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A completely unmotivated observation.
So it's late and I'm maybe just slightly cranky, and I'm feeling a momentary disaffection for slash.
The thing about it is, even though it's all transgressive and whatnot, because it messes with gender roles and the nature of sexuality and all, it still supports the status quo in a certain sense. Because slash goes out of its way to say that the relationship which matters most to you in all the world has got to be a sexual one. Despite the fact that there's no canonical evidence of a sexual relationship between the characters (just. just *shove* the subtext for a second, I know there's subtext, that doesn't *mean* anything.) we insist that there has to be one, or ought to be one, based on the intensity and exclusivity of feeling between them.
But the truth is, statistically speaking, they're probably straight. They're probably friends. Not *just* friends, because Ray would take a bullet for Fraser and Fraser would drown himself rather than leave Ray behind in a sinking ship and they're riding off into the sunrise together, eschewing all other relationships (aside from Dief, of course) to be together, because nothing else matters nearly as much. But you know what? They're probably not having sex.
And I know why slash says they do: because nobody wants to read that story, where they live the rest of their lives in a two-bedroom apartment, hooking up with strangers for sex when they need it, crawling into each other's beds when they really want company, never quite enough for each other, but taking up too much of each other's hearts to give anyone else a fair shake. Because slash is, at heart, romance, and romances ought to end happily most of the time and that means the difficulties have to be resolved, and they have to both miraculously turn out to be at least a little gay, and whatever.
But in the real world, it wouldn't work like that. Y'know?
The thing about it is, even though it's all transgressive and whatnot, because it messes with gender roles and the nature of sexuality and all, it still supports the status quo in a certain sense. Because slash goes out of its way to say that the relationship which matters most to you in all the world has got to be a sexual one. Despite the fact that there's no canonical evidence of a sexual relationship between the characters (just. just *shove* the subtext for a second, I know there's subtext, that doesn't *mean* anything.) we insist that there has to be one, or ought to be one, based on the intensity and exclusivity of feeling between them.
But the truth is, statistically speaking, they're probably straight. They're probably friends. Not *just* friends, because Ray would take a bullet for Fraser and Fraser would drown himself rather than leave Ray behind in a sinking ship and they're riding off into the sunrise together, eschewing all other relationships (aside from Dief, of course) to be together, because nothing else matters nearly as much. But you know what? They're probably not having sex.
And I know why slash says they do: because nobody wants to read that story, where they live the rest of their lives in a two-bedroom apartment, hooking up with strangers for sex when they need it, crawling into each other's beds when they really want company, never quite enough for each other, but taking up too much of each other's hearts to give anyone else a fair shake. Because slash is, at heart, romance, and romances ought to end happily most of the time and that means the difficulties have to be resolved, and they have to both miraculously turn out to be at least a little gay, and whatever.
But in the real world, it wouldn't work like that. Y'know?