What In The Slashy Heck?

Hear that sound? That's the sound of Spike/Angel slash shippers "squeeing" uncontrollably.

(Spike and Angel finally realize their feelings for each other...Kind of.)

Today marked the Dark Horse Presents internet release of Always Darkest, a short Buffy Season Eight tale brought to us by Joss Whedon and the wonderful, talented, awesome Jo Chen. Seriously, I've always wondered what it would be like for Chen to illustrate the actual comic, instead of just the covers. It's everything you could hope for as far as representation of the characters -- not to mention gorgeous.

Though only three pages, this mini-comic raises a lot of questions about what's going on in Buffy's subconscious. It's pretty obvious from the second panel that we are witnessing either a flashback or a dream, as Caleb is the one doing the taunting. His first piece of dialogue, "You can't kill what's inside you," harkens back to the beginning arc of Season Eight, when Buffy dreams of kissing Xander, and Xander tells her that she "is the dark." Darkness is something that Buffy sees in herself. It's a part of being a slayer, and to an extent, a killer.

(Caleb reminds Buffy of the darkness inside her.)

It soon becomes super obvious that Buffy is having a dream when Spike and Angel show up. But instead of welcoming her with open arms, they are distant and aloof, and seem more keen on each other than having anything to do with her. Now, there is a lot of subtext to the Spike/Angel relationship on both Buffy the television show, and Angel. There's also a bit of canoninity (I may have just made that word up) to them as a pair. At one point, late in season five Angel, Spike says, "Angel and I were never intimate... except for that one--" at which point he is cut off by a monster attacking or something of the sort. Joss has even stated that it's likely they were together sexually at least once during their time together as vampires. After all, they may have been evil, but they weren't, as Joss points out, "closed-minded."

(Adorable, no?)

First off, before I get into a discussion about slash fanfic, I should say for the record that I have nothing against slash. I sometimes read slash fiction myself. I have long been interested, however, in why the bulk of M/M slash is written by heterosexual females. I've even asked a few fellow fandom friends and fanfic writers why this is. The answers I get are what trouble me, as they are usually about "power dynamics," and "equality." Namely, that equality is much more easily acheived between two characters if they are both male. This seems to imply that there is inherent inequality in all male/female relationships, which I find a bit depressing. The most depressing answers, however, are from women who just find female characters too boring to be part of the equation, or that they prefer writing slash fiction because female/male relationships just aren't as "profound."

Is the slash fiction phenomenon in fandom a symptom of internalized misogyny? Or am I reading too much into it? I'm open to discussion of course, and I am not saying that all slash fiction writers write slash for these reasons. Some just find it sexy, and there's nothing wrong with that.

(Poor Buffy.)

I wouldn't normally link "hints of slashyness" in a comic with misogyny, but the surrounding themes in this piece seem to do just that. The next page is rather baffling at first glance. We see Buffy getting married to none other than Warren Mears -- now skinless of course, as a result of being flayed by Willow. Buffy seems to be happy in her dream about marrying him. Between this and her feelings of "dirtiness" and being excluded from the Spike and Angel lovefest, it seems as if she's dealing with some unconscious feelings of self-hate, or at the very least, a lack of self-worth. Tara even makes an appearance, telling Buffy that she still blames the slayer for her untimely death at Warren's hands.

The end panel is funny, if not a little abrupt -- and certainly in keeping with Joss' work:


All in all, it was a fun read. I sincerely hope that Chen will someday illustrate a full issue!