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I posted some recs last week (?) for the suddenly-runaway-popular-slash-pairing-from-an-established-canon that I happened to have been reading, Steve/Eddie from Stranger Things (s4). The thing about this pairing that strikes me, as I can now confirm having seen the rest of the seasons (mostly) as Wax rewatched them since then, is that it really is based on very few interactions - more the amount of scenes you'd usually expect for a side slash pairing from a movie (like, say, the butler and the hacker in the old Angelina Jolie Lara Croft movies). Slightly more than that, but nothing like the amount of scenes between two of the main characters in an ensemble movie.
The last time I remember thinking more or less this was when they introduced CGI Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian and that pairing suddenly exploded into popularity on the basis of a much-slimmer like... two sentences and twenty seconds (or something like that).
I think the same psychological and sociological forces are at work behind both of these pairings, on reflection: namely, a romantically unattached beloved fannish object who previously didn't seem to have any viable slash partners in canon - someone people were ready to dote on and wanted to see happy (and perhaps in both cases especially wanted to slash with someone, although that's probably more true for Luke Skywalker than for Steve Harrington, who was previously romantically linked to Nancy but is appealingly himbo?); and a new male character who is also romantically unattached and quickly becoming a fan favorite in their own right due to extra charmingness (this probably doesn't need that much explanation, since the new-popular-character-ness of Din in the Mandalorian and of Eddie in this season of Stranger Things is obvoius, but I'll point out that they're both appealingly emotionally vulnerable and shown doing nurturing stuff, they're both characters from especially marginalized backgrounds, they're both sorta underdogs, they both have a special subcultural identity that can make them particularly relatable to fans). I think there's a sense of "Finally, someone WORTHY of my Blorbo!" going on with this type of pairing.
And I also feel like I've seen this sort of dynamic before, but I honestly couldn't think of any more examples in the last four days or so of lying around thinking about it.
The last time I remember thinking more or less this was when they introduced CGI Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian and that pairing suddenly exploded into popularity on the basis of a much-slimmer like... two sentences and twenty seconds (or something like that).
I think the same psychological and sociological forces are at work behind both of these pairings, on reflection: namely, a romantically unattached beloved fannish object who previously didn't seem to have any viable slash partners in canon - someone people were ready to dote on and wanted to see happy (and perhaps in both cases especially wanted to slash with someone, although that's probably more true for Luke Skywalker than for Steve Harrington, who was previously romantically linked to Nancy but is appealingly himbo?); and a new male character who is also romantically unattached and quickly becoming a fan favorite in their own right due to extra charmingness (this probably doesn't need that much explanation, since the new-popular-character-ness of Din in the Mandalorian and of Eddie in this season of Stranger Things is obvoius, but I'll point out that they're both appealingly emotionally vulnerable and shown doing nurturing stuff, they're both characters from especially marginalized backgrounds, they're both sorta underdogs, they both have a special subcultural identity that can make them particularly relatable to fans). I think there's a sense of "Finally, someone WORTHY of my Blorbo!" going on with this type of pairing.
And I also feel like I've seen this sort of dynamic before, but I honestly couldn't think of any more examples in the last four days or so of lying around thinking about it.
