Why I Still Need Slash. For Now.
I actually watched TV last night. I only get four channels, and Fox is usually fuzzy, so that is kind of rare. Not having cable has forced me to be a PBS addict, and I know some people can slash PBS shows, but I really can’t. BBC, yeah, I know. I still refuse to slash ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ even though most of the cast is gorgeous on a sexual/spiritual level (oh my recurring dream to meet Kyle Secor on the street some day…) and I do think that Frank-and-Tim are in love but it’s a kind of Real Life love thing and slash is a different thing for me. Like how part of me would really like to find Cary Grant/Randolph Scott “slash” somewhere, but technically it’s not really slash since they were together in Real Life, but it could be slash because many people refuse to believe they were together. I can’t call that one. I mean, I wrote a story once that implied they were together, but is that slash?
Anyway, I watched ‘House’ for the first time and I can see how it is slashy (Robert Sean Leonard is in the cast…) and it was pretty good, but I don’t know if I’ll watch it every week. I watched ‘L&O: SVU’ too but Chris Meloni may be the most slashable actor on the planet so that’s not really a question. I can get sick of L&O after awhile if I disagree with the politics of the episodes. If I had cable I’d just watch HBO documentaries and Comedy Central. I don’t really get dramas anymore. I don’t really want to get involved. Not even good ones. Though people are trying to get me to watch the new ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and Alexander Siddig is in it and once you slash somebody you want to keep up on what they’re doing. It’s more personal. And sci-fi, yeah.
Sometimes I’ll watch bad sitcoms if I’m kind of wasted and just really want to stare at too-cute Disney boys on ABC. But the internet is around to avoid disasters like that. I watched hours and hours of TV every day for about 18 years and slash was probably the thing that broke me out of it. Ironic, yeah. Then trying to explain to college roommates why I watched cartoons about Batman of all things. Not that it needs any explanation. Now I’m resistant to any non-Batman slash. It’s a really perfect slashy world that is far removed from Real Life. I always want to get involved more but I am hopelessly obsessed with Bruce/Jason and it’s kind of a smallish obscure pairing which is all I can handle anyways because my computer is eight years old and doesn’t even have a USB port and I’m figuring out what I need slash for anyways, which is always a total mindfuck, yeah. But sometimes slash is all that can save me from a boring job. Now that’s nice.
Is it completely hypocritical to like boy-slash but not fem-slash? Because I just can’t get into fem-slash. I’d rather go out and find a girlfriend. Which is completely not an insult to fem-slash writers. Just wiring issues of the brain. Boy sex anything is always subtext and hidden and secret and rare. Often illegal. Only so many places to express it freely, and slash is one of those. Fingers crossed. Fem-slash is pretty similar I guess. I’m just super afraid of bad fem-slash and bad men-slash. Bad boy-slash is still really good. If I just haven’t read the right fem-slash story, then you can set me straight and rec something. (Please?)
Boy-slash is pretty easy in the DCU. There are multiple Robins, Superboys, little speedsters, cross-generational mentor/student mirror relationships, Aqualads… Did I mention multiple Robins? All wearing masks and costumes and spandex and fighting skills and big responsibilities in smaller bodies. And they’ve all been around for like 50+ years. Decades of subtext and situations.
Every once in awhile someone will slash a Haley Joel Osment movie or something. I don’t know of other boy-slash, but I already said that I don’t venture out of the DCU really. There’s some really great original stories with cross-generational male pairings that I used to read on the newsgroups and the alt.sex.stories.gay.male archive. Lots of published stories and novels. I’ve been pretty lazy about finding stories in general because, well, I’m pretty lazy. When I started on all of this I just read what I stumbled across and liked what I liked and it really didn’t dawn on me until my computer crashed. I saved everything onto disks and I was looking through my collection of files and almost every single file was completely boy-centric and responsibility and ownership light bulbs kind of lit up in my head and I thought, well, maybe I do have an identity which sparked off a whole ‘nother train in my life and whenever that happens, I don’t need slash as often and I can really try to live my life outside of my head. Until the train comes around again and then there are days when slash saves my life because I kind of like to be alive and be able to fall asleep at night without being completely self-destructive. Most of the time.
And that’s why I’m a slasher.
Anyway, I watched ‘House’ for the first time and I can see how it is slashy (Robert Sean Leonard is in the cast…) and it was pretty good, but I don’t know if I’ll watch it every week. I watched ‘L&O: SVU’ too but Chris Meloni may be the most slashable actor on the planet so that’s not really a question. I can get sick of L&O after awhile if I disagree with the politics of the episodes. If I had cable I’d just watch HBO documentaries and Comedy Central. I don’t really get dramas anymore. I don’t really want to get involved. Not even good ones. Though people are trying to get me to watch the new ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and Alexander Siddig is in it and once you slash somebody you want to keep up on what they’re doing. It’s more personal. And sci-fi, yeah.
Sometimes I’ll watch bad sitcoms if I’m kind of wasted and just really want to stare at too-cute Disney boys on ABC. But the internet is around to avoid disasters like that. I watched hours and hours of TV every day for about 18 years and slash was probably the thing that broke me out of it. Ironic, yeah. Then trying to explain to college roommates why I watched cartoons about Batman of all things. Not that it needs any explanation. Now I’m resistant to any non-Batman slash. It’s a really perfect slashy world that is far removed from Real Life. I always want to get involved more but I am hopelessly obsessed with Bruce/Jason and it’s kind of a smallish obscure pairing which is all I can handle anyways because my computer is eight years old and doesn’t even have a USB port and I’m figuring out what I need slash for anyways, which is always a total mindfuck, yeah. But sometimes slash is all that can save me from a boring job. Now that’s nice.
Is it completely hypocritical to like boy-slash but not fem-slash? Because I just can’t get into fem-slash. I’d rather go out and find a girlfriend. Which is completely not an insult to fem-slash writers. Just wiring issues of the brain. Boy sex anything is always subtext and hidden and secret and rare. Often illegal. Only so many places to express it freely, and slash is one of those. Fingers crossed. Fem-slash is pretty similar I guess. I’m just super afraid of bad fem-slash and bad men-slash. Bad boy-slash is still really good. If I just haven’t read the right fem-slash story, then you can set me straight and rec something. (Please?)
Boy-slash is pretty easy in the DCU. There are multiple Robins, Superboys, little speedsters, cross-generational mentor/student mirror relationships, Aqualads… Did I mention multiple Robins? All wearing masks and costumes and spandex and fighting skills and big responsibilities in smaller bodies. And they’ve all been around for like 50+ years. Decades of subtext and situations.
Every once in awhile someone will slash a Haley Joel Osment movie or something. I don’t know of other boy-slash, but I already said that I don’t venture out of the DCU really. There’s some really great original stories with cross-generational male pairings that I used to read on the newsgroups and the alt.sex.stories.gay.male archive. Lots of published stories and novels. I’ve been pretty lazy about finding stories in general because, well, I’m pretty lazy. When I started on all of this I just read what I stumbled across and liked what I liked and it really didn’t dawn on me until my computer crashed. I saved everything onto disks and I was looking through my collection of files and almost every single file was completely boy-centric and responsibility and ownership light bulbs kind of lit up in my head and I thought, well, maybe I do have an identity which sparked off a whole ‘nother train in my life and whenever that happens, I don’t need slash as often and I can really try to live my life outside of my head. Until the train comes around again and then there are days when slash saves my life because I kind of like to be alive and be able to fall asleep at night without being completely self-destructive. Most of the time.
And that’s why I’m a slasher.