Fanfiction & Pro Fiction & Slash

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Title:	Fanfiction & Pro Fiction & Slash
Creator:	carenejeans
Date(s):	Sep. 14th, 2004
Medium:	LiveJournal
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External Links:	Fanfiction & Pro Fiction & Slash, Archived version
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Fanfiction & Pro Fiction & Slash is a 2004 essay by carenejeans.

Some Topics Discussed in the Essay and Comments

• original fiction and fanfiction
• was one of several posts by fans in response to what this author called recent "standard snippy pro-writer put-downs" -- one of them was by Steve Kelner called Self-control of motivation; archive link
• men

From the Essay

Anyway, two things came up -- or didn't come up -- in these discussions that intrigued me. The first the Training Wheels notion. Fanfiction may or not serve as practice for original fiction, and may or may not work as original fiction once the "serial numbers" are filed off, but slash is a whole 'nother animal. Fanfiction is where you take the source and enlarge on it, digress from it, fix it, deepen it. Slash is where you take the source, enlarge, digress, fix, deepen, and have two characters of the same sex fuck each other.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we're talking about pornographic stories about Clark Kent here. Or erotic, or smutty, or whatever word you're comfortable with. For most slash stories, it would take a lot more than filing the serial numbers off to make it publishable out there in the cold world of pro writing.

The second thing, related to the first, is that the slash community cathexys and others talk about in defense against nimrods like Kelner isn't just (just, hah) a social space; it has actually created a new genre of sex fiction.

There is no non-fannish outlet for publishing for this kind of story, and it's not just because of the copyright issues.

Consider: I've written a couple of Highlander slash fics that, with a few changes, could be passed off as "original." For instance, "Cherries in the Snow." The plot, such as it is, doesn't hinge on any particular Highlander episode or obvious canon, like immortality or beheadings or quickenings… Just two guys in a loft, experimenting with lipstick. I could change their names to Michael and David, and the name of the lipstick's owner to Annabel. They live in a house, not a loft, and they're watching football on TV. Nobody has a ponytail, and they wear Ralph Lauren polo shirts. Voila! Original!

(Also: Ack, ptoo, blech, ick!)

So now what do we have? Two guys, a lipstick, a blow job. With a large dollop of sap. Is there a market for homosexual sap? I don't know.

(Of course there's an audience for gay male sex fiction written by and for women. We know this. But bemused acknowledgement on the part of the powers that be that Queer As Folk appeals to women hasn't yet translated into an actual market, as in "publication" and "payment.")

Okay, so I could take my slash fic and het it up. Michael is now Michelle, and… wait. Is she going to be blase about finding a lipstick by Duncan's other girlfriend? See how things change? Okay, she is blase. Big deal. Maybe they're a threesome, sometimes. There's nothing particularly startling about her putting on lipstick, though. But! She could still wander around putting her "mark" on David's stuff.

Now suspend your disbelief and pretend this all works, and I have a sappy gay story, or a light het story, that I can sell -- somewhere. Yay! I have a saleable original story!

What I don't have is slash.

From the Comments

[tanacawyr]:

Personally, I'd like to pop in the mouth anyone who tells me I need to transform a hobby of mine into money ever again.

"You can SELL those socks!"

"You can SELL that lace!"

Yeah, for what? Ten bucks a pop for something where the yarn cost me over fifty already, and then charge some piddly amount per hours because otherwise those socks would cost the average buyer roughly seven hundred dollars? And do these people even know how hard it is on your eyes to make lace to start with? Women who do crocheting and knitting for a living make PEANUTS because this world doesn't VALUE that sort of thing. How naive does someone have to be in order to imagine that the working people who produce the finery of the rich are anything other than poor, uninsured, and underpaid?

I can only make lace and gloves and socks for people I love as an expression of that love because there isn't a snail's chance in hell of my making anything near a decent living off of it.

Besides ... and here's the kicker ... I do it because it's fun, not because I am too stupid to know how to make money at it. IT'S FUN. FUN. ENJOYMENT. HOBBY. You know, like some people like to cook for a hobby?

Oh, you have to open a run a restaurant or else IT'S GOING TO WASTE!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not frigging wasted -- I'm ENJOYING myself, so shut up.

Slash is the same way. Sure, you can learn to write for pay by doing it, I suppose. I don't fucking WANNA. Most pro published books stink on ice, especially the erotic ones. With one notable exception (and the author in questions IS a slash writer when she's not selling manus), pro fiction blows chunks.

To extend the cooking metaphor, someone who cooks as a hobby can afford to do interesting, strange things without a care in the world for whether they will sell or appeal to enough people to make their investment of time worthwhile. This means that they can generally churn out far more tasty, inviting things than any paid chef will ever create.

If those people want to do it professionally, they'd have to DUMB DOWN what they're doing, slide their food further toward the McDonalds end of the spectrum or else they'll run up against the dull, unadventurous majority of humanity that will go, "Eew," at the idea of something unexpected showing up on their plate.

Suppose I don't WANNA dumb my shit down to appeal to my current culture that thinks that two hot babes going at it is sexy, but two queer pigs fucking is gross? I don't fucking WANNA write for the McDonalds-chomping, reality-TV watching, game-show-addicted idiots that make up most of my compatriots.

I wanna write for other slash-writing and reading women. I like them. They're my goombahs, my kind, the women who share thoughts and attitudes with me. I want to connect with THEM. The McPeople out in the rest of the world don't interest me. Why should I do anything that meets with their approval? Why should I seek their approval at all? And if you do something for pay, that's effectively what you need to do after a while.

And I know that most of the published SF/fantasy/genre authors like to pat themselves on the back for being "daring" and "not mainstream," but there is definitely a "mainstream" for that sort of thing, mostly male, and buttfucking Napoleonic sailors, Air Force officers, and archaeologists are not part of that universe.

The whole REASON that women write the overwhelming majority of fanfiction is BECAUSE the overwhelming majority of the entertainment industry just won't churn out genre stuff that appeals to us. If I were content with genre TV that is marketed almost exclusively to young, straight, white males I wouldn't be motivated to write the fucking fanfiction in the first place.

GOD, people are stupid.

You know why I wrote fanfiction and slash, Mr. "I'm a way-cool genre geek?" Because I don't give a fuck about meeting YOUR preferences. My world spins without you.

[carenejeans]: So, um, I take it you agree with me. *g*

I don't know -- since it's so damn *hard* to even imagine genre TV that had all the things that slash fills the need for -- that even if it did, and I were content with it, that I wouldn't still write slash. Wait -- if it had all the stuff in it that slash does, I could be writing slash as mainstream.

God, we're so talking utopia here. In another universe, far, far away.

[lastrega]:

I read the article, and without being overly sexist (and failing - I know! I can't help it), it seems like such typical male thinking. It's the sort of attitude that says that winning is everything and if you're not competing for the publishing dollar then you're just not playing the game right. It completely discounts the joy of creation, the participation in a community, the communication between fen.

I like the slash community, I like slash, I love writing. I don't need some guy coming in and telling me I'm playing the game all wrong.

What a wanker.

[tanacawyr]: AGREED. And it's of course just coincidence that pro published genre stuff is always aimed at an 18-34 year old straight MALE market, isn't it? And that in his opinion, writing for that market is the only way your writing counts?

[carenejeans]:

Yeah. He's so: "I come in suit and tie, small Earthling, and bring you great wisdom."

And if you play your cards right, you too can get a publishing contract with Baen Books! Huzzah!

[Mog]:

slash vs. original

It's way true that if you change stuff, it's not slash any more. For one thing, if you remove all the copyrighted aspects, what happens is you end up, most of the time, with a MUCH shallower work. (Note: not shallow, shallowER.) Because slash, like all fanfic, is intended to RIFF off of the original. Every slash story has a HUMONGOUS backstory behind it -- not only of the show it came from (often many seasons deep) but also of the fanon and the amassed fanfic of that show; ALL of that is back there in your mind as you're reading a slash story. You know what each word is playing on, changing, reinforcing, arguing with, you know where it goes AU, or where it quotes a line of canon dialog, and to what effect. Very importantly, you know what the characters look like and sound like, the expressions of their faces, how they move. Cut all that away and -- wow. Can we even tell what's left? *We* still know who the characters are, so can we ever see them just as we've written them, without all that historical shadow? Can we even tell how they appear when they stand on their own? What they would look like to a non-fan? I'm not sure that we can. And I'm not sure that most such stories would be able to stand alone. After all, the *art* of slash is to weave what we do into what's already been done. It's an improvisatory genre, one where you *have* to know the original in order to fully appreciate the new creations -- often, of course, even to make heads or tails of them, but certainly to grasp the nuance. Whereas pro fic is pretty WYSIWYG. You don't need uncommon knowledge to savor it properly.

Er, well, anyway, that's *one* aspect of why what you see ISN'T what you get, if you send a slash story out into the pro world. Empty-husksville.

Many such points to carom off of in your rant! For instance you are so right about markets. Yeah there's the odd novel, but where is the vast *genre* of m/m fic for women darkening the skies as it passes? In Japanese comix, yeah, but not here.

[carenejeans]: Absolutely, all the backstory, the riffing, the improvisation.

But there's something else... a *sensibility*. It's true that most slash fics don't -- aren't *meant to* -- stand alone. Yet, I've read stories in fandoms I know nothing about (for instance, Te's "That Thing," and "American Way" by Resonant) that I loved because they had that -- that *slash* thing so right. I mean, I recognized it even though the *specific* resonances between the characters & canon & fanon & etc. were lost on me. And I don't mean these stories could have been written in any fandom with the names and settings changed. It was more like -- a sensibility that shone through and reeled me in. Er, sorry about the mixed metaphor. I'm only on my first cup of coffee.

And um. I read "Hades" before seeing ANY episodes of Highlander. Granted, I'm a sucker for a pretty picture, *coff*, but still, the slash hooked me on the show, which hooked me more on the slash! I'm not the only one this has happened to -- so there's something in the slash itself that appeals to women, above and beyond, or at least sometimes before, the shows themselves.

All I know is, I would *love* to capture that sensibility in my original fiction, *especially* in the sex fiction. I think it's possible to do -- but it *still* won't be slash. *g*

References

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