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.
I think you're totally right. Especially since while I know there are plenty of people who define it just the way you have here, and that you and I probably mostly agree on what slash is (like, if you gave me a story and said it was slash chances are I would agree), there's also even that other whole grey area of how sexual does it have to be? In other words, "What of pre-slash?" that strange warning that basically tells you what's going to happen to the characters after the story?
I hadn't thought of it until now, but it just occurred to me since as I said above I'm somebody who I think has been slashing since I was very small--long before I knew the word and long before I hit puberty. Back then it was probably more about the angst and the passion or whatever between the male characters I would get attached to. So sex didn't even have to come into it, literally!
But out of curiousity, why do people have a problem with turning canonically gay characters straight?
That's a good question and I suspect it's a politically correct thing--there are fewer gay characters so it's considered either poaching or perhaps homophobic because you're trying to "fix" the character and make them "normal," which is not to say you ARE doing that, but I'll bet you might be accused of it.
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Date: 2004-11-16 02:16 pm (UTC)I think you're totally right. Especially since while I know there are plenty of people who define it just the way you have here, and that you and I probably mostly agree on what slash is (like, if you gave me a story and said it was slash chances are I would agree), there's also even that other whole grey area of how sexual does it have to be? In other words, "What of pre-slash?" that strange warning that basically tells you what's going to happen to the characters after the story?
I hadn't thought of it until now, but it just occurred to me since as I said above I'm somebody who I think has been slashing since I was very small--long before I knew the word and long before I hit puberty. Back then it was probably more about the angst and the passion or whatever between the male characters I would get attached to. So sex didn't even have to come into it, literally!
But out of curiousity, why do people have a problem with turning canonically gay characters straight?
That's a good question and I suspect it's a politically correct thing--there are fewer gay characters so it's considered either poaching or perhaps homophobic because you're trying to "fix" the character and make them "normal," which is not to say you ARE doing that, but I'll bet you might be accused of it.