Slash

Synonyms:	m/m, dudeslash, boyslash, guyslash
See also:	Femslash, Hatstand (glossary term), Slash Cons, Slash Goggles, The Premise, Yaoi
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

This article is about the fandom terminology. For the 2016 film, see Slash (film).

Slash is a fandom term used to refer to a type of fanwork in which two or more characters of the same gender are placed in a sexual or romantic situation or relationship with each other. The term is also used as a verb and an adjective. The verb form of slash, to slash, refers to the creation of a slash fanwork or the interpretation of a relationship between characters in a given canon as homoerotic. The adjective form of slash, slashy, refers to character relationships that may be homoerotic in nature and fanworks that may be described as slash without being explicitly stated as such.

Slash more commonly refers to male/male pairings, with femslash being used more often to refer to female/female scenarios.

History of the Term

See Slash Terminology

Fannish tradition holds that the word "slash" originated with Star Trek: The Original Series fan fiction, when Kirk/Spock was used as the label for a story where the relationship between Kirk and Spock was laced with sexual tension, whether it was acted on or not. This label allowed fans to differentiate those sexual relationship stories from the ones about Kirk and Spock’s friendship, which were sometimes labelled using "&". As fandoms gathered around new films and television series, the / mark became common as an indicator of a sexual relationship between same-sex characters.

Klangley explains:

The term "slash" was *not* in use in the 1970s or early 1980s. The virgule was. It has always been used in fandom, as a form of shorthand, to denote relationships--heterosexual, same-sex, romantic, sexual, friendship. For example, Juanita Salicrup wrote a Spock/Christine series and Mary Louise Dodge wrote a Kirk/Uhura series. By the mid-seventies there was a growing subgenre of stories about the friendship between Kirk and Spock. These were usually referred to as Kirk/Spock stories or Kirk/Spock relationship stories. When "the other kind" of story began seeing publication, in order to distinguish between the two types of stories, people started referring to those as K/S stories. That designation took a while to become common usage, and for the first few years there was still some confusion, as people referred to Kirk/Spock friendship stories as both that and as K/S stories. Eventually it settled into its current usage.

Not all fans were familiar with the term. This fan in 1992 wrote:

Some general comments of "Slash" — the symbol "/". (Note: The slash in writing is formally called a virgule or diagonal). I must be some sort of square or whtever [sic], never — not even once — having read or heard about this [See "SLASH" by Karen Ann Yost, SNW issue #2]. It is a free country and everyone can, at least theoretically, say or write what he/she pleases (the proper use of virgule or slash). [...] I would think science/ficton [sic] readers/fans (S/F: another use of the symbol) would not like their heroes being used in this facetious fashion.

Terms like gen and het arose to distinguish these types of stories from slash. Although heterosexual narratives can of course be explicit on the level of an R, X or NC17 rating, they were more acceptable than slash at that time. Labeling a story as slash could provide a warning of criminal risk as well. In the early 1970s, any literature depicting homosexuality, even if not explicit, was considered pornography in most states (see Slash Controversies#Illegality of Slash) and illegal to be sent through the U.S. mail.

History of the Genre

Main article: History of Slash Fandom

Fans certainly wrote and kept private, or shared with only a few friends, homosexual stories about Holmes and Watson, Bruce and Dick, Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, Ilya and Napoleon in The Man From UNCLE, James and Artemus, or Buz and Tod, but it was Star Trek: The Original Series that popularized the slash subgenre. The first such story may have been The Ring of Soshern, written by Jennifer Guttridge in 1967 or 1968 and circulated only privately.

The first slash story to be published in a fanzine was "A Fragment Out of Time" by Diane Marchant, published in Grup in 1974. After this, other Star Trek slash stories appeared in some fanzines, slowly picking up steam through the end of the decade with entire fanzines devoted to slash, and eventually slash conventions.

In the 1980s, more fandoms joined the slash scene, including Starsky & Hutch, The Professionals, and Blake's 7. As more male/male pairs were slashed, fans started to conceptualize slash as a genre unto itself rather than individual phenomena unique to particular characters or shows. A fan in March 1980 wrote:

One has to be careful with &'s and /'s these days! I used to make that mistake, using K/S all the time for speed -- luckily the people I was writing to didn't know either, so they intercepted my meaning correctly. I am indebted to [Sue S], [Sue M], and the rest of DobeyCon I ... (After I bought "Forever Autumn," I may add! These business persons aren't daft!) You may gather I am not in favor of S/H. Or K/S. As for Han Solo and Chewie, or Hawkeye and B.J. references -- I don't feel well! This whole thing is getting out of hand, not to mention boring. What's the point?

The absence of slash in Robin of Sherwood 1980s fandom provides a case study of how insecure slash fandom was about itself and its legitimacy, but in the internet age, slash has become increasingly normalized.

As fans moved online in the late 1990s, some used "slash" in their disclaimers as a warning in a derogatory way, assuring other fans that they were "safe" from slash on their site. An example: "All fics are rated at or below PG-13, and thar be no Slash here, so don't worry about running across something offensive. Make yourself at home!"

Today, Rule 34 illustrates the wide variety of slash pairings and combinations, that any conceivable fictional or real people pairing, inanimate object anthropomorphic, or crossover, has probably been written (and if not, there's always Rule 35: if there is no porn of it, it will be made).

Defining Slash

Because the early slash community kept such a low profile (as above), there weren't clearly written definitions of the term that people could refer to as they got on the net and came in contact with the existing community. So a term might experience fannish drift as newcomers used the term according to the way they interpreted it, rather than how the existing community used it. Slash was a term that experienced fannish drift in this manner. It has also evolved over the years in response to canonically gay characters and relationships becoming more common in mainstream television shows and movies.

During the initial era of K/S and other early slash pairings, and issues of "slashy subtext" and "slash goggles"aside, no one suggested that K/S and other pairings were established deliberately, as a matter of canon. Slash was defined as fanfic containing noncanonical same-sex media character pairings. As is easy to see on countless discussion forums these days, the definition of slash has become more elastic. Many fans consider slash to mean, simply, a same-sex pairing (thus, they refer to Queer as Folk fan fiction as slash, though the characters are gay in canon). Still others look at, say, Stargate: SG-1 fan fiction pairings of Jack/Daniel and Jack/Samantha and consider them both to be slash relationships, because neither is canon and both are designated with a slash mark.

Thus, at different times, fans have tried to define exactly what slash is, and what it is not.

Defining Slash
"It's only slash if it's about a same-sex couple."	In the X-Files, stories of romance between Mulder/Scully would occasionally be labelled as slash; in this sense, slash was being used to mean any non-canon relationship (there were indications that certain fans wanted it to be known as het slash). The focus of the definition slipped, and the heterosexual aspect of the relationship was irrelevant to it being slash. However, in nearly every modern fandom, the definition of slash has settled down to mean same-sex pairings only.
"It's only slash if it contains physical and/or explicit sex."
"It's only slash if it's about a non-canon (or 'unconventional') relationship."	The same fannish drift that led to the definition of slash as any non-canonical relationship then led to some fans objecting to canonical same-sex relationships being called slash. Generally, in current usage, writings which include pairings of canon same-sex couples (for instance, Christian/Oliver on Verbotene Liebe, Brian/Justin on Queer as Folk US, or Willow/Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are usually called slash, or femslash if about women.
"It's only slash if it's about the slow evolution of feelings between partners."	This was one of the first definitions; however, it leaves out enemyslash, as well as a lot of fun crossover pairings.
"It's only slash if they were both straight before they met each other."	This was apparently a rearguard action to preserve we're not gay, we just love each other or men having sex with men (MSM) without considering themselves homosexuals: by this definition, if either half of the pairing was gay or bi before they met each other, it would be gay fiction, not slash.
"It's only slash if it's part of an established slash fandom."	This was a reaction against the proliferation of small fandoms, arguing that a necessary component of a slash story is that it is produced by a member of a slash community, as a way of having a conversation about the characters—either building on, or disagreeing with, concepts from previous stories.
"It's only slash if it's written by a slasher."	This argument is possibly a reaction against the increasing public awareness of slash; these days it is easy to find slightly mocking parodies of slash written by people outside of fandom. Some would argue "it's not slash if it wasn't written by fans, for fans".
"It's only slash if it's written about characters from an existing source text, not original characters."	As the popularity of this specific type of m/m romance as a genre has grown, some people have begun using the term 'original slash' to refer to original m/m fiction (published or amateur) that feels more like slash than traditional gay porn or what is considered typical of literature portraying gay relationships, e.g. Mary Renault. However, many slash fans feel that slash can only refer to fanworks, never original fiction.

Controversies Over Slash

Main article: Slash Controversies

Slash has been surrounded by controversy since its inception. Some topics:

• early objections to Kirk/Spock sexual stories in the 1970s—often by well-known fans. One fan recollects Bjo Trimble describing K/S slashers as a "bunch of twisted sickos".
• entirely justified fears of legal prosecution: copyright and obscenity laws
• slash as inherently out of character
• disagreement even among slash fans as to "what is slashy" and "what should be slashed"
• present-day objections to Kirk/Spock slash by the Star Trek creators, including David Gerrold
• present-day statement by D.C. Fontana flatly denying that the Star Trek creators intended slash to be implied or subtextual canon

Slash and Gay

Main article: Slash vs. Gay

As long as slash fans have been calling their stories slash, there have been conversations about how slash relates to LGBT issues. In early years, it was thought that slash was by definition about two heterosexual men. Some gay men see slash as simply being inaccurate gay representation:

As a young gay man, I personally never found slash fiction to be particularly appealing or authentic to my life. I concluded that slash was not exploring the gay experience so much as it was presenting women’s fantasies of idealised romantic/sexual love liberated from oppressive patriarchal and homophobic traditions.

Other gay men have voiced opposition to heterosexual women appropriating gay male experience. Literary questions of the differences between slash and published LGBT fiction have also been discussed.

In 1998, a fan, Lezlie Shell, wrote:

Homosexuality has as much to do with Slash as Civil War history did with Gone With The Wind. Burning Atlanta gave Scarlet something to deal with and homosexuality has given Bodie and Doyle something to deal with. But GWTW wasn't about the causes of the Civil War, the plantation economy, battle strategy and slavery, just as slash isn't about gay rights, creating positive gay identities for Bodie and Doyle, or exploring the gay male sex scene. Two heterosexual males becoming involved in a sexual relationship is my standard definition of slash. … I view slash as a product of female sexuality. … I am not physically attracted to homosexual men. Portraying Bodie and Doyle in a 'realistic' gay milieu is taking them from the realm of my sexuality.

Slash as a Revitalizing Agent, Slash as Same-Old Same-Old

Something New

Some fans feel that slash offered a new take on an old fandom, bringing new writers, readers and their interests to the table:

In 1984, one famous zine's author said:

I hoped Thrust would make some kind of mark, both as a forum for writing and as a forum for the analysis of the K/S theme…. But it was the K/S theme itself that electrified fandom. As it added a dimension to the relationship between the two men, it added a new and lively dimension to fandom, providing a complex and invigorating idea to ponder, an emotional reference that took fandom by storm. I believe that the K/S theme has played a large part in keeping active fandom alive.

In 1991, another fan writes:

Years ago before there were Star Trek movies, ST had become pretty 'rutty,' too. Then along came K/S. No matter now you feel about homoerotic literature, I think you have to give K/S two things: One, it blasted ST fan fiction out of the ruts [editor's comment: some would say that now, years later, it's created its own ruts!]; and two, it kept ST fandom alive and kicking --and fighting--until the ST movies came along and revitalized the whole fandom. Now I'm not suggesting that SW fandom needs slash fiction to save it; although I'll admit I've always been puzzled by the lack of good SW slash fiction. I'm just suggesting that SW fanfiction can be saved--if the people responsible for producing it are sufficiently motivated.

From a fan in 1993:

I like slash for its own sake--well-written slash, that is. For me, slash is about the relationship, yes, and I like it best when the relationship is demonstrated through explicit, hot sex scenes (set within a good plot and believable characterization). Slash stories that only hint at sex bore me unless they have an exceptionally interesting nonsexual premise. I don't think slash is anything like commercial porno, which seems to me to be completely faked in terms of anything other than sheer mechanics (yawn). No plot, no character development, no charisma. Whereas with slash, we are visiting a universe we enjoy being in, and hanging out with characters we already know and like. But I still require the sexual component to satisfy me. Ever since I started reading slash, the commercially published Star Trek novels have bored the shit out of me because there isn't any sex in them--or any of the relationship/intimacy/deeply personal issues that slash addresses. Just another rehash of Kirk and Spock saving the universe. (rather than exploring themselves and each other.)

Something Old

Other fans feel that slash is simply retreads of hetero-normative subjects given a new hat, often by casting one person in the couple as "the girl". [need examples] See Portrayals of Masculinity in Fanworks.

Somewhere In-Between

A fan in 2002 wrote:

I am continually astounded by slash's audacity, diversity, and constantly changing nature... and continually frustrated by its repetitiveness, naiveté, and lack of imagination. Try as I can, I can't stay away.

A fan in 2003 wrote:

I believe A.J. Hall commented in RJ's LiveJournal that she could understand people not reading slash for moral reasons. Ah, here it comes:

Some people, it is true, who I know and who write slash have difficulty in understanding the "I never touch slash on principle because it can never be canonical" attitude. Most would have considerably more sympathy with a consistent moral position.

I was thinking about that, and came to the conclusion that there is no legitimate moral reason for not reading slash. There's a moral basis for avoiding smut, and insofar as slash is smutty it falls under that reason, but slash without the smut is not a moral issue.

Why not? We read murder mysteries, even though murder is wrong. Were there an entire genre devoted not only to murder but to the glorification of murder it might be wrong to write in it, but not to read the occasional story. Even in non-fiction, we read about terrible things without feeling that reading about them makes us culpable in them.

The objections to slash are more basic than moral differences, and I think they fall into two categories: the literary and the visceral. A visceral dislike for slash is often identified with homophobia, but it's more commonly human nature. Heterosexual men, especially, are deeply squicked by the notion. It's not as strong as the incest taboo, but it's out there and it's a good enough reason not to read slash.

My objection falls into the literary camp. I have nothing against reading fiction that's about homosexuals - I particularly enjoyed LMB's Ethan of Athos, even though it's not one of her better works. I don't even have anything against writing about homosexual characters, be they Willow/Tara or characters in my own original fic. It's not homosexuality as a topic that disturbs me but slash as a genre. A host of fans explicitly devoted to reversing canon sexual orientations, to writing stories because they are risqué, and to being generally contrary or rebellious do not appeal to me. It doesn't make me want to know them, to be part of their clique, or to read their stories. The slash description adds no value for me - it merely alerts me that the story wasn't directed at the general reader but at a subcommunity whose motives and principles I barely understand, never mind share.

I think when RJ exempted "Lust Over Pendle" from the slash genre she meant it in this sense - not that the story wasn't about a non-canon homosexual relationship, but that it wasn't about contradicting canon for its own sake. It was not about being slashy. I haven't read it so I can't say for sure.

There are other subcommunities of fandom that are just as self-congratulatory and anti-canonical as slash is - J/C fandom comes to mind immediately - but most of them don't assert or assume a literary superiority over other fans. It is entirely possible that slashers are better writers, overall, than non-slashers, but that's a matter of statistics which does not make slashfic better in principle than other kinds of fic. Being slashy is not a literary good in and of itself, and no amount of claiming it is will make it so.

Why Slash?

A question many fans feel compelled to answer. See: Why Slash?

Evolution of the Subtext

From a 1998 fan discussion:

Thinking about the more recent slash fandoms vs. the older fandoms brought me to this question:

Is now a better time to be a slash fan than the mid-seventies? The shows are more obvious about their homosocial/homoerotic overtones, the actors are (for the most part) more open to it and less concerned, some jokes/scenarios even seemed aimed at the slash fan. BUT: was it a different feeling when the slash was ferreted out and created wholly by the fandom, without any real help from what was on the screen? I mean, tell me please if Kirk and Spock ever looked at one another the way Mulder and Krycek do -- or is that preferable?

I know this is a judgement call and that no one is going to agree with anyone else completely, but I'm curious as to how slash and slash fandom has changed as the social climate (and therefore the entertainment) became a) more aware of homosexuality, b) more tolerant of homosexuality, and c) more likely to fan the flames (no pun intended)

I can't answer that comparatively since I don't know how Mulder and Krycek look at one another, but TOS Kirk and Spock do in fact act in ways onscreen that would be considered suspect by today's more knowing audiences. Some of it involves looking at one another, but a large part of it involves body contact which is both (mostly) unnecessary and prolonged past the point of propriety. Examples episodes in which this is most blatant are: "The Changeling" - right after Spock's meld with Nomad, "Shore Leave" - while they're being strafed by an antique fighter plane, and "And the Children Shall Lead" - the infamous turbolift scene. Most of this was accidental, due to the smaller action field in the cameras of the 60's which forced principals in a scene to stand much closer than normal in order to remain in frame. However, the censors of the time were more concerned with catching the improprieties this caused between male-female only - it being a more naive time as far as homosexuality was concerned - so they weren't watching for it between male leads.

Personally, I wish WS and LN hadn't been made aware. They've been good sports and even try to accommodate us by 'playing to the gallery' on occasion, but now it's contrived and campy. Before, in TOS, we would get scenes like the ones above in which you see genuine affection between them and sometimes bantering dialog which could be interpreted as flirting because of the accompanying body language and the fact that they were largely unaware of the effect they were creating. Now, we get "Please Captain, not in front of the Klingons" (who couldn't have cared less if they hugged each other like they did at the end of "Amok Time", IMO), which makes Spock sound like Felix Unger of the Odd Couple, for crying out loud! In short, I think it was more fun then than now because half the fun is the "are they or aren't they" speculation and the subsequent searches for clues in the episodes. Having it handed to you on a silver platter - well what fun is *that*?

I like more blatant homoerotic subtext in shows. Of course, I'm coming from the perspective of a vidder as well as a reader/writer, and the lingering glances make for better vids, IMO. <g> I suppose I sometimes feel I have to justify slash -- even to people who are sympathetic, like my husband -- and so the obvious looks, the M/K kiss, Jim distraught over Blair's "drowning", etc., keep me from feeling delusional. <g>

I don't know how much of it has to do with the timeframe, though, and how much has to do with the actual characters -- Bodie and Doyle regularly exchange meaningful glances and from what I hear, the same could be said for Starsky/Hutch, though I'm not particularly familiar with the fandom.

I guess I'm just more drawn to fandoms where the subtext is more visible: Due South, X-Files, Pros, Sentinel, Hercules/Xena. TOS has never particularly interested me, though I find both Kirk and Spock to be attractive.

Um, yeah, you could say that. Actually, I am inclined to say that Crockett/Castillo exchange meaningful glances; Starsky/Hutch exchanged meaningful gropes.

The Evolution of the Word: Subtext and Text

Some comments in 2004:

When the term "slash" was coined you didn't have to discuss what it meant, because you knew it was gay fanfic. How did you know? There were no canonically gay characters in the mainstream media fandoms people wrote in.

The early slashers had to queer the text based on subtext they thought they saw -- I don't think anyone really thinks that any subtext in ST:TOS was intended by the producers, writers or actors -- because they knew the powers that be (TPTB) were never going to do it for them. In fact that's still a common answer to the "why write slash" question -- we have to because that's the only way to get what we want.

Then the winking, the conscious subtext, started. I don't really know where; my first encounter with it was with TNG -- where one of the main writers admitted that he felt Q was in love with Picard -- and it was really blatant in Xena where TPTB did everything but say "they're lesbians and they are so doing each other!" What was written in the "conscious subtext" fandoms still fell under the old definition of slash, but now slahsers had a lot more to work on.

And then ... things got complicated because there were suddenly fanfiction fandoms like QaF that were chock full of canonically gay characters. Is it still slash when you write Brian/Justin? By the old definition, no. But a lot of those writers (and Oz writers and Velvet Goldmine writers, etc) had written slash that was "old-definition" slash and the name stuck until now the definition of slash has become a lot more fluid.

There's nothing wrong with changing the definition of a word to suit the times, of course. It's inevitable and, as reactionary as I know I sound at times, I'm in favor of it because it makes discussion easier.

Slash and Male Intimacy

While the majority of Textual Poachers is not about slash, it was one of the first academic books to address it respectfully and thoughtfully. At a 1993 panel at Escapade, the book's author, Henry Jenkins, described his beginning awareness of slash and what he felt were its possibilities:

... yes, I am both a male and a slash fan, and have really become excited, because I think that slash really speaks to men, including straight men, in a way that a lot of popular culture doesn't. The sorts of themes I talk about in terms of slash in the book, that breaking through of the barriers to intimacy between men, the creation of communication across the kind of walls that we as men put up around ourselves, is a very profound fantasy that a lot of men have. And I think back about the reality of my friendships with other men... One of my best friends as an undergraduate just about died of cancer, and I didn't know it. He just had disappeared for nine months. He couldn't communicate to me this vulnerability, and he was seriously ill before I ever found out and went to his bedside and we talked about it for the first time. But that was the reality, that I didn't notice, he wasn't communicating, and we were both into our little walls to the point that none of the stuff that's in slash was a possibility. The thought of crying, of communicating, of talking between men is so rare in our culture that slash really represents to me one of the few places where you can talk about those questions, where you can engage with it and fantasize about it. And I wish I had friendships with other men that were as good as the sorts of images that crop up in slash. But it's something that politically is very important to me, that I, going back to an undergraduate, during the same time period, ironically enough, was doing male consciousness-raising sessions. And I had been talking about masculinity as an issue, and a lot of my own writing that isn't about fandom deals with questions of gender or masculinity in one way or another. But it was slash, I think, that really opened me up fully to the implications at a most personal level of what I was actually talking about, and helped me understand that much better. So this book has been both personally and professionally a really important one to me. It's one that was intended to be written as a fan as well as an academic, to both academic and fan audiences. I've been gratified by the responses on both sides.

In 2000, a fan wrote:

Kirk & Spock aren't just close, they're *closest*. There is an intrinsic problem with having your closest affectionate relationship with someone other than your spouse. Even in cultures where marriages aren't expected to be based on love. To share your sexuality and your family name with one person, and share your profoundest friendship with another person, is inevitably problematic. Putting all your emotional eggs in one basket is also problematic, but in a different way.

I get frustrated with K+S friendship stories that do not acknowledge that the arrangement has problems...

Outsider Reactions To Slash

Main article: Attitudes Toward Fanfiction

Outsider reactions vary. Fans often do not distinguish between academics or the press writing about slash - both carry the same potential (in fannish minds) for ridicule and mischaracterization.

Fan fiction is often synonymous with slash in the press. Non-fans reading these articles could easily receive the impression that all or most fan fiction is slash.

In 1979, a fan wrote about fans who chose to write slash could give people who were outsiders the wrong impression:

"Alternative Thoughts" by Gerry Downes. An intelligent and well-written article to justify the writing of the "let's-not-talk-it-out-loud-theme".

[...]

To write Star Trek stories for fun is fun. But to believe that expanding and elaborating on these characters is the one reason for writing is self-defeating. It may also be one of the reasons that for anyone who does not know and love Star Trek and all its characters, and who happens to read one of these stories, may conceive Star Trek as something entirely different.

Slash has also been described in the press as a genre exclusive to straight middle-class women, and even as a kind of "mommy porn" written by housewives in their copious spare time. Many slash authors may have portrayed themselves in this way in order to keep anonymity, since writing and mailing explicit homosexual narrative (fanfic or not) could get you jail time in the '70s. The real slash demographic has always included Lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender women along with trans men and male-identifying gay and straight men. (see the Livejournal community Men Who Slash) -- who, even today, might use female names just to fit in.

The Future of Slash

1993

Maybe (and this is a *big* maybe, so anybody feel free to slap me down for it) slash is becoming diluted, altered so radically from its origins that it's hard to point to it anymore unless "you were *there*". Maybe in ten or twenty years, when women are reading male/male romance historicals that they bought in their local supermarkets, this will all be lost forever in the ever-blending line between general erotica, gay erotica and pornography in general. The slash subculture is getting bigger every day. The concept of homoeroticism and women getting off on men together is becoming more and more socially acceptable (or at least more in the social consciousness).

People are inserting their own opinions here on this [mailing] list because there's no Slash Bible that says, "here's how it started, and here's where.

1994

...that real on-screen equality for women might eliminate slash as nothing else could? I think it's a definite possibility, but not one that we need to worry about seriously for some time to come (rueful smile). On the other hand, when I discussed this idea with a friend, she was of the opinion that although better female characters and a better attitude toward women generally would eliminate much of the implicitly misogynistic buddy-pair stuff that is the breeding ground of slash, still there would always be certain male couples who just happened to have that magic chemistry. K/S, for example, was inevitable, she thought. Actually, this reminds me a bit of [J's] ideas about magic couples, though her particular magic couples are often not the same ones that other people notice. I agree that what's needed for "real" slash with female characters is to elevate the women to heroic status. A big part of what makes slash what it is for me is the fact that the men are not ordinary guys but heroes, in a setting that is romantic in the broad sense.

1995

I'm curious what people will think about slash 200 years from now. Will

- people regard it as an odd group of nutters?

- people regard it as a subversive feminist movement?

- it be completely forgotten?

- there be lots of professionally published fiction that is like slash?

- it have been completely suppressed because fandom grew too big and the copyrighters came out and killed it? What would fans do in this case? Invent new characters and go on slashing? And would that be the way to professionally publish it?

Or what? What do you think?

Slash Meta/Further Reading

• The Slash Tutorial by Krychick (1999) See Timeline of Slash Meta.

See Category:Slash Meta.

External Resources

• Wikipedia entry on slash fiction, and its talk page offers a somewhat more outside perspective on slash, with lots of discussion
• Usage of the word "slash" and the virgule "/" alone, at Alternate Universes: Fanfiction Studies, accessed 5.10.2011

References

Related Concepts, Fandoms, Terms, Fanworks
See also	Slash Goggles, Slash Tropes, Timeline of Slashed Sources, Essential Links for Slash Readers, Why Slash

✪ This article was featured on the Fanlore main page in 2017
How To & About	About Featured Articles How to Nominate
Past Featured Articles	2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017
Featured Article Nominations	2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017