somniloquence

I have this theory (my theory actually goes better with a large glass of alcohol in hand, but I can't do that over the net) about slash: 90% of slash fandom has to have a girl. They don't know they want a girl, they think they don't, but they do. So one guy gets to be the girl -- and it's always, always the one who: is shorter or thinner (Brian, Ray Doyle), intellectual (Blair, Daniel), younger (Vin Tanner), works in some type of non-establishment job or manner (Mulder), or any combo of the above (Methos being a weird combo/non-representative ringer, but he is thinner and therefore so much more girly, you know). We ten percenters have a lot more trouble because I think in most ways, Brian really is the tougher one emotionally. the big twist is that Brian is the hero of the piece, and that's usually exclusively the Big Mean Ugly Guy role (Jim, Duncan, Chris -- especially because he is the authority figure, which earns him the title even though he's the one who cries canonically on the show! -- and so on). Dom's a true anti-hero, like kadymae has talked about.

The problem might be too that Vin Diesel kind of walked off with the movie and so a lot of the attention was focused on him. It was such a star-making role that probably if you're coming into the fandom but not a fan of his, you would think it was oriented that way, but that 90% of the slash world, they're all cooing over the girl of the piece (just ask a Stargate fan who likes Jack just as he is!), which is what I noticed right away with Brian. And they make him such a fucking saint and it's just like... jesus christ, he let the criminal go! He's not much better!

Brian doesn't fit the role, though -- that's what's so frustrating. He's pretty, yeah, but we know next to nothing about him, whereas we get to know Dom very well. We rarely get to see his emotions beyond surface stuff, but Dom runs the gamut. In a way, they set Brian up almost too heroically by making him so mysterious that he loses focus. Which I think also attracts the "pretty girl" fans.

I like the fact that Dom is a criminal. I like how he's teetering on the edge of something really dangerous. Because I don't think that's who he is, really, but what he's become to be in the only world he knows how to live in. Watching The Wire recently has been cool that way -- it's a rare show where both sides of the law are given a chance to show all their facets, good and bad, and I think that's what F&F did really well with Dom. Unfortunately, they forgot to fill in stuff with Brian until the second movie!

Oh and this is getting too long, but I have Tanner thinking about something in a very mocking sarcastic way in the next part that I think is at work here -- that whole "you can't cage a beautiful wild animal, you have to let him roam free" kind of over the top shit. I think that could be a really funny concept to work with, seen from the other side.