Right - why slash?
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Right - why slash? |
| Creator: | Susan Legge |
| Date(s): | May 16, 1997 |
| Medium: | Usenet |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Why gay stories? (not a complaint) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Right - why slash? is a 1997 essay by Susan Legge.
It was posted as a comment to Why gay stories? (not a complaint) on May 16, 1997.
From the Essay
Right - why slash?
This is a very interesting question and I suspect we are going to get as many answers as there are slash readers and writers.
I am about to drag the discussion downhill.
I know that for me, *one* of the reasons is the question of identification.
As a child and an adolescent I was a voracious reader, mainly of historical fiction of the Walter Scott, Dumas, Stanley J Weyman (remember him anyone?) Baroness Orczy, Anthony Hope variety and there was no one I wanted to identify in there who wasn't a chap. If I wanted to emote and experience along with someone, it was one of the guys, certainly not one of those soppy women who had to be rescued every verse end. Why imagine yourself as Princess Flavia when you could be Rudolph Rassendyll and have all the excitement, all the power and all the sword fights too?
When Startrek came along that pattern was already set. I didn't want to bonk/snog these guys (even though theoretically I was old enough to be thinking like that). I wanted to *be* those guys. This did not mean I wanted to travel the galaxy snogging women with gold lurex foundation garments and unfeasible hairdos; no, I wanted to be brave, decisive, competent and beloved by the multitudes (and I wouldn't have minded being good-looking either).
Now I seem to be stuck like that - there is no one I see on TV that I want to be in the same way.
Even now when I wrote slash, the voice I am writing from is me
- as one of them* and this way I get to be one of them and have
sex with the other. Best of Both Worlds :)
That's just for me - everyone has their own way in but I don't think you should over-look the sheer naughtiness of it. Writing slash enables one to get two good-looking blokes together and give them intricate and successful sex to do and it's just that *little* bit naughtier than straight sex. Not only that, but I suspect that successful erotica/porn/arousing fiction requires that the participants have better sex than the reader/writer usually does. Sex can be great but in real life it can also be boring and uncomfortable and really *not that great*.
Slash is largely written by women about men and I have to admit, they all seem to having much more fun than I've usually had, bigger climaxes, more romance, more perfect understanding of what each partners wants by the other partner. Because we are women, we don't know what it's like for chaps, so we can project what we want onto them. It *might* be like that for them, but they're chaps and we'll never *really* know.
Mind you, once you're into the slash world you can do all sorts. You can use it to make sexual/political points; you can write sweet romance; you can write thrillers or straight (so to speak) porn; you can explore consent or anti-gay bigotry or the strain of maintaining a relationship with your commanding officer, or an omnipotent alien or a being you don't wholly trust.
You *could* do that in non-slash but you'd miss the extra kick you get from the rest of the baggage.