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After a hiatus of some months, I've recently started reading fic again -- mainly SGA fic. And a thing has struck me. I don't know if it has to do with my heightened sensitivity after absence or if it has to do with shifts in fanon since December or if it simply has to do with the fics I happened to read and says nothing about fandom in general, but there is a certain way of characterising McKay that I don't like, and that says things to me about characterisation and slashiness in general.
A few fics I've read recently have a McKay who feels diffident towards Sheppard and who says things like 'look at you!', 'why would a hot guy like you want to be with someone like me?' -- that kind of thing. Two points about this.
First: To me, this is so blatanly counter-canon that it annoys me. Canon!McKay is self-assured and cocky, about his genius and yes, also about his physical attractiveness. He says as much in 'Grace under Pressure', for example, and in 'Letters from Pegasus'. He is not one to be intimidated by a superficial conforming to current codes of handsomeness.
Second: But I am not a canon-maven and I'm willing to tolerate all sorts of off-canon veerings. There is, then, another thing that annoys me here. This is the assumption that Sheppard is, without question, good-looking and sexy, and that McKay is not. This reproduces a stereotypical notion of beauty that I don't like. It also implies that there are standards of beauty that are independent and 'out there', but to me, what is interesting in a pairing, is what makes this person attractive to this particular other person. Why would McKay be attracted by conventional beauty? What else about Sheppard might attract him? Why would McKay disparage his own beauty, and isn't that saying something about the author's disparaging of McKay's style of beauty?
When I read such fics (and I've loved some of them, except for this aspect), I feel that as a reader I am being drawn into colluding with this assessment of McKay, that I am somehow supposed to find him unattractive and pot-bellied and balding and pale. And that 'pot-belliedness' and 'baldingness' and 'paleness' are intrinsically less handsome and less valuable than muscular definition and a full head of hair.
It reminds me why I like the rare pairings. They automatically make writers eschew the conventional prettiness route. If you write wraith, for example, you simply cannot fall for the 'he's so sexy' trap nor can you fall for the 'i'm an ugly wraith, how can you possibly love me?' trap (unless you are writing bad!fic). Ditto with, for example, Kiran Shah or Christopher Lee or John Rhys-Davies in lotrips, or with orcs in lotr; and I think many Snape writers are also of the persuasion that conventional looks don't matter, it's the something else that can spark sexual hotness.
To me, this goes beyond McKay and whomever and into the wider world. I like a lot the idea (and the fact! just look around you!) that unconventionally-looking people have phenomenal sex lives and not just (and perhaps not even?) the conventionally pretty. It's an ethical point.
So I will ultimately always prefer the story where either physical appearance, in the conventional sense, doesn't matter, or where the attraction is spread evenly -- where McKay is gaga about Sheppard without needing to disparage his own body, and where Sheppard is reduced to a helpless, yearning pulp by McKay's physical presence. And where Zelenka and McKay jump each other's buns because they are turned on by each other's minds and come hotly over each other's pale bellies, gasping equations in ecstasy.
ETA: I happen to think that McKay is phenomenally sexy, and Zelenka/McKay was my entry OTP in this fandom. Sheppard was a taste that grew on me over time.
ETA the second: Also, I am not at all adverse to the conventionally pretty. In football rps, my first OTP was blatantly young and pretty. I just don't like it if this goes hand in hand with disparaging the non-pretty.
A few fics I've read recently have a McKay who feels diffident towards Sheppard and who says things like 'look at you!', 'why would a hot guy like you want to be with someone like me?' -- that kind of thing. Two points about this.
First: To me, this is so blatanly counter-canon that it annoys me. Canon!McKay is self-assured and cocky, about his genius and yes, also about his physical attractiveness. He says as much in 'Grace under Pressure', for example, and in 'Letters from Pegasus'. He is not one to be intimidated by a superficial conforming to current codes of handsomeness.
Second: But I am not a canon-maven and I'm willing to tolerate all sorts of off-canon veerings. There is, then, another thing that annoys me here. This is the assumption that Sheppard is, without question, good-looking and sexy, and that McKay is not. This reproduces a stereotypical notion of beauty that I don't like. It also implies that there are standards of beauty that are independent and 'out there', but to me, what is interesting in a pairing, is what makes this person attractive to this particular other person. Why would McKay be attracted by conventional beauty? What else about Sheppard might attract him? Why would McKay disparage his own beauty, and isn't that saying something about the author's disparaging of McKay's style of beauty?
When I read such fics (and I've loved some of them, except for this aspect), I feel that as a reader I am being drawn into colluding with this assessment of McKay, that I am somehow supposed to find him unattractive and pot-bellied and balding and pale. And that 'pot-belliedness' and 'baldingness' and 'paleness' are intrinsically less handsome and less valuable than muscular definition and a full head of hair.
It reminds me why I like the rare pairings. They automatically make writers eschew the conventional prettiness route. If you write wraith, for example, you simply cannot fall for the 'he's so sexy' trap nor can you fall for the 'i'm an ugly wraith, how can you possibly love me?' trap (unless you are writing bad!fic). Ditto with, for example, Kiran Shah or Christopher Lee or John Rhys-Davies in lotrips, or with orcs in lotr; and I think many Snape writers are also of the persuasion that conventional looks don't matter, it's the something else that can spark sexual hotness.
To me, this goes beyond McKay and whomever and into the wider world. I like a lot the idea (and the fact! just look around you!) that unconventionally-looking people have phenomenal sex lives and not just (and perhaps not even?) the conventionally pretty. It's an ethical point.
So I will ultimately always prefer the story where either physical appearance, in the conventional sense, doesn't matter, or where the attraction is spread evenly -- where McKay is gaga about Sheppard without needing to disparage his own body, and where Sheppard is reduced to a helpless, yearning pulp by McKay's physical presence. And where Zelenka and McKay jump each other's buns because they are turned on by each other's minds and come hotly over each other's pale bellies, gasping equations in ecstasy.
ETA: I happen to think that McKay is phenomenally sexy, and Zelenka/McKay was my entry OTP in this fandom. Sheppard was a taste that grew on me over time.
ETA the second: Also, I am not at all adverse to the conventionally pretty. In football rps, my first OTP was blatantly young and pretty. I just don't like it if this goes hand in hand with disparaging the non-pretty.