That's why I love what pauraque said about writing an original fic and then slashing it afterwards. The slash is a comment on the text. Perhaps it was a slashy text to begin with, but it wouldn't have to be.
And like you said, that's the thing, what is the "style" of slash since all slash is so different from each other. Some writers come closer to what people might describe as "realistic gay culture" while others sound more like het romance novels where the vagina just happens to be moved a few inches back.;-) So I'd always thought slash was just a neutral term that meant taking existing characters in a narrative where they had no homosexual experiences and giving them that.
Then I just realized that although what you say makes a lot of sense about name-only characters being unable to be slashed, I still probably would think of it as slash! Is it just because hearing the name "Blaise Zabini" spoken within HP canon makes gay sex involving a character of that name slash? Could be...but then I suspect a story about Blaise Zabini and Marcus Flint having sex might "feel" more like R/S than Mulder/Scully. And as cathexys pointed out on the other thread, R/S is considered by many people to be canon, so is it slash? Does it really make a difference either to the slash or to the canon which way you interpret it?
And then bringing up Mulder and Scully reminds me of that famous thing written in that fandom about Mulder and his AU partner "Dan Scully." Basically the author took Mulder and Scully's shippy moments, applied them to Dan and asked, "Does this sound gay/does this sound like slash?" as proof that M/S was canon. Now, it did prove, I think, that Mulder didn't treat Scully "like a guy," but it didn't really work as proof that M/S was canon since men and women have different physical boundaries and physical things are coded differently between them to begin with whether or not there's anything romantic there.
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Date: 2004-11-16 01:22 pm (UTC)And like you said, that's the thing, what is the "style" of slash since all slash is so different from each other. Some writers come closer to what people might describe as "realistic gay culture" while others sound more like het romance novels where the vagina just happens to be moved a few inches back.;-) So I'd always thought slash was just a neutral term that meant taking existing characters in a narrative where they had no homosexual experiences and giving them that.
Then I just realized that although what you say makes a lot of sense about name-only characters being unable to be slashed, I still probably would think of it as slash! Is it just because hearing the name "Blaise Zabini" spoken within HP canon makes gay sex involving a character of that name slash? Could be...but then I suspect a story about Blaise Zabini and Marcus Flint having sex might "feel" more like R/S than Mulder/Scully. And as
And then bringing up Mulder and Scully reminds me of that famous thing written in that fandom about Mulder and his AU partner "Dan Scully." Basically the author took Mulder and Scully's shippy moments, applied them to Dan and asked, "Does this sound gay/does this sound like slash?" as proof that M/S was canon. Now, it did prove, I think, that Mulder didn't treat Scully "like a guy," but it didn't really work as proof that M/S was canon since men and women have different physical boundaries and physical things are coded differently between them to begin with whether or not there's anything romantic there.