Original Slash

[sistermagpie]

This topic came up talking to 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?

Comments

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, I thought, years from now there might be a real recognizable tradition in early 21st century lit (particularly amongst female writers?)

Wow, I have to say I read this with some surprise because, in my opinion, this has already happened. Slash is a recognizable literary tradition of the 20th century with its own history and it has and does affect (and has been affected by) certain strands of pro writing (and will affect more I'm sure.)

I also have to confess that I'm fairly taken aback by what seems like your fairly negative view of slash as a genre--if it's feminized/weak then it's slash?

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.

I really don't think this is what slash is about! Rather, it seems to me to be about creatively re-imagining and reinterpreting a set of codes--behavioral and social codes, mainly, but also literary and dramatic ones. By behavioral and social, I mean the way in which we Refuse the idea of the "swinging bachelor"--that behavior no longer reads as James Bondish but as "probably gay and needs a therapist" (and I think that Brian and Justin's codes are different, but still open to creative interpretation); by literary and dramatic, I mean the impulse to argue about what the "important" parts of the story are--in that way, we are all the people who fast-forwarded through the Yoda on Dagobah stuff to get to the Han-Leia kiss : yes, yes, your mileage may vary on this, you Yoda-loving freaks or who make edited tapes of teasers and codas and long shots of police officers' kitchens and other things that "everyone knows" aren't important. We're also narrative climax junkies; we love 'em and we can't have too many of them--in that way, it's a very female aesthetic. ;)

That's the beginning of a definition of "slash" for me, anyway, and I absolutely believe that there can be original slash and a slash aesthetic that transcends traditional fandoms.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow, I have to say I read this with some surprise because, in my opinion, this has already happened. Slash is a recognizable literary tradition of the 20th century with its own history and it has and does affect (and has been affected by) certain strands of pro writing (and will affect more I'm sure.)

I think I'm pretty clueless of most things that are considered traditions. *blushes* I'm glad to know it is!

I also have to confess that I'm fairly taken aback by what seems like your fairly negative view of slash as a genre--if it's feminized/weak then it's slash?

Yipes! No, I didn't mean that to come across that way. I was using those terms because I was thinking how often people sometimes use the term slash negatively, particularly when it's being compared to gay lit. Or just in general--sort of like the way all OCs can be talked about like Mary Sues, so all slash is reduced to whatever charicature the person imagines in the worst fics. So if somebody said (presumably as a criticism) that somebody had taken a gay romance and made it slash, would they be using the term slash to mean feminized and weak? I mean, I've heard slash stories that I loved dimissed with exactly those criticisms--that the male characters have been made feminized and weak. That almost seems like something slashers and writers can unfortunately throw at each other as a Bad Thing they do in their writing.

I assume when people use those words they are describing *something* that is a quality slash has that they are describing negatively. I'm more interesting in asking what people mean when they say the characters are feminized--sometimes it's obviously, of course. If the male character is pregnant, for instance, one can see why the author would be accused of "making him female." But is the author really doing something that simple? I tend not to think so but it seems like that's the thing it's usually accused of.

So really I totally agree with your second paragraph, which seems to go a long way towards explaining how slash can be reacting to something without that something being a specific original text. It seems like there's just a sort of omnipresent text out there in the culture.

That's the beginning of a definition of "slash" for me, anyway, and I absolutely believe that there can be original slash and a slash aesthetic that transcends traditional fandoms.

I'd love to hear more about what you think that aesthetic is--I'm totally fascinated!

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

I was using those terms because I was thinking how often people sometimes use the term slash negatively, particularly when it's being compared to gay lit.

See, I think this is just sexism; I'd put slash up against "gay romance" or "gay lit" *any day of the week*!! Then again, I'm a big defender of slash as a literary movement of it's own, one that's not "sub-" or even derivative but that's articulating an aesthetic that is NOT gay male and therefore shouldn't be seen as faux or fake "gay". As Julad has so famously put it: Slash is about gay men the way Watership Down is about rabbits. *G*

[manna]

As Julad has so famously put it: Slash is about gay men the way Watership Down is about rabbits. *G*

Oh, Lord. Now I'm imagining slash with little footnotes about gay men, the way Watership Down has the asides about Lockley's 'The Private Life Of The Rabbit'.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

YES. This is EXACTLY what we need. *G*

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Those would be the footnotes showing that Lockley's Private Life Of The Rabbit (which I read before I read Watership Down btw) demonstrates that rabbits are tool-users, linguists who can communicate and cooperate with other animal and bird species, and have a vibrant oral tradition of tales and poetry, would they?

Because so far as I can recollect, Lockley gets appealed to only when Adams thinks he's coming under fire because the does aren't getting enough sensible airtime. At which point he states that according to Lockley, giving them more airtime would be contrary to the essential nature of the rabbit.

Which really shows the cauldron in which slash was forged, essentially.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

slash with little footnotes about gay men

Isn't that what livejournal is for? I mean, that phrase describes the majority of the contents of my friendslist page on any given day. Heh.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's fabulous! And I totally agree--that's what those words always sound like to me as well, a sexist dismissal. In fact, I think they creep me out more because it gives the impression that somehow the male characters are being corrupted or corroded in the hands of icky females--well, the word "weak" pretty much says it all.

Whereas for me, it's just as you said--it has nothing to do with gay men. It is what it is. It maybe also seems very natural to me because I'm one of those women/people (and I now know there are many of us out there but didn't growing up) who has sort of always slashed even when I was very very young. I always had certain male characters that I wrote stories in my head for this way and it never occurred to me that they'd been weakened. Sometimes I would be aware that I was putting them into experiences more often associated with females (or myself!) but so what? They were my character in my head and so were just as they were meant to be-they weren't just the best I could do, being a girl or something like that.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And then right after this discussion the Snitch links to a slash discussion with this this comment. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/azaelia_culnamo/26198.html?thread=77654#t77654)

Don't knock gay fiction

[franzeska]

I actually really like gay fiction and have read quite a bit of it. I'm not even talking about Tales of the City or other mainstream fiction with gay characters in it. No, I mean the insane drag queen filled weirdness that you only find in gay bookstores. It's interesting to see how this genre is influenced by various facets of gay culture. It's very self-referential and meta in its own way, but it draws from a set of cultural knowledge not held in common by slashers, so many slashers aren't going to be drawn to it.

Reading it is, however, a good antidote to the irritating slashers' inferiority complex since it's just so clearly a different type of writing. I'll admit though that I have been guilty of telling people that the character they're writing "doesn't sound like a real man". Bad me. I really should say that those characters don't sound like actual humans since the ones I complain about certainly don't sound like real women either.

Re: Don't knock gay fiction

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have nothing against gay fiction--just that I don't see slash as a subset of it. Gay fiction is its own thing, and slash is its own thing, and I don't like when slash is seen as an inferior, less authentic form of gay fiction rather than as a literary movement in its own right.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

ha...i knew you'd be with me on that one...good! :-) now go fill out my poll to up the OC slash is still slash numbers :-)

in my thread i kept on repeating issues of style, theme, narrative as well as production, dissemination, and reception. we've talked a lot before about the latter and its "female" aspects...i think we need to talk more aboutthe former as well...i really, really like the thought of a female aesthetic and how slash functions like that

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Me too! It seems like the way I usually hear the term "female" used with regards to slash is just the way I quoted, meaning, "Failure to be properly male," as if there's a way slash is *supposed* to go and fails to...only it's not a way I'm really interested in.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

no, we've had some beautiful threads about thefemaleness in slash a while back, like here for example, where julad and ces go to town :D