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elspethdixon Nov. 21st, 2008 08:26 pm)
elspethdixon Nov. 21st, 2008 08:26 pm)I delayed a long time before posting this, because it had its genesis as a shipper-war rant (and my HP-trained instincts to start shipper wars-to-the-knife over my OTPs do not need encouragement), but recent events in my fandom have reminded me all over again why this argument pisses me off.
So, a couple months ago I got the traditional semi-annual piece of feedback on ff.net asking why I couldn't "just let the characters be friends," and why didn't it occur to slashers than men could just be straight? (if it hadn't been an anonymous comment, my immediate desire to reply, "ZOMG, you mean some people are straight? I never knew that! All these years I've wondered where the hell babies come from and why so many men and women get married and you've finally enlightened me! Why did no one ever tell me that not everyone is gay?!?" would have been too poweful to resist). This, combined with an argument I got into this summer with someone who didn't like one of my OTPs because she didn't think people should sexualize friendships, has been preying on my mind, quietly irritating me in the way that only someone being wrong on the internet can.
Several years ago, I wrote piece of meta on sexualizing friendship. Said meta was much more cleverly put together than this rant, and there is some really great input from people smarter than me in comments. Here's the link: http://elspethdixon.livejournal.com/73138.html?style=mine because I'm going to revisit the topic now.
When I wrote the first essay, my position on the topic was informed at least partially by the fact that one of my long-time OTPs (also my only RPS ship to date) is Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp, whose historically close and devoted friendship I was adding romance/desire too (Note: like most regular RPS shippers, I don't actually think Wyatt Earp and John Henry Holliday were knocking boots - I just like the way they work as a pairing and think the "canon" for them, both the historical record and pretty much every movie about them ever made, is slashy as all get out. So slashy. OMG.).
Now, I approach it from the perspective of a woman who is engaged to her (female) best friend.* Needless to say, I have a little more personal stake in the debate now, and a stronger objection to it than my original mild "but saying that platonic friendships are more pure and/or meaningful than romantic love implies that we still think sex is dirty and shameful."
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and an opinion is not necessarily wrong just because I disagree with it, but it logically follows that, if someone believes putting Starsky & Hutch, Kirk & Spock, Sam & Frodo, Cap & Iron Man, etc. in a romantic/sexual relationship lessens or demeans their friendship, then they on some level also believe that I, by proposing to my best friend, have demeaned our friendship. When someone criticizes slashers for sexualizing friendship, they are by extension implying that our relationship is in some way lesser than a relationship between two heterosexual women (or two non-heterosexual women with no romantic interest in each other), whether they intend to or not. I'm assuming, for the record, that they don't intend to - unless they're the kind of anti-slasher who just objects to homosexuality in general, in which case the issue at work is homophobia rather than the conviction that platonic love is superior to romantic love.
That said, I do think it's interesting that slash fans are so much more likely to hear the "why must you cheapen the purity of their friendship by adding nasty, dirty sex to it" argument then het fans. I'd say it's due to the fact that het ships are much more likely to be canon, but I bet you Tony/Pepper shippers don't hear that one, for all that their pairing is no more canon than Steve/Tony is (all objections I hear to that one revolve around "but it goes against comics canon," or "but Pepper is supposed to be with Happy Hogan/Tony's supposed to be with [insert alternative slash or canon-het pairing of your choice]," or "you know, I kind of liked that she's the first female lead in an action movie since Aliens that didn't just exist to be the hero's girlfriend," or "but the word 'Pepperony' makes my eyeballs bleed." Nothing about it cheapening or distorting Tony and Pepper's friendship.). If there are any X-Files fans reading this, feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong and MSR writers were deluged with "you're demeaning their friendship/why do you have to cheapen everything by sexualizing it" comments back in the day
If adding romantic love and sexual desire to friendships lessens them -- makes them something less noble/more selfish/less spiritually pure/whatever and reduces them to "all about sex" (as in, "why do we, as a society, always have to make everything about sex? Why can't they just be friends?") -- then that means that I, as a bisexual woman, am doomed to forever have friendships with other women that were "worth" less than those of a completely heterosexual women whose feelings for her friends would be unsullied by physical appreciation of her friends' bodies and (god forbid) romantic committment. (And as a person with a relatively low sex drive, can I also register my discomfort with viewing sex as the sole or most important attribute of a romantic relationship?)
I would contend that introducing sexual/romantic desire into a friendship constitutes an addition, not a substitution or a subtraction. If, for example, Sam feels physical desire for Frodo at the same time that he accompanies him to Mordor, carries the ring for him when its burden gets too heavy, and prepares to die beside him "at the end of all things," that doesn't make their relationship any less meaningful or in any way diminish Sam's willingness to unselfishly sacrifice and suffer for Frodo's sake (something I've seen argued before). Not unless Sam is secretly blackmailing Frodo into sleeping with him during The Two Towers and Return of the King as the price for his help or something (and if that fic exists, don't link me).
If Gilgamesh loved Enkidu as a lover instead of as a brother... well, actually, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, he, and I quote, loved Enkidu "as a wife," so that one's pretty much a given. And yet their relationship is still the cornerstone of the world's oldest litarary epic.
If we truly believe that sexual/romantic love (eros) is less worthy or less pure than entirely platonic love (phillia), than that also says something less-than-positive about the way we as a society think of heterosexual relationships (not to mention what we really think of sex, deep down). If we believe that eros replaces or even destroys phillia, that slashing friends changes the relationship into something different and lesser rather than deepening an already existing relationship by adding a new element to it, well... I have heard more than one man or woman describe his/her spouse as "my best friend." How do we reconcile that with the idea that friendship and romance are distinct and different, and that portraying friendship as something other than platonic is disrespectful or insulting to that friendship? Are happily married straight people who say that they are friends with their spouse as well as lovers and that this has made their marriage stronger just fooling themselves? Somehow I doubt it.
*Engaged is a lovely term, since it implies long-term commitment and the intention of permanancy in a way that "sleeping with" or "dating" doesn't, without necessarily requiring that you get married right away. You can't truthfully call someone your wife unless you're legally married, but "engaged" simply signals intent-to-marry-at-some-future-point and is a social rather than a legal contract, so you can be engaged anywhere regardless of state marriage laws. Also, fiancee is a nice, gender neutral term that lets you signal that you're in a relationship without telling your co-workers "Hi! I'm bisexual/lesbian!"
So, a couple months ago I got the traditional semi-annual piece of feedback on ff.net asking why I couldn't "just let the characters be friends," and why didn't it occur to slashers than men could just be straight? (if it hadn't been an anonymous comment, my immediate desire to reply, "ZOMG, you mean some people are straight? I never knew that! All these years I've wondered where the hell babies come from and why so many men and women get married and you've finally enlightened me! Why did no one ever tell me that not everyone is gay?!?" would have been too poweful to resist). This, combined with an argument I got into this summer with someone who didn't like one of my OTPs because she didn't think people should sexualize friendships, has been preying on my mind, quietly irritating me in the way that only someone being wrong on the internet can.
Several years ago, I wrote piece of meta on sexualizing friendship. Said meta was much more cleverly put together than this rant, and there is some really great input from people smarter than me in comments. Here's the link: http://elspethdixon.livejournal.com/73138.html?style=mine because I'm going to revisit the topic now.
When I wrote the first essay, my position on the topic was informed at least partially by the fact that one of my long-time OTPs (also my only RPS ship to date) is Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp, whose historically close and devoted friendship I was adding romance/desire too (Note: like most regular RPS shippers, I don't actually think Wyatt Earp and John Henry Holliday were knocking boots - I just like the way they work as a pairing and think the "canon" for them, both the historical record and pretty much every movie about them ever made, is slashy as all get out. So slashy. OMG.).
Now, I approach it from the perspective of a woman who is engaged to her (female) best friend.* Needless to say, I have a little more personal stake in the debate now, and a stronger objection to it than my original mild "but saying that platonic friendships are more pure and/or meaningful than romantic love implies that we still think sex is dirty and shameful."
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and an opinion is not necessarily wrong just because I disagree with it, but it logically follows that, if someone believes putting Starsky & Hutch, Kirk & Spock, Sam & Frodo, Cap & Iron Man, etc. in a romantic/sexual relationship lessens or demeans their friendship, then they on some level also believe that I, by proposing to my best friend, have demeaned our friendship. When someone criticizes slashers for sexualizing friendship, they are by extension implying that our relationship is in some way lesser than a relationship between two heterosexual women (or two non-heterosexual women with no romantic interest in each other), whether they intend to or not. I'm assuming, for the record, that they don't intend to - unless they're the kind of anti-slasher who just objects to homosexuality in general, in which case the issue at work is homophobia rather than the conviction that platonic love is superior to romantic love.
That said, I do think it's interesting that slash fans are so much more likely to hear the "why must you cheapen the purity of their friendship by adding nasty, dirty sex to it" argument then het fans. I'd say it's due to the fact that het ships are much more likely to be canon, but I bet you Tony/Pepper shippers don't hear that one, for all that their pairing is no more canon than Steve/Tony is (all objections I hear to that one revolve around "but it goes against comics canon," or "but Pepper is supposed to be with Happy Hogan/Tony's supposed to be with [insert alternative slash or canon-het pairing of your choice]," or "you know, I kind of liked that she's the first female lead in an action movie since Aliens that didn't just exist to be the hero's girlfriend," or "but the word 'Pepperony' makes my eyeballs bleed." Nothing about it cheapening or distorting Tony and Pepper's friendship.). If there are any X-Files fans reading this, feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong and MSR writers were deluged with "you're demeaning their friendship/why do you have to cheapen everything by sexualizing it" comments back in the day
If adding romantic love and sexual desire to friendships lessens them -- makes them something less noble/more selfish/less spiritually pure/whatever and reduces them to "all about sex" (as in, "why do we, as a society, always have to make everything about sex? Why can't they just be friends?") -- then that means that I, as a bisexual woman, am doomed to forever have friendships with other women that were "worth" less than those of a completely heterosexual women whose feelings for her friends would be unsullied by physical appreciation of her friends' bodies and (god forbid) romantic committment. (And as a person with a relatively low sex drive, can I also register my discomfort with viewing sex as the sole or most important attribute of a romantic relationship?)
I would contend that introducing sexual/romantic desire into a friendship constitutes an addition, not a substitution or a subtraction. If, for example, Sam feels physical desire for Frodo at the same time that he accompanies him to Mordor, carries the ring for him when its burden gets too heavy, and prepares to die beside him "at the end of all things," that doesn't make their relationship any less meaningful or in any way diminish Sam's willingness to unselfishly sacrifice and suffer for Frodo's sake (something I've seen argued before). Not unless Sam is secretly blackmailing Frodo into sleeping with him during The Two Towers and Return of the King as the price for his help or something (and if that fic exists, don't link me).
If Gilgamesh loved Enkidu as a lover instead of as a brother... well, actually, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, he, and I quote, loved Enkidu "as a wife," so that one's pretty much a given. And yet their relationship is still the cornerstone of the world's oldest litarary epic.
If we truly believe that sexual/romantic love (eros) is less worthy or less pure than entirely platonic love (phillia), than that also says something less-than-positive about the way we as a society think of heterosexual relationships (not to mention what we really think of sex, deep down). If we believe that eros replaces or even destroys phillia, that slashing friends changes the relationship into something different and lesser rather than deepening an already existing relationship by adding a new element to it, well... I have heard more than one man or woman describe his/her spouse as "my best friend." How do we reconcile that with the idea that friendship and romance are distinct and different, and that portraying friendship as something other than platonic is disrespectful or insulting to that friendship? Are happily married straight people who say that they are friends with their spouse as well as lovers and that this has made their marriage stronger just fooling themselves? Somehow I doubt it.
*Engaged is a lovely term, since it implies long-term commitment and the intention of permanancy in a way that "sleeping with" or "dating" doesn't, without necessarily requiring that you get married right away. You can't truthfully call someone your wife unless you're legally married, but "engaged" simply signals intent-to-marry-at-some-future-point and is a social rather than a legal contract, so you can be engaged anywhere regardless of state marriage laws. Also, fiancee is a nice, gender neutral term that lets you signal that you're in a relationship without telling your co-workers "Hi! I'm bisexual/lesbian!"
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In fact, I've often wondered if the reason so many romantic relationships crash is BECAUSE of the separation most people believe exists between romance and friendship. Because romance has its peaks and troughs, and if there's not a strong friendship there as well, the person who attracted you so much at one time may end up boring or repelling you.
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Very well thought out essay, and you'll give me if I don't try to come up with coherent response today. Other than when I was in Biker Mice from Mars there were people that thought shipping Vinnie/Charley degraded their friendship, or more in general that Charley would never go there (which could be agreed quite well. But you could argue the same with movie!Pepper. Comic!Pepper at certain points would have so gone there)
Okay maybe my brain completely addled yet. *G*
*comments with a sort of x-files icon, just because*
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It was pretty canon too given all the flirting they did.
Oh 90s cartoons I miss you.
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Fandom always focusses on the important things. Interspecies sex? Meh, don't care. A pairing that goes against my shipping preferences? DieDieDie!
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re: sex as demeaning
...but viewing sex as another venue to give pleasure to someone you love or just care for (as well as feel sexual desire for), THEN there is nothing cheap about it at all
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Re: sex as demeaning
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(also, YES THANK YOU. and, WTF was with that comment to that fic?)
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I know. The equivalent would be if we decided to go to a movie-verse comm and leave "Pepperony makes my eyes bleed" comments on Tony/Pepper fics. There's a time and a place for talking about your dislike of [ship X], and that time and place isn't the comments of a [ship X] fic.
Of course, I'm probably biased, in that I've gotten into ship arguements with the commentor once or twice before (once in the comments of a discussion post on cap_ironman).
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And I now question myself on the ending I went with for the fic. Which drives me a little bit nuts because I actually changed it from having Steve and Tony have words about Tony not mentioning his family to something that I thought what hit a bit more emotionally and show that Pepper wasn't in the dark about things.
I'm also a bad fan because I'm not sure if that's Abe from Hellboy or Kit from Star Wars.
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And yes! Bad, naughty fan! It's Kit. Though I now think I need to see this Abe person...
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Don't get me wrong, I definitely think adding sex to a friendship can complicate the relationship, and that there being a friendship at bottom is no guarantee that the relationship will be successful (though it gives you a WAY better platform to work from than if there weren't). But "cheapen"? Give me a break.
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::cheers::
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...thing is, most of the time when those arugments are made for het ships, they aren't arguments against the ship itself or the fact that people write fic for it; they tend to be arguments about whether canon should go there. Experience, I think, has borne out the argument of the people who say canon shouldn't go there, because adding sex to in it canon pretty much always *does* cheapen the relationship in general.
...and since 'het shippers tend to be much more likely to be tinhats than slashers, it gets all tangled up with the ship in general, leading to pain. (I think part of the reason this hasn't show up as much in Iron Man fandom is that Tony/Pepper shippers - from what I've seen - tend to not be particularly rooting for it in canon either.)
(MAybe I am just justifying this because I tend to be one of the ones making the argument that 'shipping them screws it up. But there's a difference between thinking that badly done shipping (like canon) will ruin the friendship, and whining because people write fic. And I think few no-slash whiners are afraid it'll become canon, even now.)
(I am given to understand that it did go beyond this at the height of XF ship wank, because back in the day XF ship wank was epic in all ways. ...But at least the NoRoMo people in XF were gen shippers, period, and not rooting for one sort of sex over another? Rabid gen people were more common in all fandoms way back in the day, though, I think.)
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I'd put the sucky way canon writers often handle het romance down to bad writing, though, rather than the idea that Mulder & Scully, Spike & Buffy, Hermione & [guy of your choice] falling in love is inherently flawed. Because I've read numerous Spike/Buffy, Scully/Mudler, and Ron/Hermione fics that all handled the relationship much better than canon did.
When I hear people say "canon shouldn't go there," it tends to be less "because it will sully the purity of their friendship, and you don't really value their friendship if you want to ship them" and more "because TPTB will somehow find a way to make it suck." Or they're saying "canon shouldn't go there" because they want Hermione to get together with Harry and it's a ship-war argument instead of an anti-ship one.
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Re: sex as demeaning
of course for every single time I've found myself leaving that comment there has been at least a dozen or more where someone finds a way to make a very non-canon or even shaky canon pairing ~work~ for me through the quality of their writing and story.
It kinda fits with my you can have your OC's if you can manage to make them characters and not Mary Sue's ALOT of writers struggle with the difference or jump to it is an MS because it's an OC but recently I've been reading a fic the person only posts to their own LJ for fear of being hung by the fandom for OC'ing and yet it is one of the best quality fics to appear consistently in that fandom for the past few months. The adherence to canon is fantastic as are the connections of the characters making it humourous but not "and now she is an amazing acrobat and hero too and and and-"
More ON the topic though I was in a relationship on and off with a good friend from the time I was 7 years old when he naively declared he would marry me on first sight. He was my first kiss, only friend for a number of years prior to highschool, and an all around good guy. We had our fights- round highschool he got convinced that the wigger thing was in and tried to use that language in making out.... only to find a freezing towel thrown on his bits. We are still friends- the sex never CHEAPENED what we were *the brief dalliance on his part into drugs certainly did for a time*.
In our case rather than your though Els- we found at the end of the day we 'loved' one another but it wasn't world shattering or anything just a quiet phillia that occassionally ran toward eros. He's now a snowboard instructor in Vancouver and I'm back at school so we have officially decided on seeing other people (his new Gf is ADORABLE- and she doesn't drink or do drugs <3).
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As a reader of fic first and then occasional follower of meta, I can testify that it can seem as if slashers treat any evidence of stronger then normal feeling between two charactors as being evidence of erotic feelings. This can lead to an impression that there is no room in this person's worldview for strong non-familial non-sexual relationships between two people. That slashers believe that all strong non-familial relationship are really showing open or surpressed desire.
I would agree that if this belief existed it would logically imply that the person is reducing the possible value of friendship.
[I do realize that much of this is because the slash writer in question is looking for plausible story hooks rather then any belief or lack thereof on the possiblity of a strong non-sexual non-familial relationship but I can see how this could be easily be misinterpreted. ]
Another possiblity is that the reviewer simply believes as some women I know do that it is wrong to risk a good friendship for a romantic relationship when most romantic relationship fail.
There's also the belief that strong friendship and certain types of sexual relationships are incompatible (An example of such reasoning is that casual sex is emotionally risky, as it's hard for both people to stay at the same level of casual, and so one shouldn't have casual sex with a good friend).
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the slash writer in question is looking for plausible story hooks rather then any belief or lack thereof on the possiblity of a strong non-sexual non-familial relationship
Honestly, when I slash, I'm usually not just looking for story hooks - my reading of canon is that the characters I write about are attracted to/love each other in canon. There are exceptions, like the one Tony/Bruce Wayne fic I did (which was just for cracky fun), or the background Sharon Carter/Winter Soldier het in some of my Marvel fic, but my PotC OT3 fic, my Steve/Tony fic, my Remus/Sirius fic, isn't just my wanting an excuse to write slash. All those pairings are canon in my head, and when I read/watch, "Steve & Tony are deeply in love," "Carol Danvers is/was attracted to the Scarlet Witch & Jessica Drew" "Will & Elizabeth & Jack are all attracted to each other to some degree" etc. is as vital a part of my interpretations of the characters as "Ginny had a crush on Harry" or "Rogue and Gambit are in love."
And I don't sexualize every relationship. Really I don't. Just the ones where the slash vibes are painfully obvious or where slashing the characters makes the canon more meaningful to me. Steve & Bucky, I think have a platonic sibling relationship. Steve & Sam, I believe have a platonic friendship. Steve & Clint, firnedhsip with some sibling vibes thrown in. Tony & Rhodey: Tony clearly had a crush on him that Rhodey didn't return.
Steve and Tony, on the other hand, read like the kind of romance operas get written about. And I have a laundry list of personal issues tied up in the ship that make me incapable of reading things like the linked review without wanting to hit people. Which is wanky and over-invested, I'll freely admit, but I'm a very wanky and irrational person ^_^.
Some slashers do sexualize every relationship. Most of us don't. I don't. I don't even sexualize every strong relationship. When I seriously ship people, it's because I think the best (and in cases of OTPs, most valid, to the point that I actually can't support or read any others, because I OTP harder than a crazed Harmionian) reading of canon is that they're in love. I mean, it probably says something that all of my het OTPs are canon ships.
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I'm not an OTPer and I tend to think in terms of plausiblity (and does this make a workable and entertaining story) so I'm afraid I didn't think to clarify.
My main opinion; which is that you can't tell what the author's beliefs on strong non-sexual, non-familial relationships are from a slash story should still hold.
BTW My opinion about the canon for this particular pairing
After reading the eyes dialogue in particular I would agree that some degree of romantic feelings (plus appreciation of physical attibutes) should be considered canon for both Steve and Tony. It's also pretty obvious that they are also good friends they like each other, enjoy doing things together and support each other(my working defn of friendship).
While I wouldn't insist that this must mean that they desire each other sexually, it would be very difficult to argue that a story where they do desire each other sexually could be considered against canon or that such desire could, in itself, demean their friendship (which was already highly romanticized).
I would consider any story which did not take both their friendship and the idealized and romantic view they've had of each other into account to be implausible. With their history any relationship between them can't be casual.
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Sorry for getting all snarly. I'm extra twitchy right now, recent political events being what they are, and so my immediate instinct is to claim that all opposition to slash under any circumstance is inherently illegitimate. I know that's not true, though, because there are slash pairings I don't ship, fandoms I don't have any real interest in reading slash for, and het pairings I like a lot. For one thing, I'm one of about twelve slashers in fandom who doesn't really slash anyone in SGA (unless Teyla and that Genii girl with the red hair count).
it would be very difficult to argue that a story where they do desire each other sexually could be considered against canon or that such desire could, in itself, demean their friendship (which was already highly romanticized).
I would consider any story which did not take both their friendship and the idealized and romantic view they've had of each other into account to be implausible. With their history any relationship between them can't be casual.
That sounds... similar to the way I see it, actually (I want even gen writers to ship them at least on an emotional level), only with a sizable helping of "I got engaged because of this pairing, because their doomed love inspired me to take a risk so that I wouldn't be left looking back, years later, and saying 'It wasn't worth it.'"
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I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that m/f romances in popular media are a dime a dozen while strong m/f friendship is incredibly rare, so when something that looked like a strong m/f friendship came along on a show I liked, it was annoying to see everyone wanting to turn it into the 153865928370239857th romance. Also, I really-really-really hate the whole "men and women can't be friends" thing that seems so pervasive in our culture (don't get me started on When Harry Met Sally), and the M/S shipping seemed to be feeding into that.
Which is why, to this day, I'm more likely to make this objection to a het pairing than a slash one. M/m friendship is ubiquitous in all media, while m/m romance is still fairly rare, so the impulse to slash is a lot more understandable to me.
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*nods* I can see that, because I've been irritated by pointless het shoe-horned into many a telvision or movie plot just for the sake of having a female love interest, and I've made that argument myself about Tony/Pepper, though if I'm being honest my real objection to that ship is a combination of "but you're ignoring comics canon; they never get together and Pepper loves Happy" and die-hard shipper hatred for all things that conflict with my OTP (I stay far away from Iron Man movie-verse fandom for a reason - if I didn't, I'd become the Steve/Tony-shipping version of the troll several of us here are ranting about).
My simmering rage whenever I hear the "why can't they just be friends" argument directed at slash pairings has a similar root - if I/we didn't turn friendships into romance, then there would be no same-sex romances for slashers to root for. Plus, all of my OTPs are canon for me, both slash and het. If you presented me with the "The insistence that A and B should have sex implies a belief that their current relationship is lesser or inferior" argument, my answer, for every one of my OTPs, would be "but based on X, Y, and Z pieces of canon, I believe that they already are romantically in love. I'm not changing their relationship, I'm just having them consumate it."
Plus, when it all comes down to it, though I do love and enjoy gen, and will defend the "gen means no pairings at all" definition to all and sundry, at the end of the day, romance speaks to me on a deeper and more visceral level. It's more intense, for one thing.
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Yeah, that's how it generally works for me when I ship a buddy pairing (which doesn't happen often, but then, I'm really a gen girl at heart and hardly ever ship at all). Danny/Rusty, Steve/Tony and Hercules/Iolaus all worked that way for me. But in X-Files fandom, at least as I remember it, there seemed to be a lot of people arguing not that Mulder and Scully were in love, but that they should be.
My main problem with movieverse Tony/Pepper is that the movie itself made it clear that it would be a horrible idea and that they both know it would be a horrible idea. Comics canon doesn't come into it for me, because comics is comics and movie is movie. Movie!Tony won't even meet Steve until the Avengers movie in 2011, and who knows what'll happen then? For all we know, RDJ will develop brain-meltingly hot chemistry with whoever gets cast to play Thor, and a hot new pairing will be born overnight. (Which would be fine with me, but wouldn't have any effect on how I view comicsverse Steve/Tony.)
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That strikes me as a particularly het ship kind of argument. Most slashers are generally, if not pleased with the fact that our pairings will never be explicit canon, at least resigned to it.
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The hetters say "They should totally make out in canon!" The slashers say "They should never make out with anyone else in canon!"
The genners sulk in the corner, muttering "Why does anyone have to make out at all, this is stupid..."
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Then, of course, there's the classic "hetting canon up" reaction TPTB have been known to have if/when they realize their show features a popular slash pairing, which slashers loathe and rightly so - though I don't think it's quite as common as some slash fans claim. I'd put random het introduced out of nowhere in later seasons of a show down to the plain old heteronormative "It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unattached male protagonist must be in want of a girlfriend" outlook as often or more often than I would to deliberate attempts to send a writerly "fuck you" to slashers.
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so, instead of restating, I'm going to wish you congrats on your engagement and thank you for your little rant (though it's completely rational, so I don't see how it's really a "rant" ^.~)