Fanfic Ponderings Pt 1: Slash, WTF? or No Batman, your're hurting meeee...

dude, I would totally do Hermione. Er, that was out loud wasn't it? Oops...

Sorry Frank, is that character from Inu Yasha (sp)? If not, why do I keep seeing that character's name pop up so much.

oh no, that's the girl from Harry Potter..

I ain't gonna throw the first stone on the home-erotic stuff. A lesbian once asked me why het guys liked to watch lesbians. I looked at her in wonder that she hadn't figured this one out. I mean what's better than one naked girl? Why two naked girls, of course! Chick bought me drink for explaining that. 'Course the whole situation that night was really weird. Something along the lines of celebrating the demise of a very troubled relationship at the Aut Bar and having a good looking woman buy me a drink. Not that it was going anywhere past that, but still. Not that my situation has gotten any less surreal. I mean my ex-girlfriend is now my ex-boyfriend and two of the guys I used to hang out with are now two of the girls I hang out with.

But now tell me. If Erma Felna were hitting on you at a bar, you wouldn't be the least bit interested?

Sorry, not into anthromorphs myself, the fur thing doesn't do it for me. Oh, tell J and C I say what's up.

Ooooh boy what a can of worms. Well. Where DO I start?

With the first slash I read, I suppose, which is the grand-daddy of them all -- Kirk/Spock. First story I read was in seventy-something and is one of the first ones ever written, by a woman named Leslie Fish (famous filker, you can read her bio here . It was actually classic hurt/comfort, and made sense in character all the way up to the sex -- which was ... oooohkay, that's ... different... as I recall thinking. But hot. I had had a crush on Spock all the way through my adolescent years and this seemed like an extension of it. Now, you have to recall that all of this slash back in those days were published in fanzines, which were not exactly available to one and all, you had to (a) know they existed and (b) get the zine editor's postal address and pony up the cash that they asked for the 'zine, which could be in excess of 25 dollars, which at the time was a lot of money for reading fan fic. I was lucky enough to be given a whole collection of 'zines which were erotic Star Trek -- there were stories about Uhura/Kirk, Bones/Christine/Kirk, Spock/Kirk... Which were fun, but I wasn't about to seek them out and buy them. (I loaned them out to someone else later, and they KEPT THEM, so I don't have any, any more. Just in case you were wanting to borrow the one with the very hot illo of Uhura that I recall...) Zines are still around, in some forms, and they are fun. And had editors. So were a bit more literate than just posting OMGTEHHAWT...

Fast forward to the Internet. All hail! So, she says, one day, I was toodling along and found out that there was Star Trek fanfiction online. And lots and lots and lots of slash. I recalled that first story rather fondly, after all, and looked up an archive. And found out that there were X-files slash, Sentinel slash, etc etc etc. I don't read a LOT of fanfic in a lot of fandoms, though I have had times when I do.

Fandoms that I *have* read and enjoyed --

X-files. I'm not a big Mulder/Krychek fan, but it does work well with canon, since there's that on-screen kiss and all. Mulder/Skinner also has its charms. (I am convinced that Chris Carter knew about the Mulder/Krychek fandom and wrote in the kiss just to mess with their minds.)

The Sentinel. Come on, two guys living together? And one cute as a button and one so butch it hurts? Fantasy fodder. Is all I'm sayin'.

Smallville. Okay, I've read "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", so I know it's not realistic. But who reads these to be realistic? Not me, man. It IS ALL about the chemistry here -- you can so see Luthor having the hots for Clark, and it's even canon that Lex is not exactly 100% het, here. He was a swinging boy back in Metropolis, and there's no way he swung only one way. I haven't seen anything past season three, so if Lex is now all nasty and EVOL, I don't wanna know.

Harry Potter. Now. No, it's not because of any odd fetish with 15 year olds. Ewww. Fifteen year old boys are just... babies. But Harry is our protagonist, so in our heads (my head?) he's adult at least in his thinking, in his outlook. So seeing Harry and Snape, or Harry and Draco, or whatever pairing floats your boat... is not so weird. Plus, a lot of the HP fans are big puppy!shippers, which means Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, and that's all adult.

And ... I think you're missing the point about what slash does for women. While the sex can be very intense, erotic, it's not about the details, precisely. It's about the emotions. About the relationship. The intimacy, I guess. At least it is for me, and for a lot of other women. I don't actually imagine the physical details of the encounter in the ways you describe -- it's all about the sensuousness of the thing -- the sense impressions and the emotions that arouses. I don't know if that's making sense. But that's my 2 am essay on the matter. I may return to this later.

Twila, thanks for the reply, this thread was meant to be only half serious so I'm sorry if came off as too harsh. This thread has as much as ribbing some female slash fan and her friend (also a slasher) with who I had a talk with last month. I thought it would be good to get these good ladies back with a little boorish wit also get some questions anwered about this genre.

By the way thank you for validating what I suspected about what slash does for for woman. I always figured is was more mental and less mechanical than it is for men. I also now understand a little more about the female psyche, cool beans!

To me, slash is less about the physicality of it (although, if well written, it can so. Damn. HOT. But I digress.) and more about connections on an emotional level. Which, when actually written out sounds like total bullshit but hear me out.

Women, who, as far as I know make up the majority of slash fans, tend to (tend to, I say) view relationships on an emotional level and give that aspect of a relationship attention that may equal or even exceed the amount of attention paid to the physical. That being said, it is one of the big reasons that slash started.

First of all you have characters, let's say on a TV show like SG-1, who have an emotional connection and an attachment that is at the level of friends. That's cool. Most people just leave it there. But there are some people who see beyond just that base level, whether or not there is actually anything there, and see interactions at more than just face value.

An example- in the first season episode of Stargate, entitled Need, Daniel becomes addicted to a sarcophagus and goes through withdrawal that I am assuming is close to that of a heroin addict. In his attempts to get back to the sarcophagus, he tries to shoot Jack, who then proceeds to talk Daniel down and hold him while he cries. Now, one can read this at face value or one can see it as something more than that. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

Add to that the idea that some people cannot believe that people, men especially, can become extremely emotionally close to someone without things becoming physical, I actually had a discussion with a writer about this at a due South convention. I didn't understand it completely then and even now it only makes a small amount of sense but the way that I see it is that many people (women especially) only let themselves become that close with people that they are the most intimate with, most of the time this includes sex.

I have a video clip where Michael Shanks himself is asked a question about slash and has to admit that the characters of Jack and Daniel interact in a very "gay" way, to the point that Christopher Judge told him that they were "queer". If you want to see the clip, I can find it for you.

Not to say that they are, but it's an interesting interpretation.

Again, that being said, I think that many people are looking for relationships that meet or exceed their own. They see characters behaving one way and not following through in the direction that their behavior tends to suggest and they want to fix that. That's where I think slash was born.

Just for the record, I do read slash but I don't read just anything. There are certain pairings that are just, in my mind, totally implausible (I hesitate to say *wrong*) and I can't read them. Fraser/Vecchio being one of them. I don't know... there's something there that gets me, outside of the hot pr0n action. *shrug*

Good Points Miria. I would most definately like to see SG-1 clip with Michaek Shanks talkin' 'bout slash and how it relates to the show. Oh just for the record, I know that slashers are more about the relationship, I just had to tease porny harndogs out there a bit. Y'know, it's a bit of guy jack-off thing I guess.