Comments on: [META] OT3s: Disrupting the Intimate Society? http://fanhackers.transformativeworks.org/2011/10/ot3s-disrupting-the-intimate-society/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ot3s-disrupting-the-intimate-society A directory of informative things about fans Sun, 14 Oct 2012 06:57:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: KindKit http://fanhackers.transformativeworks.org/2011/10/ot3s-disrupting-the-intimate-society/comment-page-1/#comment-28950 KindKit Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:40:49 +0000 http://testsymposium.transformativeworks.org/?p=338#comment-28950 I’m not sure I’m inclined to accept Levinas’s claim, but even if I were, I think this argument edges into the problematic. Going directly from “solipsism” to “slash” troubles me, even though of course you’re right that slash is prevalent in fandom (although not perhaps at utterly dominant as the AO3′s statistics might make it seem). Freud’s psychoanalytic theories ascribed same-sex relationships to narcissism and an inability to cope with difference (as though difference of sex were somehow the true difference and the only difference that mattered). “Slash is solipsistic” risks reinscribing that, especially since you go on to suggest that threesome fics with a heterosexual element (specifically m/f/m fics) “add a deeper sociopolitical dimension to the worlds they construct” and are thus less solipsistic, more responsive somehow to society and social responsibilities. Again, this echoes with homophobic arguments that are deeply rooted in western cultures, in this case the notion that queer women and men ought nevertheless to be heterosexually partnered (i.e., married) as a gesture of maturity and responsibility. Do f/f/f and m/m/m threesome fics get to be less solipsistic as well, or do they not qualify?

In any case, I’m skeptical of arguments that writing or reading a particular type of fictional relationship is more politically or socially responsible than reading/writing another type of fictional relationship. The claim some slash fans make that slash is more righteous than het has been deservedly critiqued in fandom; here you seem to be making the same claim for a different type of pairing. OT3 fic may present relationships and characters *differently* than pairing fic of any kind, but that doesn’t necessarily mean better, although it may mean more to your taste.

Finally, if one does accept Levinas’s argument that love is ultimately anti-social, I don’t see why increasing the scope of the love relationship slightly, from two people to three, should make much of a difference.

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