Talk:Slash

PPOV Policy

The first paragraph of the definition that slash was same sex, shouldn't the PPOV policy cause to mention the kerfuffle that dragged on for a long time on mailing lists with some people feeling that slash could also be certain m/f romances (I unfortunately don't have links handy, but I remember that some felt quite strongly that non-canonical romance was the sticking point in the late 90s, early 00s iirc, and that some m/f felt like slash to them, often mentioned was Mulder/Scully, I think), and more widespread the position that canonical gay relationships don't count as slash?

I know in the last years these views seem to have gone the way of the dodo, but I think they should be mentioned somewhere, maybe under controversies? --RatCreature 16:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

This. I know it came up as late as 2001ish or so in SV, and I've seen it a couple of times since then. --Seperis 17:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a stab at adding something, but my memory is bad, so it'll be short and need support and smoothing out from other people.--rache 17:32, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I browsed a bit in old metabib linked entries and for example found this one tallking about "het slash", also mentioning that for them "for me, stories about openly gay characters are not slash, because they don't have the problematic sexual tension that I'm looking for":

http://helenraven.livejournal.com/79618.html --RatCreature 17:32, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

here is another meta post I've found to document this, from 2002 by bettyp, it lists competing different slash definitions: http://bettyp.livejournal.com/36560.html

maybe there should also be a mention of the whole "slash as sexual identity" position as well, or perhaps that ought to go under "slasher"? I know for a while in these endless "why do we slash?" discussions I was careful to emphasize that I like to read slash but don't self-identify as a slasher and thus have not as much stake in the discussion on that identity politics level. --RatCreature 17:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's a really interesting distinction, one I hadn't thought of. It's definitely worth putting in somewhere, although maybe "slasher" as a subsection of slash rather than a separate page. (Although I do self-identify as a slash, but that has nothing to do with my sexual identity. Layers upon layers!) --Arduinna 18:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I remember discussions about this I had, like in this this one from 2002 where I explain that I don't see it as an identity for myself but just read it but am aware that for others there is more importance in the definitions and boundaries because of the identity thing, and bettyp replies with "That's what I'm really interested in, here, to be honest with you -- Slasher as a sexual orientation. Because I think it is. And that's my agenda with all of this, to somehow figure out what's up with that."

There is a section in metabib with posts about slash as identity so I think it is a common enough perspective on the genre.--RatCreature 18:20, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Lezlie Shell has an awesome rant about slash getting "too gay" quoted in an article of henry and shoshanna's, and I'm grabbing just the good parts, here.

Two heterosexual males becoming involved in a sexual relationship. To say that there is no relationship between homosexuality and slash is absurd. To say that slash is just another name for homosexuality is equally absurd. We have appropriated men's bodies and sexual activities for our own gratification.

Three years ago I wouldn't have made a distinction between sexual and homosexual. Since the beginning, slash writers have appropriated what we want from the physical side, adapted it to fit female hot buttons... Somewhere along the line, our appropriation of the physical act of homosexual sodomy [...] has been coupled with the obligation to portray these acts realistically and to also give the characters the emotional make-up of homosexual men. The failure to do this is taken as evidence of the writers 1)naivete; 2)homophobia; 3)social irresponsibility; 4) all of the above.

My question, selfish and self-serving, is where do I fit into this? Something that was an extension of me is now being reality checked to fit the sexuality of a group of people who don't even READ slash... Why is it our duty to accurately reflect the gay male experience? Is it the duty of gay male writers to accurately portray the lives of spinster librarians?

"Slash" characters excite by being extensions of female sexuality while the 'gay' characters excite by being a window into an alien sexuality, that of homosexual men. It is internal vs. external in a way. The issues I will write about, power and trust, concern me as a woman, not Bodie and Doyle as gay men. I am fulfilling my kink, not accurately portraying the kink of gay men. http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/bonking.html

Relatedly, anyone know the source of this quote? ... as Lezlie Shell said in 1995, "slash is the process of getting two heterosexual characters into bed"... It's a great pithy old-line description, but if we're quoting, we really need the source. --msilverstar 04:19, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

we should check the WP slash page occasionally, too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction It's long, and hard fought, and largely written by people I've never heard of, which is cool for variety of viewpoints.

We should let them fight it out on their page and just point to it from our page and be like, "Here are some other opinions on it. Check their discussion page for multiple viewpoints. --Etothepii 03:22, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I also think, as a sort of guideline, that it's interesting to link to Wikipedia in every article where it's relevant, glossary or other (like for canons, characters, etc), so that the variance between what Fanlore does (look at fandom, written by fen, PPOV) and what a general-purpose encyclopedia (NPOV, etc) does can become apparent and enrich the reader's outlook on things *makes note to say so somewhere else*.--anatsuno 09:33, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Slashy het

Another thing that might be worth mentioning is a discussion that occasionally recurs about 'slashy' het pairings. I know I've seen it around livejournal. --Betty 16:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Acafen and "Closer"

I deleted the bit about acafen and "Closer" because I didn't quite understand why it was in that particular section-- it's one thing to argue that "slash is written by slashers, therefore outsiders who write it aren't writing slash," and another thing to argue that something like "Closer" becomes not-slash when viewed by non-slashers (if that is the argument that was being made-- I'm not sure.) -- Liviapenn 08:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

fancy quotation marks

Maybe I should find the talk page of some formatting help, but since this is an article with edits from plain to curly quotes, I'd like to point out that these special characters make some things harder. Like they don't always c&p correctly on my system, and the plain text editor I use doesn't display them, making editing things harder. I get that fancy print formatting wants these special quotes, rather than the simple ascii version, but I find the simpler ones much more practical for a wiki.--Ratcreature 02:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

…But don't they look pretty?

Is your editor Unicode enabled? Are you on the Unicode character set when editing? If not, that's why you won't see them. You're welcome to make edits using the ASCII characters.

My logic is that if the Wiki supports using them, we should use them, because it adds a sense of quality to our Wiki. Really, the Wiki should convert the ASCII characters to their proper typographic equivalents when we submit edits.

--awils1 04:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

That's your opinion. Personally when I see curly quotes, I think the author wrote in Word and doesn't have the sense to turn them off because it looks like shit on the web. Furthermore, they don't show up properly for everyone, and they can break links.

As for quality, unless you plan to go through every page and replace every single quote and apostrophe, it's going to look half-assed. Not exactly a sign of quality. (Note: This is NOT a suggestion to go through and replace everything! D:)

99% of people editing are going to use normal quotes and apostrophes, because that's just what people use on the web. I think the best way to look like a "quality" site, is to have some sort of standardisation, and since you are the minority, maybe you should just adhere to the pre-established style. --Kyuuketsukirui 07:12, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, personally I think curly quotes look crap in most non-serif screen fonts. (And while not really relevant, I find the »...« prettier in books in general, but I know that those are not used in English, and since it's an English language wiki we are obviously stuck with the uglier English standards for quotation marks.*g*) Also I've had an irrational hatred of curly quotes on the web ever since the idiotic use of "smart quotes" in non-standard windows encoding by M$Word generated pseudo HTML wrecked my fanfic reading online a lot in the mid- and late-90s. It got better with Unicode since they now usually are encoded so that my browser displays them, but I still hate them a lot...

I have no idea why my c&p hiccups on the curly quotation marks sometimes, in principle I use UTF-8 and can type all kinds of special characters in the editor. I never bothered to figure out the glitch, because it rarely matters.

And since right now the wiki doesn't convert automatically, I agree with Kyuuketsukirui above that it just looks inconsistent to have some curly, some not.--Ratcreature 07:22, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Jeez, double team attack. I'll revert them, then.

For whatever it's worth: I'm a big Unicode supporter (comes from a personal interest in localisation, and linguistics), and haven't had any experience with such historical glitches.

While we are on the subject, are the em-dashes OK?

--awils1 13:46, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Klangley quote?

Additional info about British fans was added to Klangley's quote: is this text part of Klangley's original text? " Many of the same fans ... of the fandom's archivists." If not, I'm thinking it should be moved after the quote.

On a related note, I'm finding it hard to identify indented, quoted text as a quote when it's in the middle of a large section of text. Would people object to having borders around quotes? Is it time to revisit the Quote template?--æthel 20:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's part of the quote, but I'll look up the original material Klangley sent me when I get the chance to check it. It can certainly be broken out right under that bit of the quote, though, if need be - it's good info! --Arduinna 05:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Responding to question in edit: can we change all these quotations into regular wiki text so that other people can work with it? That sounds like a good idea, although we should still cite Klangley as a source. I wonder if we should follow the Fanlore Live example and put Klangley's text in a subpage of Slash and then break the quotes up a bit more on the main page, paraphrase things, intergrate other perspectives/information, etc.--æthel 01:55, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I know it's unusual, but Klangley specifically requested that her material be entered as a quote(s), and not as editable wiki text for other people to modify. She did unbelievable amounts of primary-source research on this, and really didn't want people coming in and saying "well, I heard x three years ago from my fannish mentor, so I'll just change this" -- those things are important as part of our oral history to see how things have changed, but Klangley's quotes are top-level research, so to speak. (When she sent me the material to add, I assumed I'd be adding it as regular wiki content, and that's when she made the specific request of me.) And I've just looked at the page, and that quotation template ROCKS. \o/ Please let's keep Klangley's contributions in those quote blocks - she doesn't have them posted anywhere else on the web, and seriously, they're an amazing, accurate look at our fannish history, based on looking at the original sources rather than relying on memories. --Arduinna 05:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is good to keep the quote somewhere so the text is here, but I'm not sure it's so great to have a very long part of the slash article basically not editable. I think æthel's suggestion above makes sense.--Ratcreature 07:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to run this past the wiki admins before a decision is made - ordinarily I would totally agree that the quoted material be somewhere off the page with a pointer to it, but the quoting was a specific condition of Klangley's agreeing to put the information on the Slash page, and she trusted me to make that happen. I don't want to just change it on her, not without a decree from above, as it were. --Arduinna 13:05, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The "Controversies over Slash" part of the Klangley quote seems too specific for such a general page. Could we maybe move that part to a subpage? --Doro 11:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, we could make the entire "Controversies over Slash" section into a separate article (and summarize it here). And then if it keeps growing, put Klangley's quote into a subpage of that article.--æthel 19:23, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

That's a really good idea. There's the whole does slash=m/m and the appropriation debate that could go there too. But I feel guilty that the het entry is so small--we perhaps need to recruit somebody to help there.--facetofcathy 21:34, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I moved the section to Slash Controversies. The remaining paragraph here may need to be edited to provide a more general overview.--æthel 23:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I find this page very hard to read because of the length of the quotes. [User:Arduinna|Arduinna]] is there any way to ask Klangley about putting the history in its own page? Or put it at the very bottom of this page? This is a complicated topic, and the history details are overwhelming ----

I think the time has come to create a separate History of Slash Fandom page and move the sections related to the slash community there--definitely "history of the genre" and maybe "Slash and the Arrival of the Internet" and "Slash Comes Into Its Own". Sections related to the term itself could stay here. --æthel 17:03, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with that. The Slash vs. Gay section also seems to me to be half Defining and half Controversies content. I'd like to expand on the slash vs. m/m vs. gay lit conversations, but I don't know where to put it.--facetofcathy 17:48, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Slash vs. Gay could go on its own page and be linked to Slash Controversies. It could include a lot of different types of civil conversations, so it may not belong on the Slash controversies page.--æthel 18:56, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I like that idea, taking the framing language of controversy out of it altogether. --facetofcathy 02:24, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

new zine to add

Help me out here. I have a zine to add. I find two references to it:

• MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. -- USED

“/” (generic UNCLE zine), /, 78p

and from Agent With Style:

• GENERIC "/" MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. ZINE

Type: slash

• In the novella "A Fine Line" by Clotilda Willard, the author asks the question — from a torturous imprisonment by Justin Sepheran to a battle warred with each other — only fifteen years could heal the emotional wounds — or could they?

Is the zine called / ? Is the zine called "/" ? Is the zine called "Generic "/" Man from UNCLE Zine"?

And from the description, it's by Clotilda Willard?

(could there be any more of a difficult name for a zine.... grrr) Mrs. Potato Head 20:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you could just put it under the novella's title if that is the only content in the zine?--Ratcreature 20:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Now, I get it! AWS filed this under "GENERIC "/" MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. ZINE" as if that was the title, rather than, "A FINE LINE" which is already cataloged on Fanlore. The confusion was furthered by the fact that "FINE" and "GENERIC" both fall next to each other alphabetically. *scowls* Mrs. Potato Head 20:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the cover that explains the listing troubles as the design seems to omit the novella's title. Though that one needs moving anyway-- searching now I noticed A Fine Line - BEKi, a ST:TNG zine...so I see a disambiguation looming. Heh.--Ratcreature 21:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Confusion over the meaning of "slash"

Embarrassing fandom true confessions: "The embarrassing part is that I made it a couple of years, in HtLJ, with the firm conviction that slasher fanfic was just like slasher movies, and all these nice ladies were spending their free time writing stories about one character hacking the other to pieces, possibly while the characters had sex." Not that uncommon a reaction to the term, going by the comments! --Anenko 21:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

new pages, other thoughts

As was discussed above, I moved some history-related sections to their own page, History of Slash Fandom. I left a [summary goes here] tag in the "History of the Genre" section so someone who feels qualified to sum up the past 40 years in one paragraph can do so. :)

I was looking through the rest of the article to see if I'd missed any more fandom/genre history and noticed that the TPTB_and_Chilling_Effects section is only about Robin of Sherwood fandom. In its current state, I think it belongs on the Robin of Sherwood page instead. But are there other fandoms where slash didn't happen because of TPTB? If so, the section could be changed to give a run-down on all the fandoms where this happened, with links to the full story on the fandom page.--æthel 23:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

(Can I just say I just love that RoS section... so interesting...) That section certainly could go on the RoS page, but I'd like to see some of it remain on a general slash page as it really says something about the subject as a whole. As for other fandoms that had that issue, I know Blake's 7 has some history there, though I'm unqualified to summarize it. --Mrs. Potato Head 23:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

It would be good to clarify what the RoS case says about the subject as a whole. I can't imagine the creators' wishes having as much impact now, nor can I imagine creators singling out slash now. With more context, this section might be appropriate for the history page.--æthel 03:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. It's a totally dated thing and history is the place. I just don't want to "lose" this bit. If the links are robust, I'm okay with moving it. --Mrs. Potato Head 03:44, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

quotation template on this page

I took out the indents on the quotation template. I had to put p tags on the first and last paragraphs to get the line spacing to work correctly? Is that the "paragraph bug" or is that something else? I think it looks much better with the same line spacing as the rest of the text in the page and with the same padding left and right.--facetofcathy 13:25, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

That's the paragraph bug, yes. --Awils1 13:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Quality of the page

What happened to this page? It used to be so good (see older version) but ever since the history section was moved to its own page, it got worse and worse. D: --Doro 15:18, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Wow, you're so right, it used to be *way* more awesome. I also noticed there are not even links on the page to History of Slash Fandom or Slash vs. Gay, which is where most of the content went, so I will add those at least. --MegR 15:33, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Besides the links, how can we fix it and make it better? I've been adding bit and pieces to this page, and I hope I didn't ruin it. :-( --Mrs. Potato Head 15:41, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

MPH, I was just looking at the revision history, and it looks like you deleted *a lot* today ((-11,307) and marked it as a minor edit? Was that moved somewhere or was it just formating or something? I can't figure out what's changed because practically the whole page is in red. --MegR 15:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Yikes, all I did was *think* of adding H/J to the early slash, but then didn't, and then changed "T" to 't" in a summary header. At least that's what I meant to do!! I swear, I didn't purposely change anything else on that page today. Whatever it was that got deleted needs to go back, toot suite. --Mrs. Potato Head 16:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC) Added: Jeez, I see what you mean! I didn't mean to take any of that out, just make that minor change that should have registered as "0" changes in the history summary. --Mrs. Potato Head 16:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I wondered if it was something like that! No worries, I think I undid it, but you should check I didn't undo whatever you meant to do. --MegR 16:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Sorry about that. I have no idea how I did that. And I'm also glad that this was what Doro was referring to, and not that the page had slowly gotten crummy... *wipes sweat off brow* --Mrs. Potato Head 16:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

History of the Genre

We have a History of Slash Fandom page, content that was formerly part of this page. I think the details and quotes form the history section should move to history page because there is the danger of recreating exactly the same content we already have and actually moved to make this page shorter. --Doro 13:50, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Accurate prediction was accurate; I just cleared out some (interesting!) stuff and moved it to the history page.--aethel (talk) 19:19, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

History of the Term and Use of /

I'm starting to think the article shouldn't lead off with a discussion of just exactly what the virgule is, how it came to be used and what it denoted, and should it be pronounced stroke or slash, etc. These minutiae are fascinating to me as a cultural linguist, but I think newcomers to Fanlore probably want to see the overview first. I'm thinking of moving the terminology part to the history page. Maybe it could even have its own page and feature more quotations from discussions. This would give more of a dimension to how early writers shaped and defined this genre as it began to be shared on a wider scale. --KTJ (talk) 17:49, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. --MPH (talk) 17:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll start working on this. --KTJ (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Any clue on date of the quotes by Klangley?

I'd like to add them to the cite. --MPH (talk) 15:28, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

From the history of the page: "05:51, 2 April 2009‎ Arduinna (Talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (40,736 bytes) (+26,666)‎ . . (incorporated a ton of historical info from klangley; ran out of steam wikilinking)" --Doro (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

"Slash" drifting to mean any pairings not just same gender?

Re: this Tumblr poll from February 2024:

Question: "How old are you, and does the term slash fic refer to only same-gender pairings, or is any ship fic slash?"

Response	Answer %	Answer % within age group
I am younger than 18 and slash is same-gender	2.6%	59%
I am younger than 18 and slash is any ship	1.8%	41%
I am 18-25 and slash is same-gender	20.7%	70%
I am 18-25 and slash is any ship	8.9%	30%
I am 26-30 and slash is same-gender	23%	82%
I am 26-30 and slash is any ship	5.2%	18%
I am 31-35 and slash is same-gender	18%	91%
I am 31-35 and slash is any ship	1.7%	9%
I am 36+ and slash is same-gender	15%	88%
I am 36+ and slash is any ship	2%	12%
secret other thing? (please include your rough age bracket and elaborate)	1.2%	--

In all age categories the majority voted for the "same-gender pairing" meaning, but it ranged from 90-10 (among the early 30s cohort) to 60-40 (among under-18s). Obviously one tumblr poll isn't conclusive, but it might be worth investigating usage of "slash" on tiktok, wattpad, or other spaces that skew younger to see if there's a broad change in usage of the term. -- Quaelegit (talk) 02:00, 15 July 2024 (UTC)