the glaring lack of fanfiction for canon het UST pairings, among other things

[cimorene]

Due to possibly watching too much Bones too fast, I have started to find David Boreanaz attractive. I still thinks he looks like a charming, friendly, ingratiating bull dog (or maybe one of those big drooly ones, a mastiff perhaps) with a broken nose, just in a mildly hot way. I'm not sure why he was so offputting to me in the Buffy verse in comparison. Maybe it's just the character. Also, I read a badfic last night where Bones and Booth were having pizza with red wine and now I really, really want pizza with red wine. (And then I dreamt that I went to the National Zoo and discovered that the gift shop had been replaced by a giant department store full of animal-themed merchandise and bought a green metallic vegan snake-printed floor-length trench coat with a turtle motif. Don't worry, I don't actually want the coat.)

The badfic was extra enraging and also full of creepy right-wing politics, shitty characterisation, and boring descriptions of army-and-gun-stuff, like Jerry Pournelle with comic sound effects and worse writing ("KA-POW! B-B-B-PUT!").

Wax and I were having a discussion the other day about UST on tv (because the Bones/Booth dynamic in Bones is a lot Mulder and Scully, but it's also a lot Kirk and Spock. I'm not saying there isn't K/S in the Mulder & Scully dynamic - I'm sure it's all related. It's similar to parts of, say, The Sentinel as well - the deliberate UST we get sometimes in heterosexual pairings is at a very similar level to the accidental UST you get in many highly-slashed tv shows).

I think it's possible the deciding factor, in terms of the interest in the pairing/fic about it, is canonicity and not gender orientation. That is, the more canon a pairing is, the less fandom seems to spring up around it. (Except for Mulder/Scully, says Wax. Obviously that's not the only exception, though.) But I don't think there's any way to get enough data to examine the hypothesis because there's not a big distribution of canonical gay pairings out there, keeping other factors the same (like if there's any fanfiction at all).

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

There was a pretty big fandom for Brian/Justin, wasn't there?

But just for myself, canonicity is exactly the reason why I don't feel much desire to read (and even less to write) for het couples I ship. I usually ship canon couples (or those who I think will eventually become canon) and so canon will give me what I want anyway. Plus if it's an open canon, that's one more thing to get jossed over and I hate getting jossed.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel as well, which I guess is probably why I'm inclined to think other people share the feeling. I still want to read them sometimes, but not as much, because at least canon's giving me something.

het pairings I have known

[devon.livejournal.com]

In SGA, I am fond of Rodney McKay with women, specifically Cadman (the marine explosives expert who ended up in his brain that one time), Carter, or hotties-of-the-week. I like John Sheppard with Rodney and a woman. Yes, that's my dirty threesome fetish. I am not ashamed. I hate John/Elizabeth Weir for some reason, but I'll read John/Teyla if I know the author or the summary doesn't suck. There are ways it can work. Oh! And I like the new guy Lorne with pretty much anyone. I read a lovely and hot AU about him and Heightmeyer (the base's shrink). Yeah. :D I like het enough that I will, from time to time, change all the pronouns so that the bottom becomes a woman. It also makes it easier to share the SGA luv with my het boyfriends sometimes.