sexuality in which the entire body is a canvas for sexual stimulus. Whereas in Freud this is a state to be superceded by the more mature genital sexuality, consequent critics have questioned such a bias. See, Freud's The Infantile Sexuality. go back to text

6 And I'm following here the latest generation of queer scholars who are much more willing to embrace queer identity in part at least as choice, so that same-sex over opposite-sex is not just a biological imperative (as traditional gay studies tended to posit) but a conscious cultural and political choice. In that sense, choosing a same sex partner becomes in part a function of community, of identities and sharing those identities overriding biological desires. go back to text

7 One story that strikes me as exemplary is Ellis Ward's Pro AU Harlequin Airs where Bodie and Doyle are trapeze artists; their meant to be togetherness is clear even before they ever have sex, think of one another sexually, before they even *know* one another, by the way their bodies fit together! We see it in the way partners in fic read each other's bodies, know each other by sight, sound, smell..., and mind bonds and mind reading is a trope found in just about *any* fandom, whether canonically supportable or not. go back to text


8 For an interesting discussion of how happy and how self-identified John may be at the beginning of the story, see here. go back to text

9 Jacques Lacan's concept of the Real is immensely complicated and contested: it can be understood as the plane which resists both the mirror fantasy of the Imaginary as well as any attempts of formalization or symbolization of the Symbolic. It thus can never be reached because we are always mediated through our fantasy space or though language, and we only experience it indirectly in terms of ‘left-overs.’ Another way to think of it is to understand the Real as the places where the Symbolic fails to cohere, the ruptures that then, in turn, are filled out by the Imaginary. For a summary of Lacan, see here. go back to text

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I apologize for using the term error. I described my limited, trope-affected reading of Straight that way but clearly the also implied that your or Trobadora's reading suffered similarly, which I hereby take back.

No errors anywhere except in my own reading of Straight.

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

That was where our largest disconnect was and what I was trying to get across, that it doesn't mean one is in error or reading through OTP goggles to see that connection between the participants matters, here. Nor do I think your interpretation of their relationship in Straight was in error, either, just because that wasn't what the author intended. Interpretation is fluid for a lot of reasons; we read a lot more into the behavior of people in stories than adhering to tropes can explain, including our on expriences and personal preferences. Everyone does that.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

But Carolyn, the author never was an issue here. I reread the TEXT!!!! And I realized that I'd have to work very hard against the text to stay with my initial reading.

just like you have invoked logic and what guys do or don't do and what you think John would do but haven't actually addressed any of the quotes (and once we get into the sex I have many more where those come from) I provided. I'm arguing TEXT!!! not author...

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

But did you re-read the text before or after the author said that that wasn't what she'd intended? If she hadn't said that, would you have re-examined the text with an eye to her intended interpretation? Did her saying it wasn't what she'd meant influence your view at all? I'm saying, if you read something different through the interpretation of your own lenses, influenced by whatever ideas and experiences and preferences you commonly use when you read, that doesn't make your interpretation wrong, just different from what was intended.

I haven't directly addressed any of the quotes because I'm not sure in what way you want them addressed. You're sharing quotes that show physical attraction between them as straight men--yes, that's there, of course it is, and I've never said it wasn't. You've also shared a few quotes that reveal an emotional connection between them. And? Nothing in any of those quotes is influencing me to think that the bond between the characters isn't integral to the decision to have sex, especially in this situation. Are you saying that, because the writer doesn't go on at length about the wonderful, magical bond between them, there's no bond there? I'm not advocating for a wonderful, magical bond that's OTP specific between John and Rodney, I'm talking about the importance of a bond existing between two people, any two people, and especially two self-identified straight men, before they could engage in sex under these very freaky circumstances. It's implicit in the decisions made, in the action portrayed, and even in some of the quotes you share. Are you arguing that the author must not have intended for there to be any sort of connection between them because there's so much in the story that's phyisically explicit? Well, it's a story about sex, so there's going to be. Are you arguing author intent? That she deliberately wrote a story of sex-without-prior-connection so that it would be cooler in an anti-trope way? I don't think so, and I get that as much from reading the text as you do. Not because I'm an OTP John and Rodney girl, but because I'm a logical human responses in stories girl, and because I see that connection in the story. So, I'm not sure where you want me to go from that, re: quotes from the story.

*is tracking conversation*

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I'm a logical human responses in stories girl

One thing I was trying to get across in my response is that a lot of the time our 'logical human responses' sense is contingent on experience and culture. I can see your argument here and I don't precisely disagree with it - but I don't think it has to be so set in stone as 'the only logical human response'. Because - by your own argument about tropes and different readings - not everyone is going to perceive it that way. Logical human responses are at least as variable as perceived authorial intent, I think...

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

No, not really--we do recognize such a think as OOC writing in fanfic, we do acknowledge that there's such a thing as twisting a character too far to fit a kink or plot, rather than building the plot around the character. Characterization isn't infinately fluid, not if it wants to stand by any sort of standard of believability.

So, if this is a story about two horndogs who blithely cast off the emotional trauma of being changed into women and fuck for the sake of fucking, I'm going to find this story less engaging and less real, and I'm going to be less impressed with the treatment of the tropes and find this story less successful both as a story and as an inversion of fanon. Keeping it real is what makes it work, you know? Just as Helen's recreation of the all Dom/sub world was more real and worked so well as a twister of the trope. Disregarding the emotional effects of what they're going through and saying "they're straight guys, all they care about is sex, anyway," makes it less real and less workable on several levels. So, no, I don't agree that, in the context of what makes this story work, an interpretation of 'feelings don't matter' is as real and workable as that their feelings do matter, because, really, they would. Seriously, don't you think they would? Given the situation and the people involved? From a logical standpoint, I mean.

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I am always suspicious of "logical standpoints" when they are expressed as though logic were a totally impartial bias-eradicating tool which isn't totally influenced by its own history of bias and domination... but that's really just an aside to this conversation, except inasmuch as we know that no two fans are ever going to completely agree over what is and isn't OOC, no matter how much logic gets invoked.

I'm arguing semantics though, because yes, I think that feelings matter in this context! I think they matter a lot! I think they pretty much always matter and I am pretty sure they always condition our 'logical responses' too. ;)

And what's more, I don't think that cathexys or anyone else is presenting a reading of they're straight guys, all they care about is sex, anyway – I'm not, certainly. I wouldn't have been anything like as interested in this story if it had been a PWP with John and Rodney having straight=man-lesbian-sex for the hell of it; I love it so much because of the way we see their feelings and their identities change as they come together and move into deeper intimacy. (Well, for that and for the queer cultural references, of course. :) )

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

I'm probably not making it clear enough, here and elsewhere in converstation, that I'm extrapolating from show canon re: the emotional bond between them and their reaction to having been changed into women about how easily they'd fall into sex. The bond between them on the show is clear and doesn't need slash goggles to see; I'm not talking about teh big gay love, I'm talking about how Rodney is worried about having lost John's trust after Doranda, how John needs to know that they're cool after shooting down the dart that had him captive, how John confesses (badly) that he loves his team as his chosen family and would do anything for them, how Rodney spends what he thinks are his last hours of life reaching out to the people who are important to him. Those bonds are real and evident, and they're shown to be very strong between this particular group of people. To go into any story where I'm to assume that there are no strong bonds between John and Rodney tells me I'm in an AU, because they're there, by intent and by depiction, in the canon. If someone doesn't see them, they don't seem them, but I'm not going to agree with their interpretation or find it believable in a story.

As far as their reaction to being 'womanized' and their sexual response, I think of John, who never sees it coming, and Rodney, whose romantic dorkiness and cluelessness is played for humorous effect, and Rodney's consternation at his body's being made to kiss Carson, and John's wide-eyed sort of fear reaction to being approached by women, and I'm thinking, these aren't a couple of Cassanovas, here, competant and comfortable in their sexuality to a degree that THIS situation wouldn't throw them for an enourmous loop. My imagining how this would be enacted in canon is pretty hilarious, actually, and there's no way I can see them, based on the canon, as not becoming at least somewhat overwrought and insecure over the whole thing to a degree that would require them to have the kind of trust and connection that we have seen displayed on the show with the other person in order to contemplate sex. That, along with my ideas/experiences with self-proclaimed straight guys (there are issues bound up in that identification that also influence my view) is where I'm getting the 'logical view' conclusions for my reading. If I'm not supposed to read this story with an eye to canon connections and characterizations, then I need the author to tell me I'm reading an AU before I understand that. I don't think this was meant to work outside canon, but maybe it was, and the author just didn't identify it that way.

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[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to invalidate your reading, and as I said, I agree that the bond of friendship between John and Rodney is important in the story. *Nobody* is saying that John and Rodney are protrayed as devil-may-care promiscuous straight men.

For me, the story works both within SGA canon and outside of it; I find the author's use of queer cultural references lets me go off into really interesting (to me) theoretical readings about the function of gender and sexuality. I recced the story in my LJ and a friend who's never seen SGA read and loved it, which suggests that it does also work out of the canon context. I don't think that a reading like yours, closely attentive to canon, and one like mine, that goes more into structures of identity and community than character, have to be incompatible at all; but I suspect that the difference in perspective there is where the percieved (but I don't think actually present) disagreement is coming from. At least for me; of course I can't speak for cathexys.

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[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

I'm a big canon whore, but I can and do enjoy non-canon oriented stories, too (I love penguins and wacky AUs and other silliness.) I don't think a story needs to stick close to canon to be enjoyable, but, in this case, to accomplish what it appears to have set out to do, I think it does. If it is a twisting of the trope, then I think it needs to be canonical to be most effective at that. Helen's story, as I said before, took the D/s world a proposed that, were it really real, things wouldn't be all that happy in the garden, and it was a wonderful way to rethink the trope. Similarly, with this story, the more real the responses are, the more unreal WNG gets shown to be, by comparison. And I think it's possible that, in the same way that WNG lovers think the bigness of their love is made even bigger by the fact that they're, ohmigosh, not gay, just so in love! don'tcha know, Cath may be proposing that the twisting of this trope may be made even bigger if they began from a place that is only not "we have the big love" but also "we have no special connection"--that that makes the inversion even great, "embiggens" the anti-trope effect, so to speak. *g* And I don't think that's true; I think that, once you take the characters out of the more canonical place of close bond/sexual dorkiness, you take away the 'realness' that shows up a fannish trope for the unreal thing that it is. That John and Rodney are close friends, and that they have issues over being made women and now possessing strange, new bodies (and the embarrasing removal of their penises, oh noes!) dosn't make the trope twisting less effective--it heightens it. It's the real-vs-unreal thing that shows up a trope for what it is, and that's what's being analyzed, in this case. So, yeah, enjoyable story, in any case, but more enjoyable as a story, for me, if it sits closer to canon, and more successful as a refutation of the trope if it does, too.

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[cathexys.livejournal.com]

But see, I never said that. My initial discussion was with Trobadora who did come to it with a big OTP perception, and I always acknowledged that they are good friends etc. but I suggested again and again that in this particular story the text de-emphasizes the connection and foregrounds the community of two. Clearly that does not mean that there isn't any connection, b/c the story takes place within canon. But there's no special, unique, only-the-two-of-them connection either (which it'd have to be for Trobadora's reading who unlike you or me could *not* go to see Zelenka/McKay or Ronon/John in the same situation!)

Just for reference: this is the quote that got this entire discussion started:
Maybe I'm misreading this due to my OTP goggles, but the way I read it was neither that they are together because no one else is like them, nor that they discovered love; it's that they did love each other, but platonically, and that their experiences have messed with their identities to the point where sexual orientation becomes fluid as well. and I always maintined that clearly they were friends, but it wasn't their being friends that the story emphasized but their desire for the other's body and their connection via same experience.

And yes, I do believe that subverts the trope of 'meant-to-be-togetherness' that OTP suggests. Seriously, *g*, you started agreeeing with Dora and disagreeing with me. I never put you in an OTP position that you didn't align yourself with. My disagreement with Dora was one of degree from the getgo, and I still believe you're actually closer to me than her, so I'm not sure where our readings are so fundamentally different.

For the purposes of a rhetorical argument I foregrounded what was *different* from other stories above, tacitly assuming that it would be obvious where the stories are the same.

And I kind of resent the implication that by simply focusing on one aspect that the story foregrounds that my reading is either not logical or going against canon.

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

I took issue with your saying, when I said I agreed with Trob about underlying connection being important to the story, that seeing that connection was an error brought about by an OTP reading of the story, a reading that was factually untrue. Which I know you've apologized for, and I'm not angry, though I was bothered, for a moment--I'm saying that that's what spurred my attempts to explain that seeing connection between these two isn't about fantasizing a one-true-love between them, and that I saw that connection in the text, where you didn't (or didn't seem to, as you continued to refute my interpretation), and that that had nothing to do with OTP. That you argued so vigorously about any reading of a connection in the story or its importance TO the story did lead me to believe that you thought that connection either isn't there or isn't important, yes. I've never argued that the story doesn't emphasize the physical, but, in the end, the story isn't about the physical, it's about the relationship and about the changes in them that change the relationship. There's a lot of talk about sex and physical attraction, but they don't end the story as fuckbuddies, they end the story as more, and that journey, the emotional, is happening concurrently with the physical and is just as important. So, we may have polarized, some, in our views in our attempts to get our points across. As far as logic and canon are concerned, I'd still say that recognizing the canonical connection between them and taking it for granted when reading a story that has been written to fit near, if not into, canon is logical, and to disregard it without reason is less so. You say that's not what you're doing, that you do see a connection between them, so that isn't an issue.

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[trobadora]

But there's no special, unique, only-the-two-of-them connection either (which it'd have to be for Trobadora's reading who unlike you or me could *not* go to see Zelenka/McKay or Ronon/John in the same situation!)

Actually, no, I don't have any such reading of the story. I clearly said that within the framework of the story, those pairings would be perfectly plausible - I'd just have zero interest in them! I don't know where you think we disagree. Did you think I was referring to something exclusively McShep when I talked about platonic love?

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[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Oh, ok. When i suggested the other pairings you said This much I agree with [the friendship's necessary but not sufficient]. The other [other pairings I saw equally as likely], not so much, but that's more a question of how we view the characters, not the story. I took that to mean that you indeed did see a connnection between McShep that the others didn't have, not that you wouldn't be interested in the story (which I more than likely wouldn't be either).

I wonder whether this post was a real example of the academic vs fannish interpretation. I doubt these discussions would have looked the same if I'd suggested an alternate reading of McBeth, y'know :) [alixtii sadly isn't watching this, but I'm invoking his How Many Children icon now :)]

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Wait, I'm not?

I don't have anything to say, because you know, not my fandom, but I'm reading it all avidly.

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

LOL! I love tracking...

(Also reading avidly, but not participating til I finish reading the fics.)

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yes, tracking is wonderful.

I'll probably read the fics too, despite not being my fandom, if I ever find the time to do so.

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[trobadora]

Sorry, I was a bit unclear there. What I meant in the bit you're quoting was that while I personally interpret the McShep relationship on the show as more likely to be sexualised than others (according to my own OTP preferences, of course), I didn't see the story as supporting such a reading. *g*

I still don't think we actually disagree except in emphasis!

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

No, we really, really don't!!!

But now we've gotten a couple of people out of the woodworks, which yet again makes me more aware of the fact that tracking really has changed the dynamics of LJ discussions!

*waves at alixtii and Grace * :) tracking rocks!!!

Re: *is tracking conversation*

[trobadora]

Indeed it does! *waves at the trackers too*