Slash Fiction Makes Room for Gays
| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Slash Fiction Makes Room for Gays |
| Commentator: | Michael Ricci |
| Date(s): | October 9, 2006 |
| Venue: | Online |
| Fandom: | |
| External Links: | http://www.afterelton.com/archive/elton/print/2006/10/slash.html (Wayback archive) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Slash Fiction Makes Room For Gays is a 2006 news piece by Michael Ricci published on AfterElton, a media news website for gay and bisexual men.
Excerpts
(Formatting as in original.)
On The X-Files, Fox Mulder and Alex Krycek are bitter enemies. On CSI , Nick Stokes and Greg Sanders are murder-solving forensic experts. On Angel, Angel and Spike fight together to save the world — and fight over the affections of blonde bombshell and vampire slayer Buffy Summers. On television, these male relationships challenge and fortify the meaning of friendship between men. On the internet, they're lovers.
So why is it that a genre that deals exclusively in same-sex relationships, mostly between men, is written almost entirely by straight women?"So many reasons really," says Marianne Landon, a 26-year-old Newfoundland native who has been writing fan fiction for more than 10 years. "In my case, I can tell you that television writers have a massive problem right now in heterosexual relationships. It's a simple one really: They don't know how to write them. I don't tune into shows, watch movies or read books for the unresolved sexual tension. I tune [in] to watch the characters and the advancement of their relationships. I'd rather see no romance at all than what television considers romance these days. They go into it to tease us with the ‘will they, won't they,' and at a certain point I stop caring.
"Speaking as a heterosexual woman, I am not interested in wondering if Sam Carter and Jack O'Neill [from Stargate SG-I] or Dr. Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy [from Grey's Anatomy] are finally going to break that taboo and cross that line. Let's face it: Manufactured sexual tension does not make a realistic relationship."
Landon says that the theme of her slash writing is primarily the close male friendships between contrasting personalities, such as Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1. Landon adds: "The fact that the characters are both men is not an obstacle to me — nor should it be. In truth, it's a factor that very rarely enters my mind."
Straight women, however, are not the only writers of slash. Gay men also write and participate in this form of fan fiction, as do a number of bisexual and lesbian women.
"As a gay man, I thought I'd try my hand at contributing works of gay romance from a perspective that I knew from intimate experience," says Tarchannon, a gay male fan fiction writer. "Since gay people seem to be defined in society by their romantic relationships, I think that the world needs to have realistically depicted gay romance and gay relationships become commonplace in the media — unlike in the stereotypical and virtually sexless depictions we've seen on shows like Will & Grace. I think this is essential for gay men and women to become accepted fully by society, and by writing slash, I feel at least some contribution toward that end."
Tarchannon, a 39-year-old medical researcher with a Ph.D. in genetics, has been reading and writing fan fiction since the earliest days of the internet; he wrote his first fan fiction story in 1991. His partner of 15 years, Curtis, has also taken up the hobby. The type of characters he tends to "slash" are strong, masculine, male characters who defy common gay stereotypes — something that he identifies with, and many gay men do as well.
When asked whether he knew why so many straight women write slash fiction, Tarchannon says: "I cannot claim to know. I imagine the reasons for lesbians or bisexual women are similar to that of gay men — to see [their] favorite characters represented in a meaningful way. Not as a sidekick that suddenly announces that he's gay and is killed off the next issue, or an occasional look that's never acted upon, but a fully realized interaction of major, fully fleshed characters that they rarely see in the media today."
Slash is a controversial subject within the fan fiction community. Many fans argue that placing these heterosexual characters in homosexual relationships is unfaithful to the vision of their creators, while others argue that slash writers confuse close friendships with romantic feelings.
Landon believes that some fans may indeed confuse friendship with romance, especially when television programs show "good-looking guys in close contact, [who] happen to exchange a few looks or stand a little too close together."
She says: "We sexualize just about every relationship we see these days so there is an element of misinterpretation going on, but I don't think that's limited necessarily to single-sex friendships. I've seen it across the board, really! When I'm writing Jack/Daniel, I'm building on what I've seen in the story and the emotion that's already there. There's a connection between them and I [am] just following along."
Tarchannon has a different opinion on the buddies-turned-lovers theory. "I don't think anyone feels that there can't be great heterosexual 'buddies' — quite the contrary. But after a lifetime of seeing just that, I think there is a collective appetite for different directions. We all know Butch and Sundance, but … could Butch and Sundance [have] been bi? Absolutely. Were they? Very unlikely. But it's fun to think about those characters recast to represent that which is familiar to you. What were the moments that made it seem possible? What happened in those scenes that we didn't see? It's all great fun and very entertaining for imaginative people that like to write."
"[Fan fiction authors] and the powers that be have always had an uneasy relationship. Shows, movies and book series often succeed because of these groups — alienating us is never good for business. However, they are bound to protect their own copyrights. I'm happy to protect the current status quo. They pretend people like me don't exist; I pretend they don't know; and we're all happy. "