The future of slash?

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Title:	the future of slash?
Creator:
Date(s):	May 1995
Medium:	mailing list
Fandom:	multifandom
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the future of slash? is a early 1995 discussion amongst fans on a slash mailing list, Virgule-L.

Some quotes are used anonymously, with permission, and two are by Michelle Christian and M. Fae Glasgow and quoted with permission.

Some Topics Discussed

• speculating about the future of fiction, art, discussion, and communities
• copyrights and fears
• slash and other fanworks underground
• tenacity of fans
• writing as feminism
• speculating about m/m professional romance fiction

From the Discussion

[D]: 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?

[K]: I'm of the opinion that in 200 years slash will be about as it is now: a small, but enjoyable part of fandom. As long as there's slashable characters in media, then I believe women will keep writing slash, but I can't see slash becoming "mainstream" or popular because of copyright considerations.

[C]: I think it will still be around much as it is today. I'd like to think there'd be more professionally published stuff that is like slash. There certainly seems to be some stuff out there now but whether it would be published by gay presses or mainstream ones, I'm not sure. I can't imagine it growing so big that it would make it worth people's while to crack down on the copywrite issue. I could be wrong, maybe it could become that big. But if that happened, I would imagine slash fans would just switch to new characters and go merrily on their way. Or keep their characters and go back to passing the stories from friend to friend. Inventing one's own characters would be one way of going professional but finding a publisher who thinks you'll have the buyers is another issue.

Michelle Christian: ...there are enough women who are coming up with this idea [of slash] in isolation that even if slash goes farther underground than it is today, I doubt it'll ever be forgotten.

[...]

For me, it'd be hard for [professionally published gay fiction] to be "like slash"--because the major appeal of slash is that it's about characters I already loved. The professionally published fiction would have to do a *very* good job of developing the characters, very quickly; it'd also have to be in a series, because I always want to read *more*...not that I wouldn't appreciate a "slashy" book that didn't meet those qualifications; it just wouldn't be the same.

[Copywriters killing slash?]. My first reaction was "Suppress *me*? Ha! They can try...") Really, though, I think slash (and zines in general) would just go farther underground. I don't think it would ever be suppressed totally, although I can see large-scale agents like Bill Hupe vanishing if copyright suits became widespread .

[Would fans invent new characters and go on slashing?] Some would. I probably wouldn't, because I'd rather write a B7 story I can only show to a few friends than write "original" stuff. But for those people who like the slash concept as applied to more than just a few "universes," and those who have some aspirations to write professional fiction, I can see that that might appeal.

Seriously, it's a good question. But what will society be like 200 years from now? If the multinationals have solidified their grip on people's lives through electronic means (Big Bro and all that), then the net will certainly be censored, and lists like this won't exist. In that case, I'd imagine that slash would be carried on by the "old-fashioned" means of snail mail and fax. On the other hand, if the net manages to remain private and autonomous, then maybe slashers will become completely electronic.

I think slashers will always exist--as several other posters said, women will always discover it for themselves. And, sadly, I think we'll always be considered a group of nutters by outsiders.

Of course, there's always the possibility that some enterprising person will smell an untapped market and will churn out slashy stuff in the mainstream, if censorship and copyright laws permit. Actually, in 200 years, almost all publishing will probably be electronic, so maybe the difference between professionally published and amateur will become irrelevant.

[J]: Gazing into the crystal ball, I see...

- fans writing stories for their friends. Maybe they'll be distributed in different ways, and maybe there'll be easier ways of finding out about them, but that's the basis of everything, and why would it change?

- earnest doctoral theses (okay, we have these now. But I'm sure there'll be more, when time has had a good chance to obscure the source material)

- professionally published? 200 years from now, I'd like to think there'd be a really efficient publish-on-demand system. Whatever you want, when you want it (and no out-of-print, damnit!)

M. Fae Glasgow: I _hope_ that they will more likely regard it with the slightly bemused 'how weird!' reaction I'm seeing in 6 year old girls discovering that not too long ago, women did _not_ go to university or become doctors or train in astrophysics or go into professional sports. I'm hoping that people will look at it and say, 'just imagine, people used to be _shocked_ by women doing this!'

It may be [completely forgotten], or certainly no more than a footnote, but given the way media fandom is becoming more and more known and more and more widely-spread, I think it will simply be yet another segment of an increasingly segregating fan base.

[...]

As for professionally published slash: I think there's more out there than we know. I wish I could remember the title/author, but there's a gay novel published by Plume where the author did an interview saying that basically, the two characters were inspired by and based on watching two of his favourite actors in a film together. So, it's in that grey area of not being slash, but sharing certain slashy elements. Sometimes, though, I think slash is out there, we just haven't been given enough info to label it.

[...]

Not only do I think that there will always be slash, I think there'll always be someone who hasn't heard of it yet, but finds herself making up these stories and convinced that no-one else likes the same thing or wishing she could meet like-minded folk. And I think we'd all get some very interesting surprises if we could get a mind-reading time-machine and dip into the memories and dreams of our great-(great-)grandmothers waiting breathlessly for the next issue of Strand Magazine and the new Sherlock Holmes story.