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Slash fiction

Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic (and often sexual) relationships between two or more male characters, who may not be engaged in relationships in the canon universe. While the term was originally restricted to stories in which one or more male media characters were involved in an explicit adult relationship as a primary plot element, it is now more generally used to refer to any fan story containing a pairing between male characters. The term is also sometimes applied to fiction focusing on relationships between female characters; however, some fans distinguish femslash as a separate genre.

The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/) in the description of the primary pairing involved in the story, as compared to the ampersand (&) conventionally used for friendship fiction.

History

It is commonly believed that current day slash fanfiction originated within the Star Trek: The Original Series fan fiction fandom, with "Kirk/Spock" stories – generally authored by female fans of the series – first appearing in the late 1970s. The first such stories appeared in British fanzines. Slash was originally coined as a derogatory term for such fanfiction, and for a time both slash and K/S (for "Kirk/Spock") were used interchangeably. Slash later spread to other fandoms, such as Starsky and Hutch, Blake's 7, and The Professionals.

At first, slash was not accepted by many fans. Later, authors such as Joanna Russ studied and reviewed the phenomenon in essays and gave the genre more academic clout. From there, increasing tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality and frustration with the portrayal of gay relationships in mainstream media fed a growing desire in authors to explore the subjects on their own terms using established media characters. Star Trek remained an important slash fiction fandom, while new slash fandoms grew around other television shows, movies, and books with sci-fi or action adventure roots and two or more charismatic male characters.

Until the internet became accessible to the general public in the early 1990s, slash was tucked away as a subculture in certain fandoms, published only in fan-edited non-profit fanzines (often called only "zines") priced just high enough to recoup printing costs, usually sold via subscription or at conventions. Slash moved to become predominantly an internet phenomenon. The field became open to more writers and allowed the publication of a greater quantity of material. It increased the number of readers, who were now able to access the stories from their own home at a much lower cost (the price of zines vs. the price of internet connections). The number of fandoms represented increased, especially those devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and police dramas. The internet also increased the level of interaction – not every fan could write fiction, but the internet made it easier for fans to comment on stories, give episode reviews, and discuss and comment on trends in slash fandom itself.

Present-day slash

Slash fiction continues to follow popular media, and new stories are constantly being produced. Slash fiction readers and writers tend to adhere closely to the canonical source of their fiction, and create a fandom for that particular source. However, some participants follow the slash content created by a certain fandom without being fans of the original source material itself. Of the diverse and often segregated slash fandoms, each fandom has its own rules of style and etiquette, and each comes with its own history, favorite stories, and authors. There is some correlation between the popularity and activity within each fandom and that of the source of the material.

Many people in recent times view slash as a hobby, both writing and reading it. It has become so popular that it has involved the coming together of certain communities, particularly on the internet, to share interests. Slash usually is based on a particular fictitious programme or film and many people have become famous through writing slash novels but usually remain anonymous. The slash communities regularly post updates on each others work, showing feedback of their work.

An ambiguous definition

The term slash fiction has several noted ambiguities within it.

Though not in line with the original definition, some people assert that some published works constitute slash fiction despite the fact that they are not fan-created. This is likely due to the relative void of canon homosexual relationships in source media. For example, Star Trek virtually never portrayed gay or lesbian relationships on screen outside of the mirror universe (it was done once in an episode of DS9); however, the 1985 novel Killing Time by Della van Hise included hints of a homosexual relationship, as have several subsequent works, including 2001's Section 31: Rogue by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin. Other authors' works that deal with homosexual themes or characters are sometimes described as slash fiction as well. More commonly, though, fans describe such professional fiction as "slashy" rather than actually claiming it as slash fiction.

Due to the lack of canonical homosexual relationships in source media, some have come to see slash fiction as being exclusively outside of canon. These people hold that the term 'slash fiction' only applies when the relationship being written about is not part of the source's canon, and that fan fiction about canonical same-sex relationships is hence not slash. The recent appearance of openly gay and bisexual characters on screen, such as Willow and Tara in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and Torchwood, and many of the characters in the Queer as Folk series, has added much to this discussion. However, abiding by this definition leaves such stories without a convenient label, so this distinction has not been widely adopted.

More recently, some slash authors have begun to write slash fiction which contains transgender themes and transgender/transsexual or intersex characters. As a result, the exact definition of the term within this respect has often been hotly debated within various slash fandoms. The strictest definition holds that only stories about relationships between two male partners ('M/M') are 'slash fiction', which has led to the evolution of the term femslash, or femmeslash. Slash is also present in various Japanese anime or manga fandoms, but is referred to as shounen-ai or yaoi for relationships between male characters, and shoujo-ai or yuri between female characters respectively.

Due to increasing popularity and prevalence of slash on the internet in recent years, some use slash as a generic term for any erotic fan fiction, whether it describes heterosexual or homosexual relationships. This has sparked mild concern among writers of heterosexual fan fiction. This concern is sometimes based in moral objection to homosexuality and manifests itself as offense at the notion of being compared to homosexual subject matter. It has also caused concern for slash writers who believe that while it can be erotic, slash is not by definition so, and that defining erotic fic alone as slash takes the word away from all-ages-suitable homo-romantic fan fiction. This may cause confusion when the quite unambiguous words 'erotica', 'adult', and 'porn' already exist along with fanfiction terms such as 'lemon'. In addition, a number of journalists writing about the fan fiction phenomenon in general seem to believe that all fan fiction is slash, or at least erotic in character. Such definitions fail to distinguish between slash, het (works focusing primarily on heterosexual relationships) and gen (works which do not include a romantic focus).

Content ratings and warnings

Slash fiction, like other fan fiction, sometimes borrows the MPAA film rating system, using the labels G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 to indicate the amount of sexual content in the story. Not all slash fiction has explicit sexual content – the interaction between two characters can be as innocent as holding hands or a chaste kiss, or even contain nothing but unfulfilled yearning; stories may be labeled "UST" for "unresolved sexual tension". As the result of trademark issues over the use of the MPAA rating system, some fandoms have created their own rating systems. If a story contains themes which may offend or which some readers may find distasteful (e.g. rape, incest, BDSM, shota/underage characters, or even heterosexual sex) it is considered polite to include warnings in the story header. Some sites require all stories to be rated and have warnings attached, often by using a beta reader.

The term no lemon is sometimes used to indicate fanfiction stories without sexual content. Anything with explicit content may be labeled "lemon". The terms lemon and lime arose from the anime/yaoi fandoms. Lemon refers to a hentai anime series, Cream Lemon. Lime is sometimes used to indicate that the story contains only mild sexual content, similar to a PG-13 film.

Slash fandom

According to polls, most of slash fandom is made up of heterosexual women with a college degree, though it also includes males and lesbian women. Therefore, the majority of slash authors are women, although male authors also exist (especially in original slash). These demographics are older than the yaoi fans and, as such, they tend to be more easily disturbed about slash depicting underage sexuality. This is becoming less true due to the popularity of Harry Potter slash.

Terminology

Slash fiction has created and appropriated words to describe peculiarities found within the fandom.

One of these terms is squick, most often used as a warning to refer to a reader's possible negative reaction to scenes in the text (often sexual) that some might find offensive or distressing. This may include incest, BDSM, rape, "MPreg" (male pregnancy), gender swapping, and torture. The term originated in the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.bondage in 1991. Squicks are often listed as a warning in the header of a fanfiction story.

Original slash

Properly termed homoerotic fiction but very often termed "original slash", perhaps in an effort to better relate to the vast slash fanfiction audience thriving on the Internet, or perhaps because several of the authors participating in the genre priorly participated in slash fanfiction.

Homoerotic fiction is a growing and lucrative professional market within publishing circles. A few smaller presses, such as Torquere Press and PD Publishing, are dedicated to M/M and F/F titles, and several other mainstream publishers of erotica and romance have recently added "gay" sections to their print and digital catalogues.

With the advent of large online bookstores such as Fictionwise and Mobipocket, a popular niche opened up for professionally-written homoerotic stories, which are now as available and accessible to the Internet readership as slash fanfiction is. The genres of popular homoerotic fiction in epress today run the gamut from historical, science fiction/fantasy, paranormal, traditional romance, modern day westerns, horror, and many others.

There is also a substantial amount of free amateur writing available on the Internet with a similar readership to fanfiction. Many amateur authors are self-published either on the internet or through POD outlets such as Iuniverse or Lulu.

Slash controversy

For many people, slash is a controversial subject. In addition to the legal issues associated with traditional fan fiction, some people believe that it tarnishes established media characters to portray them in a way which was never illustrated canonically. Slash fiction writers, however, often believe that sexual orientation and romance aren't necessarily fixed entities and that it is impossible to state conclusively that any character is straight, gay or bisexual without official word from the characters' creator(s). In cases where the extrapolated characters in slash fiction gain more popularity within a certain community than the original character themselves, the "fandom version" – alternative sexuality intact – may be perpetuated by slash fiction writers who may not have even watched the show and are unaware of how the show informs its characters' sexuality at all. Some may accept the fandom portrayal and the original portrayal as separate and different characters while others find the incongruity unfavorable.

There is vociferous debate on the canonicity of any relationship, be it homosexual or heterosexual, on various fan fiction websites. However, a certain percentage of slash writers choose their fandom because they believe it is actually likely within their chosen universe and that the original creator was unable to write about it for fear of losing popularity. For example, Angel/Spike fan fiction within the Buffyverse: in the Angel DVD commentary for "A Hole in the World", Joss Whedon, the creator of Angel said, "Spike and Angel...they were hanging out for years and years and years. They were all kinds of deviant. Are people thinking they never...? Come on, people! They're open-minded guys!" as well as Spike saying "Angel and me have never been intimate. Except that one..." to Illyria in the episode "Power Play." Needless to say, this has been seen as a vindication of some fans who have been arguing this point since the characters met. Some people say they see similar evidence of such relationships in other shows such as Smallville, The O.C, Friends, and House.

Occasionally, some forms of erotic fiction can prove to be particularly controversial: of note is slash involving underage characters (often termed chanslash; examples include some Harry Potter slash) or real person slash ('RPS', where people who actually exist, most often celebrities, are characters in slash stories). These are considered distasteful by some who otherwise find nothing objectionable about erotic fiction in general.

Chanslash

Chanslash is the controversial portrayal of underage characters in sexual situations in slash fiction. The prefix chan most likely comes from the Japanese name suffix used as a term of endearment toward children or women. It may be a nod towards yaoi fandoms, in which underage pairings are more commonplace. Owners of the intellectual property rights to characters in this type of slash are often unhappy with chanslash because of the potential legal ramifications and concern over negatively affecting the popularity of the character. Some studios owning the rights to slashed characters have issued cease and desist orders in the past as a result of this type of slash.

Some slash writers consider chanslash a separate entity from slash, and initially, there is vast and sometimes acrimonious controversy within the slash writing communities regarding the existence of chanslash. Authors are usually required to clearly mark chanslash stories with warnings of underage sex, and some slash communities forbid the posting of chanslash to their forums and groups altogether. What is considered chanslash may vary due to differing ages of consent in different jurisdictions.

Chanslash is also called "shouta" or "shota" when dealing with anime fanfiction.

Real person slash

Real person slash (RPS) involves taking the celebrity's public image and creating slash stories with them. Real person slash gained popularity with the rise of the pop music industry. In particular, the popularity of boy bands in the late 1990s and early 2000s promoted the growth of RPS. RPS also encompasses other musicians, sports figures, actors, and even prominent political figures.

The legality of using a real person's name to tell a story has frequently been questioned. As a result, authors often preface their stories with lengthy disclaimers which clearly identify the story as entirely fictional. Real person slash took on a new dimension when slash fans and writers began to use blogging services to create fictional journals which purported to be owned by celebrities. These journals often include disclaimers that explain their true (fictional) nature, and that authors are participants in role-playing games where they take on the persona of a celebrity.

Many RPS authors have written alternate universe story-versions of the celebrities concerned. Many authors remove the facts of the celebrity's real life to the extent of behaving as though wives, children, relationships, and even current professions do not exist. Another popular alternate universe method is to remove the celebrity to another time period in history, keeping only the names and personalities of the persons involved. Other instances occur when the writer also changes facts about the characters of TV shows, movies, or books, or even the plots of shows.

In instances when even the names of the celebrities are changed, the fiction moves out of the realm of RPS and into original fiction, because the status of the celebrities in question have been demoted to mere mental avatars representing original fictional characters.

Evolution of slash

In recent years, slash fiction has moved beyond text-based literature. With the help of the internet to promote and distribute multi-media content and the growing prevalence of the slash phenomenon, new forms of slash (beyond narrative fiction) and slash analysis have begun to appear.

Slash artwork

In addition to fiction, fans also create artwork depicting media characters in same-sex relationship contexts. In recent years, the widespread availability of imaging software, like Adobe Photoshop, has allowed slash artists to manipulate photographs of their subjects to produce romantic or erotic images (often referred to as manips) which imply a homosexual relationship, either as static pictures or animated GIFs. When the manipulated photos depict real people instead of media characters, the creation of these images can be as contentious as RPS, and for many of the same reasons.

Prior to the widespread home adoption of computers, however, most fanart was done by hand using techniques such as pencil and ink line drawings, pointillism, and painting. Charcoals, gouache, watercolors, and other media were less widely used.

Hentai has an intimate connection with slash, as many slash stories are accompanied by links to hentai-style illustrations.

Popular pairings

Popular couples in Slash fiction and Slash artwork include:

Aang and Zuko ()
Captain America and Iron Man (The Avengers)
Aragorn and Boromir (Lord Of The Rings Series)
Apollo and Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica)
Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne (Buffyverse)
Angel and Spike (Buffyverse)
Spike and Xander Harris (Buffyverse)
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce and Charles Gunn (Buffyverse)
Kiro and Yu (Cinema Bizarre)
Batman and Robin (DC Comics)
Batman and Superman (DC Comics)
Batman and Joker (DC Comics)
Light Yagami and L (Death Note)
Die and Shinya (Dir en grey)
Kaoru and Toshiya (Dir en grey)
Ninth Doctor and Jack Harkness (Doctor Who)
Constable Benton Fraser and Detective Raymond Vecchio (Due South)
Constable Benton Fraser and Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski (Due South)
Lucien LaCroix and Nicholas de Brabant (Forever Knight)
Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach and Dorian Red Gloria (From Eroica with Love)
Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell (Gundam Wing)
Trowa Barton and Quatre Raberba Winner (Gundam Wing)
Remus Lupin and Sirius Black (Harry Potter)
Fred Weasley and George Weasley (Harry Potter)
Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter)
Sylar and Mohinder Suresh (Heroes)
Methos and Duncan MacLeod (Highlander: The Series)
Hikaru Shindo and Akira Toya (Hikaru no Go)
John Watson and Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes)
Nick Stokes and Greg Sanders (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation)
Gregory House and James Wilson (House)
Killua and Gon (Hunter × Hunter)
Sesshomaru and Inuyasha (Inuyasha)
Legolas and Aragorn (Lord Of The Rings Series)
Legolas and Gimli (Lord Of The Rings Series)
Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee (Lord Of The Rings Series)
Mana and Gackt (Malice Mizer)
Solid Snake and Otacon (Metal Gear Solid)
Frank Iero and Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)
Kaworu Nagisa and Shinji Ikari (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Sora and Riku (Kingdom Hearts
Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto)
Iruka Umino and Kakashi Hatake (Naruto)
Itachi Uchiha and Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto)
Naruto Uzumaki and Gaara the Kazekage
Naruto Uzumaki and most of his friends, and some of his enemies
Hikaru Hitachiin and Kaoru Hitachiin (Ouran High School Host Club)
Brendon Urie and Ryan Ross (Panic at the Disco)
Will Turner and Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Doyle and Bodie (The Professionals)
Jean Valjean and Javert (Les Miserables)
Enjolras and Grantaire(Les Miserables)
Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg (The Sentinel)
Lex Luthor and Clark Kent (Smallville)
James Kirk and Spock (Star Trek)
Elim Garak and Julian Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Starsky and Hutch (Starsky and Hutch)
Rodney McKay and John Sheppard (Stargate Atlantis)
Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill (Stargate SG-1)
Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester (Supernatural)
Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones (Torchwood)
Fox Mulder and Alex Krycek (The X-Files)
Walter Skinner and Fox Mulder (The X-Files)
Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen (Actors)
Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki (Actors)
Bill Kaulitz and Tom Kaulitz (Tokio Hotel)
Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski (South Park)
Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy)
The Doctor (any incarnation) and The Master (any incarnation) (Doctor Who)

Slash in academia

Slash fiction was the subject of several notable academic studies in the early 1990s, as part of the cultural studies movement within the humanities:

Cicioni, Mirna (1998). "Male Pair Bonds and Female Desire in Fan Slash Writing." In C. Harris & A. Alexander (Eds.) Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity. Cresskil, New Jersey: Hampton.
Penley, Constance (1997). NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America. New York: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-617-0.
Penley, Constance (1992). "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture." In L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies. Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1992. ISBN 0-415-90345-9.
Bacon-Smith, Camile (1991). Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1379-3.
Jenkins, Henry (1992). Textual Poachers. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90572-9.

Most of these, as is characteristic of cultural studies, approach slash fiction from an ethnographic perspective and talk primarily about the writers of slash fiction and the communities that form around slash fiction. However, some studies (such as Cicioni's) focus on textual analysis of slash fiction itself.

Slash timeline

1974: Diane Marchant's "A Fragment Out Of Time" is the first known Star Trek slash to be published in a fanzine, Grup 3. The language was highly coded and didn't refer to Spock and Kirk by name.
1975: Diane Marchant published a rather indirect essay about K/S in Grup #4. The first public discussion of this essay occurred in the Star Trek letterzine, Halkan Council.
1976: According to the National Library of Australia, the Star Trek Action Committee was formed as a Star Trek Club. This fanclub would publish the Star Trek adult fanzine Beyond Antares, which contained both het and slash.
1976: G. Downes publishes the first K/S zine, Alternative: Epilog to Orion.
1980s: After actors from the Blake's 7 series were shown slash stories by fans of the show, they tried to ban slash authors and slash from the Blake's 7 fandom, saying that the characters were not homosexuals.
1980s: The first all-slash convention, Zebracon, devoted to Starsky & Hutch, is held in Chicago, IL.
1990 Escapade, a fan-run, media based slash convention was first held near Santa Barbara, CA.
1992: The Nifty Erotic Stories Archive, or Nifty for short, was established. The 'Gay Male - Celebrity' sub-section of the archive became one of the largest collections of RPS in existence.
1993: "Virgule", the first online slash mailing list created, run from a private listserv on the East Coast.
1995: Slash comes to Usenet, with stories posted in alt.tv.x-files.creative.
2002: On September 12, the FanFiction.net archive removes and banned real person slash and NC-17 rated stories.
2004: Slash community slacken_ties is created on LiveJournal.

2005: On the Series 2 DVD commentary for The Mighty Boosh, technophobe Noel Fielding mentions that he has found a story on the internet "where they took this situation and turned it into porn. It was filthy." He and the other participants seem rather amused at the idea.
2006: Australian newspaper The Advertiser mentions slash in its online article about The Logies. MSNBC.com also mentions it in a comment about the 2006 fall schedule.