ship_manifesto

Bodyslide By Two: The Cable/Deadpool manifesto
or "We're not gonna haveta kiss or anythin'... are we?"

PRELIMINARY NOTES (SKIP THIS UNLESS YOU'RE ANAL-RETENTIVE)

Deadpool: Work with me, it's the Marvel Universe here. It's supposed to be fun and wacky!

Cable and Deadpool have been around since the early 90s and have been written by multiple writers in multiple contexts. The canon concerning the two of them is scattered all over the place and not all of it is easy to get hold of. So I'm going to be focusing on the two characters as they appeared in Cable & Deadpool (which was written throughout its 50-issue run by Fabian Nicieza), partly because it's just plain easier and partly because that's where the majority of the relevant interactions appear.

SO, WHO ARE THESE GUYS, ANYWAY?

G.I. JESUS: CABLE (NATHAN SUMMERS)

Deadpool: Son of a--- well, technically, son of a mutant X-Man and clone of a mutant who died (then came back several times depending on quarterly publishing budgetary needs) who was then infected by a techno-organic virus-- and sent to the future by his father in order to save him, which forced him to be raised in a harsh world where he fought for survival every single day.

His full name is Nathan Christopher Charles Summers Dayspring Askani'son... but that's a mouthful, so mostly we just call him Cable, or Nate. (Wade calls him Priscilla a couple of times. Cable hates that.) There's a long version of his backstory and a short version. The long version is so convoluted it makes my head hurt, but thankfully it's mostly irrelevant to the Cable/Deadpool ship, so I'm going to quietly ignore it and hope it goes away. The short version is this: Cable is a soldier from the future of the Marvel Universe, in which the world is ruled by the tyrannical mutant Apocalypse. He's a mutant himself, a powerful telepath and telekinetic, but his powers are kept in check by the fact that his body has been infected with the techno-organic virus since he was a baby; most of his TK power is in constant use keeping it from consuming his body.

As a result of the TO infection, his left arm is metallic; it looks like a cybernetic replacement, but it's actually a techno-organic mesh. As a result of having come back in time from a horrific future, he has a tendency to act like he knows something you don't... because he does. And he wants to use his knowledge of the future to make the world a better place. The phrase "messiah complex" comes up a lot in discussions of Cable's character, and with good reason: as the one person who knows what's coming, he's determined to make sure that it doesn't come.

Cable's chief traits are determination, stoicism, and unshakeable self-belief. He's deeply compassionate, but has a tendency to be distant and closed-off in relationships; his "big picture" is always bigger than anyone else's, which can make it hard for him to relate to people. His worst flaw is his tendency to manipulate people, feeling that no matter what others may think, he knows what's best for them. This causes problems for his relationship with Deadpool, as we shall see.

THE MERC WITH THE MOUTH: DEADPOOL (WADE WILSON)

Deadpool (caption): Do I still think in those little yellow boxes?
Deadpool (dialogue): I'm good.
Deadpool (caption): Ooh, I missed you, little yellow boxes! What fun we shall have together!

Deadpool's story is a bit more straightforward than Cable's. His real name is Wade Wilson. (Unless you believe the identity-theft storylines that suggested Deadpool stole the real Wade Wilson's identity... but they're so confusing even the writers don't understand them, so let's just pretend they didn't happen.) Born into a military family, he moved around a lot as a kid, and tended to act up against his father's wishes -- by his own account, he was a hoodlum and a delinquent from a fairly young age. After he witnessed his father's murder (in a bar brawl that he himself had caused), he joined the US Army Special Forces for a while, but got booted out and turned to mercenary work instead. When he became infected with terminal cancer, he volunteered to be a guinea pig for the Weapon X program -- you may be familiar with them as the people who coated Wolverine's skeleton with adamantium. Weapon X's experiments left him with a highly powerful healing factor that kept the cancer from killing him, but also left him hideously deformed and messed with his brain. Weapon X sent him to a faculty where he was repeatedly tortured; he was a special favourite of the scientist in charge, and so the other prisoners gave him high odds in the "dead pool". Wade broke out, adopted "Deadpool" as an alias, and went back to mercenary work, which he's been doing more or less consistently since.

The first thing you need to know about Wade is that he's insane. Loopy. Bonkers. Round the twist. Governed by moon logic. He has the world's worst case of ADHD, combined with a perception of reality that is skewed at best, at worst outright surreal. This makes his moral compass deeply unreliable (and it was pretty wonky before he went crazy). There are times when he really wants to be good, but he has trouble paying attention for long enough to figure out what's the right thing to do in any given situation, and if he does manage to pay attention, he'll usually draw the wrong conclusion because his brain leads him astray. There are times, too, when he doesn't particularly want to be good -- he's been a villain at least as much as he's been a hero -- but he's not a very competent villain, for exactly the same reason. Some of the worst things he's ever done have been the things he did without quite meaning to, or without quite knowing why.

The second thing you need to know about Wade is that Wade knows he's a character in a comic book. Gleeful mockery of the fourth wall has been his trademark since very early on. (This sometimes carries over into fanfiction, too.) The other characters never notice this, or if they notice, they just take it as further evidence of Wade's mind being gone. Maybe it is, at that. Maybe Wade's madness gives him an insight into the nature of his reality. Or maybe knowing that he's not really real was what drove him mad in the first place.

The third thing you need to know about Wade is that underneath the murder and the bouncing around and the frenetic reference-laden chatter, Wade is damaged in a way that's all too familiar to fans of Marvel comics. He's been the victim of torture many times over, and while some of it's bounced off him like a rubber ball off cinderblocks, some of it's left permanent scars. His hands are bloody, and he knows it, and sometimes it doesn't bother him; but sometimes it does, and there are times when he has trouble believing that he deserves to live. Considering the things he's done, it's probably just as well that's not too plugged-in to the real world.

THE EVIDENCE

Deadpool: We got this whole don't ask, don't tell thing goin'... not that there's anything wrong with that.

The pairing up of Cable and Deadpool in the same book was an odd choice. Apart from the fact that they were both co-created by Rob Liefeld, they had pretty much nothing in common. Put their descriptions side-by-side and they sound like they were thrown together by a random plot generator: "One's a telepathic mutant from the future with a cybernetic arm and a messiah complex. The other's an insane deformed mercenary who breaks the fourth wall. Together, they fight crime!"

Indeed, the first time they met was when Deadpool was hired to kill Cable. Not an auspicious start.

However, when Fabian Nicieza was given the job of writing Cable & Deadpool, he came up with a timeworn angle that worked better than anyone could have predicted: they were forced to work together by extraordinary circumstances, and over time developed a curious and inexplicable friendship that shaded into something more profound. Deadpool came to believe in Cable's mission to make the world better, and to need Cable as a source of direction and conscience; meanwhile, Cable came to need Deadpool to be his licensed fool -- the one person never taken in by his charisma or his certainty, who'd always point it out when the emperor had no clothes.

And then there's the fact that they were totally hot for each other.

...Okay, it's exaggerating slightly to call it a "fact". There's enough ambiguity around the relationship that it's reasonable to read them as friends. Provided, that is, you can come up with a non-homoerotic explanation for this:

Yep, that's Deadpool, in a Speedo, rubbing suntan lotion into Cable's back.

And the context makes it even gayer: this isn't something that actually happened. This is a fantasy that was triggered by Black Mamba's powers, which cause her victims to imagine that their deepest, darkest desires have been realised. So Wade's deepest, darkest desire is to give Cable a... well, um... a sensual massage.

Even as a throwaway one-panel joke, this is pretty bloody suggestive. But it doesn't stop there! Wade is deeply troubled by this revelation, offering to prove to Black Mamba and her partners in crime that he's "all man", which backfires badly:

(And for the explanation of why he's wearing yellow panties...

...does that make it less gay? I'm going to go with "no, unless you are Deadpool and therefore crazy". Note that his plan involves the assumption that Cable finds him attractive.)

Later, the two of them get in some sparring practice, and the HoYay becomes so pronounced that even the other characters are commenting on it:

After that comes the Civil War storyline: the Superhuman Registration Act becomes law, and all superheroes are required to register with the US government and become employees of SHIELD, or else get sent to an extradimensional prison. The new law divides the MU heroes into two camps -- pro-registration and anti-registration. Not surprisingly, considering how different they are, Cable and Deadpool end up on opposite sides. Deadpool registers with the government and takes a job hunting down unregistered heroes because it gives him an excuse to fight; Cable sides with Captain America's resistance movement because, being from the future, he knows that this is going to end badly -- and he manipulates events to make sure that Deadpool loses his job as an enforcer. When Deadpool realises what's happened, and hears Cable's rationale, he's not impressed, and this is the beginning of a serious rift between them.

However, even their separation doesn't stop the subtext. For one thing, they both refer to it as "getting a divorce", without even a trace of discomfort with the implication that they were married before. For another, immediately after they separate, Cable starts to... well... stalk Deadpool. Telepathically. Haunting him with visions of all the people he's killed, until Deadpool gets pissed off enough to call him on it, at which point we see this:

There followed a period of separation, during which Cable didn't appear in the book at all. But when it came time for Cable to die in a huge fiery explosion (...don't worry about it, he got better), he did so while making sure that Deadpool would be far away and safe, and reflecting to himself on what it's worth sacrificing yourself for:

Cable: You make sure... if you're going to sacrifice yourself... you do it for someone -- for something -- that matters... You sacrifice yourself for a cause, to protect your men, your leader. To prevent an enemy from obtaining a worthwhile target... You sacrifice yourself to keep your dream from being corrupted. But most of all...

*sniff*

Even Cable's death doesn't put a stop to the subtext, as Deadpool comments on the statue built in Cable's honour in Rumekistan:

I'm sure there's an explanation of this that doesn't involve Cable and Deadpool having had sex while Cable was alive. I just can't think of it right now.

And in the very last issue of Cable & Deadpool, which brought a tear to many a cynical eye, Cable, who didn't even appear in that issue, sent Deadpool back a little present from the future, just in time to save his life:

Awww.

WHY CABLE/DEADPOOL?

Cable: Always comes back to this. For two people who say they don't need each other, both of us keep doing a lot of stupid things to try and stay together.

Why do I ship Cable/Deadpool? ...what, you mean the abundance of homoerotic subtext bordering on outright text isn't enough?

No, I know what you mean. A lot of the conventional reasons for shipping a non-canon couple don't apply to Cable/Deadpool. They're not particularly "hot" -- Cable's reasonably good-looking, but his body's part-metallic and he's past his 40s; Deadpool is hideously deformed. They don't really have anything in common. They're drastically different characters both in in-universe terms and in meta terms: Deadpool's a wacky comedy guy, Cable's a grim antihero. They end up on opposite sides every so often, but they don't have the kind of intense rivalry or passionate mutual hatred that generally leads to enemyslash. And there are women in their lives -- albeit not exactly in stable relationships with either of them. Considered in the abstract, Cable/Deadpool is a pairing that makes no sense.

That is, until you see them together. And then you realise that they like each other, respect each other, need each other, even. That each of them has something the other one can't do without. That Deadpool's loopiness and cynicism keeps Cable from succumbing to his own propaganda; that Cable's high ideals make Deadpool want to sit still for long enough to do some good. That they make each other better people.

I have to confess that I started reading Cable & Deadpool for the slash. I saw a couple of posts on

scans_daily, said to myself "wow, that looks pretty darn gay, I better check it out", and discovered that as well as being very gay, Cable & Deadpool was laugh-out-loud hilarious, with twisty plots and the occasional swerve into deeper emotional waters that writer Fabian Nicieza handled extremely well.

But the thing was, the slashy undertones never quite went away, even when people started mentioning them in the letter column. They just changed, and in a way that suggested an emotional storyline taking place in between the panels of the main plot. In the early issues, there was a lot of plot-related stuff that just happened to look homoerotic, and was occasion for nervous banter. Then, as Nate and Wade got closer, Wade started letting slip little hints that maybe he wasn't as completely heterosexual as he might have seemed in the past. Even as their relationship foundered, in the wake of the Civil War, and (more importantly) as Wade became impatient with Nate's manipulative ways, they could never deny how important they were to each other. It got so that the series just made more sense if you assumed they were more than friends.

Why Cable/Deadpool? Because they get under each other's skins (both literally and metaphorically). Because they don't want to care about each other at all, but they can't seem to help it. Because they don't make sense apart.

And because they don't make sense together, either, except in all the ways they do.

FANDOM GUIDE

T-Ray: As for those doubting me, who else but Wade Wilson would break the fourth wall on the recap page?

The complete run of Cable & Deadpool is available in a set of 8 trade paperbacks. The slashiest of these is volume 4, Bosom Buddies, though they're all pretty slashy. The last volume is less essential than the rest, since it covers the period after Cable's death -- though I'd still recommend it on its own merits, and for the many guest appearances. If you're interested in Cable and Deadpool's pre-team-up canon, Cable's is scattered all over the place and Deadpool's is mostly uncollected, but you should be able to find Cable Classic and Deadpool Classic in the shops; I can't say I recommend them, exactly, since they date from the time when Rob Liefeld was considered a good artist (...no, I can't explain it), but they're there if you're interested.

Marvel recently released a free comic detailing Wade's backstory, in preparation for the upcoming Deadpool solo ongoing series; it's been posted to scans_daily with notes by a C/D shipper. This is easily the best way to get caught up (and read the comments, too; they're hilarious).

Cable/Deadpool fandom is small, but has a few exquisite gems that I keep coming back to again and again. There's a comm on LJ, the imaginatively named

cabledeadpool, which is my source for most of the following links.

Fic:

Selfless by

sarkywoman: Nate tries to sequester his selfish urges in the back of his mind. It doesn't work, and turns out? He's got some feelings for Wade that are pretty selfish...
Valentine's Day by

sarkywoman: Wade and Nate exchange Valentine's Day gifts. As you might expect, the gifts are a little... unconventional.
The Impenetrable Noise of No Guns Firing by

halfnorn: Providence, Nate's island fortress, is destroyed, and Wade looks for him in the wreckage. Most C/D fic has a humorous tone, but this one explores the darker side of Wade's madness. It's sad and powerful.
Shut Up! by

shananagin: A PWP told entirely through dialogue. Hilarious and hot, which is quite a feat.
Christmas in the Spring by

shananagin: The most annoying thing about fanfiction, Wade decided, was that the feebs who wrote it always overused the fourth wall breaking thing... Funny and sweet metafictional ficlet.
Always Keep An Eye Out For That Damn Sex Pollen by

gestalt1: "What! Sex pollen? Sex pollen! That is so fuckin’ cliché! I hate you fanfic author." I did mention that the "fourth-wall breaking" thing carried over into fanfic, right? Yeah, just checking.

Vids:

Cable & Deadpool being a comics fandom, these are slideshow-style vids, both of them on YouTube.

Deadpool's Greatest Hits by uncannyrman is not a slash vid, but it is a hilarious recap of some of 'Pool's finest moments, narrated by the man himself.

My Heart Is A Fist by neverknowsbest09 is a slash vid, and it's wonderful. The combination of comedy and tragedy is very cleverly done, and really sums up this pairing better than I ever could. Watch out, especially, for Deadpool's intervention at 01:30.

Art:

Faux by TierraL -- you'll need to be a registered DeviantArt user to see it since it's flagged "mature", but it's actually a very sweet work-safe picture of Wade hugging Nate. It makes me go melty.

Saturday Morning by

zara_the_pirate: another SFW image of the boys snuggling.

By the same artist, a gorgeous pic of them kissing, and You got a better idea? -- the definitive piece of Cable/Deadpool fanart.

(If you're a registered user at y!Gallery, check out her gallery too -- some of the "mature"-flagged stuff is well worth a look.)

Meta:

sabinelagrande has a lovely little essay on how to write Cable/Deadpool over at

superhero_muses.

Footnote: Why "Bodyslide by two"?

Well... back in the day, Cable used to have a space station called Graymalkin (which is kind of a weird name for a space station, now that I think about it, but anyway). Graymalkin was made out of future tech from Cable's own time, and it included a teleportation unit. When he had access to this unit, Cable would activate it by saying "Bodyslide by one". If he wanted to bring somebody else with him, he'd say "Bodyslide by two". Later, Cable used parts of Graymalkin to construct Providence, an artificial island in the South Pacific. That was the status quo at the beginning of Cable & Deadpool -- but during the first story arc, something interesting happened, in the course of a plot so complicated I won't even try to summarise it. (Though I'll note in passing that it involved Cable swallowing Deadpool. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.)

The relevant part is: Cable and Deadpool's DNA became so intertwined that any time Cable tried using the teleport unit by saying "Bodyslide by one", he and Deadpool would teleport together -- melded into the same body. (And if you're thinking "boy howdy, that sounds homoerotic", you would be absolutely correct.) The only way for him to teleport anywhere without bringing Deadpool along in a very awkward and uncomfortable way for both of them was to say "Bodyslide by two" and... bring him along in the normal way. (Well, "the normal way" if you're a mutant from the future with a teleportation machine.) But Deadpool could use it too, which is what the picture at the top of this manifesto is about. "Bodyslide by two" became a recurring phrase in the series, used more often the more the two of them worked together, and it seemed a fitting encapsulation of the weird way Nate and Wade came together by accident and forged an unexpected bond.

(And it sounds kinda dirty, but that's just a bonus.)