Original Slash

[sistermagpie]

This topic came up talking to cathexys and I'd love to hear what all the slash readers/writers on my flist think about it. Basically, it was a question about the idea of "original slash," meaning slash about original characters and whether that could actually be called slash. My first answer was obviously not--slash implies fanfic, of course. Not only that, but it implies some difference from the text. Thus: Chandler/Joey=slash because they are both straight in canon (sadly, these two were the first male couple I could come up with where I felt comfortable really saying their sexuality was established in canon-I tossed out a lot of others I was going to put there). Will/Bran=slash because as 12-year-olds their sexuality has not been defined and we're filling in a blank. Blaise/Theodore=slash because they are names in the text and we’re filling in the rest. However, Brian/Justin=/=because they are gay in canon. At least that's how I do it.



Because it struck me that I can easily imagine reading a fic about two original characters that read to me as slash despite not having a source text. Similarly, I suspect one might be able to read a Brian/Justin fic and consider it slash too--saying, "This author took a gay romance and turned it into slash!" I think anybody familiar with slash would understand what was meant by that criticism, whether or not they could articulate it: does it mean Brian and Justin have become wimpified? Too emotional? Feminized? Does Brian suddenly not want to sleep around? Does Justin suddenly need children? Is one of them pregnant? Things like that.

But what would it really mean? Would it just be bad characterization? Because one could characterize them badly in many ways. I think part of it--not all, but part--would literally come from an author supplying a slash factor that isn't there in canon. That is, almost writing *as if* Brian and Justin exist in a primarily straight canon and have been made gay only here, in the story. Sure everyone else is/has been made gay too, but then that's not unusual in slash. What I mean to say, I guess, is that rather than taking the direct route and writing gay Brian and Justin as seen on the US QAF, a writer (and I'm speaking hypothetically here, not criticizing any writer of B/J because I haven't read any QAF fic) could go through the motions of slash: create a phantom Brian and Justin to which she relates as she would straight men, make *them* gay and write the slash from there. I don't think this is something the writer would be aware of doing--I can't imagine a slash writer sitting down to think about what the characters would be like straight. Why bother? I rather think that the act of slashing could become so natural you wouldn't have to think about it. You would just miss it if it weren't there. I described it to cathexys as it being a bit like you and your naked partner dressing up just so that you could take each other's clothes off.

You could do this with original characters too. I know some writers on my flist have described their original fic as "slashy" (which is different from slash, but since they're the ones making it slashy, perhaps there's a little slashing going on there as well). I know I often wind up thinking about slash when I write, despite the fact that most of the characters I write for are about ten or eleven (hey, so were Will and Bran and all of Harry’s class at Hogwarts!). I don’t slash them, but it makes me think of their relationship from non-sexual slashy angles-yes, they do exist, imo. So I think it seems almost natural for slash writers to have gotten to the point where they/we can slash without the need of a straight source text. We all carry a phantom source text, in a way, that adds tension or a foundation to a story without anyone knowing where that tension came from. Perhaps, I thought, years from now there might be a real recognizable tradition in early 21st century lit (particularly amongst female writers?) that actually came from slash. Students would have to study the history of it to see where it originally came from, though they might interpret it a different way themselves.

For instance, look at Frodo and Sam. A while ago I read The Great War and Modern Memory and the author had a whole section on homoeroticism in WWI literature--a section some, apparently, found offensive. But his point was really interesting, especially for anyone interested in slash. Essentially what he described was a huge hurt/no-comfort narrative running throughout war literature: beautiful and beloved young man dies in the arms of the narrator. I believe the author pointed out that while there was tons of homoeroticism (it was completely common for commanders to find favorites in the prettiest youths under their command), homosexuality was quite rare. It wasn’t homosexuality as we understand it today it was...something else. That may sound like a sort of prissy denial, I don’t think it is. After all, don't we see something similar in slash after all? The homoerotic/homosexual meaning something else besides the recreation of what we call homosexuality in real life? Clearly it is something else, or else there wouldn’t be an ongoing discussion of just how much slash should or shouldn’t mirror real life gay men.

LOTR doesn't go too over the top with that imagery, but we all know there's a bit of it there, which is why people nowadays ask whether Frodo and Sam are gay, or Sam is, since he's the one usually waxing rhapsodic.;-) While I don't think they are, there are a lot of ways of disagreeing with that proposition that annoy me. One of those is, "I hug my friends all the time! Like when we see each other at the mall, even! You can hug your friend without being gaaaaayyy!" And that bugs me because yes, hugging your friend doesn't make you gay, but Frodo and Sam are not hugging like you and your friends. A modern reader who raises an eyebrow at Sam's affection does not have to be being stupid or childish or puerile, because come on, Sam's affection is written in a way that modern writing reserves for romance. He is physically attracted to Frodo literally, just not (necessarily) sexually. Nowadays, though, men are not physically attracted to each other, period, so you can't blame someone for reading certain passages that way. You can blame them even less when you get a load of this WW1 literary tradition, which is pretty damned slashy! It reads differently to us today, perhaps, than it did to contemporary readers of the time because modern readers don't make the same associations with it. They don't just "get it" the way perhaps others in the past might have.

So I wonder if slash writers might affect literature the same way. Think about it: you'd have a writer who is perhaps used to taking canonically straight or unresolved characters and having them interact sexually with people of their own gender--interact in many different ways, too: angrily, sweetly, lovingly, humorously, tediously. Now you've got that writer doing original fic. Still interested in male characters (as perhaps many slash writers/readers are-I know I am), s/he might easily dip into his/her slash experience to write them. Nowadays that would probably play as slashy to anyone reading, whether or not they knew the word slash, because we understand and are familiar with the culture of which slash is a part. But perhaps in the future that same text would be looked at differently; people might see other things in that tension besides the sexuality of it, particularly if (*crosses fingers*) by then homosexuality has become seen as just a normal part of human life.

Would slash-influenced original work come across as simply prudish homoeroticism? Just as the more subtle and complex things Tolkien was saying with Frodo and Sam sometimes get reduced to just, "Just shag already!" Or would the complexities become *more* clear because after all, it isn't just sex it's often got other gender and intimacy issues among other things. I mean, there's a lot of slash that's PWP, but this hypothetical original writing would presumably not be porn, and when there's no actual sex in the story slash writers tend to get really intense about the friendships involved. Plus, it seems like it would be hard to look at several slashy texts with completely different tones (funny, angry, light, heavy, violent), and think they were all only about sex.

Err, so I wonder how any of the slash writers on my flist feel about slash and original writing. Do you all feel it influences it? How do you incorporate it into your original fic, be your original characters straight of gay?

Comments

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Not too long ago, I was challenged to write a Georgette Heyer fanfic. Since most of her novels are one-offs without recurring characters but with character *types*, I chose to write a pastiche instead. And while it turned into a Hornblower crossover (I swear, it just happened), the lead character was completely original. And I liked him enough that I'm in the planning phases for an original story. And it will be "slashy" in that he will be paired with another man.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OOh, that's fascinating and I can totally see how one could lead to the other. Well, except for the Hornblower crossover but even that doesn't seem wrong so much as tied to that specific story. But I love the idea of starting from types, which one can probably find in most authors, and creating an original character for that, who could then be slashy.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

I'm at work, so I'll just do a list sans analysis.

- Straight characters in strong friendships
- Straight characters in uber-het contexts making light of slash (cf Brock in Venture Brothers, who is very very het yet exhibits exaggerated mothering and male camaraderie... not to mention the awful jokes)
- characters who are attracted yet suppressing
- characters who the author wants you to think are suppressing but are actually straight
- gay characters written by someone who views homosexuality as a deviation
- gay characters written by someone who views homosexuality as a lifestyle choice
- gay characters written by someone who views homosexuality as an orientation
- gay characters written by someone who views it as a combination of the above
- storylines which emphasize sexuality and deliberately *cough* screw with it
- storylines which are "asexual" and their relationships reflect that
- authors who want to capitalize on slash purely for the "weird" factor
- authors who genuinely like slash
- authors who tease, i.e. messing with perception is the priority
- authors who not only tease, but want their fandom to ignite (can we say Krycek?)
- cultural forces such as acceptance of and/or a stable role for ambiguous sexuality, as with many regions of Asia
- historical forces such as friendship / bonding genres
- authors who don't know about slash
- authors who view slash as a subset of ... slanting something (a character, storyline, etc) in favor of personal whims rather than narrative necessities
- authors who slash for aesthetic or personal purposes
- authors who slash to make a statement
-... or both
- slash authors using the storytelling components of slash in their original fiction
- authors who coincidentally use the storytelling components of slash without knowing slash

...now I have to get ready to leave work.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Much to think about--and you're right about all of it! I particularly like the way that the way someone thinks about sexuality would naturally lead to it being presented differently...should be obvious, but sometimes it's not. I mean, people in slash fandom tend to be shocked by the idea that there are people who write slash but think homosexuality is wrong, but they definitely exist!

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, I thought, years from now there might be a real recognizable tradition in early 21st century lit (particularly amongst female writers?)

Wow, I have to say I read this with some surprise because, in my opinion, this has already happened. Slash is a recognizable literary tradition of the 20th century with its own history and it has and does affect (and has been affected by) certain strands of pro writing (and will affect more I'm sure.)

I also have to confess that I'm fairly taken aback by what seems like your fairly negative view of slash as a genre--if it's feminized/weak then it's slash?

does it mean Brian and Justin have become wimpified? Too emotional? Feminized? Does Brian suddenly not want to sleep around? Does Justin suddenly need children? Is one of them pregnant? Things like that.

I really don't think this is what slash is about! Rather, it seems to me to be about creatively re-imagining and reinterpreting a set of codes--behavioral and social codes, mainly, but also literary and dramatic ones. By behavioral and social, I mean the way in which we Refuse the idea of the "swinging bachelor"--that behavior no longer reads as James Bondish but as "probably gay and needs a therapist" (and I think that Brian and Justin's codes are different, but still open to creative interpretation); by literary and dramatic, I mean the impulse to argue about what the "important" parts of the story are--in that way, we are all the people who fast-forwarded through the Yoda on Dagobah stuff to get to the Han-Leia kiss : yes, yes, your mileage may vary on this, you Yoda-loving freaks or who make edited tapes of teasers and codas and long shots of police officers' kitchens and other things that "everyone knows" aren't important. We're also narrative climax junkies; we love 'em and we can't have too many of them--in that way, it's a very female aesthetic. ;)

That's the beginning of a definition of "slash" for me, anyway, and I absolutely believe that there can be original slash and a slash aesthetic that transcends traditional fandoms.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow, I have to say I read this with some surprise because, in my opinion, this has already happened. Slash is a recognizable literary tradition of the 20th century with its own history and it has and does affect (and has been affected by) certain strands of pro writing (and will affect more I'm sure.)

I think I'm pretty clueless of most things that are considered traditions. *blushes* I'm glad to know it is!

I also have to confess that I'm fairly taken aback by what seems like your fairly negative view of slash as a genre--if it's feminized/weak then it's slash?

Yipes! No, I didn't mean that to come across that way. I was using those terms because I was thinking how often people sometimes use the term slash negatively, particularly when it's being compared to gay lit. Or just in general--sort of like the way all OCs can be talked about like Mary Sues, so all slash is reduced to whatever charicature the person imagines in the worst fics. So if somebody said (presumably as a criticism) that somebody had taken a gay romance and made it slash, would they be using the term slash to mean feminized and weak? I mean, I've heard slash stories that I loved dimissed with exactly those criticisms--that the male characters have been made feminized and weak. That almost seems like something slashers and writers can unfortunately throw at each other as a Bad Thing they do in their writing.

I assume when people use those words they are describing *something* that is a quality slash has that they are describing negatively. I'm more interesting in asking what people mean when they say the characters are feminized--sometimes it's obviously, of course. If the male character is pregnant, for instance, one can see why the author would be accused of "making him female." But is the author really doing something that simple? I tend not to think so but it seems like that's the thing it's usually accused of.

So really I totally agree with your second paragraph, which seems to go a long way towards explaining how slash can be reacting to something without that something being a specific original text. It seems like there's just a sort of omnipresent text out there in the culture.

That's the beginning of a definition of "slash" for me, anyway, and I absolutely believe that there can be original slash and a slash aesthetic that transcends traditional fandoms.

I'd love to hear more about what you think that aesthetic is--I'm totally fascinated!

[pauraque]

At one point I wrote an original fic, the plot of which was that the narrator was attempting to prove that another character had murdered his male lover. The sexuality of the narrator himself was left to the reader's imagination, but I found myself writing the "canonically" bisexual murderer flirting with the narrator, and doing various other things that created what one would call slashy subtext.

I finished the story, and was happy with it. Do you know what I did next?

I wrote slash for it. Yes, I slashed my own original fic. And it simply wouldn't have *worked* as "canon", as part of the initial story, because to me, slash depends on having something pre-existing to riff on. It's a comment on a text, not a stand-alone text in itself.

Now, you could conceivably write slash that's commenting not on a particular text, but on a whole genre of literature. And I think that exists in some gay sci-fi stories, which comment on the subtextual elements (and strangely traditional het archetypes) of sci-fi in general. But to me, it ain't slash unless you're commenting on something. That's the heart of it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*applauds gleefully*

I'm am gleeful because what you did makes so much sense to me. I think part of it is that I've gotten so used to using slash as a language somehow, that it seems a natural part of m/m relationships in writing. I'm more like you in that it seems like something to do as a comment on the text...it's a bit like writing a backstory or history, or interviewing the character, perhaps. It seems like an important part of understanding the dynamic or the characters. Perhaps you could figure these things out another way, but slash seems like a great shortcut to valuable info to me.

But to me, it ain't slash unless you're commenting on something. That's the heart of it.

That's how it seems to me too. Though I think I've been lazy in thinking about just how many things out there can be commented on--that phantom straight narrative that's just everywhere. It's like you mentioned in the sci-fi genre. You almost don't need a specific version of the traditional het version because it's in your head.

[ptyx.livejournal.com]

I think you're taking slash as a clearly defined genre, when there are many kinds of slash. There are even gay men writing slash and some of them include their RL experiences into it. And even what is gay differs from a culture to another.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Very true--in fact, I even usually dislike it whenever anyone says that slash is *about* any one thing, because I think there's easily enough room inside it for straight women, bisexual women, gay men, bisexual men, straight men, gay women writing about all different combinations of characters (gay women writing gay men, straight men writing gay men, etc.). It's not even so much that different *groups* of people get different things out of slash, but that every person gets something different about it. Well, I guess it's like that essay linked to recently on the Snitch which was just one writer trying to figure out what drew her to it. And yet presumably there are *some* things in common or we wouldn't be able to say "slash" and have everyone know what we meant.

[randomblade.livejournal.com]

while there was tons of homoeroticism (it was completely common for commanders to find favorites in the prettiest youths under their command), homosexuality was quite rare.

I agree that this type of loving male friendship is no longer a really accepted social format. I think it's quite sad. My twinbro and his three closest friends do the victorial male beloved thing quite well, and it's almost entirely non-sexual. Theirloveissoplatonic!

Of course, as my baby brother Twinbro is completely asexual anyway. Shut up. He is.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hurray for asexual twinbros!! :-D

I really do think there's a lot to be said for having less labels, really. A while ago I saw a production of the Noel Coward play "Design for Living" which is about a woman and two men. The subtext seems very slashy to me--it's a threesome, obviously. This production made the slash text, though--the men actually kissed on stage. The weird thing was--and I don't think it was just doing that but the way the whole thing played in general--I wound up feeling like it was about a rather stupid woman who didn't realize she was a third wheel to two gay men. Like I said I think this had to do with more than just letting the men kiss onstage, but it made me think how it was probably sexier when everything was unspoken.

Huh. That's a totally different situation than the one you've described. But still.;-)

[jewelsong.livejournal.com]

Magpie, as usual, you think way too much *grin* but I wanted to say that I agreed with this: "while there was tons of homoeroticism ... homosexuality was quite rare. It wasn’t homosexuality as we understand it today it was...something else." completely.

There is a difference between homosexuality as we think of it today and homoeroticism, especially in war or other situations of extreme stress. In "Band of Brothers" there is a passage where the author describes the relationship between the men as "closer than a wife; closer than a lover." It is...something else. Not "just friends." But not "lovers" either. Something else...something more.

Maybe there is a word for it in Greek...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Me? Think to much? Never!;-P

But yeah, I agree and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a Greek word for it.

In fact, I remember reading the televisionwithoutpity recap of Band of Brothers and just being completely annoyed at the way the recapper obviously decided the funny way to recap it would be to act as if the whole thing was very very gay, which had just never occurred to me watching it. Now, I can imagine wanting to slash the characters in it, sure. But I never thought watching that series that that was a factor.

[tiranog.livejournal.com]

Hi, there!

Great questions as usual! :)

I think if you're writing two male (or two female)original characters of your own having sex, then you're writing homoerotica. If you're taking someone else's original characters who are not portrayed in canon as being actively gay, like Snape and Harry, then you're writing slash. If you're taking characters portrayed in canon as actively gay, like the guys in Queer as Folk, then you're probably just writing fanfic, because you're just expanding on an existing relationship.

There is that grey area you mentioned when it comes to writing romantic stories about characters written in another age, like Robin Hood & Will Scarlet, Holmes & Watson, or Arthur & Lancelot. People declared their love and loyalty differently in different ages.

LOTR doesn't go too over the top with that imagery, but we all know there's a bit of it there, which is why people nowadays ask whether Frodo and Sam are gay, or Sam is, since he's the one usually waxing rhapsodic.;-)

I've heard this debate before, and the thing that I don't get is that LotR isn't a story from a different age. It was written and published in the 1950s. A guy waxing rhapsodic about how much he loves another man while he's watching him sleep in the 1950s meant pretty much what it does today. Admittedly, Tolkein was very old world, but, the man taught at a university. He knew the English language backwards and forwards. He didn't live under a rock. I find it impossible to believe that any man in the 1950s above the age of ten could be completely innocent of the overt sexual connotations in that scene where Sam and Frodo are in bed together. I think a lot of people want to believe that it doesn't mean what it says it means, but I'm inclined to think that the man wrote precisely what he meant - Sam loved Frodo. Sam mightn't have known how to act on that love; hence the later mentions of being torn between his feelings for Rosie and his feelings for Frodo when they're all living together, but in that morning bedroom scene, I think Sam meant precisely what he said, that he loved Frodo.

Whew, sorry about the tangent, but that's my biggest pet peeve! LOL Hope this finds you happy and healthy. Cheers.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Actually, that was a great tangent and I'd love to hear more about it! Because that's a very very good point that this book was being written in the 1950s. It's not part of WW1 lit, though when I was reading Great War and Modern Memory there were a number of things in it where I felt like it really was part of that whole body of literature...it just took Tolkien a few decades to get it on paper. It was a really fascinating way of looking at it because it was so removed from that time, but connected to it at the same time.

So when you read the story do you see it, as I know some people do (and this is a way that makes a lot of sense to me), as Sam essentially being in love with Frodo romantically but unaware of it? Would you say Tolkien had more understanding of this than Sam, or would he, too, probably not be able to say Sam literally wanted to have sex with him? Do you think Tolkien was specifically using that language to say this *wasn't* just a friendship, but being more vague about just what it was, or was he hinting it was sexual?

I guess what I mean is...Tolkien lived through that earlier time, but was now living in the 50s. A lot of LOTR he seemed to be an intentional throwback to earlier eras. So if he was using language that he knew would be taken sexually in his own time, I wonder if he might have done it as a rejection of the current interpretation.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

It wasn’t homosexuality as we understand it today it was...something else.

"Uranian. Invert. Onanist. (These are words they make up; you will find them in medical texts.)"

Quoted from "The Mystery of the Young Gentleman", by Joanna Russ, who also wrote "Pornography By Women For Women, With Love" [link (http://www.totse.com/en/erotica/erotic_fiction_o_to_p/pornogra.html)], over 20 years ago...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, now I have to read that essay that's linked, but "Mystery of the Young Gentleman" sounds even more tempting. (Me and my young gentleman!)

Invert always makes me think of Proust. "Everybody is gay an invert but me!" Meanwhile I'm reading the book and thinking, "Gay as a picnic basket."

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was very odd to have 'original' slash-- or even name-only character slash in existing universes-- and call it slash (since I'd barely call it fanfic). I don't know if I've noticed a recognizable 'style' in the majority of slash fics vs. 'normal' romance, I guess, except as in most hetero published romance is bad (...and so is most slash... and fic in general).

I mean, if you take away 'slashing these two canon straight or sexually-ambiguous characters you see in the source text', what remains? Writing about people in a 'certain way'?? Taking straight-acting (WTF??!) boys & making them like each other...? Does that make all slash a coming-of-age story...?

I think what the whole 'style' of slash thing is getting at is that it's a romance genre vs. an act by an audience. Applying m/f romance conventions on m/m stories-- or implying that dynamic without actually making it obvious. That's making it 'slashy', then-- when two boys act sorta like a boy and a girl. However... I always thought that was only how -bad- slash was like. That is, people made one of the boys a girl and substituted just because they were incapable of realism or didn't want any-- and perhaps, given the evidence of most fic, one could say that's what slashers want, but....

If you wrote a realistic depiction of m/m queer desire for characters who're canonically straight or ambiguous, wouldn't that be slash? I suppose that's priviledging the 'act' over the style (which I do).

Perhaps you could define slashing as taking homoerotic close male bonds & making them romantic-- but this is a very tricky thing, since you'd first have to convincingly write said homoerotic bond in a non-slashy way, if that makes sense. It would have to work on two levels-- you can't set out to write slashily 'cause then it'd mess up the foundation. It's like, slash seems to be the 'second layer'-- You'd have to be able to add it or take it away, and if you take it away, the relationship would have to remain almost the same (in a classic sense, I think).

Basically, I think seeing all m/m romance (say, QAF or some random original fic) as slash totally doesn't work for me to the point where I think the idea is laughable. Besides this, it gets tricky because rivals also get slashed, not just friends-- so it's not all about homoerotic bonds & closeness, it's also about chemistry. If you're writing the basis for slash as well as slashing, you'd have to take off your clothes while naked, yes-- but basically, I've read some 'original' slash, and I don't see that happening. I see romance fics happening-- where the romantic attraction is there from the beginning, pretty much, which takes away the foundation. There have to be two stories for the price of one, and I just don't see that going on in most people's definitions as I see through their writing.

As far as writing 'slash' (rather than actual slash)-- that's just writing about male characters with intense homosocial bonds, whether friendship-type or rivalry, and it almost offends me that this would have to be slashy just because it's present in the fic. I mean, you could see it that way as a reader, but what's the point of meaning it to be slashy? It seems dishonest somehow-- like instead of just being a fic, it's got an immediate 'media tie-in' or something. *sigh*

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Uh... by 'writing slash' in the last paragraph, I meant writing 'slashy' ^^;;;;

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

Do you all feel it influences it? How do you incorporate it into your original fic, be your original characters straight of gay?

I can't write if I'm thinking about how other people might interpret it, or if I'm trying to write one relationship while imagining entirely another. I need to know a) what the characters' relationship is and b) what it could develop into, or else I fumble. That's in fanfic writing *and* original writing. I was writing a bit of pure adventurefic in which sex was not the point and the characters were not interested in each other, and during the writing of it I kept getting feedback from someone that essentially wanted to know when they'd get the 'missing scenes' that occurred outside of my established 'universe' in which the characters were slashed. The story started trying to go in both directions, you know? I understood which bits the fb'er viewed as slashy, and started to view further interaction through that lense, and suddenly the whole thing stopped making sense. I had a similar problem with a bit of original fiction. Honestly? I've sort of come to the conclusion that if I'm going to write anything non-smutty, I need to hide it from slashers until I'm done with it, or it will die a very confused death. :P

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ah! That makes total sense! I mean, I can completely see why that would mess you up, trying to essentially write and slash at the same time. It's like reenka said above, I think, it's like trying to take your shirt off *and* be naked at the same time, or comment on the fic as you're writing it. I can easily see the whole thing getting mushy--not just in your head as you're writing but also on the page--if you're trying to do both. I tend to think that even the best slash is going to come from something where the author just wrote what the characters would do without any winks at the audience. In fact it seems like that hurt some TV shows that did that if it got to be too much of a joke. Xena, I seem to remember, got just too jokey about the femmeslash sometimes until the world of the show broke down and you aware of the commentary.

That's probably why I tend to be really nervous about any winks to the audience in TV shows (TV shows seem to have the most problem with this). It's just too easy to destroy the fictional world that way.

[ginzai.livejournal.com]

Hm... As a writer of self-proclaimed slashy original works, your entry intrigued me. I think that there's is still a wide variation on what people call "slash", despite how firm your own convictions on the term may be. What I mean is... I grew into reading slash fic from anime, and perhaps that's influenced my opinion. To me, slash isn't homosexual or homoerotic fanfic regarding canonically straight characters. Slash is simply stories that involve bi or gay characters, or that heavily feature homosexual or homoerotic themes.

It simplifies things quite a bit. It means that I'm just as comfortable calling a Robin Hood/Will Scarlett fic slash as I am calling Harry/Draco slash. The same goes for canonically gay pairings. I equally use slash both in and out of fanfic, but then I refer to both fanfic and original fic as "fic," for "fiction."

Fic is fic to me; something that is of particular interest, I think, is how many fanfic conventions come out when fanfic writers try their hands at original stories. Online stories are written in a considerably different way than printed text. Often it seems that online original work is written for impact per chapter, whereas printed books tend to have more emphasis on the story arc itself, the plot and keeping things smooth. I'd elaborate, but I'm running late to go get a kid from daycare. ^_^

Argh. In short, slash = homosexual or homoerotic themes in a work of fiction. The characters can be canonically gay, they can be canonically straight, they can be canonically attracted to watermelons, it doesn't matter.

But out of curiousity, why do people have a problem with turning canonically gay characters straight? we turn canonically - or assumed canonically - straight characters gay all the time. When I read, it's for the characters and their relationships with other characters, not because a man is boinking another man.

I think I'd make more sense if I wasn't typing at 70 WPM trying to get this out. Ack. Late!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

ha...i was waiting for anime folks to jump in...b/c yaoi puts yet another spin on the issue altogether, doesn't it? thanks on emphasing the conventions too!!!

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can discuss your thoughts in any meaningful way, because I can't determine how you define slash from your post. I was especially thrown by the following:

I don’t slash them, but it makes me think of their relationship from non-sexual slashy angles-yes, they do exist, imo.

Slashy means containing subtextual homoerotic tension, to me. In other words, sexual. Slash means containing textual homoerotic tension. Again, sexual. The slash aesthetic (as opposed to style) means, to me, viewing the text in question in a certain way, hinged on sexuality. Whether the text in question is one you're reading, one you're reacting to, or one you're writing is irrelevant. The aesthetic is the same.

So yes, I believe you can have original fiction that is, in fact, slash, in that it's written with a slash aesthetic, or perhaps sensibility. But then, I also don't believe you can have slash in any permutation without that sexual factor. And I don't mean sex itself, just some awareness and acknowledgement of the sexual level of interaction.

I've written B/J QaF fic. I call it slash in part for ease of categorization, but also because I am writing from a slash sensibility. I'm not commenting on gay culture or gay relationships, I'm commenting on my own reaction to the specific relationship of the specific characters of Brian and Justin. And I'm commenting as a straight woman. And slash, with apologies to the men who have taken to writing it, remains an uniquely female artform in my mind. Not because it's derivative, not because it's reactionary, but because it takes the archetypes common to humankind (as opposed to mankind), and moves them in a different direction than other, male viewpoint-dominated artforms.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hi! Um. I agree that the act of 'slashing' is a sexualizing of the original non-sexual subtext between (normally) two men-- it is a commentary on the text, yeah. Which is kinda why QaF fic works for me even though it's about a canon same-sex relationship-- because I think most fic still subverts the text by making it a romantic as well as sexual relationship-- most (good) fics seem to be focusing on Brian's journey to admit his feelings for Justin, which is an interesting breed of slash, but is still slash in that it messes with an existing relationship between a same-sex couple. Eh, close enough.

It's in original slash that this definition completely breaks down 100%, and I really can't imagine, even for ease of classification, why it's all that different from sheer 'romance fic' except with boys. If it's got the 'slash aesthetic', then I'm just not sure what that -is- without the act of slashing-- from an existing source text, which an original fic would clearly lack. That is, you could obviously have a sexual relationship between two men-- but what would be the source text? That's what I don't get at all.

Mostly I just wanted to say that to 'view a source text in a certain way', you'd need to have a source text. And you could say that an original fic would kind of create a non-sexual foundation at the same time as it slashed itself, but I've read a number of so-called original 'slash' fics, and I've never seen this dual narrative work, and am not sure how it would.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Hmm, very interesting topic. But not everyone uses the word slash in that way. For example, I have an original fic that I refer to as being slashy, but by that I mean the main character is gay but it doesn't really play a part in the story. If I say a novel I just read was slashy, then chances are that I mean it had gay characters in it (though sometimes I do just mean subtext, but that's rarer to me). At Swim, Two Boys is a love triangle between three gay men. That's the story, not subtext. But I would definitely call it slashy. To me, slash is shorthand for gay lit or stories featuring m/m relationships or whatever. It's just easier to say.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Oh, also I was going to say I consider writing fic about canonically gay/bi characters to be slash. I know some people don't, obviously, but again, to me it's shorthand for a sort of fic, that featuring m/m relationships.

[uchidachi.livejournal.com]

Hello, I just came over from the link on daily_snitch, and wanted to put my two cents in on the topic of feminizing characters in slash. (I can't really remember where this came up in the responses, so i'm just starting a new thread)

I think the "slashy" feeling might come from the fact that male characters are thrown into a female archetype without that switch having greater meaning in the story. Or, to put it another way; the male character is filling what would be considered the woman's role, but there is no further reason for that in the story. The reader comes with a set of expectations from all the literature that they've read through their life, and the expectations about the slashed character are broken... instead of acting like the man in a relationship, he becomes the 'woman'... either because he is objectified or courted, or fills a literary role traditionally given to women.

However, the (negative) feeling that the story is "slashy" comes, I think, from the fact that the switch is not the main focus of the story -- The author is taking a bold step in violating the expectations of the reader, but then continuing on as if it were natural, instead of creating a subtext story... letting the role violation follow it's own story arc in the background.

Well, I know this all sounds pretty pretentious, but I'm an English major, and am currently writing a paper for my "Masculinity in Film Noir" class, so I don't think I can really explain more simply... *ponders*

Thank you for bringing up this discussion, though. I think it's very thought provoking.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, not pretentious at all--that's a very good point and I think you're right. I think this is probably got a lot to do with what cesperanza was talking about with the aesthetic, that certain things are done with no apologies, and it's not always the point of the story. It's funny because in fanfic people often complain about things like that--any major change from canon some people feel must be dealt with as the point of the story when it's not always the point. Sometimes, of course, the criticism has a real point to it, though. It really can feel strange when people go on as if nothing is amiss when you don't know how to make this new dynamic make sense.

That paper sounds really really interesting btw!

[puppy-tenchan.livejournal.com]

Here via Daily Snitch.

May not be a writer on your flist, but maybe my coment is still remotely interesting. You see, I RP a lot, and since one can either RP Original Characters or already existing ones, I think the situation is quite the same.

I admit, I call my RPs 'slash' simply out of lazyness ('homosexual' is just a terribly long word, and 'gay' also implies some kind of lifestyle to me) but actually, slash to me is only there when homosexual content, be it as subtext or outright smut, is put where it wasn't before. Logically, slash for me can only be fanworks. I think that's what makes slash unique.

but Frodo and Sam are not hugging like you and your friends.
=D Yes, they are. At least in my and my friends' case.
(Just a brief amused note. Although I do think it might contribute to your thoughts, as it shows that not only the time period, but also the individual's lifestyle influences what we see as slash and what not.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Definitely interesting, whether you're on my flist or a writer at all.:-)

Just a brief amused note. Although I do think it might contribute to your thoughts, as it shows that not only the time period, but also the individual's lifestyle influences what we see as slash and what not.

LOL! Defintely--and I think that's a good point because it's not that Frodo and Sam live in a vacuum where what they're doing is nothing anybody could experience today. We can still understand it, I think. We just have to make sure they really are like us before we say they are, so we're not changing them to fit us, imo.

[barbed-whispers.livejournal.com]

When I first learned what "slash" was, it was defined to me as "stories where you take at least 1 canonically straight character and make him or her gay." I was in the Buffy fandom though, so when Willow/Tara happened it threw things off. Is Willow/Tara slash? Willow used to be straight. Or just in general, the people who are squicked by slash are most likely squicked by all gay loving, so why not just label all same-sex couplings as slash and save us an argument?

I'm kind of a purist, and I still define slash as "at least one straight character going gay," but only to myself. Fandom at large seems to equate slash with same-sex.

(On a sort of related tangent, what do we call it when we turn canonically gay characters straight?)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

(On a sort of related tangent, what do we call it when we turn canonically gay characters straight?)

Good question! And of course you wouldn't always have to turn them straight but you could just have them have a het encounter.

mahoni brought up Willow/Tara too and I tend to think the same way about it in my head, that it wasn't slash on the show, at least. I don't think it would make previous Willow/Tara slash not slash anymore, but would the later stuff be slash? I can't imagine what else you would call it, though in my head I think I might make a distinction.

[thegraybook.livejournal.com]

The problem here seems to be one of definitions. If "slash" is taken to mean (as I always thought) "Derivative fiction in which straight canon characters are gay or enter into a gay romance with a character with whom they have no established romantic relationship in canon" then it is a term that applies only to derivative fiction and there can be no such thing as "original slash." It would be like suggesting that one could write a parody without anything to parody.

But if "slash" is an aesthetic, that opens up a whole other can of worms. Slash is not really a being with an "official" definition; it's not like "mystery" in terms of having rigidly defined genre conventions and it's not like "neorealism" in terms of having rigidly defined aesthetic conventions (despite what anyone might have to say to the contrary about wimpified men.)

I have used the term to apply to original work, but not in the sense that I think you mean. I remember talking with blackholly about a story she was writing; she said she wanted it to be "slash" and I said that wasn't possible because if she wrote her characters as gay, they'd just be gay characters; it wouldn't be slash. She said what she meant was that she wanted to leave the text open to a slashy reading, and I realize that's what I usually mean when I refer to original fiction as slashy. I'm not sure I'd describe that as an aesthetic, though. :>

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think I tend to think about it myself just the same way. "Slash" to me implies that there is an original text in which this sexual relationship isn't happening. I think you could defintinitely describe an original piece as slashy--that's what original works are there for, after all, to provide subtext that can be made into slash. It seems like if there is an aesthetic part of that aesthetic is having an original text out there--though now I'm beginning to think maybe that original text could be imaginary!

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

I think, as cesperanza said, there is a definite slash aesthetic, though I'll be damned if I could explain it as well as she did.

There are also certain tropes that I see in slash (perhaps they're in het as well, I'm not familiar with het as a genre) -- Fuck Or Die (aka The Aliens Make Them Do It), Genderswap, MPreg -- that I gleefully incorporate into the work I do with original characters. (Okay, maybe not MPreg. Give me time.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes definitely! It's funny, too, because I was just reading a post linked to on the Snitch about slash and in the comments there was a comment from someone complaining about the way people acted like slash had nothing to do with gay men--that they didn't act like men. I think it's basically that same thing. There is an aesthetic there that people can recognize, it's just hard to define it.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

Slash is like insidious, insidious poison. You write it and learn to regard male-male affection as just as worthy as (all the worthies did) I mean, WW1 kinda guys, and then you write an original, and then you realise that the times, they have a-changed.

Because I mean. Back a hundred years ago everyone was saying 'Alexander and Hephaestion. Boy, there was a pure love. Everyone should love their friends like *that.*' And now we're making films pretty much entitled Alexander the Great Gay. (Which I do think he, you know, was. Which goes to show sometimes we're right, and sometimes they were.) But I think the other way was more poetic. More romantic. And as literary people (as I think most of us are, even pre-slash) we've imbibed through Shakespeare, Chaucer, anything and et cetera, a belief uncommon in our times - that the big male bonding is beautiful!

And then we try to show this beauty, and alas, Lasair comes and scribbles with the Enormous Red Pen all over it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And then we try to show this beauty, and alas, Lasair comes and scribbles with the Enormous Red Pen all over it.

Artists surely do suffer for their work! (And why am I now imagining UL!Draco dealing similarly with the red quill of his Creative Magic professor...)

But anyway, yes yes! It's almost like you cross this line or break some spell and suddenly you can't talk about the Great Love anymore or the Great Alexander without it being the Great Gay Love and Alexander the Gay.

Incidentally, totally OT, but there have been all these ads around here for this upcoming show on Alexander the Great and they all say stuff like, "They didn't call him Alexander the Spineless," or "They Didn't Call Him Alexander The Timid." It drives me crazy because obviously it should be more like, "They didn't Call Him Alexander The Not-So-Bad," or "They Didn't Call Him Alexander The Average." Such a waste! And this seemed like the only possible time I'd ever get to say that to anyone on lj so I've said it here.:-)

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

Ooo! Okay, structured reply!

1. The whole "what is slash" debate seems a little futile, because it's always going to come down to semantics, and since English is the wonderful mutative beastie it is, no matter how many people decide it should mean this or that, there will be large groups of people using it in other ways. (The young 'uns even claim that it is used to describe het sometimes!) As it is, "slash" is a convenient fannish shorthand for saying "these fictional people are/do something gay". And slashy (which I myself use more often than slash) to describe the gray area which is subtext, and can range from blatant to totally reader-constructed. Not to say that the debate shouldn't take place, and I'm sure you know all this anyway, but just that - even if you decide, say, that slash only applies to people who are *made* gay, people will still describe literature involving homosexuality as slash because it's easier for everyone to understand.

2. As for original writing, I don't tend to write slash, and when I do I don't really think of it as 'slash' in the fannish sense, often because I'm not primarily concerned with the relationship. However, it's interesting, because in the Before Teh Fandom days, I was largely unware of slash as phenomenon, and nowadays when I write I am much more aware. I think odd things like, "If this ever manages to gets published and gets fans, which characters will they slash? :o" and then "should I put in teh subtext? :o" and then I start wondering if there *is* subtext and then I get confused.

2a. Random Tangent. Is there anybody who reads already-slashed (canonically gay) text and looks for het subtext? And then writes het fic? Wouldn't that be seen as very offensive?

3. Clearly it is something else, or else there wouldn't be an ongoing discussion of just how much slash should or shouldn’t mirror real life gay men. I think that some people get grumpy about the divide here, but also I think that it's just a standard feature of fiction. It's not as though every het relationship actually mirrors the way all het relationships are. And even when schmoopy romance or overdramatized!romance is written well, there are still all these literary tropes that make the relationship unrealistic, and sometimes it's intentional because people want to feel overdramatized and not-like-RL. That bleeds over into slash quite predictably. But slash suffers a bit because it's still quite new (to this culture, if not historically), that is, that people still think about this fiction/RL (intentional) divide, because people care about the way 'gayness' is presented to the world at large. It's a bit like (apologies for stale simile) people are concerned with the way minorities are presented on film/TV. Or...perhaps a better analogy, if there was some book about someone going to visit the ancient Aztecs, and all the Aztec historians were going, ">:O that is totally not how the Aztecs behaved!" while everyone else was going, "woo, exoticism!" (I think 'making sense' is a foreign idea to me at this point. *facepalm*)

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

4. Re: historical slash. It's very hard to know, usually, what the people of olde thought about sexuality because it wasn't very talked about...not in the sense that there is no evidence of homosexuality and such but in the sense of, more people may have been gay than we think but would not have admitted it, or have been (openly) gay if they had got the chance, which wasn't culturally available? However, I do think...tentatively...that the way men relate to each other has been altered in the way that you say, where things seem to either have to be completely platonic, or else are perceived by us as completely romantic/sexual. So there is this murky area of things that seem "slashy" but might not be, but revisionists claim is, but there's no way of knowing, really. The other day I was reading a letter written to Keats by one of his friends that went, "God bless you, let our hearts be buried in each other"...I mean, who would write that these days? I wouldn't write that to my boyfriend...sappy...;) But anyway, I have just realized that #5 has no real point(except to agree with you that contemporary views might have difficulty comprehending certain relationships without sexual subtext), and as the Gratuitous Keats Referencing has begun, it is probably time to move on...

5. Forget not the fiendish beastie of authorial intent! If an author wrote steamy subtext, how would you know if she intended her characters to be actually gay but didn't have a place or reason to put it in the narrative, or if she just wanted subtext for the sake of 'slashiness'? ;)

6. He is physically attracted to Frodo literally, just not (necessarily) sexually In my modern, all-or-nothing uptight way, I find this sentence intriguing. What do you mean? Is that possible? Do you mean in a "comfort" sense? Or, like, artistically? *ponders this*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lothlorien/]

Got here from four_lobsters. I have a different take on what slash "is," so this might not totally jive with what you said, but...

If we take slash to mean "homosexually-themed writing" (not erotica!), I believe slash has already evolved beyond a strict definition of fanfiction - albeit not necessarily in published literature.

I think it's worth thinking about the point at which a fic is no longer considered a derivative work from existing media. Take for example uluthiel's "Another Hunger." It's purportedly a LOTRIPS fic, but when the setting is dramatically altered and all of "canon" besides the names and physical appearances are changed, can it still be called an AU? Couldn't she conceivably literally do a search and replace of the names and then send it to a publisher (without getting sued)? Yet this original work reads as good slash – none of that crap with turning the characters into girls, but at the same time, it doesn't exactly read like something out of QAF. If you look at it this way, then I think we already have tons of "original slash" floating around on the web.

At the same time, if you're talking about crossing the divide into popular contemporary literature, then no, I don't think that's happened yet. But with the sheer numbers of slashers, it's probably only a matter of time ^_^

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

At the same time, if you're talking about crossing the divide into popular contemporary literature, then no, I don't think that's happened yet. But with the sheer numbers of slashers, it's probably only a matter of time ^_^

Me too! And I agree it really has moved out of a purely fanfiction context. Also, this gets into the dicussion above about the definition of the word that is really cool...because the word slash was really just created to describe this *thing* that fanfiction writers were doing. So maybe it started with established fictional characters but why would it stop there? The impulse behind it goes beyond fanfiction, I think. Maybe it just took fanfic to give people an outlet so that they could talk to each other about it!

[shannon-sue.livejournal.com]

I think that there should be some kind of warning when people take gay couples and make them straight. Hee. Like anti-slash.

I was reading one Buffy/HP crossover, and before I know it, Tara's having Sirius's baby and Willow's in love with Snape! What's up with that?

So, there should be a label for like, unslashing. Because it's wrong.