Demystifying Slash
Jul. 17th, 2006 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vanillafluffyI sat down earlier with the idea of continuing "Flying Towards Destiny", and ended up writing an essay that's been on my mind lately, namely, what motivates writers of slash. How do we explain it to those puzzled hardcore heterosexuals who don't understand our predilections? Maybe I'm projecting my own point of view onto the subject, and I shouldn't claim to speak for all proponents of the genre, but I think I've dealt with a lot of its more common roots. I'm posting this as a public entry, with some trepidation. Some people take light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek things far too seriously. I hope this isn't going to be one of them.
We Who Slash
There are many people who shake their heads at the phenomenon of slash. They don't understand what's behind it. Most of them are average (het) guys, who don't look at other guys That Way, and think that We Who Slash are a little strange. In some cases, that may well be true, but the average (mostly female) slasher thinks it's perfectly normal to hook up Boy A with Boy Z. Interestingly, I've seen this mindset at work among a cross-section of women, including some who don't self-identify as het.
Geeks who've participated in D&D or the SCA will recognize the slogan: "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and good with ketchup." (Usually, it's accompanied by a picture of a dragon standing over the remains of a suit of armor and picking its teeth with the knight's lance.) The slashers have co-opted this to fit, and present it as, "Do not meddle in the affairs of slashers, for you are cute and go well with other men." That sums a great deal of it up right there. Writing slash is a kind of voyeurism---we got to "watch" two hot guys getting it on. It eliminates the other woman. Depending on the fandom, we may not like the cannon female the hero is usually paired with. This way, We Who Slash don't have to share him.
Some fandoms don't have a canon girlfriend, but we can read subtext into the hero's relationship with his best friend---or his mortal enemy, if it comes to that. Which would you rather have?, We Who Slash ask the audience. A really cheesy Mary Sue OFC, or the hero shagging his best friend in between adventures? Because very often, the heroine is little more than a substitute for the writer, who wants to seduce the hero in the worst way...and the hero's best friend/mortal enemy/sidekick, etc.. "The worst way" is often how it reads. Good slash avoids this pitfall---and what better way to solve the dilemma of penis envy than to throw an extra one into the mix?
The average het guys (some of you are the ones we're writing about), are shaking your/their heads. (No, really, that's never occurred to you, you really weren't thinking about snogging-blowing-buggering your costar in that scene. You were thinking about rotating the tires on your car, what you're going to get your kids for Christmas, whether to have a reuben for lunch, or a cheeseburger. And there's no way you'd ever do *that*---ick!) Relax, fellows. To We Who Slash, it's just good, clean fun, purely fantasia---we don't really expect to see it on any screen except the one between our ears.
For years, a staple of porn for guys was the classic situation of big, strong hero overpowering woman and making her love sex. Feminists were/are outraged. While I'm sure we'll all agree that in Real Life, rape is a bad thing, this isn't Real Life, it's fan-fiction. We Who Slash have ganked that stapler and are merrily giving it our own interpretation. First, we're going to do this, then we're gonna do that, and as soon as our pairing has had a chance to catch its breath, we're gonna do this other thing.... Of course, it's okay---Mother Knows Best, and We Who Slash are the ones birthing these fantastical incarnations of our favorite characters. It just that they're stubborn occasionally, and sometimes we have to make them do what's good for them. For us, non-consensual sex equals eat your broccoli or you won't get dessert.
From the point of view of We Who Slash, slash is love. We aren't inventing these scenarios out of malice. It's mental masturbation, and that's simple truth. We get to spend hours at our keyboard, happily cataloging the pleasures we want to inflict on our heroes and enjoying the frisson of vicarious sexuality. The details don't disturb us; being female, the idea of being penetrated is business as usual. The antics our heroes indulge in are frequently things we've enjoyed, or which sound like fun, at least on paper. A substantial percentage of fan-fiction is relatively mild. Our hero surprises, or is surprised by, a kiss with his best friend, or the boys lend each other a helping hand for sexual relief, or simply comfort one another in times of distress. Don't get me wrong: hot sex is nice too, but unless it's rampantly OOC, we want the cuddles afterward as well.
It often seems that in today's culture, it isn't "okay" for one male to have physical contact with another---unless they're fighting or participating on contact sports. A "guy hug" is generally a brusque thump or two on the back; there's none of the "cling" that most female hugs generate. I'm not saying all females hug that way, but most of us allow a few seconds of close proximity before drawing back. We Who Slash want to give that gift of intimacy to our heroes. It's okay to feel good, it's okay to show your feelings for each other, we reassure them. It may not be canon for you to romp among the sheets with your best friend/mortal enemy/sidekick, etc., but that's okay! Those escapades don't make you less attractive to us, they make you more so. They demonstrate that your heart is open to possibilities, love-able. In this, We Who Slash write the world as we would like it to be.
Go forth, and read slash and be excellent to one another. Really, we don't mind.
There are many people who shake their heads at the phenomenon of slash. They don't understand what's behind it. Most of them are average (het) guys, who don't look at other guys That Way, and think that We Who Slash are a little strange. In some cases, that may well be true, but the average (mostly female) slasher thinks it's perfectly normal to hook up Boy A with Boy Z. Interestingly, I've seen this mindset at work among a cross-section of women, including some who don't self-identify as het.
Geeks who've participated in D&D or the SCA will recognize the slogan: "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and good with ketchup." (Usually, it's accompanied by a picture of a dragon standing over the remains of a suit of armor and picking its teeth with the knight's lance.) The slashers have co-opted this to fit, and present it as, "Do not meddle in the affairs of slashers, for you are cute and go well with other men." That sums a great deal of it up right there. Writing slash is a kind of voyeurism---we got to "watch" two hot guys getting it on. It eliminates the other woman. Depending on the fandom, we may not like the cannon female the hero is usually paired with. This way, We Who Slash don't have to share him.
Some fandoms don't have a canon girlfriend, but we can read subtext into the hero's relationship with his best friend---or his mortal enemy, if it comes to that. Which would you rather have?, We Who Slash ask the audience. A really cheesy Mary Sue OFC, or the hero shagging his best friend in between adventures? Because very often, the heroine is little more than a substitute for the writer, who wants to seduce the hero in the worst way...and the hero's best friend/mortal enemy/sidekick, etc.. "The worst way" is often how it reads. Good slash avoids this pitfall---and what better way to solve the dilemma of penis envy than to throw an extra one into the mix?
The average het guys (some of you are the ones we're writing about), are shaking your/their heads. (No, really, that's never occurred to you, you really weren't thinking about snogging-blowing-buggering your costar in that scene. You were thinking about rotating the tires on your car, what you're going to get your kids for Christmas, whether to have a reuben for lunch, or a cheeseburger. And there's no way you'd ever do *that*---ick!) Relax, fellows. To We Who Slash, it's just good, clean fun, purely fantasia---we don't really expect to see it on any screen except the one between our ears.
For years, a staple of porn for guys was the classic situation of big, strong hero overpowering woman and making her love sex. Feminists were/are outraged. While I'm sure we'll all agree that in Real Life, rape is a bad thing, this isn't Real Life, it's fan-fiction. We Who Slash have ganked that stapler and are merrily giving it our own interpretation. First, we're going to do this, then we're gonna do that, and as soon as our pairing has had a chance to catch its breath, we're gonna do this other thing.... Of course, it's okay---Mother Knows Best, and We Who Slash are the ones birthing these fantastical incarnations of our favorite characters. It just that they're stubborn occasionally, and sometimes we have to make them do what's good for them. For us, non-consensual sex equals eat your broccoli or you won't get dessert.
From the point of view of We Who Slash, slash is love. We aren't inventing these scenarios out of malice. It's mental masturbation, and that's simple truth. We get to spend hours at our keyboard, happily cataloging the pleasures we want to inflict on our heroes and enjoying the frisson of vicarious sexuality. The details don't disturb us; being female, the idea of being penetrated is business as usual. The antics our heroes indulge in are frequently things we've enjoyed, or which sound like fun, at least on paper. A substantial percentage of fan-fiction is relatively mild. Our hero surprises, or is surprised by, a kiss with his best friend, or the boys lend each other a helping hand for sexual relief, or simply comfort one another in times of distress. Don't get me wrong: hot sex is nice too, but unless it's rampantly OOC, we want the cuddles afterward as well.
It often seems that in today's culture, it isn't "okay" for one male to have physical contact with another---unless they're fighting or participating on contact sports. A "guy hug" is generally a brusque thump or two on the back; there's none of the "cling" that most female hugs generate. I'm not saying all females hug that way, but most of us allow a few seconds of close proximity before drawing back. We Who Slash want to give that gift of intimacy to our heroes. It's okay to feel good, it's okay to show your feelings for each other, we reassure them. It may not be canon for you to romp among the sheets with your best friend/mortal enemy/sidekick, etc., but that's okay! Those escapades don't make you less attractive to us, they make you more so. They demonstrate that your heart is open to possibilities, love-able. In this, We Who Slash write the world as we would like it to be.
Go forth, and read slash and be excellent to one another. Really, we don't mind.
