The Creation of Plausible Fanon
Nov. 29th, 2004 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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For starters, I'm pretty neutral on this particular topic--I've never written RayK smoking, but it's not one of those things that in and of itself bothers me particularly. However, I find it hard to resist playing devil's advocate by saying that I can't really see how the argument "RayK does not smoke, damn it!" differs essentially from the argument of anti-slashers: "RayK (or whoever) is not gay, damn it! It's a distortion of the character to write him doing something we never see him doing in the show and are given no reason to think he would do!"
As slashers, we've developed several lines of response to this, which are familiar enough to those reading this not to need recapitulation, I trust. But we need to not lose sight of the fact that ultimately slash is fanon, at least for any characters who aren't canonically shown as being gay or bisexual. It's a fanon with which those of us who read/write slash are very comfortable, but it's useful to keep in mind that it is always an extrapolation from sub-(sometimes *deeply* sub-)textual elements of canon--whiffs of body language, inflection, gazes, or maybe actor variables (chemistry, attractiveness)--and it's an extrapolation that many non-slasher fans would vehemently contest.
Hang around slashdom long enough, and it's easy to simply assume that *of course* RayK is in love with Fraser, in every sense, of course he's sexually attracted to him, of course it's a romance that will eventually be consummated, because that's what we read and write, over and over. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that, when we look at canon with the slash-colored lenses off, we see that RayK is someone whose romantic/sexual life has been defined by his consuming passion for a woman, Stella, that all of his canonically visible attempts to get past that relationship and move on involve fumbling approaches to other women. I really don't have any way to *argue* with people who say "RayK is not gay, dammit!", except by pointing to--intangibles, the way he looks at Fraser, their body language together, the kind of trust and rapport they seem to develop, the way they *vibe* together. It's easy for me to imagine that segueing into a sexual relationship, but in order to do that, I really have to move outside of canon.
Further, in reading Fraser/RayK, I'm happiest when the writer makes some effort to situate that relationship in some context of Ray's previous concepts of his own sexuality (which we have no reason to think are anything other than the conventional ones that would be held by a blue-collar long-time-married Chicago cop). I want to see a case being made, a connection between the uniformly het guy we see in the show and the getting-it-on-with-a-guy guy we read and write in slash.
So, getting back to the smoking thing--it seems to me plausible fanon, and I base that on the same kind of subtexual cues: body language (the jitteriness, the toothpick); Ray's thing for Steve McQueen; his fondness for a particular set of masculinity-signifiers (leather jackets, muscle car, motorcycle boots, boxing) that often go with smoking; the fact that he doesn't seem like a guy who's deeply concerned with his physical health; and, yeah, the same actor variables that sometimes creep into our willingness to see slashiness. And just as with the slashiness, I am by far happiest when a writer makes some effort to situate it, perhaps to indicate why we don't see him smoking in the show (my favorite take, fwiw, is that he quit when he took on the undercover role of non-smoking RayV [because man, the guy so often looks like someone who's jonesin'], and that he maybe sneaks cigs on the sly). But a sudden incursion of Smoking!Ray is not going to throw me out of an otherwise well-written story, any more than a sudden incursion of GayNow!Ray leaping into sex with Fraser is going to throw me out of a ditto. In each case, the plausibility of the fanon thus enacted doesn't come from adherence to canon per se, but from how a writer makes the non-canonical behavior plausible for these particular characters in this particular situation.
None of this is to disrespect the feelings of those who fervently believe that RayK does not smoke, dammit, exclamation mark. All I'm saying is that while we can certainly like or dislike, agree or disagree with, various bits of fanon, if we're going to *judge* them, we have to do so on the basis of plausible character extrapolation, not canonical evidence. Because otherwise? As slashers, we really don't leave ourselves much ground to stand on.