In other news, I'm completely and entirely in love with AJHall. (I fell in love while reading Lust Over Pendell and I've been falling in love again and again via LiveJournal. I've been pondering the Recent Kerfuffle over that one egomaniacal fan who demanded payment for finishing their WIP and have concluded that as much as I love some authors in fandom, I probably wouldn't pay to read their stuff, if payment was acceptable in fandom, which I continue to think it isn't, but I'd pay AJHall, even just for continued access to nothing more than her Livejournal.)

Anyhow. Before I went on Semantic Safari, the point of introducing AJHall was to mention that if you haven't followed the link to Pandarus' discussion of love, eros, agape, and sexual versus emotional connection, it's a really fascinating topic and you should go read it. I didn't find much to quibble with, and that's unusual for me. LoTR, SG, DS, HP, XF, Firefly, and a lot of other fandoms make an appearance.

It made me think. Is the concept of "love," is the deep emotional bond shared by two characters trivialized by insisting upon a sexual component?

To a certain extent, I think it is. Those who prefer the adversarial pairings (Mulder/Krycek) won't have as much of this problem, because that's about a different kind of attraction, but those who see who characters deeply bonded emotionally (Starsky/Hutch) and nudge it into sexual attraction...yes, maybe that trivializes the true complexity of the emotional connection.

And, yes, I believe that in the Western tradition, a selfless, "pure," and non-sexual love occupies a very special place, being considered in some ways "superior" to sexual love, but I also think that the Western tradition is the product of the church screwing with and trying to grab control of people's emotional and sexual lives in an attempt to retain control of society and that's all just an entirely different rant, so I won't go there. (Although I think a case could be made for a semantic discussion of the gap between "selfless" and "sexual.")

The odds of fandom being able to take on the delicately nuanced territory of an all-encompassing emotional but non-physical love are slim to none. It doesn't feed the kinks of the blind herd of readers just looking for a sexual bounce and that kind of thing can be so damned hard to write that only the smallest handful of authors would even take the time to try it. An even smaller percentage of them could probably handle it decently.

As a reader...well, when I go to pro fiction, no, of course I don't need the sexual component. Mostly I don't even want it.

Frodo and Sam are not "so doing it" and not the entire world full of fangirl squeeing over the casting of pretty actors can't change that. But they do love each other, deeply and sincerely and I think sexualizing it reduces the relationship to something less than it is. Sexual love does encompass the selfishness of sexual desire and sexual desire is a drive strong enough to overpower almost anything else.

If Sam wanted to get into Frodo's pants, then his selfless sacrifice is no longer selfless...he's hoping for the 'reward' of physical gratification and that's not selfless. It demeans Sam's actions and his willingness to sacrifice himself.

I don't doubt it's possible to write a truly selfless love that also contains sexual desire, but not one in a million authors could handle the balance in the way necessary to make both the selflessness and the sexuality stand up to scrutiny.

OTOH, that's not really what I come to fandom for, is it? If I'm looking for quality fiction that's deeply nuanced and explores the ramifications of the various emotional bonds humans can form, I don't come to fandom. I'm delighted when I find it (all four or five times I've found it) but it's not why I'm here. I'm mostly looking for a very specific emotional development between two specific characters. Frequently, since I read only slash, I want a sexual connection between characters, even if it's not an explicit one. I don't expect complex layers of emotionality and I don't expect a delicate interplay between selfish and selfless motivations.

Which does, now that I think about it, make anything I could add to Pandarus' entry rather moot. But do go read it, because it's really worth considering.