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This topic came up talking to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 tocathexys 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?
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?
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Or, what about a fanfic (let's define that: a story that heavily borrows setting and characters from an original source, in this case Harry Potter) that's centered around two boys who're not together-- or even apparently known to one another-- in canon, and they're already together at the start of the fic, so it's not a get-together romance, and the fic itself is a mystery? All right, I'm talking about
I mean, most people see it as slash. In fact, enough slashfics aren't romance & are instead mysteries or slice-of-life fics or comedies-- I've written plenty of slash comedies myself, only there to amuse. Like, I remember this one fic where the 'joke' was that Harry wanted Draco and he bantered with Ron about it a lot. Was that a romance? Was it slash? Of course it was slash, but it wasn't a romance (that is, no one was 'involved' romantically with anyone-- I'm not even sure if full-on sex occurred), that's for sure, and neither was it gay literature by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, I just think it doesn't make sense to combine all the fics that are out there under the label of 'slash' unless you have a semi-precise yet non-exclusive definition. 'Fanfic which has same-sex characters paired together' seems to work best as far as I can see.
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but i'm not sure that distinction is ultimately that useful...but then i seem to wanna call everything slash...except when it's on nifty :-)
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I think slash is the equivalent of writing B/S fic pre-season-6, at any point-- when they had chemistry, when it was clear Spike had a 'thing', when they -hated- each other-- it's all game before they kissed (which I think counts as consummation). It's just that while things remain unconsummated in the source, I think they're 'slashy' but after that-- well they're just uh...
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So what would you call a fanfic that has same-sex characters that are shown to be together (but aren't in the source), but the story is about a straight couple (which may or may not be together in the source), not their romance but their quest to defeat an Evil Wizard?
Slash/Het/Adventure.
Was that a romance? Was it slash? Of course it was slash, but it wasn't a romance
You can always put 'Other' in the fic category section, I guess?
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Anyway, I think I was just saying you could easily say it's 'romance' or 'adventure' or 'comedy/adventure/romance' without including slash anywhere in there. (Like, what if it was a romance of a het couple that had a same-sex subtext that never became a romance?) You could sort of say "hints of H/D" for instance-- that's what they'd do in anime fandoms-- but there's no reason to say it's same-sex romance even though it's 'slashy'. Er. Or something.
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Like, what if it was a romance of a het couple that had a same-sex subtext that never became a romance?
Then you call it het, and burn anyone who dares to criticise the story's same-sex subtext alive *g* Speaking of nowadays "boy's" anime, there's a fine line between slashy and "fake slash" or otherwisely known as fucking with slashers' heads which is just plain evil. Jump for example resembles giant cigarette companies with unspeakable tarket market more than anything else now imho.
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I really liked what Reenka said before about the need for two levels of a relationship, one for the slash and the other just to be there, a platonic connection between characters. But then, I look for that in all of the stories I read, and I think one of the major things that annoys me is to create a story where that connection simply doesn't exist. I wonder if that's why it's easier to slash fanfic characters than it is to create a plausible (and enjoyable for the reader) homosexual couple. With original fic, so many writers ignore that crucial in-between stage and jump immediately to getting the characters in bed or in love. It annoys me with fanfic and it will make me simply stop reading an original story. You've *got* to have that other layer to the relationship or its meaningless. Not love, but lust.
Anyway.
I tend to view preslash as author intended UST. *g* Specifically, author intended UST that will, eventually, go somewhere. Even if that somewhere is never actually written, it's implied that in the future of the characters, they'll eventually hook up.
Back then it was probably more about the angst and the passion or whatever between the male characters I would get attached to.
*This* I completely understand. I was the same way and still am; I enjoy reading about character relationships. It doesn't have to be sexual in the slightest for it to be enjoyable. It's the intensity of those relationships that make them all the more fun to read about, though likewise easy to slash. Hm.. But I like that sort of intensity in *all* of my character relationships, which is why certain pairings pop out at me more than others, het *or* slash.
You're probably right about the politially correctness of not hetting canonically gay characters. I suppose it could also be based on how few there are; gay characters in mainstream media are pretty rare.
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In regards to pairings that have undertones, say of H/D, but don't actually develop into a relationship proper, I'd simply call that subtext and be done with it.
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"Slash" as a term first came about in the Star Trek fandom in the seventies and was used because of how people wrote the names of the characters involved. Kirk/Spock, stuff like that. I don't think it ever had the anime implications of seme and uke though, which is almost a shame. I miss knowing the seme and the uke in slash fandoms, not so much for caring who does what in sex, but because I like knowing who pursues whom. But that all goes back to what I consider to be in-character or not. ^_^
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I miss knowing the seme and the uke in slash fandoms
I kind of miss that too, and actually, I dare say the majority of fics one would consider IC in the end are the ones with the same seme/uke sequence as the reader desires. Because most fanfic writers associate a character's 'position' on bed with his personality elsewhere... and it's not really a good thing. I do have read great H/D fics in which Draco is or 'takes turns to be' seme and are perfectly IC in my eyes, and I truly admire those authors. For breaking the cursed link between character personality and seme/uke position I mean :P
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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.
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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.
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The original definition of slash can be easily applied to any scenario to parcel out what is slash and what isn't, unless you want to make it difficult. Just because a story sucks does not mean it's not slash, for example, though it might feel better to punish it for sucking by not allowing it to be categorized with the same terminology as the (subjectively) non-sucky slash stories. And, ignorance is no excuse. Whether or not a reader knows about the canon doesn't change the canon; applying a label unilaterally with no reference to reality doesn't make the reader right, it just makes her uninformed.
I don't deny that uninformed people seeking to make things more difficult than they need to be alter ideas and terminologies on a regular basis. I just don't intend to do that with this word, in my own worldview.
*goes to bed*
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Isn't that what livejournal is for? I mean, that phrase describes the majority of the contents of my friendslist page on any given day. Heh.
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Whoa there! Well, in that case let's take another look at it because I love Silvia Kundera's argument too.:-D
And here's what it made me think about...that JKR is a woman. I don't mean to say this changes everything or that she's incompetent at writing male characters at all, but it's still kind of interesting to think about ways that one sex writing about the other sex might relate to gender stereotypes in a slightly different way. In the case of HP I think the way this mostly comes up is just a "vibe." None of the boys are usually "gross" teenaged boy, which is possibly just as much about the genre (kids books) as the author--but still Dudley sort of stands out when he makes a crack like, "Who's Cedric, your boyfriend?" because it's so...about sex and homophobia and all that!
Usually, though, it's more where people laugh about the fact that Harry seems to notice guys as being attractive far more than girls. Is it that Harry's gay? I don't think so. It doesn't come across that way to me--in fact, it's often couched in terms of Harry feeling awkward by contrast (like "pretty boy Diggory" who gets Cho). But still I think there might also be some subtle ways that Harry is not only reacting to characters his own way but his female authors.
So with Draco it's just that the character may come across in different ways than the author intends--I always remember Chief saying how there were boys in her library discussing how Draco obviously liked Hermione because of the way he acted towards her--yet the author was kind of horrified by that pairing. Draco acts similarly towards Harry, but most young boys probably wouldn't even think to consider that the same way because Harry's a boy. The other thing, though, is that in some ways Draco tends to have a lot in common with female bullies picking on other girls (as
So that's my incredibly long-winded of saying well hey, maybe when it comes to Harry and Draco it's not so simple as gender roles because you never know which gender role they're playing.:-)
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What I meant by sexual non-slashy (which is very silly sounding when I hear it again now) is that if I'm writing about characters who are, say ten, I would be thinking about things in their relationship that could be sexualized when they were older. There could be things that are present in the relationship now that could already be sexualized in a child-sexual way. But in the things I'm thinking about that I've written, I would feel like I needed to keep the two things separate, like
So there would be a sexual component to the slash yes, as I thought about what these two boys might be like in a few years. But to apply it to them as they are now I feel like I have to remove the sexual aspect because that's not in play yet for them, if that makes sense. It's a bit like fast-forwarding into the future, seeing them as adolescents or adults, and then rewinding back. I would want to only keep the parts that applied to them now. I'm not sure if this were fanfic whether to call it pre-slash or not. Sometimes there will be something that does ping me as something that *could* be pre-slash, but if the slash never happens in the actual piece being written, how can there be pre-slash?
Unfortunately I feel like right now I define slash on a sort of, "I know it when I see it," instinct, and that's not very helpful for anyone else in a communication.
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I mean, when I was writing that one-sentence summary, I wasn't sure whether to say Silvia meant Harry or Draco should be made the 'girl' for purposes of example-- since I don't think either of them fall into place for that very easily. I remember her saying that Draco was pulling Harry's pigtails, though, and HE SO IS :)) <3333333
I can see how it's similar to female bullies picking on other girls 'cause Draco's so verbal and non-physical in how he approaches it-- but at heart, it's just that something clicks in my head when I think 'omg mean boy/girl pranking/playing for attention!! = love' Because if nothing else, it's similar to the Lily/James & Ron/Hermione dynamic in my mind (which would so horrify
I don't think he acts that way around Hermione that much-- I mean, okay, it's Harry's pov so we don't see a lot of Hermione-Draco scenes, but it always seems to me that he's pestering Ron & Hermione partly to get at Harry or at least that it's not personal with them like it is with Harry. Like, Ron/Hermione is nothing like Draco/Hermione in that way-- it's Ron who picks on Hermione and is mean/attention-seeking to her, not Draco. Draco doesn't seem to want Hermione's attention.
I don't think any of this holds up post-OoTP (but then, this was a pre-OoTP argument), but eh. Draco's development (or lack thereof) in book 5 pretty much seemed unrealistic anyway :/