Must. Not. Comment.

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Meta
Title: Must. Not. Comment.
Creator: Helen Raven
Date(s): December 17, 2004
Medium:
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links: Must. Not. Comment.; archive link
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Must. Not. Comment. is a 2004 essay by Helen Raven.

It was posted to Livejournal and was, in part, a response to a scans daily post that is now offline.

Some Topics Discussed

From the Essay

The thread started with a slash fan leaping on a non-fan for implying that there might be such a thing as het slash: "Well, y'see, there's no such thing as "het slash" as slash is the pairing of two or more characters of the same gender in a sexual relationship." Yes, that's certainly the most-common definition but most fans I know are quite happy to talk about certain straight relationships as being "slashy" - Mulder/Scully, say, or Buffy/Angel. What makes them slashy for me is that they have the same sort of unresolved sexual tension that you find in the same-sex relationships that get slashed, or rather, the same sort of sexual tension that we know is unlikely to be resolved in canon in our lifetime, and that sets our fannish imaginations to work filling in the gaps. That's how my fannish imagination works, anyway. I don't think I'm entirely on my own with this, though I accept that I may be in a very small minority. Incidentaly, this definition means that, for me, stories about openly gay characters are not slash, because they don't have the problematic sexual tension that I'm looking for. A particular story about openly gay characters could be slashy in my terms, but only if there was a factor in the story keeping the characters apart (work, a gypsy curse, etc., etc.).

Since I know that the majority definition of slash covers same-sex relationships only, I wouldn't try to advertise a story with a slashy het relationship as a "slash story", because I know that this would get most slash fans very annoyed with me. I use the "advertising" example because that seems to be the standard test applied to definitions of slash but in fact I doubt if there is anyone who would start reading a story just because it was billed as being a "slash story". In 25 years of reading fanfic, I don't think I've ever come across a story that didn't state upfront what the main pairing was, so as an argument for "why we need to agree on a definition of slash" the advertising test seems to me rather weak.

I am not at all convinced that we need to agree on a definition of slash, anyway, and I find it especially depressing to see people so eager to slam down the portcullis around the "same-sex" definition because it seems to me to be one that closes off so many interesting possibilities for discussing our responses as fans. OK, so it hasn't been a hardship for me in those 25 years to deal with scene after scene of hot gay sex, but it's the dynamic between the specific individuals that makes it hot for me, not the design of the genitalia, and I've only ever come across three or four same-sex pairings that have pushed my particular fannish buttons - about the same as the number of het pairings that have haunted me. The other... 99%?... of same-sex pairings leave me as cold as... well, as the 99.9% of het pairings that don't raise any issues that speak to me. The other same-sex pairings appeal to fans with different buttons, and while we may be able to do a certain amount of bonding around our experiences of discovering and adjusting to this particular "transgressive" hobby - i.e. around the things that distinguish us from people who are definitely not slash fans (going by the same-sex definition) - the chances are that any two such fans chosen at random will be quite unable to talk about the details of whatever is currently obsessing them, i.e. about the things that actually make them fans.

I think that having a fannish (obsessive) response to a depicted relationship is the primary thing, the thing most worth discussing, and I think that we'll understand each other and ourselves much better if we consider the possibility that the fannish impulse that generates the Kirk/Spock story has as much in common with the impulse that generates the Mulder/Scully story as it is does with the impulse that generates the Wesley/Angel story. I want very much to be able to talk about "het slash" when the context is appropriate, and I deeply resent the idea of the Slash Fan Police telling me that I have to label myself as a fan in a way that implies that I think the most important thing you can know about a person is their gender.

That wasn't my experience of the early days of Trek fanfiction. The convention in the circles in which I moved was to use / to denote any story that concentrated on a particular sexual relationship, and to use & to denote a story that concentrated on a particular friendship. So a story in which Kirk and Uhura could be guaranteed to have sex would be flagged as K/U, and a story in which Kirk provided lots and lots of comfort to a hurt Spock would be flagged as K&S - because gen fans also like to know what they're getting. (Well, "pre-slash fans", some people might say, but they still like to know what they're getting.)

I don't think there were many het & stories. Plenty of gen ensemble stories, but very few stories that concentrated on a particular het friendship. So potential readers didn't have to spend any time worrying over the difference between K&U and K/U, whereas the difference between K&S and K/S was a big issue - and I think it was in this context that "slash" emerged as a shorthand. It's true that "slash" never was used at the time for sexually-explicit het stories and I and most fans I know would indeed have ruled out the very idea of "het slash" until... well... Mulder and Scully. So inconvenient, the way that time and experience erode certainty.

From the Comments

[lovessong]: Canonically gay characters having het sex does feel slashy to me, in the stories that I've read -- if it's done well. Because it could just as easily be character violation and/or very homophobic/heterosexist.

But then, some bad slash doesn't feel "slashy" to me, either. When writers violate characterization and turns characters into stereotypical gay men (especially without adequately explaining how they got there) or feminize them . . . Not that guys can't have "feminine" characteristics, but the question is, do these guys have these traditionally feminine characteristics? And I know I probably don't need to explain in this depth to you, as your characterization is very much in line with canon and obviously deliberately so, but I want to be clear about what I mean.

Anyway, when what has the potential to be transgressive is made so conventional, it stops feeling like "real slash" to me. This probably also has to do with the fact that if you ignore canon characterization enough, you may as well be writing original characters. And there's certainly some appeal in that, and original character fic can be slashy, depending on what's done with it, but it's not the same thing.

And I don't necessarily want to say, "oh, those authors should stop violating canon! Bad them! They should write what I want to read!" Because, hey, lots of people love those stories that don't push my buttons at all, and I certainly don't have to read the bad ones. (Again, I'm probably disclaiming where I don't have to, but better too much explanation than offend without meaning to.) But what makes a story feel like slash to me has to do with these particular characters, whoever they are, these particular guys, with all the complexes and barriers that come with being a guy in Western society, break down some of those barriers enough to reach each other.

[Jane Carnall]: Well, I think you already know I don't agree with you, but...
In 25 years of reading fanfic, I don't think I've ever come across a story that didn't state upfront what the main pairing was

I'm kind of shocked to discover you haven't discovered my website yet... :-)

[Helen Raven, original poster]: In the early days of slash (the late 70s, I mean, when K/S was pretty-much the only slash fandom around), I heard a lot of discussion of the idea that the main appeal was of a relationship between equals, who were able to be involved together in an important, exciting project "out in the world". Such a relationship between a man and a woman was either impossible to imagine, or would require so much explaining that the explanations would take over the story - whereas slash allowed this relationship to flourish in a neutral setting.

I know that definitely was an appeal for a lot of people in Trek fandom, and probably still is - with Trek putting so much emphasis on teamwork (i.e. on the fact that the characters do have a place "out in the world") and on the issues rising directly out of their working lives. Buffy has a lot of the same aspects, now I think about it, but with the addition of high-angst elements running alongside.

I enjoyed that aspect myself, though I think it was the barrier of Spock's extreme reserve that made the relationship compelling for me. Once I was introduced to Professionals slash I found K/S very static in comparison, because K and S were too well-adjusted, too equal, and I got much more of a charge out of Bodie and Doyle being posturing late-70s jerks (who also happened to be strongly drawn to one another). The other people in the fandom also tended to be people who had drifted in from K/S because they liked more friction in their slash, so I moved out of the circle of fans who particularly liked slash for the "slow development from deep friendship".

The above is largely me musing to myself about the extent to which I've been moving in self-selected fandom groups ever since I moved into Professionals fandom. It's not since the K/S days that I've spent time with people who were after radically different things in their fandom.

[almostnever]: Count me in your small minority, and Mulder/Scully is basically the same het example I use, too. I think the quality that I love in slash pairings is the sense that the traditional romantic templates don't apply-- that nothing as familiar as the Hallmark and Harlequin flowers-and-chocolates version of romance is going to work to bring these two people together.

Two people who connect in a way that's too complicated to be "romance"-- that's a rough definition of "slashy" to me. But yeah, that's so different from the common fandom usage that we probably need another word for it.

[bluepard]: come from metafandom, think I'll ramble a bit

"Slashy" makes me think of relationships that have some sort of barrier through being inappropriate/forbidden/verboten (I'm waiting for that last one to become mangled into a fandom term. Verbbie? Verbo? VB?) Say the characters work together, or are related, or are the same gender in a homophobic environment, or are working for different sides. These can be canonical (say, Spike/Buffy) Is that what you mean?

A lot of the vernacular needs work. There are several pairings in OP that are called "canonical" even though we know there's never going to be romance in the series. There's two characters who were childhood friends, wound up on different sides and then reunited. There's UST, but I wouldn't call it slashy. If they get together, there's nothing in their way. Another pairing's "conflict" is that the two characters are separated, but he's coming back someday, so that's not slashy either.

References

Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Must._Not._Comment.&oldid=2595521"