I don't read fanfic.

[conuly]

I don't write fanfic. I don't write at all, in fact, not fiction, anyway. But a lot of my friends read/write fanfic. Nothing wrong with that, really, though after a few disturbing incidents (including a Sinfest li'l devil/godfanboy slash suggestion) I need to ask...

What's the point of slash? Why write it? And is it slash if the characters are supposed to be gay in whatever you're basing this off of?

Comments

[kuriku.livejournal.com]

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I know where the term slash comes from, but not why it's used. It's from the way of denoting relationships by writing them J/D (ie Jack/Daniel.) But I don't get why it was then applied strictly to homosexual pairings (and usually male/male - certainly amongst Stargate slash female/female seems to be pretty universally called femslash.)

As for why to write slash... I read an interesting piece on once somewhere, possibly Pink Khaki. I believe the main reason being given in that case was that it's the same reason blokes like watching lesbian porn (the article was on why women specifcally write slash, since most slash writers are female.) If you're a heterosexual reader and your writing/reading/watching what essentially amounts to pornography, do you *really* want to see limbs and body parts flailing that belong to your sex?

The other reason I used to read slash was because it was a good place to get angst. I used to read a lot of Paris/Chakotay stuff when I was 14 or 15 because at that time I was really into angst fiction (I had a strange habit of reading it when I was feeling really crap about myself. Possibly not the healthiest habit.) As it happened, a lot of angst fic about Paris (who was my favourite character) was slash, so slash I read (I used to skip past the graphically sexual bits.) Plus most non slash stuff on him was Paris/Torres and I really couldn't be doing with that :0P

So there's a couple of reasons there.

Interestingly although I've read a LOT of slash over the years, I've never had a desire to write it. *Shrugs*

[kuriku.livejournal.com]