Citizens Against Bad Slash Interview with Fluttergirl

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Citizens Against Bad Slash Interview with Fluttergirl
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Fluttergirl
Date(s):	July 12, 2001
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Backstreet Boys, slash
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
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Citizens Against Bad Slash Interview with Fluttergirl was posted in 2001.

It is part of a series of interviews posted to Citizens Against Bad Slash in which fans were each asked the same ten questions.

Some Excerpts

I do a lot of headbanging. Heh. There isn't a whole lot of BSB slash, especially when compared to Nsync slash. And since there aren't as many people writing BSB slash, it hasn't had the chance to develop like Nsync slash has. So a lot of people are still hung up on the physical part of it (the sex, the kissing -- the basic want to see the Boys touching each other) and don't take as much time to craft the physicalness, and then, to craft something good, plot-wise, around that. I'm not saying that it's all lacking in plot, or that it's all badfic, I'm saying that it's like there's not a much of an emphasis on writing well, than there is on just getting the story out there.

I try to read at least part of every BSB story that graces my inbox, and then I'm always finding BSB slash out on the web that never gets sent to the slash lists. Usually, I read the first few paragraphs to see if it interests me, and if it doesn't, I sometimes don't finish it. If it's an author I've read before and like, I'll probably read the whole thing, same thing if it's an author I've never read before. And as far as feedback, lately I try to feedback every story I read through to the end. *Try* being the key word. It's hard to feedback everything. But it's a nice thing for the author, even if it's just a simple, "hey, I liked that, and this is the part I liked best..."

In RPS, we draw from a somewhat set public persona -- the personality that the celebrity has in the public eye. But as with any characterization, you have to make the reader believe that your character would actually do what you're having them do. So if you write, for example, Howie as an insensitive prick or Kevin as limp-wristed and flamey, you really need to go into some of the history as to why they're acting like that, because that's not necessarily something you'd see them do in real life. People don't do that enough. They have the character do outrageous things, and don't back it up. But on the flip side of that, you also run the risk of making the characters too stereotypical of their public personas. Especially since boyband members tend to be described in a specific role -- the wild one, the religious one, the sensitive one, the heartthrob, the father figure. You have to break them out of that role to an extent to make them real characters rather than pin-ups.

I was surprised to find how far back the BackstreetSlash list archives went. There are messages dating back to October of 1999. So one would think that the fandom would be larger than it is, but it's not. Especially when compared to the rapid growth of the Nsyncslash list, which was started back in June of 2000. Another thing I've found in the BSB fandom that I didn't see as much of in the Nsync fandom, is that you can find a large amount of slash hidden amongst the het on general fanfiction sites. And they're not necessarily calling it slash, either. The stories are labeled as having "gay themes" or mention "homosexual content" in the summary. I just think it's interesting how het and slash are mixed so much in this fandom.