What Isn't Slash

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Title:	What Isn't Slash
Creator:	Sue the Android
Date(s):	2003
Medium:	online
Fandom:	multimedia
Topic:
External Links:	What Isn't Slash
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What Isn't Slash is an essay by Sue the Android.

It was posted at The Android's Dungeon.

While the title of the essay suggests the entire essay is about slash fanfiction, the essay itself discusses what Sue the Android feels should be the elements of any good fan writing.

Some Topics Discussed

• slash
• criticism
• characterization

From the Essay

There's nothing quite so pompous as a fan author who sets herself up as an authority and aims to tell other writers what they should and shouldn't do, so that's not what this is about. On the other hand, those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them, which is why I find myself proffering these words of so-called wisdom; there is no need to keep on re-inventing the wheel, after all. I've been in fandom 25 years (yes, you read that right, twenty five years) and I've come to the conclusion that there aren't any right answers where slash fiction is concerned - only a whole heap of wrong ones which I try to identify here. They may just be of help to anyone trying to avoid falling into the error of other people's ways!

SLASH FICTION ISN’T JUST SEX

To my way of thinking the emotional content of a story matters far more than what a friend of mine refers to as 'plumbing'. Detailed descriptions of who puts what into which orifice and how many times they cum (and it's always the greatest climax of their lives) have their undoubted attractions, but I'm far more interested in knowing how the characters are thinking and feeling. Functional sex is perfectly possible without emotional commitment, as some of us are unlucky enough to know at first hand; I want to believe that the characters I'm reading about are willing to risk everything - life, liberty, public ridicule, loss of status, whatever it may be - because they love one another more than anything else in the world. Descriptions of the sexual act in slash tend to be formulaic anyway; after a while there is just not a lot more you can say about it.

JUST SEX ISN’T SLASH FICTION If the characters meet on page 1 and are gasping in satisfied completion by the end of page 3, there is no story. If all you're going to say is "X fancies Y and eventually gets to screw him" I don't see the point of writing the story. Slash needs an element of challenge/threat to make it interesting, therefore a story needs a plot. Challenges/threats are usually either in the characters' line of work ("my partner is missing", "my partner is dying" etc.) or can simply involve the jeopardy they will be placed in if their relationship becomes known. The plot must be suitable to the characters and their time-frame unless you are writing an A/U. Allied to this, I regret to say, is the need to do some basic research and make sure you know your characters. Learning how to spell their names is a good place to start. (Dr Phlox is a Denobulan. Dr Pholx the Denoblian is a fannish invention.)

ACTUALLY NO SEX ISN'T SLASH FICTION EITHER I was recently introduced to a large new archive for a currently-popular fandom which wanted to host one of my stories. Naturally I checked it out, including trying a few story links chosen at random. I was intrigued to discover that what went under the name of 'slash' on that site included vignettes in which the characters merely conversed or did their daily jobs without once mentioning that they were in a relationship. Much as I detest fannish labelling practice, unless the guys are either involved in sexual activity or are thinking about one another either romantically or sexually it really can't be described as 'slash'. To label a story as 'slash' when it is so innucuous [sic] it could appear in a genzine is as misleading as putting a 'gratuitous violence' warning on a Harry Potter film. I really thought it was so obvious it didn't need mentioning, but just as a 'Star Trek' story should include 'Star Trek' characters, a 'slash' story should include 'slash'. Well, duh.

FIRST TIMES ARE NEVER EASY, CAPTAIN Personally I don’t go a bundle on fiction that assumes a pre-existing relationship. I have no objection to long series in which the relationship begins in Part 1 and develops thereafter, but I will generally only be interested in an ‘existing relationship’ story if it has a flashback sequence explaining how it all got started. I just don’t find that there is sufficient dramatic potential in an existing relationship to spark my interest; if you are living happily ever after, it’s not news. (And sometimes this fiction can get unbearably twee; hands up all those who’ve read a ‘Chakotay-gets-pregnant’ story and wished they hadn’t?)

THIS WEBSITE ISN’T INTERESTED IN RPS Actually, this website ‘does not feature' RPS (as in Real People Slash) would be closer to the mark - unless the Real People are dead and have already been fictionalised in a movie/TV series. Michelangelo Buonarotti and Pope Julius II were Real People once, many years ago in Rome, but the story "Passion Play" which features them has nothing to do with them and everything to do with a movie called 'The Agony and the Ecstasy'. Whilst I fully understand the desire to write actor slash or even boy band slash, and I've read some which was quite passable, I personally couldn't bring myself to write any such thing or even to imagine it. I'm far more interested in fictional characters who are less likely to do something to disappoint me.

THIS WEBSITE ISN’T INTERESTED IN UNDER AGE SLASH I just don't see it. I like my characters to be adults, preferably a bit past their sell-by date and world weary, meeting with the experience and the perspective to recognise one another as The Real Thing and be ready to settle down. Immature boys are not to my taste and a slash pairing featuring an under age partner would not appeal to me for that reason. I do also have ethical quibbles about under age slash, but it's a very big subject and there are a lot of shades of opinion about it so I'm reluctant to be too dogmatic and prefer to judge fiction on a case by case basis. Any story in which a grown man is seen to behave like a silly child (sobbing, screaming, whining) but also has wild monkey sex with his best friend/villain is giving off too many conflicting messages for my taste, and for the record I refuse to believe that Illya Kuryakin is a deformed child with the genital development of a twelve year old.

THIS ISN’T 'THE OLD DARK HOUSE' - NOBODY DIES Minor characters die; major characters do not. This is partly a lifetime's TV ethic, and partly that I've never been seriously smitten by a story which featured a character death. I don't rule it out, and I certainly don’t find character death 'squicky' (ugly word!) but it doesn't do anything for me and I don't see why I should put myself through the angst of writing it. Nor do I feel up to the task of writing about a character bereaved of his lover; it would take a lot of hard work and skill to be able to bring that off successfully and there aren't too many people in fandom with that kind of ability. Personally I couldn't give my people that kind of grief and I'd hate myself for it.

SO, NO RPS, CHARACTER DEATH, UNDER AGE OR GRATUITOUS SEX. WHAT ABOUT VIOLENCE, BONDAGE AND ALL THOSE OTHER FUN THINGS? Good question. I don’t have a problem with violence, even extreme violence, but it should be true to series and part of the plot - and that includes sexual violence. Never really seen the attraction of golden showers or coprophagia but oral sex and fisting are fine although most of my characters are not particularly physical. I also have an admitted partiality for men who are not embarrassed about appearing feminine and wrote one character who was revealed to be a transvestite so genderfuck is okay with me. A little mild bondage creeps into my fiction sometimes too. I like to test my characters in various ways, and they frequently surprise me.

A SLASH STORY ISN’T LESS THAN 2000 WORDS LONG Because if it is there's no point in writing it - and it's not a story so much as a 'vinaigrette' (whoops, vignette). If it's worth writing, it's worth writing all of it - no matter how long it takes. Rocks-off stuff, three pages of raunch where all you hear is the gasps of the participants, isn't my idea of slash fiction.

AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR 'This is my first time so be gentle with me'. From an author (as opposed to a character) this only means 'I don't know what I'm doing and have no confidence in my work'. The other really annoying comment is 'Constructive criticism only, please'. It's what Clive James calls the eternal plea of the shlock merchant and amounts to the same thing; 'Be kind to me, this is the best I can do'. Your work has to take its chances in the big wide world along with everyone else's; if you think it's not strong enough to do that, don't ask for special treatment - make it stronger. If you can't, maybe you should think twice about inflicting it on the world. "Our dreams are like our children," as former US President Russell P. Kramer said, so memorably and so often; it's no use expecting the world to be generous to our little darlings - it's up to us to make them strong enough to survive on their own.

SO, TO SUM UP: Give me fictional adult participants, plot, accurate characterisation, story development (the characters must learn or achieve something on their journey through the text), romance, threat and the minimum of clichéd or formulaic situations. Do it in a universe that isn't already overcrowded and get the detail right, and you'll have a friend for life. The fiction I return to again and again (and have done for many years) meets these requirements.

SO, SHOOT ME DOWN IN FLAMES This is what slash fiction means to me, and this is the way I’ll go on writing it, and this is the kind of fiction I will read with the greatest pleasure. I can quite see why other people write what they write, and I find some of it fascinating. I have a problem with authors who don’t even do the most basic research and who thrust their masterpieces upon the world with spelling and grammatical errors and inaccurate background, but even then it’s hard to fault their enthusiasm. Sometimes if you love the characters you’ve just got to get something on paper, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense at the time. Being able to recognise when your work needs polishing, and understanding what you need to do in order to achieve that, is the finest asset any writer can acquire. Not every word is perfect the first time, and if the thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing to the absolute limit of your ability. Writing slash should certainly be fun, but that’s no reason not to do it as thoroughly as you can; preparation and research (watching all those episodes!) are vital – and to my way of thinking they’re part of the pleasure. What will stay in a reader’s mind is the emotional impact of a story, not the ingenious way in which the characters have sex.