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Re: Foggy and Matt on the show

[(Anonymous)]

Anon, you're making me go on a rant (not against you, don't worry), so fair warning. :-)

It's just that I don't understand the fandom phenomenon these days to immediately squish two clearly canon-heterosexual male leads on a show together as a gay couple like there is no other possibility than that canon is wrong (or they're both bisexual). Give me any TV show in the last 10 years that has two non-gay male leads, and not at least 50% of the fanfic is slash.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against slash, and there are fandoms where the slashers and het/genner happily share a sandbox. (White Collar, anoyne?) What I have a problem with is when it becomes all-encompassing, even patronizing. And, yes, I mean the Sherlock fandom again.

I see things on Tumblr that say, "If you don't think Johnlock is a thing, we can't be friends." And then there's page-long metas on why it's unfathomable that John and Sherlock aren't gay, and analyses on how close Sherlock's hand is to John's in the new promo still, and that clearly them just being platonic friends is NOT within the realm of possibilities, and anyone thinking that isn't a true Sherlock fan.

Uhm, excuse me, I beg to differ.

Yes, the creators aren't exactly making it easy, because they keep adding fuel to that whole discussion when they put in another ambiguous line or add more slashy on-screen innuendo. It's total fan service in this case, and I'm sure they mean to be more tongue-in-cheek than anything, but it's grating on my nerves and turning me off the fandom completely.

And, hey, sorry, this doesn't have anything to do with Daredevil. Most of the Matt/Foggy fic I've actually read is very well written, and I don't have anything against that pairing, even if it isn't what I'm envisioning in my head. I just hope it doesn't become such a big, controversial thing like it is in the Sherlock fandom.

Re: Foggy and Matt on the show

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I don't know, I feel like 'they are clearly heterosexual bros' is just as much a judgement call as 'they are clearly gay/bi and pining'. And a lot of the latter comes out of not having LGBT leads on many mainstream shows. I mean, you may get one character out of an ensemble cast, but in a show like Daredevil (or Sherlock, or Supernatural) where there's a very small main cast, you almost never see a gay or bi lead character. That's slowly changing, but the general trend still holds true.

So, I mean, I would be delighted if the show made Foggy explicitly gay or bi, not because I want to see my ship validated on the screen (I actually really don't; canon tends to fuck up perfectly good ships) but because I would love to see a superhero show with a gay/bi lead character and I think at least in Foggy's case there's enough material there to make it work without much or anything in the way of retconning.

I do agree with you about the queerbaiting, though. I wish they would either just go through with it, or stop with the innuendo. Juicy subtext was nice back in Star Trek TOS days, when you couldn't show a gay relationship on TV and had to sneak it in, but that's not the case anymore.