Slash fiction - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction

Fan fiction

Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...

that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex. While the term was originally restricted to stories in which male media characters were involved in an explicit adult relationship as a primary plot element, it is now often used to refer to any fan story containing a pairing between same-sex characters, although many fans distinguish the female-focused variety as a separate genre commonly referred to as femslash

Femslash

Femslash is a subgenre of slash fan fiction which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Typically, characters featured in femslash are heterosexual in the canon universe; however, similar fan fiction about lesbian characters is commonly labeled as...

. The characters are usually not engaged in such relationships in their respective fictional universes.

History

It is commonly believed that current slash fanfiction originated within the Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...

fan fiction

Fan fiction

Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...

fandom

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...

, with "Kirk/Spock

Kirk/Spock

Kirk/Spock, also commonly referred to as "K/S" and referring to James T. Kirk and Spock from Star Trek, is a pairing popular in slash fiction, possibly the first slash pairing according to Henry Jenkins. Early on, a few fan writers started speculating about the possibility of a sexual relationship...

" stories – generally authored by female fans of the series – first appearing in the late 1970s.
The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/)

Slash (punctuation)

The slash is a sign used as a punctuation mark and for various other purposes. It is now often called a forward slash , and many other alternative names.-History:...

in mentions in the late '70s of K/S (meaning stories where Kirk and Spock had a romantic [and often sexual] relationship) as compared to the ampersand (&)

Ampersand

An ampersand is a logogram representing the conjunction word "and". The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and".-Etymology:...

conventionally used for K&S or Kirk and Spock friendship fiction. For a time both slash and K/S (for "Kirk/Spock") were used interchangeably. Slash later spread to other fandoms, first Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch is a 1970s American cop thriller television series that consisted of a 90-minute pilot movie and 92 episodes of 60 minutes each; created by William Blinn, produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, and broadcast between April 30, 1975 and May 15, 1979 on the ABC...

, Blake's 7
Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...

, and The Professionals
The Professionals (TV series)
The Professionals was a British crime-action television drama series produced by Avengers Mk1 Productions and London Weekend Television that aired on the ITV network from 1977 to 1983. In all, 57 episodes were produced, filmed between 1977 and 1981. It starred Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon...

, then many others, eventually creating a fandom based around the concept of slash. Many early slash stories were based on a pairing of two close friends, a "hero dyad" or "One True Pairing" such as Kirk/Spock or Starsky/Hutch; conversely, a classic pairing between foils

Foil (literature)

In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of another character....

was that of Blake

Roj Blake

Roj Blake is a fictional character from the British science fiction television series Blake's 7, played by Gareth Thomas ....

/Avon

Kerr Avon

Kerr Avon is a fictional character from the British science fiction television series Blake's 7, played by Paul Darrow...

from Blake's 7
Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...

.

The first K/S stories were not immediately accepted by all Trek fans. Later, authors such as Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny...

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.

Slash sources

From its earliest days, slash fiction has been particularly inspired by popular speculative fiction

Speculative fiction

Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...

franchises, possibly because well-developed female characters may be lacking in speculative fiction, or because the speculative elements allow greater freedom to reinterpret canon characters. However, other large fandoms, such as Starsky and Hutch or The Professionals, are based in non-speculative sources.

Slash fiction follows popular media, and new stories are constantly produced. There is some correlation between the popularity and activity within each fandom and that of the source of the material. Slash fiction readers and writers tend to adhere closely to the canonical source of their fiction, and create a fandom

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...

for that particular source. However, some participants follow the slash content created by a certain fandom

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...

without being fans of the original source material itself.

Slash finds the Internet

Until the internet became accessible to the general public in the early 1990s, slash was hard to find, published only in fan-edited non-profit fanzine

Fanzine

A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...

s (often called only "zines"), usually priced just high enough to recoup printing costs, sold via adzines or at conventions. With the advent of the internet, the slash fiction community of fans and writers created mailing lists (which gradually took the place of APA

Amateur press association

An amateur press association is a group of people who produce individual pages or magazines that are sent to a Central Mailer for collation and distribution to all members of the group.-Organisation:...

s), and websites such as fanfiction.net, (which gradually started taking the place of zines). As slash publishing gradually moved to the internet, the field became open to more writers, and a greater quantity of material was published.

The internet allowed slash authors more freedom: stories could include branching storylines, links, collages, songmixes included and other innovations. The internet increased slash visibility, and 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 fandom

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...

s represented increased dramatically, especially those devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and police dramas. The internet also increased the level of interaction – making it easier for fans to comment on stories, give episode reviews, and discuss

Critical and queer attention

Slash fiction has received more academic attention than other genres of fan fiction. Slash fiction was the subject of several notable academic studies in the early 1990s, as part of the cultural studies

Cultural studies

Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...

movement within the humanities: 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. Slashers have been configured as fans who resisted culture. Some studies - for example by Italian anthropologist Mirna Ciconi - focus on textual analysis of slash fiction itself.

Slash fiction was often ignored by queer theorists

Queer theory

Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...

. However, slash fiction has been described as important to the LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

community and the formation of queer identities, as it represents a resistance to the expectation of compulsory heterosexuality, but has also been noted as being unrepresentative of the gay community, being more a medium to express feminist frustration with popular and speculative fiction.

Science fiction writer Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ

(herself a lesbian), author of How to Suppress Women's Writing
How to Suppress Women's Writing
How to Suppress Women's Writing is a book by Joanna Russ, published in 1983. Written in the style of an irreverent sarcastic guidebook, it explains how women and minorities are prevented from producing written works....

, was one of the first major science fiction writers to take slash fiction and its cultural and literary implications seriously.

Definition and ambiguity

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.
Slash cannot be commercially distributed due to copyright, and up until the 1990s was either undistributed or published in zine

Fanzine

A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...

s. Today, slash fiction is most commonly published on LiveJournal

LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....

accounts and other websites online. Legal scholars promoting copyright reform sometimes use slash fiction as an example of semiotic democracy

Semiotic democracy

Semiotic democracy is a phrase first coined by John Fiske, a media studies professor, in his seminal media studies book Television Culture. Fiske defined the term as the "delegation of the production of meanings and pleasures to [television's] viewers." Fiske discussed how rather than being...

.

The term slash fiction has several noted ambiguities within it. Due to the lack of canonical homosexual relationships in source media at the time, some came to see slash fiction as being exclusively outside of canon. These people held 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

Canon (fiction)

In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...

same-sex relationships is hence not slash. The recent appearance of openly gay and bisexual characters on screen, such as Willow

Willow Rosenberg

Willow Rosenberg is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed throughout the TV series by Alyson Hannigan...

and Tara

Tara Maclay

Tara Maclay is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed by Amber Benson from the fourth to the sixth season until the character's death. Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love...

in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the characters of Queer as Folk
Queer as Folk (UK TV series)
Queer as Folk is a 1999 British television series that chronicles the lives of three gay men living in Manchester's gay village around Canal Street. Both Queer as Folk and Queer as Folk 2 were written by Russell T Davies...

, Jack Harkness

Jack Harkness

Captain Jack Harkness is a fictional character played by John Barrowman in Doctor Who and its spin-off series, Torchwood. He first appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child" and reappeared in the remaining episodes of the 2005 series as a companion of the ninth incarnation of the...

in Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

, and numerous characters in Torchwood
Torchwood
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...

, has added much to this discussion. Abiding by the aforementioned definition leaves such stories without a convenient label, so this distinction has not been widely adopted.

Some slash authors also write slash fiction which contains transgender

Transgender

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

themes and transgender/transsexual or intersex

Intersex

Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male...

characters. As a result, the exact definition of the term 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

Femslash

. Slash-like fiction is also written in various Japanese anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

or manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

fandoms, but is commonly referred to as shōnen-ai or yaoi

Yaoi

In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...

for relationships between male characters, and shōjo-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 caused concern for other slash writers who believe that while it can be erotic, slash is not by definition so, and that defining all erotic fic as slash takes the word away from all-ages-suitable homo-romantic fan fiction. 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 erotic and romantic slash, and between slash, het (works focusing primarily on heterosexual relationships) and gen (works which do not include a romantic focus).

The slash mark itself (/), when put between character's names, has come to mean a shorthand label for a romantic relationship, regardless of whether the pairing is heterosexual or homosexual, romantic or erotic.

Slash and the original media sources

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. But official disapproval of slash, specifically, is hard to find. As early as 1981, LucasFilms has issued legal notices to fans who wrote sexually-explicit stories). J. K. Rowling/Warner Brothers has sent cease-and-desist letters referencing "sexually explicit" writings on the web, (Example cease and desist letters at Chilling Effects), though Rowling approves the writing of fan fiction in general, posting links to fan fiction on her website and openly acknowledging slash fiction while maintaining that pairings such as those between Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape are non-canonical. Meanwhile, Anne Rice

Anne Rice

Anne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...

is notorious for attempts to stop production of any type of fan fiction based on her Vampire Chronicles characters. Note that none of these specifically referenced slash fiction.

Some media creators seem down-right slash friendly. In the Angel DVD commentary for "A Hole in the World

A Hole in the World (Angel episode)

"A Hole in the World" is episode 15 of season 5 in the television show Angel. Written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon, it was originally broadcast on February 25, 2004 on the WB television network. In this episode, Fred is infected by the spirit of Illyria, an ancient demon who existed...

", 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." Some people say they see similar evidence of such relationships in other shows such as Smallville
Smallville (TV series)
Smallville is an American television series developed by writers/producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar based on the DC Comics character Superman, originally created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The television series was initially broadcast by The WB Television Network , premiering on October...

, Due South
Due South
Due South is a Canadian crime drama series with elements of comedy. The series was created by Paul Haggis, produced by Alliance Communications, and stars Paul Gross, David Marciano, and latterly Callum Keith Rennie...

and Supernatural
Supernatural (TV series)
Supernatural is an American supernatural and horror television series created by Eric Kripke, which debuted on September 13, 2005 on The WB, and is now part of The CW's lineup. Starring Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester and Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester, the series follows the brothers as they...

.

In the episode The Monster At The End Of This Book of the TV show Supernatural

Supernatural (TV series)

Supernatural is an American supernatural and horror television series created by Eric Kripke, which debuted on September 13, 2005 on The WB, and is now part of The CW's lineup. Starring Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester and Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester, the series follows the brothers as they...

, the main characters encounter fictional representations of themselves in series of books. They find the on-line fandom, and comment about their activities including the writing of slash fanfiction. This is often referred to by fans of Supernatural as Wincest, based on the characters' surname (Winchester) and the fact that they are brothers (incest).

The revival of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

led by the openly gay writer Russell T Davies has also seen nods towards the slash fans beyond the omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness and other characters from the spin-off Torchwood
Torchwood
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...

. Many fans see exchanges between the Doctor and the Master (played in the new series by John Simm

John Simm

John Simm is an English stage and screen actor. In recent years he is best known for his roles as Sam Tyler in the detective drama Life on Mars and as The Master in the revival of the science fiction series Doctor Who, but he has also starred in many highly acclaimed award-winning television...

, whose Life On Mars
Life on Mars (TV series)
Life on Mars is a British television series broadcast on BBC One between January 2006 and April 2007. The series combines elements of science fiction and police procedural....

character Sam Tyler is also the subject of a lot of slash fiction) as indicative a previous relationship, or current attraction. At one point the Master says to the Doctor "I like it when you use my name.", and in a Children in Need

Children in Need

Children in Need is an annual British charity appeal organised by the BBC. Since 1980 it has raised over £500 million. The highlight of the Children in Need appeal is an annual telethon, held in November. A teddy bear named "Pudsey Bear" fronts the campaign, while Terry Wogan is a long...

special, the tenth Doctor tells the fifth, after being asked whether the Master still has "that rubbish beard", "no, no beard this time. Well, a wife. " - which fans point to as a reference to gay men marrying a woman for public respectability, the wife being referred to as "a beard". The term for shows that seem to be giving material for slash writers to use is "pre-slashed", sometimes "pre-slashed for your convenience".

Public domain slash

One recent development appears to be "public domain" slash, which occurs when two same-sex "classical" literary characters are thrown together in unexpected lesbian and gay relationships. Ann Herendeen

Ann Herendeen

Ann Herendeen is an American author of popular fiction. A native New Yorker and lifelong Brooklyn resident, Herendeen holds a degree in English from Princeton University....

seems to have pioneered this genre, with her recent Pride/Prejudice (2010). This work postulates that both Fitzwilliam Darcy

Fitzwilliam Darcy

Fitzwilliam Darcy, generally referred to as Mr Darcy, is one of the two central characters in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. He is an archetype of the aloof romantic hero, and a romantic interest of Elizabeth Bennet, the novel's protagonist...

and Charles Bingley, and Elizabeth Bennett

Elizabeth Bennett

Elizabeth Bennett may refer to:* Elizabeth Bennett , Canadian judge* Elizabeth Bennett , English television actress* Elizabeth Ann Bennett, , American television actress* Eliza Bennett, English child actress, * Betty T...

and Charlotte Lucas

Charlotte Lucas

Charlotte Lucas is an English actress and painter.-Early life:Born in 1976 into an acting family, Lucas is the granddaughter of Linden Travers and Guy Leon. Linden appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. Charlotte is the great niece of Bill Travers who appeared in Born Free...

were lovers of the same sex, and therefore closet bisexuals.

Demographics

While slash fandom includes all genders and all varieties of sexual preferences and educational statuses, according to what little demographic information is available, most of slash fandom is made up of heterosexual women with college degrees.

Conventions

Several slash conventions run throughout the year and across the globe, mostly in the United States, including Escapade in California, REVELcon in Texas, Connexions in Maryland, MediaWest*Con in Michigan, CON.TXT in Washington, DC, Con*Strict in Nevada, Connotations in England, Zebracon in Illinois, Yaoi-Con in California, Bascon in California, and others.

Terminology

Slash fiction has created and appropriated words to describe peculiarities found within the fandom. "Gayfic" is sometimes used to refer to stories focusing on gay male relationships, and "femslash" or "f/f" used to indicate that a work features female characters in slash relationships.

Slash fiction, like other fan fiction, sometimes borrows the MPAA film rating system

MPAA film rating system

The Motion Picture Association of America's film-rating system is used in the U.S. and its territories to rate a film's thematic and content suitability for certain audiences. The MPAA system applies only to motion pictures that are submitted for rating. Other media may be rated by other entities...

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". Some sites require all stories to be rated and have warnings attached, often by using a beta reader

Beta reader

A beta reader is a person who reads a written work, generally fiction, with what has been described as "a critical eye, with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release to the general public."The author or writer, who can be referred...

.

The term no lemon is sometimes used to indicate fan fiction stories without explicit sexual content. Anything with explicit content, especially with erotic scenes without accompanying romantic scenes, may be labeled "lemon". The term lemon arose from the anime

Anime

/yaoi

Yaoi

fandoms, referring to a hentai

Hentai

is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as anime, manga, and computer games. The word hentai is a kanji compound of 変 and 態...

anime series, Cream Lemon
Cream Lemon
is an erotic anime series with some in-depth storylines and classic artwork. The first Cream Lemon OVA was released in 1984, though Cream Lemon was not the first hentai OVA...

. The term squick is 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, such as those including incest

Incest

Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...

, BDSM

BDSM

BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...

, rape

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

, "MPreg" (male pregnancy

Male pregnancy

Male pregnancy refers to the incubation of one or more embryos or fetuses by male members of any species. In nearly all heterogamous animal species, offspring are ordinarily carried by the female until birth, but in fish of the Syngnathidae family , males perform this function...

), gender swapping, and torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

. The term originated in the Usenet newsgroup

Newsgroup

A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

alt.sex.bondage in 1991. Squicks are often listed as a warning in the header of a fanfiction story.

The term "slasher" is used for someone who creates slash fiction, and the term "slashy" is used to mean "homoerotic". "Slashy moments" are those events in the canon storyline which slashers interpret as homoerotic, which in turn form the slashers' depiction of the characters in slash fiction.

Femslash

Femslash or femmeslash is a subgenre of slash fiction which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Typically, characters featured in femslash are heterosexual in the canon universe; however, similar fan fiction about lesbian characters are commonly labeled as femslash for convenience. The term is generally applied only to fanworks based on Western fandom

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...

s; the nearest anime/manga equivalents are more often called yuri and shōjo-ai fanfiction. Femslash is also known as "f/f slash", "femmeslash", and "saffic", the last term being a portmanteau of Sapphic

Sapphic

Sapphic can refer to:* Related to Sappho, a 7th century BC poetess** Sapphic stanza, a four line poetic form* Sapphic love, related to female homosexuality...

and fiction.

There is less femslash than there is slash based on male couples - it has been suggested that heterosexual female slash authors generally do not write femslash, and that it is rare to find a fandom with two sufficiently engaging female characters. Janeway/Seven is the main Star Trek femslash pairing, as only they have "an on-screen relationship fraught with deep emotional connection and conflict". Although it is debated whether fanfiction about canon

Canon (fiction)

lesbians such as Willow

Willow Rosenberg

and Tara

Tara Maclay

of Buffy the Vampire Slayer counts as "slash", their relationship storylines are more coy than heterosexual ones, which entices Willow/Tara femslash authors to fill in the gaps in the known relationship storyline. It is "relatively recently" that male writers have begun writing femslash.

Chanslash

Chanslash is the portrayal of underage characters in sexual situations in slash fiction. The prefix chan

Japanese titles

The Japanese language uses a broad array of honorific suffixes for addressing or referring to people, for example -san, as in Daniel-san. These honorifics are gender-neutral , though some are more used for men or women and can be attached to first names as well as...

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

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

Cease and desist

A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....

orders in the past as a result of this type of slash. Chanslash is also called shotacon

Shotacon

, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...

(abbreviated as "shouta" or "shota") when dealing with anime fanfiction.

Real person slash

Real person slash (RPS), also a subgenre of real person fiction

Real person fiction

Real person fiction is a type of fan fiction featuring celebrities or other real people. In the past, terms such as actorfic were used to distinguish such stories from those based on fictional characters from movies or television series....

, involves taking a celebrity's public image and creating slash stories with them. Real person slash gained popularity with the 1990s rise of boy bands in the pop music industry. The band Muse had taken some of the heat for this with the invention of BellDom, where they have the drummer (Dominic Howard) and the guitarist (Matt Bellamy, who once declared that "MuseSlash" sounded so interesting that he would definitely check out what it was about) in a relationship, there are many other forms of Muse Slash but BellDom became the most famous one. In the Supernatural fandom, slash fans who were uncomfortable with Wincest moved into writing and reading Jsquared/J2 fic (slash involving the lead actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles). This lead to the phrase "Supernatural fandom - where RPS is the moral high ground"!. Though increasingly common, RPS is considered a potential "squick" for slash readers. In addition, the use of celebrities in fictional, sexual stories remains controversial. Journals including RPS often include disclaimers that explain their true fictional nature. Henry Jenkins says that RPS may be "troubling" to the old guard of slash. Fans of real person slash state that the personas presented by the common figures of RPS such as boy bands, celebrities, athletes and pro wrestlers are "largely manufactured" for the pleasure of female fans, "so why not just run with them?"

Reverse slash

Reverse slash is a term used for fanfic without any sexual content, or very little sexual content, compared to the canon

Canon (fiction)

. The term is believed to have originated when non-sexual fanfic based on the Anita Blake

Anita Blake

Anita Blake is a fictional character in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series of novels by Laurell K. Hamilton. Subsequently, she has also appeared in the Dabel Brothers/Marvel Comics adaptation of her first novel, Guilty Pleasures....

series began to circulate. Can also be referred to as 'genfic', short for general fiction, wholly non-romantic in nature.

Original slash

Original slash is a term used to describe stories that contain m/m content, but the characters are fictitious. These works are generally unpublished and use the same forms of rating, warnings and terminology that is commonly used by slash writers. Original slash, also referred to as original yaoi are terms that are considered somewhat controversial by some slash fans since they feel that the term ‘slash’ can only refer to works of fan fiction and not original works.

Slash art

In addition to fiction, fans also create artwork

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

depicting media characters in same-sex relationship contexts. Initially, slash art was mostly used in covers and interior pages of fanzines, and sold to other fans at media and slash conventions. In recent years, more slash artwork has used widespread availability of imaging software, like Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...

, 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.

Slash vidding

Vidding has existed in media fandom since the 1980s, and slash vidding is still a popular movement within vidding. Slash vidders take clips of characters (generally ones not written as gay, or in a relationship together), and through juxtaposition, song choice, and other techniques, portray a slash relationship on screen. Vidding used to be very guarded within the slash community, among other reasons, because the songs used in videos are copyrighted. When vidders started putting their videos online, their sites were routinely password protected, etc.

Today, there are thousands of vids, and vid-like projects, available on YouTube and other video sites. Many of these vids are made by slash (and gen) fans, but enormous numbers of them are made by people who have never heard of media fandom. The previous secrecy of vidding fans has come to seem unnecessary, but there is still a community ethos of not freely giving out a vidder's URL.

Slash Roleplay

Slash is one of the fastest growing styles of roleplay in every genre. Sometimes referred to as Yaoi

Yaoi

(male/male) or yuri (female/female), roleplay involving same-sex characters in relationships can be either with canon

Canon (fiction)

or original character creations. There are slash roleplaying based on Dungeons and Dragons, Supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

, Naruto

Naruto

is an ongoing Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. The plot tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires to become the Hokage, the ninja in his village who is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of...

, World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...

and Dragon Age

Dragon Age

Dragon Age: Origins is a single-player role-playing video game developed by BioWare's Edmonton studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the first game in the Dragon Age franchise...

, among others.

There are many mediums used to approach the act of internet roleplaying including message boards, AIM, IRC and specially created chatrooms on servers. Some roleplay is very strict and requires players to be able to type a paragraph or two per each turn, some use strict guidelines involving roleplay dice and some are combinations of all of the above.

Not every roleplay community accepts slash, however, and some people specifically disallow the use of it in their community as not being canon or simply the operators do not care for slash.

History

Slash sources

Slash finds the Internet

Critical and queer attention

Definition and ambiguity

Slash and the original media sources

Public domain slash

Demographics

Conventions

Terminology

Femslash

Chanslash

Real person slash

Reverse slash

Original slash

Slash art

Slash vidding

Slash Roleplay

See also

Further reading