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?
Part 2
I think we're just going to keep disagreeing about this. I don't believe it's necessary for slash to have to be written by someone other than the author of the piece being slashed, and I don't believe the piece being slashed has to exist first as a non-slash work. I agree that slash is romance, but it's a subset of romance, and I find the specificity of the term useful.
I think the difference we have is a question of whether the writer is an 'audience' (of an outside source of which the reader is also the audience of simultaneously) is necessary for something to be defined as 'slash' (which means that 'slashy'-- that is subtextually charged-- is something else, really).
I've always taken slashy to mean that there's unrealized or semi-realized slash potential in whatever is being called "slashy." Where I think we're actually disagreeing is whether or not a slashy source must exist somewhere other than the author's head in order for slash to be written. I believe an author can write original slash if she sees the slashy potential in her own characters and runs with it. You seem to believe the non-slashed source has to be written down/filmed and distributed before slash can be written about it. Am I understanding you correctly?
Re: Part 2
I guess I believe that firstly because that is the history of it (that is, as a type/genre of fanfic), and the majority of slash existing being fanfic of a movie/book/game/text of some sort that is shared by an audience-- and therein is the separation between audience and source (though it could be a fuzzy boundary). I mean, there are variations, but yeah. It's sort of a matter of contrast to me-- for there to be slash as an action, there has to be an antithesis, a 'lack of' (or potential for) action it's acting against on some sort of meta level.
So yes, there should be 'unrealized or semi-realized slash potential'-- and if it's only in one person's head (the person writing), then the definition dissolves for me because you could call any piece of gay literature slash at that point, and there's no precise differentiation for that act of commentary on some existing media that is unique to the origins of slash.
That difference between simply writing something with homoerotic content (which would automatically imply, to me, a process of exploring any developing tension) and writing something that develops the dormant homosocial/homoerotic tension in an existing work-- what would be the name for -that particular act-, then? Like, simply historically, the 'slash' came from the word for the "/" between the fan's preferred pairings in TV shows-- thusly, Kirk/Spock, and the fanfic or discussion of that couple. I suppose whether one thinks of one's original characters in such terms depends on the writer, but I don't know how it could be a fandom or a social act.
Re: Part 2
This is, I believe, the basis of the original question, though. If you have a slash fanfic author who writes for a slash fanfic readership, who now chooses to write original fic with an m/m dynamic similar to that which she writes and enjoys in slash, and she's writing it with the idea that it might appeal to a slash fanfic readership, what better term to identify it than "original slash?" No, it's not fanfic slash, which has for the history of the term been synonymous with slash, but what it is is a new form of literature, rising out of the roots of slash. As such, it needs an identifying terminology. Original slash is certainly accurate.
So yes, there should be 'unrealized or semi-realized slash potential'-- and if it's only in one person's head (the person writing), then the definition dissolves for me because you could call any piece of gay literature slash at that point, and there's no precise differentiation for that act of commentary on some existing media that is unique to the origins of slash.
I disagree. Slash has as its focus homoerotic relationships, and it's written for an audience who enjoys those relationships, but may not participate in those relationships themselves. Gay literature, in my understanding, is geared toward a gay audience, with a focus on gay culture and issues as well as homoerotic relationships. The difference in target audience and focus would of necessity make it rather difficult to call one the other. Though people have tried.
That difference between simply writing something with homoerotic content (which would automatically imply, to me, a process of exploring any developing tension) and writing something that develops the dormant homosocial/homoerotic tension in an existing work-- what would be the name for -that particular act-, then?
::cutting yet another iteration of the origin of slash, which I think we've all got by now, thanks::
I'm afraid your sentence structure makes it rather difficult for me to determine which particular act you mean. If you mean writing something with homoerotic content...well, I would call that writing homoerotica. If you mean writing something with homoerotic content with a slash sensibility, geared toward a slash audience, I would call that slash. If the characters you are writing are your own, I would call that original slash. If the characters you are writing are from another source, I would call that fanfic slash, or simply slash. Original slash needs the qualifier of "original" because slash has been specific to fanfic for so long. That, I never disputed, which is one reason I'm very impatient with the detour into the history of the term. What I am disputing is that slash cannot be applied to original work that is written by a slash author, with a slash sensibility, geared toward a slash audience.
As to your last point, writing is always a social act when you publish your writing. And I don't believe anybody has tried to claim that original slash is or must be a fandom act. I believe it's a fannish act, in that fans are writing it for other fans, and it might be argued it's a meta-fandom act, since it's an art form arising out of being involved in fandom. But I don't see anyone arguing it should be considered part of a specific fandom.
Re: Part 2
Hmmm. I find this interesting-- if anything, because I have seen so many people using 'slash' to mean both the 'original' & 'fanfic' variety-- in their answers, a lot of people just said, 'it's all slash', which was the root of my problem. I just want a differentiation between the two kinds, because I think it's a rather significant/deep one in terms of both origins and practice. At this point. It may become more meshed later, but... I guess I haven't seen enough people see 'slash' in a new way for me to justify changing basic terminology of 'slash'. So in this way I suppose I was responding to others as well as you in a fashion, for which I'm sorry-- but no offense meant, as I was (and generally am) being explorative rather than definitive, no matter my awkward phrasing.
Slash has as its focus homoerotic relationships, and it's written for an audience who enjoys those relationships, but may not participate in those relationships themselves.
This differentiation of audience is also interesting and new to me. That is to say, it makes sense, but I haven't seen it generally used. I mean, I definitely think the audience something is intended for is important, and my main issue was saying that the act (or content) of slashing was equivalent, rather than the audience. I think I wasn't being precise or specific in my responses to you-- and taking into consideration various things others who also use 'slash' to include 'original slash' have said. Since I'm just rarely precise or specific-- and I'm sorry if that cause some negative misunderstanding.
Because for me, the very act of 'slashing' is different in 'original' and 'fanfic' variety slash. But the unity of audience adds a new axis, definitely. Basically, I can see your point-- and this whole time I wasn't arguing with you, really, just trying to clarify.
The concept of a fannish act that transcends fandom is an interesting one, also, and I believe there is something to that, though what precisely that would be outside of a particular fandom seems hard to pin down.
Re: Part 2
I still don't think there's that large a difference, but that comes down to how you and I perceive slash. To me, the main difference is that one type of slash is based on an external text created by someone else, whereas the other type is based on an internal text created by the writer of the slash. However, I do agree the difference is enough of one to warrant differentiating terminology. Hence, original slash.
This differentiation of audience is also interesting and new to me. That is to say, it makes sense, but I haven't seen it generally used.
It's not something that seems to come up much in intrafandom interaction, but I've spent a lot of time exploring and discussing "meta-fandom," if you will, and audience is a common factor in such discussions. What a story was intended to accomplish, and whom it was intended to interest, has a fair bit of impact on analysis and criticism, so I'm used to taking it into account.
Because for me, the very act of 'slashing' is different in 'original' and 'fanfic' variety slash. But the unity of audience adds a new axis, definitely. Basically, I can see your point-- and this whole time I wasn't arguing with you, really, just trying to clarify.
The main difference I see in the act is how much is external versus how much is internal, but in my own writing, perusing, and discussion of original slash, I've found that intended audience is key. And I can see why the concept of original slash doesn't quite click for you if you don't take the intended audience into consideration.
The concept of a fannish act that transcends fandom is an interesting one, also, and I believe there is something to that, though what precisely that would be outside of a particular fandom seems hard to pin down.
My fannish career began in the speclit segment of the pro-writing world, and I continue to participate in that arena. Basically, I originally came to fandom as someone who had been fannish for a long time without having a specific fandom (beyond sf/f/h) to which my fannishness was attached. At first, I thought media fandom to be a different beast, with some overlap in terminology and members, but a different structure. I've since found that's not the case, and perhaps it's because there's more overlap than there used to be, so both the speclit world and media fandom have changed shape, but I'm finding more and more parallels between the two. I suspect the separation of the two will continue to blur as more and more fanfic authors realize their plans of writing profic. And I suspect we'll see more co-opting of media fannish terms, just as there have been many speclit terms co-opted by media fandom, to correspond with that growing overlap.