RPS Writer Interview: Slimslash

Interviews by Fans
Title:	RPS Writer Interview: SlimSlash
Interviewer:
Interviewee:
Date(s):	2002
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	RPS, Eminem
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

RPS Writer Interview: SlimSlash was posted in 2002.

"This interview was conducted by email in November 2002 but first appeared in Pretty But Schizo #5."

Others in This Series

• RPS Writer Interview: Akuma
• RPS Writer Interview: Cinna P.
• RPS Writer Interview: Claudia
• RPS Writer Interview: Slimslash

Some Excerpts

What’s your personal view on why you think women especially yourself write slash about real life celebs, not just boybands but people like Eminem and others?

Partly I think it’s the Internet. There’s so much footage, so many pictures, so much stuff out there about these guys, and it’s easy to share it over web pages, ftp archives, etc. We have a lot of material to inspire us. Earlier, slash was almost always based on shows or movies, and “canon” was basically the TV series, maybe the movies (like Star Trek) and sometimes the novels. Lots of times it was just the series. Slash was published in paper zines (sold at conventions or through the mail) and in circuit stories. “Actor slash” as frowned on, and although it existed it was very, very underground. Lots of people who were big slash fans were very opposed to actor slash. However m/m fantasy stories about famous people have always been part of gay erotica and porn. So although there is a pretty big gap between slash and actual gay porn, at least in my opinion, celebrity sex fantasies are not that big a deal in gay porn. Usually you would see a kind of Mary Sue thing (see the Nifty celebrity archives for hundreds of examples), but in slash, you mostly see the guys slashed together.

Also I notice you say you wrote in other fandoms, I sense a move towards RPS from fictional slash, do you think that and if so, why?

Re.: moving from fictional characters to RPS: I don’t know about everyone else but that’s my experience. To tell you the truth I think my reasons for it may be a little unusual but whatever. Despite having been involved in several TV fandoms (mostly Voyager, XF, Sentinel]], SAAB and Buffy), I don’t really much like watching television. I love music, though. I really liked that the main canon “texts” for Eminem and NSYNC were basically CDs rather than some show I would have to make time to sit down and watch every week. Plus the “canon” becomes much more multimedia. We have web sites (official and otherwise), gossip sites, a billion pictures, books about them (I have the Eminem book Angry Blond and many many NSYNC books), news articles (Eminem’s lawsuits etc.) movies, concerts, appearances on TV and of course, the music. When I was getting into Eminem I spent literally hours with his CDs on repeat. I played them constantly for a couple of months last fall. It was so cool. I loved having something that was so all-encompassing, so much more to think about than just an hour show every week.

Two Of Us is a crossover with a fictional character. What made you choose this pairing, other than the fact Marshall needs a “Daddy” to spank him, LOL? No, I’m wondering is this part of the thing of seeing Eminem the star as just as much of a fictional construct as the character of Krycek?

I do see Eminem (the star) as a fictional construct, just as much as Krycek. I feel the same about NSYNC, pretty much. I know nothing about these people, really. I think about them, sure. I spend a lot of time thinking about them, what their motivations might be for the things they do, etc. But I don’t know them and whatever I write about them is based on what I hear in the music, what I see when I look at the TV. I assume it’s a performance on their part. As for why we slashed him with Krycek, there are a few reasons, and mostly they are logistical more than anything else. My co-writer and I both came from X-Files slash. We’d both written Krycek and had a good feel for him as a character. I think we felt unsure enough about writing Marshall that we didn’t want to try and write him with a character neither of us really knew (like JC or Dre). So in a way it was a comfort thing for us. Also on a plot level it made sense to pick Krycek. Marshall spends so much time on his earlier albums trying to convince you of how bad he is (listen to the song “Criminal” from MMLP). We thought, how would he handle meeting a real criminal? He’d be so out of his league and it would be a total mindfuck … And who better for that than Krycek?

What do you think about the impact LiveJournal seems to be having on RPS? It seems to be really helping --- loads of recommending and cross-posting links and people doing challenges and discussing the boys touching.

I didn’t get into LiveJournal until after I was already well into RPS. But LJ does seem to be especially good at promoting RPS.