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

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Not too long ago, I was challenged to write a Georgette Heyer fanfic. Since most of her novels are one-offs without recurring characters but with character *types*, I chose to write a pastiche instead. And while it turned into a Hornblower crossover (I swear, it just happened), the lead character was completely original. And I liked him enough that I'm in the planning phases for an original story. And it will be "slashy" in that he will be paired with another man.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

I'm at work, so I'll just do a list sans analysis.

- Straight characters in strong friendships
- Straight characters in uber-het contexts making light of slash (cf Brock in Venture Brothers, who is very very het yet exhibits exaggerated mothering and male camaraderie... not to mention the awful jokes)
- characters who are attracted yet suppressing
- characters who the author wants you to think are suppressing but are actually straight
- gay characters written by someone who views homosexuality as a deviation
- gay characters written by someone who views homosexuality as a lifestyle choice
- gay characters written by someone who views homosexuality as an orientation
- gay characters written by someone who views it as a combination of the above
- storylines which emphasize sexuality and deliberately *cough* screw with it
- storylines which are "asexual" and their relationships reflect that
- authors who want to capitalize on slash purely for the "weird" factor
- authors who genuinely like slash
- authors who tease, i.e. messing with perception is the priority
- authors who not only tease, but want their fandom to ignite (can we say Krycek?)
- cultural forces such as acceptance of and/or a stable role for ambiguous sexuality, as with many regions of Asia
- historical forces such as friendship / bonding genres
- authors who don't know about slash
- authors who view slash as a subset of ... slanting something (a character, storyline, etc) in favor of personal whims rather than narrative necessities
- authors who slash for aesthetic or personal purposes
- authors who slash to make a statement
-... or both
- slash authors using the storytelling components of slash in their original fiction
- authors who coincidentally use the storytelling components of slash without knowing slash

...now I have to get ready to leave work.

[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.

[pauraque]

At one point I wrote an original fic, the plot of which was that the narrator was attempting to prove that another character had murdered his male lover. The sexuality of the narrator himself was left to the reader's imagination, but I found myself writing the "canonically" bisexual murderer flirting with the narrator, and doing various other things that created what one would call slashy subtext.

I finished the story, and was happy with it. Do you know what I did next?

I wrote slash for it. Yes, I slashed my own original fic. And it simply wouldn't have *worked* as "canon", as part of the initial story, because to me, slash depends on having something pre-existing to riff on. It's a comment on a text, not a stand-alone text in itself.

Now, you could conceivably write slash that's commenting not on a particular text, but on a whole genre of literature. And I think that exists in some gay sci-fi stories, which comment on the subtextual elements (and strangely traditional het archetypes) of sci-fi in general. But to me, it ain't slash unless you're commenting on something. That's the heart of it.

[ptyx.livejournal.com]

I think you're taking slash as a clearly defined genre, when there are many kinds of slash. There are even gay men writing slash and some of them include their RL experiences into it. And even what is gay differs from a culture to another.

[randomblade.livejournal.com]

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.

I agree that this type of loving male friendship is no longer a really accepted social format. I think it's quite sad. My twinbro and his three closest friends do the victorial male beloved thing quite well, and it's almost entirely non-sexual. Theirloveissoplatonic!

Of course, as my baby brother Twinbro is completely asexual anyway. Shut up. He is.

[jewelsong.livejournal.com]

Magpie, as usual, you think way too much *grin* but I wanted to say that I agreed with this: "while there was tons of homoeroticism ... homosexuality was quite rare. It wasn’t homosexuality as we understand it today it was...something else." completely.

There is a difference between homosexuality as we think of it today and homoeroticism, especially in war or other situations of extreme stress. In "Band of Brothers" there is a passage where the author describes the relationship between the men as "closer than a wife; closer than a lover." It is...something else. Not "just friends." But not "lovers" either. Something else...something more.

Maybe there is a word for it in Greek...

[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!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OOh, that's fascinating and I can totally see how one could lead to the other. Well, except for the Hornblower crossover but even that doesn't seem wrong so much as tied to that specific story. But I love the idea of starting from types, which one can probably find in most authors, and creating an original character for that, who could then be slashy.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Much to think about--and you're right about all of it! I particularly like the way that the way someone thinks about sexuality would naturally lead to it being presented differently...should be obvious, but sometimes it's not. I mean, people in slash fandom tend to be shocked by the idea that there are people who write slash but think homosexuality is wrong, but they definitely exist!

[tiranog.livejournal.com]

Hi, there!

Great questions as usual! :)

I think if you're writing two male (or two female)original characters of your own having sex, then you're writing homoerotica. If you're taking someone else's original characters who are not portrayed in canon as being actively gay, like Snape and Harry, then you're writing slash. If you're taking characters portrayed in canon as actively gay, like the guys in Queer as Folk, then you're probably just writing fanfic, because you're just expanding on an existing relationship.

There is that grey area you mentioned when it comes to writing romantic stories about characters written in another age, like Robin Hood & Will Scarlet, Holmes & Watson, or Arthur & Lancelot. People declared their love and loyalty differently in different ages.

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.;-)

I've heard this debate before, and the thing that I don't get is that LotR isn't a story from a different age. It was written and published in the 1950s. A guy waxing rhapsodic about how much he loves another man while he's watching him sleep in the 1950s meant pretty much what it does today. Admittedly, Tolkein was very old world, but, the man taught at a university. He knew the English language backwards and forwards. He didn't live under a rock. I find it impossible to believe that any man in the 1950s above the age of ten could be completely innocent of the overt sexual connotations in that scene where Sam and Frodo are in bed together. I think a lot of people want to believe that it doesn't mean what it says it means, but I'm inclined to think that the man wrote precisely what he meant - Sam loved Frodo. Sam mightn't have known how to act on that love; hence the later mentions of being torn between his feelings for Rosie and his feelings for Frodo when they're all living together, but in that morning bedroom scene, I think Sam meant precisely what he said, that he loved Frodo.

Whew, sorry about the tangent, but that's my biggest pet peeve! LOL Hope this finds you happy and healthy. Cheers.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

*applauds gleefully*

I'm am gleeful because what you did makes so much sense to me. I think part of it is that I've gotten so used to using slash as a language somehow, that it seems a natural part of m/m relationships in writing. I'm more like you in that it seems like something to do as a comment on the text...it's a bit like writing a backstory or history, or interviewing the character, perhaps. It seems like an important part of understanding the dynamic or the characters. Perhaps you could figure these things out another way, but slash seems like a great shortcut to valuable info to me.

But to me, it ain't slash unless you're commenting on something. That's the heart of it.

That's how it seems to me too. Though I think I've been lazy in thinking about just how many things out there can be commented on--that phantom straight narrative that's just everywhere. It's like you mentioned in the sci-fi genre. You almost don't need a specific version of the traditional het version because it's in your head.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Very true--in fact, I even usually dislike it whenever anyone says that slash is *about* any one thing, because I think there's easily enough room inside it for straight women, bisexual women, gay men, bisexual men, straight men, gay women writing about all different combinations of characters (gay women writing gay men, straight men writing gay men, etc.). It's not even so much that different *groups* of people get different things out of slash, but that every person gets something different about it. Well, I guess it's like that essay linked to recently on the Snitch which was just one writer trying to figure out what drew her to it. And yet presumably there are *some* things in common or we wouldn't be able to say "slash" and have everyone know what we meant.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

It wasn’t homosexuality as we understand it today it was...something else.

"Uranian. Invert. Onanist. (These are words they make up; you will find them in medical texts.)"

Quoted from "The Mystery of the Young Gentleman", by Joanna Russ, who also wrote "Pornography By Women For Women, With Love" [link (http://www.totse.com/en/erotica/erotic_fiction_o_to_p/pornogra.html)], over 20 years ago...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hurray for asexual twinbros!! :-D

I really do think there's a lot to be said for having less labels, really. A while ago I saw a production of the Noel Coward play "Design for Living" which is about a woman and two men. The subtext seems very slashy to me--it's a threesome, obviously. This production made the slash text, though--the men actually kissed on stage. The weird thing was--and I don't think it was just doing that but the way the whole thing played in general--I wound up feeling like it was about a rather stupid woman who didn't realize she was a third wheel to two gay men. Like I said I think this had to do with more than just letting the men kiss onstage, but it made me think how it was probably sexier when everything was unspoken.

Huh. That's a totally different situation than the one you've described. But still.;-)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was very odd to have 'original' slash-- or even name-only character slash in existing universes-- and call it slash (since I'd barely call it fanfic). I don't know if I've noticed a recognizable 'style' in the majority of slash fics vs. 'normal' romance, I guess, except as in most hetero published romance is bad (...and so is most slash... and fic in general).

I mean, if you take away 'slashing these two canon straight or sexually-ambiguous characters you see in the source text', what remains? Writing about people in a 'certain way'?? Taking straight-acting (WTF??!) boys & making them like each other...? Does that make all slash a coming-of-age story...?

I think what the whole 'style' of slash thing is getting at is that it's a romance genre vs. an act by an audience. Applying m/f romance conventions on m/m stories-- or implying that dynamic without actually making it obvious. That's making it 'slashy', then-- when two boys act sorta like a boy and a girl. However... I always thought that was only how -bad- slash was like. That is, people made one of the boys a girl and substituted just because they were incapable of realism or didn't want any-- and perhaps, given the evidence of most fic, one could say that's what slashers want, but....

If you wrote a realistic depiction of m/m queer desire for characters who're canonically straight or ambiguous, wouldn't that be slash? I suppose that's priviledging the 'act' over the style (which I do).

Perhaps you could define slashing as taking homoerotic close male bonds & making them romantic-- but this is a very tricky thing, since you'd first have to convincingly write said homoerotic bond in a non-slashy way, if that makes sense. It would have to work on two levels-- you can't set out to write slashily 'cause then it'd mess up the foundation. It's like, slash seems to be the 'second layer'-- You'd have to be able to add it or take it away, and if you take it away, the relationship would have to remain almost the same (in a classic sense, I think).

Basically, I think seeing all m/m romance (say, QAF or some random original fic) as slash totally doesn't work for me to the point where I think the idea is laughable. Besides this, it gets tricky because rivals also get slashed, not just friends-- so it's not all about homoerotic bonds & closeness, it's also about chemistry. If you're writing the basis for slash as well as slashing, you'd have to take off your clothes while naked, yes-- but basically, I've read some 'original' slash, and I don't see that happening. I see romance fics happening-- where the romantic attraction is there from the beginning, pretty much, which takes away the foundation. There have to be two stories for the price of one, and I just don't see that going on in most people's definitions as I see through their writing.

As far as writing 'slash' (rather than actual slash)-- that's just writing about male characters with intense homosocial bonds, whether friendship-type or rivalry, and it almost offends me that this would have to be slashy just because it's present in the fic. I mean, you could see it that way as a reader, but what's the point of meaning it to be slashy? It seems dishonest somehow-- like instead of just being a fic, it's got an immediate 'media tie-in' or something. *sigh*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Me? Think to much? Never!;-P

But yeah, I agree and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a Greek word for it.

In fact, I remember reading the televisionwithoutpity recap of Band of Brothers and just being completely annoyed at the way the recapper obviously decided the funny way to recap it would be to act as if the whole thing was very very gay, which had just never occurred to me watching it. Now, I can imagine wanting to slash the characters in it, sure. But I never thought watching that series that that was a factor.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

Do you all feel it influences it? How do you incorporate it into your original fic, be your original characters straight of gay?

I can't write if I'm thinking about how other people might interpret it, or if I'm trying to write one relationship while imagining entirely another. I need to know a) what the characters' relationship is and b) what it could develop into, or else I fumble. That's in fanfic writing *and* original writing. I was writing a bit of pure adventurefic in which sex was not the point and the characters were not interested in each other, and during the writing of it I kept getting feedback from someone that essentially wanted to know when they'd get the 'missing scenes' that occurred outside of my established 'universe' in which the characters were slashed. The story started trying to go in both directions, you know? I understood which bits the fb'er viewed as slashy, and started to view further interaction through that lense, and suddenly the whole thing stopped making sense. I had a similar problem with a bit of original fiction. Honestly? I've sort of come to the conclusion that if I'm going to write anything non-smutty, I need to hide it from slashers until I'm done with it, or it will die a very confused death. :P

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Maybe there is a word for it in Greek...

Yeah: paiderasteia (pederasty) (http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/pederasty.html).

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Uh... by 'writing slash' in the last paragraph, I meant writing 'slashy' ^^;;;;

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Actually, that was a great tangent and I'd love to hear more about it! Because that's a very very good point that this book was being written in the 1950s. It's not part of WW1 lit, though when I was reading Great War and Modern Memory there were a number of things in it where I felt like it really was part of that whole body of literature...it just took Tolkien a few decades to get it on paper. It was a really fascinating way of looking at it because it was so removed from that time, but connected to it at the same time.

So when you read the story do you see it, as I know some people do (and this is a way that makes a lot of sense to me), as Sam essentially being in love with Frodo romantically but unaware of it? Would you say Tolkien had more understanding of this than Sam, or would he, too, probably not be able to say Sam literally wanted to have sex with him? Do you think Tolkien was specifically using that language to say this *wasn't* just a friendship, but being more vague about just what it was, or was he hinting it was sexual?

I guess what I mean is...Tolkien lived through that earlier time, but was now living in the 50s. A lot of LOTR he seemed to be an intentional throwback to earlier eras. So if he was using language that he knew would be taken sexually in his own time, I wonder if he might have done it as a rejection of the current interpretation.

[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*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, now I have to read that essay that's linked, but "Mystery of the Young Gentleman" sounds even more tempting. (Me and my young gentleman!)

Invert always makes me think of Proust. "Everybody is gay an invert but me!" Meanwhile I'm reading the book and thinking, "Gay as a picnic basket."

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that slash originally* meant taking two characters of the same gender from an established piece of fiction (tv show, book, movie, whatever) in which those characters are NOT participating in any kind of same-sex sexual interaction, and writing a story in which they DO participate in some kind of same-sex sexual interaction. Imho, that's ALL "slash" means. It doesn't mean feminizing, or mpregging, or writing a gay character in a straight relationship.


*originally in this case referring to the offline fandoms of about 30 years ago. At any rate, this is the earliest reference to 'slash' that I've been able to find. The term comes from the backslash - the "/" - used in, for example, Kirk/Spock, Starsky/Hutch, etc (and today, Harry/Draco and whathaveyou). Kirk-slash-Spock. Slash. It was used to refer specifically to same-sex pairings in fanfiction and in discussion/interpretation of canon. So, yeah. I don't quite get applying the term to anything other than that.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's why I love what pauraque said about writing an original fic and then slashing it afterwards. The slash is a comment on the text. Perhaps it was a slashy text to begin with, but it wouldn't have to be.

And like you said, that's the thing, what is the "style" of slash since all slash is so different from each other. Some writers come closer to what people might describe as "realistic gay culture" while others sound more like het romance novels where the vagina just happens to be moved a few inches back.;-) So I'd always thought slash was just a neutral term that meant taking existing characters in a narrative where they had no homosexual experiences and giving them that.

Then I just realized that although what you say makes a lot of sense about name-only characters being unable to be slashed, I still probably would think of it as slash! Is it just because hearing the name "Blaise Zabini" spoken within HP canon makes gay sex involving a character of that name slash? Could be...but then I suspect a story about Blaise Zabini and Marcus Flint having sex might "feel" more like R/S than Mulder/Scully. And as cathexys pointed out on the other thread, R/S is considered by many people to be canon, so is it slash? Does it really make a difference either to the slash or to the canon which way you interpret it?

And then bringing up Mulder and Scully reminds me of that famous thing written in that fandom about Mulder and his AU partner "Dan Scully." Basically the author took Mulder and Scully's shippy moments, applied them to Dan and asked, "Does this sound gay/does this sound like slash?" as proof that M/S was canon. Now, it did prove, I think, that Mulder didn't treat Scully "like a guy," but it didn't really work as proof that M/S was canon since men and women have different physical boundaries and physical things are coded differently between them to begin with whether or not there's anything romantic there.