Long time coming: why I like slash
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Long time coming: why I like slash |
| Creator: | shadowscast |
| Date(s): | October 8, 2005 |
| Medium: | livejournal post |
| Fandom: | emphasis on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Due South |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Long time coming: why I like slash: Long time coming: why I like slash, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Long time coming: why I like slash is a 2005 essay by shadowscast.
For other essays on this topic, see Timeline of Slash Meta.
Some Topics Discussed
- the documentary "The Celluloid Closet"
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, due South
- why slash
Excerpts
When I first discovered slash online, I was both thrilled and surprised. When I realized how huge it was, and when I realized that the majority of slash authors were actually straight women, I was even more surprised. I'd reached the age of twenty without really being exposed to the idea that women could have/create/share sexual fantasies; porn had always seemed to be the exclusive domain of men.
... I watched the third season of Due South. The season with Ray Kowalski. And I thought I was seeing subtext. I thought I was seeing pretty frikkin' blatant subtext, week after week. I thought, "Those guys are so in love with each other!" The looks, the touching, the "Do you find me attractive?" The buddy breathing (read: thinly-veiled onscreen kiss!), and the "Does this change our relationship?" talk after the buddy breathing.
I desperately wanted someone else to acknowledge what I was seeing. My roommate was uncooperative. But finally (it took a lot longer than you might think), I discovered fanfic and slash pretty much simultaneously. I discovered the Hexwood archive, a huge repository of Due South fic, most of it slash. I was actually surprised to see that there were a lot of stories pairing Fraser with Ray Vecchio rather than Ray Kowalski, as I personally hadn't noticed any subtext in their scenes. However, there were more than enough Fraser/RayK stories to keep me happy. I was also delighted to find out later, through reading fannish meta, that Paul Gross (who played Fraser) and Callum Keith Rennie (who played RayK) were well aware of slash and of at least the potential of subtext between their characters.
...about "how I got into slash." Time to really delve into "why I like it" and "why it makes sense to me."
First off: it's not the sex. Not for me. I'm really just not a very strongly sexual person. I'm very pro-sex in theory, and I think women writing porn for other women and sharing it freely over the internet is a wonderful, empowering thing, and that's one of the reasons I like slash in principle, but on a personal level it just doesn't do it for me. I avoid PWPs. I often skip over reading sex scenes in longer stories if they don't seem to be advancing the plot in a way that the phrase "and then they had sex" couldn't do equally well.
On the other hand, I do have my kinks, and fanfic feeds them nicely. I am a big damn sucker for the hurt/comfort dynamic, as anyone who's read my stories is well aware. But h/c can perfectly well exist in het stories; why do I only like it in slash?
Okay, here's part of it: traditional gender roles make my teeth itch. They drive me nuts. I don't want to read stories where characters play by those rules; I don't even want to read stories where they explicitly struggle against those rules. I want to read stories where those rules aren't even taken into consideration. Slash answers that need.
[snipped]
Also, I just plain like queering the text. It frustrates me that homosexuality is routinely excised or relegated to barely-there subtext. It's satisfying to put it in, to make it explicit. It feels like fixing an imbalance.
...the friendship-relationship continuum. I want to discuss this point because it's one that I've seen a lot of people bring up in explanations of why they don't like slash: the idea that it denies the possibility of close and caring friendships between men who have no sexual interest in each other. And you know, I can see where they're coming from. It's probably true that for every onscreen pair of attractive, canonically straight men who are presented as close friends, there are lots of people online writing them having hot, steamy sex. I just don't think that's a problem. From my point of view, it's not that I'm saying there can't be close friendship without sexual tension—it's just that close friendships are a really good jumping-off point for romantic relationships. And also a really common jumping-off point for romantic relationships.
...virtually every possible het pairing is fair game for the writers. Opposite-sex friendships are frequently complicated by crushes and unrequited love. Het friendships transition into actual dating sometimes. Whereas, Willow and Tara aside, same-sex ones never, ever do.
In my fantasies, in my ideal world, in my own real life experience, it's unrealistic to differentiate the opposite-sex friendships from the same-sex friendships that way.
Hm, okay. One thing I still haven't addressed is why I'm so thoroughly oriented to m/m slash, even though most of the points I've raised so far support f/f slash just as well.
A simple answer would be that I'm straighter than I think I am. I mean, hell, I'm married to a man. I dated a woman for five months while I was an undergrad and we never even had sex (we were both virgins at the time and we only had three chances to sleep together over the course of our relationship, so we never quite worked up to it). Maybe I like the m/m slash because the boys are so very, very pretty.
I've struggled with this question for a long time, actually. I've asked myself if I'm just attached to my queer identity for ideological reasons, if maybe deep down I'm just an ordinary straight woman. But ... dammit, I am attracted to women, I'm just somehow not interested in 'shipping them. I mean, I find Spike by far the sexiest character on Buffy (in fact, quite possibly the sexiest character in the history of television), but Faith is definitely my second choice, and Willow my third. On Angel, I find S4 Wesley pretty attractive in all his dark, unshaven angstiness, and although Fred never did it for me, Illyria is fucking hot.
So it's not just the guys. It's the dynamic between them that appeals to me. I like the prickliness, the bravado, the snark. I like the fact that they're so damn unlikely to be sweet to each other that when it does finally happen, it has so much more impact.
It may also have to do with the fact that the majority of really strong, interesting characters on TV and in movies are male. It sucks, but there it is.