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Not really meta, as such. Just an interesting series of observations I blundered through while considering the following:
Holmes/Watson vs John/Mary (Downey filmes)
Vimes/Vetinari vs Sam/Sybil (Discworld)
The names, I mean, not the pairings themselves.
I was just thinking about this in terms of my having written Sybil/Sam/Havelock and Sherlock/John/Mary. Just noticing the choice of names used for each pairing tag. I noticed it even at the time, when I was putting the threesomes in the headers for the fics and noticed the odd ... stickiness of the names? Just taking those two. The Discworld set, do you say Vimes/Vetinari/Sybil? Vimes/Vetinari/Ramkin? Sam/Sybil/Havelock? With the Holmes set, is it Holmes/Watson/Mary, or Holmes/Watson/Morstan, or Sherlock/John/Mary?
None of them really look right, laid out. And there are a couple of reasons for that, and also a couple of implications, and right now I'm sort of randomly finding this fascinating. Heh. So. Bear with me while I unpick it a little?
Holmes/Watson vs John/Mary (Downey filmes)
Vimes/Vetinari vs Sam/Sybil (Discworld)
The names, I mean, not the pairings themselves.
I was just thinking about this in terms of my having written Sybil/Sam/Havelock and Sherlock/John/Mary. Just noticing the choice of names used for each pairing tag. I noticed it even at the time, when I was putting the threesomes in the headers for the fics and noticed the odd ... stickiness of the names? Just taking those two. The Discworld set, do you say Vimes/Vetinari/Sybil? Vimes/Vetinari/Ramkin? Sam/Sybil/Havelock? With the Holmes set, is it Holmes/Watson/Mary, or Holmes/Watson/Morstan, or Sherlock/John/Mary?
None of them really look right, laid out. And there are a couple of reasons for that, and also a couple of implications, and right now I'm sort of randomly finding this fascinating. Heh. So. Bear with me while I unpick it a little?
On the Use of Names In Pairings
The basic problem is that the individual pairs within the threesome are usually denoted as above: Holmes/Watson vs John/Mary and Vimes/Vetinari vs Sam/Sybil (which have the advantage of alliteration). The slash pairs are denoted using surnames while the canon het pairs are denoted using first names.
There are a couple of reasons for this. In the case of the canon het, surnames wouldn't work because they're both married couples where the woman took her husband's name, so it would be Watson/Watson or Vimes/Vimes, which usually denotes something else entirely. You could use the pre-marriage names, Watson/Morstan and Vimes/Ramkin, but in fic set later on that has the effect of erasing the marriage. Plus, in the canons, the participants think of each other and address each other by first name, so we the audience then do the same when imagining them in the context of the relationship.
This is the same reason I think we use the surnames for the slash pairs. Vimes and Vetinari think of each other almost exclusively in those terms (I think Vimes would probably have a small fit if asked to call the Patrician 'Havelock'), because in canon they have a largely professional relationship. Holmes and Watson are slightly more complicated, by Victorian mores in the original canon, and in fandom by the association of Holmes/Watson with ACD or Downey canon while John/Sherlock almost exclusively refers to BBC Sherlock. But in the end, in both the Downey'verse and ACD canon, both Holmes and Watson address each other almost entirely by surname, and seem to think of each other the same way. (ACD canon, this is complicated by Victorian ways of denoting relationships between peers and levels of politeness).
And fandom has appropriated that habit, I think, because basically those are the names most commonly used in the relationships in the canons. The slash pairs go by surnames and the het pairs go by first names.
There's just an odd series of implications of that, which I only noticed from trying to denote the threesomes. Lets just look at the threesome options for a minute?
Take the straight smushing of the individual pairing names: Holmes/Watson/Mary and Vimes/Vetinari/Sybil. I've seen both those options used (and probably used them myself). Now, there's a couple of interesting implications there. Firstly ... why Holmes/Watson/Mary instead of Holmes/John/Mary? Both would be straight smushes of the two pairs, but the second one is something I've seen considerably less often (if I've seen it at all?). I think that might partially be explained by prioritising the slash pairing in the name because the het is canon and doesn't need the extra help. However, it also has the interesting effect of making the woman look both different (possibly a little tacked-on), and also making her look more informal and less professional. It seems to emphasise the slash pair on a number of levels, both by giving the men a structure in common and also by reminding the audience that the men share a professional and an emotional relationship, while the woman only shares an emotional one. Now, I actually doubt any of that is the intentional reading, but it is interesting on a subconscious level.
Then lets take the options where we switch the common name of one pairing to get all three of them in line:
Holmes/Watson/Morstan and Vimes/Vetinari/Ramkin. As said above, using those names effectively erases the male/female marriage. That almost never happens that I've seen, mostly because it runs entirely against canon and the whole point of the threesome, usually, is so you get to keep the canon het marriage along with your slash pair.
Sherlock/John/Mary and Sam/Sybil/Havelock. Now this one is interesting, and also quite sticky mentally speaking, at least in my experience. Because this one sort of highlights the difference between canon and fanon in terms of the relationships between the characters. The reason being, of course, that seeing Sherlock and Havelock written down as names is weird (they're also both weird names to start with). Next to nobody in the original canons refers to either of those characters by their given names, and most of the fandom/audience tends to think of them by their surnames as well (different, as I said, with BBC Sherlock). When you write it down in the pairing name, you experience a brief moment of disorientation.
It highlights two things. First, it highlights the difference in relationship in the canons. The slash pairing, while emotionally fraught and very intense in both cases, is usually framed as either professional or ... Holmes/Watson is complicated, it was the difference between close friends and lovers in Victorian society, you could love a man like a brother and still call him his surname, you could live and die for a man and never give voice to his given name: in certain layers of society, a given name was reserved purely for lovers, spouses and close family. In both cases, it highlights the fact that the canon does not consider the slash pairs as any of those things. Calling the extra man in these pairs by his given name puts his emotional connection with the other man on a level with that man's relationship with his wife, which is what you want in a threesome. So it's interesting, in many ways, that to the reader that arrangement still doesn't look right.
Which leads to the second thing: it highlights the fanon vs canon nature of putting those pairs together. Framing the slash relationship in terms of given names directly denotes the emotional relationship as being different to canon, particularly if within the fic the characters then think of each other using the given names. Doing it that way puts an odd stress on the canon het pair as canonically emotionally intimate while highlighting the slash pair as being non-canon, if only through the strangeness of a character being addressed in a way we're not used to from the canon itself.
So when you're naming out your threesome in fic, you've got a few choices. You can erase a marriage, imply self-cest instead of het, put the men on a different footing to the woman, or highlight the non-canonicity of the slash pair almost entirely by accident. And all because we're used to thinking of characters in certain ways depending on the relationship involved.
Now, this only applies to these particular canons, or any other canon where the men are primarily addressed by the surnames by each other and the narration outside of the canon het relationship. (I wonder if this is a culturally specific thing? Either in time or by nationality?). But I do think it's interesting, at least in reference to these canons. Especially when you pull it back to the original pairings the issue stems from. Why, even when moving away from the canon relationship, do we still refer to the slash pairs as Vimes/Vetinari and Holmes/Watson? In the Holmes case, is it to distinguish between canons, or is there an element of having trouble fully converting the canon relationship to a more sexual one, even in our own heads? Is it just about familiarity, making sure the audience knows who we're talking about?
Because I have actually come across this problem, mentally, with other het or slash pairs for different reasons. I think a large mental sticking point, in literary fandoms at least, is to refer to the character by the same name as most of the narration does, for reasons of familiarity. For example, for years I refered to the Dresden/Marcone pairing in Dresden Files as 'Harry/Marcone', because the narration is 1st person Harry POV, so he's usually Harry on the occasions his name is actually mentioned, while John is almost exclusively 'Marcone' unless Harry's being a smartass. And, above, I have often seen Sam/Sybil as 'Vimes/Sybil', despite the fact that Sybil never, ever refers to him that way, mostly because the audience just gets used to thinking of the character as 'Vimes', and of only seeing Sybil in terms of her relationship with Sam, so she's almost always 'Sybil'. Which might say some interesting things about the characters' prominence and role and relationships in the canons, just by what names are used for them in pairings.
*shakes head* As I said, it was only a weird thing I noticed as a result of writing out the threesome names for a pair of fandoms. It's just slightly interesting, I think, how much weight and implication the choice of names used to denote pairings might actually carry, no?
The basic problem is that the individual pairs within the threesome are usually denoted as above: Holmes/Watson vs John/Mary and Vimes/Vetinari vs Sam/Sybil (which have the advantage of alliteration). The slash pairs are denoted using surnames while the canon het pairs are denoted using first names.
There are a couple of reasons for this. In the case of the canon het, surnames wouldn't work because they're both married couples where the woman took her husband's name, so it would be Watson/Watson or Vimes/Vimes, which usually denotes something else entirely. You could use the pre-marriage names, Watson/Morstan and Vimes/Ramkin, but in fic set later on that has the effect of erasing the marriage. Plus, in the canons, the participants think of each other and address each other by first name, so we the audience then do the same when imagining them in the context of the relationship.
This is the same reason I think we use the surnames for the slash pairs. Vimes and Vetinari think of each other almost exclusively in those terms (I think Vimes would probably have a small fit if asked to call the Patrician 'Havelock'), because in canon they have a largely professional relationship. Holmes and Watson are slightly more complicated, by Victorian mores in the original canon, and in fandom by the association of Holmes/Watson with ACD or Downey canon while John/Sherlock almost exclusively refers to BBC Sherlock. But in the end, in both the Downey'verse and ACD canon, both Holmes and Watson address each other almost entirely by surname, and seem to think of each other the same way. (ACD canon, this is complicated by Victorian ways of denoting relationships between peers and levels of politeness).
And fandom has appropriated that habit, I think, because basically those are the names most commonly used in the relationships in the canons. The slash pairs go by surnames and the het pairs go by first names.
There's just an odd series of implications of that, which I only noticed from trying to denote the threesomes. Lets just look at the threesome options for a minute?
Take the straight smushing of the individual pairing names: Holmes/Watson/Mary and Vimes/Vetinari/Sybil. I've seen both those options used (and probably used them myself). Now, there's a couple of interesting implications there. Firstly ... why Holmes/Watson/Mary instead of Holmes/John/Mary? Both would be straight smushes of the two pairs, but the second one is something I've seen considerably less often (if I've seen it at all?). I think that might partially be explained by prioritising the slash pairing in the name because the het is canon and doesn't need the extra help. However, it also has the interesting effect of making the woman look both different (possibly a little tacked-on), and also making her look more informal and less professional. It seems to emphasise the slash pair on a number of levels, both by giving the men a structure in common and also by reminding the audience that the men share a professional and an emotional relationship, while the woman only shares an emotional one. Now, I actually doubt any of that is the intentional reading, but it is interesting on a subconscious level.
Then lets take the options where we switch the common name of one pairing to get all three of them in line:
Holmes/Watson/Morstan and Vimes/Vetinari/Ramkin. As said above, using those names effectively erases the male/female marriage. That almost never happens that I've seen, mostly because it runs entirely against canon and the whole point of the threesome, usually, is so you get to keep the canon het marriage along with your slash pair.
Sherlock/John/Mary and Sam/Sybil/Havelock. Now this one is interesting, and also quite sticky mentally speaking, at least in my experience. Because this one sort of highlights the difference between canon and fanon in terms of the relationships between the characters. The reason being, of course, that seeing Sherlock and Havelock written down as names is weird (they're also both weird names to start with). Next to nobody in the original canons refers to either of those characters by their given names, and most of the fandom/audience tends to think of them by their surnames as well (different, as I said, with BBC Sherlock). When you write it down in the pairing name, you experience a brief moment of disorientation.
It highlights two things. First, it highlights the difference in relationship in the canons. The slash pairing, while emotionally fraught and very intense in both cases, is usually framed as either professional or ... Holmes/Watson is complicated, it was the difference between close friends and lovers in Victorian society, you could love a man like a brother and still call him his surname, you could live and die for a man and never give voice to his given name: in certain layers of society, a given name was reserved purely for lovers, spouses and close family. In both cases, it highlights the fact that the canon does not consider the slash pairs as any of those things. Calling the extra man in these pairs by his given name puts his emotional connection with the other man on a level with that man's relationship with his wife, which is what you want in a threesome. So it's interesting, in many ways, that to the reader that arrangement still doesn't look right.
Which leads to the second thing: it highlights the fanon vs canon nature of putting those pairs together. Framing the slash relationship in terms of given names directly denotes the emotional relationship as being different to canon, particularly if within the fic the characters then think of each other using the given names. Doing it that way puts an odd stress on the canon het pair as canonically emotionally intimate while highlighting the slash pair as being non-canon, if only through the strangeness of a character being addressed in a way we're not used to from the canon itself.
So when you're naming out your threesome in fic, you've got a few choices. You can erase a marriage, imply self-cest instead of het, put the men on a different footing to the woman, or highlight the non-canonicity of the slash pair almost entirely by accident. And all because we're used to thinking of characters in certain ways depending on the relationship involved.
Now, this only applies to these particular canons, or any other canon where the men are primarily addressed by the surnames by each other and the narration outside of the canon het relationship. (I wonder if this is a culturally specific thing? Either in time or by nationality?). But I do think it's interesting, at least in reference to these canons. Especially when you pull it back to the original pairings the issue stems from. Why, even when moving away from the canon relationship, do we still refer to the slash pairs as Vimes/Vetinari and Holmes/Watson? In the Holmes case, is it to distinguish between canons, or is there an element of having trouble fully converting the canon relationship to a more sexual one, even in our own heads? Is it just about familiarity, making sure the audience knows who we're talking about?
Because I have actually come across this problem, mentally, with other het or slash pairs for different reasons. I think a large mental sticking point, in literary fandoms at least, is to refer to the character by the same name as most of the narration does, for reasons of familiarity. For example, for years I refered to the Dresden/Marcone pairing in Dresden Files as 'Harry/Marcone', because the narration is 1st person Harry POV, so he's usually Harry on the occasions his name is actually mentioned, while John is almost exclusively 'Marcone' unless Harry's being a smartass. And, above, I have often seen Sam/Sybil as 'Vimes/Sybil', despite the fact that Sybil never, ever refers to him that way, mostly because the audience just gets used to thinking of the character as 'Vimes', and of only seeing Sybil in terms of her relationship with Sam, so she's almost always 'Sybil'. Which might say some interesting things about the characters' prominence and role and relationships in the canons, just by what names are used for them in pairings.
*shakes head* As I said, it was only a weird thing I noticed as a result of writing out the threesome names for a pair of fandoms. It's just slightly interesting, I think, how much weight and implication the choice of names used to denote pairings might actually carry, no?
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