sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2004-11-16 02:50 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2004-11-16 02:50 pm
Original Slash
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?
no subject
All i'm trying to say here, i guess, is that the edges are very unclear. As i just argued extensively in my journal. What if you do an AU where you change the names and the guys are barely recognizable. At what point would you stop calling it slash? Or, asked differently, if I give you an OC slash fic and tell you it's based on a little known tv series, you'll read it as slash, right? I've started thinking of OC slash today as a simulacrum, a copy/derivation without an original :-)
I think terminology changes and fandom certainly has a tendency to change definitions over time and as needed. [b/c in your definition RPS isn't slash either, right?]
no subject
There were other cases, which I remember less well-- it was ages ago, possibly before I found slash, that I read an original fic where two boys-- one a few years older than another-- fell in love. It read like a YA romance (except with sex)-- and since I've always liked gay boys in lust, I liked it, but I didn't know to call it slash (I think?) There was much less of that sense of 'source'-- in fact, I'd say it was nonexistent. These were real-seeming characters, though I suppose you could've messed with the fic and set it in some fictional universe, because the world they were in was kinda flat-- and a lot of slash is character-driven (as is all fanfic), so the world doesn't get fleshed out much.
I've also seen
As far as AU's-- and I've read a lot of these in Gundam Wing-- and I'd say if it's a well-done AU, you get a very clear sense of it being 'that' character. Actually, it's pretty surprising how some shows (moreso than others, but GW in particular) lend themselves to being transplanted-- I think it's a lot easier with GW than say, HP, because the characters are more function-oriented in a particular way-- they all have roles to play with regards to each other-- they have a steady group-work dynamic across about 6 to 12 people, which is enough to make a small 'world'.
I think for me, this is all different because I like reading romance of all sorts-- and m/m romance of all sorts-- so I'll likely enjoy any variation if it's well-written, but that doesn't mean I see it as slash-- why can't it just be a same-sex romance? Why does romance need to be separated by gender? And if there's more to it than gender, then what is it? There's no style that really unites it in my experience.
I agree that the edges are unclear, but most of it would somehow still revolve around the -idea- or the -intent- to comment on an existing text. And obviously intent is hard to gauge-- which is why as a reader, I only really read slash where the text is known to be to some extent. So I myself -wouldn't- read fic for a little known tv series unless I had some inkling of what it was about-- some foundation to build upon as a frame of reference.
And another thing I associate with fanfic and/or slash (since to retain some half-way coherent definition, slash would need to be passable as fanfic)-- as a reader, especially if I didn't know the source text well, as I often hadn't in my explorations-- I'd need more than one fanfic. In this case, the other fanfics in the 'world' become a sort of canon-- you compare them against each other and the next fic sort of 'comments' on the other fics and all these fics together comment on a world you could surmise existed even without knowing it directly. This is how I learned quite a bit about Harry Potter without reading the books for a long time.
no subject
and yet more rambling...
I think in this case, it'd be easiest to make a blanket statement that 'all fanfic and therefore slash is AU by default'-- even if that AU 'matches' the reality of the show, it could never match it completely-- the dynamic is bound to be somewhat 'OOC' in a strange way, because different things happened if nothing else. So yes, while it remained a same-sex romance both in fic and on the show, that didn't make it -slash- (an act of changing the source by playing with gender/sexuality/attraction) after Willow & Tara consummated-- admitted their attraction to themselves on air.
I was looking back on your poll-- and the option for OOC characterization not being 'slash'/fanfic-- and I realized why I'd still call OOC things slash. I think there's a process of projection that goes on in OOC fics the same as with AU fics-- that is, I notice myself 'filling in' or pretending that the character I'm reading really is the one I think of as the 'real' one.
Like... I think some suspension of disbelief is definitely involved. I have certain things-- certain traits-- that I'd refuse to see messed with and lack or presence of them would throw me right out of a fanfic-- but generally, I'm willing to 'go with the flow' even if it's OOC because I can project the missing pieces of the character or ignore the ones that don't 'fit'. And if it's an AU, I can just link the fic I'm reading to the characters I know, and it becomes part of the 'fanon' or general mass of fanfic (mixed with canon) I use as reference when reading fics.
So I mean, I think it depends how sensitive one is to that particular characterization and how one perceives the original, 'real' character in the first place. Some readers have very fluid ideas of who other people/characters are, and some are certain of some things but not others, and some are just certain of everything, I think. I guess it's not enough to just say 'OOC' in this case 'cause it depends on context & reader so much, as far as what's necessary to keep a fic being 'fanfic' (and thus slash).
Re: and yet more rambling...
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 :-)
Re: and yet more rambling...
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...
boringnormative (whether queer-normative or het-normative, doesn't matter, I don't think).Re: and yet more rambling...
Re: and yet more rambling...
Re: and yet more rambling...
no subject
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*
no subject
but i'm glad your world view is nice and orderly...