The Chesire Cat Syndrom





October 25, 2000
2054 hrs
central standard time
Somewhere around here...
 

One of my favorite quotes is from "Alice In Wonderland", spoken by the Chesire Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." I use it in my sig, I wear it on a T-shirt and I pass it along to friends. Well, recently I was reading another author's rant page and she made mention of a subject I've noticed in almost every fandom, and it brought to mind the above quote, although it did undergo some rewriting: "We're all gay here. I'm gay. You're gay."

What I'm referring to is the "everyone's gay!fic" genre. (Actually, I'm not certain it is a recognized genre, but it's easier for me to identify it like that.) Here's something based on the due South fandom for an example, because it's easier than Herc/Xena to demonstrate (more on that below), it goes something like this:

"Look, Stella, I don't want to hurt your feelings or nothin', but Frase and I are together, you know? A duo. Partners. Lovers." Ray Kowalski leaned back against Ben and waited for his ex-wife's reply. But instead of being upset, or showing concern or anything else he would've expected, she looked relieved.

"I wasn't sure how to tell you this before, Ray, but now it's easier. You see, Francesca and I are...involved."

"You and Frannie?" Ray's eyes went wide.

Just then Huey and Louis walked into the room, both detectives lost in each other's eyes, arms around each other, staring at each other with a passion no one could mistake.

"I--I never knew how much you meant to me," Huey whispered.

"Yeah, me too," replied Louis. "If Lt. Welch and Turnbull hadn't taken us to that gay bar, who knows if we ever would've found each other?"

"Is that that bar on Main?" Ray spoke up. "Remember that place, Ben?" He looked up at his partner. "We met Jim and Blair there. They were in town with their boss Simon who was with his new boyfriend Adam, or was his name Methos?"

"No," Stella cut in, "I think he means that place on Baker Street. I went there once with Inspector Thatcher."

"You and the Inspector!" Benton Fraser gasped.

"Well, not anymore; she left me for some Canadian detective, Tracy Vetter. She did have a cute friend, Natalie, but she was with her girlfriend, Buffy Summers...."

And so on, and so on, ad nausum. The point being, before you know it, everyone in the story -- hell, everyone in the whole world -- is gay, right down to the characters' pets. (That's not an exaggeration. I've read those fics.)

So, tell me, how does the population continue in a world like that? Cloning? Asexual reproduction? Who knows. Somehow it all works out in the minds of the authors who create those worlds. But it's not at all believable. In fact, despite how serious the story was intended to be, I always find myself laughing and hitting the "back" button on my browser.

As for the Herc/Xena fandom, to some extent we can get away with that type of fic because it's set in Ancient Greece, but only to a point. If everyone from Zeus right down to Falafel is bumping uglies with someone of the same gender, eventually Greece is going to run into a serious population shortage.

Fortunately, that doesn't seem to happen too much in this fandom because, with one or two exceptions, all of the characters are portrayed as bisexual by most authors, and as far as I'm concerned that's probably the best way to do things in fic. If all or most of the characters are bi, then it goes a long way towards explaining past relationships and opens up almost limitless opportunities as far as pairings are concerned -- plus they can pop out the odd kid or two here and there.
 
 

(Here's a banner I always think of when it comes to "everyone's gay!fic".)

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