Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2018: Week 41

A series of wave theory buttons created by the Media Cannibals in response to Lezlie Shell's theory. These were most likely worn at Escapade conventions in the 1990s.

The Wave Theory of Slash, often referred to simply as "Wave Theory", originates from a 1993 essay by Lezlie Shell. In the essay, Shell theorizes that there are clusters of tropes and styles in slash that a given fandom (or a given fan) progresses through, in the same way that feminism is said to have progressed through various "waves".

One thing Shell emphasized was that "EVERY wave has quality stories and writers. EVERY wave has bad stories and poor writers. What you consider good and bad depends on which wave you rode in on."

The Wave Theory was one of the first "big hits" of fannish meta fandom. It has elicited conversations and analysis from the time it was first posted, and continues to do so.