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*