UR DOING IT WRONG

[ifyouweremine]

This is a response to a Swedish newspaper article about Star Trek slash. I have some problems with it and my reply was a bit too large for the comment box.

Comments

[ifyouweremine]

YES YES YES, WHAT YOU SAID! #SMISHES#

I mean, anyone who's ever glanced at a fandom newsletter knows what het, gen, and slash are--if you don't know what those are you're either the newest newbie who ever newbied or nestled in a little hermit-like nook of fandom within a bubble and enveloped in ignorance blankets. THEY'RE BASIC TERMS. PEOPLE LEARN THEM, LIKE, THE FIRST WEEK.

I honestly can't see how an established fandomer (by that I mean someone who's been in fandom for at least a few months and interacts socially and/or artistically with fandom) could not know what slash was, especially if they're in a fandom like Star Trek where Kirk/Spock has such a huge presence. Even if it's not your ship, you at least know it exists.

Also: MORE YES FOR YOUR POINTS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALS IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA, I WANT TO FRAME THIS.
1) I should have talked about this point more specifically in my post; I kind of touched on it when I said the shows/etc. "aren't primarily about homosexual characters," but I should have extended that arguement, though now I don't have to because you've articulated it so wonderfully well here.

There are more gays in the mainstream media now--homosexuality isn't as taboo as it used to be--but they are usually secondary characters (they serve as props for the heterosexual storyline, i.e. My Best Friend's Wedding) and/or their romantic relationships are usually downplayed and desexualized (you are far, far more likely to see a heterosexual sex scene than you are a homosexual one, and if you do see a homosexual sex scene it's probably not going to be as explicit as a heterosexual scene). The point here being that homosexuals do not get equal coverage in mainstream media. The only shows I can think of that focused mainly on homosexuals and didn't shy away from homosexual sex scenes are Queer As Folk and The L Word. That's hardly the playpen of homo-centric media this article would suggest.

2. Fandom, at its core, is about exploring the source media on which it is based. Asking "what if," filling in the blanks, and turning subtext into text is what we do. Fandomers are not passive consumers of media; we are active contributors to it. We engage the source, play with it, deepen it, stretch it, analyze it, etc. We recontextualize. Someone who asks "every otehr TV-show contains homosexual characters - is there still a need for slash?" clearly doesn't understand fandom at all, because the whole point of fandom is to explore possibilities within the source media. There is as much a need for slash as there is for gen or het.

I know this writer was trying to do show slash in a positive way, but the problem is she didn't know WTF she was talking about and it makes us look bad (to clarify: I don't think porny slash is bad, obviously--porny slash is my favorite!--but, dude, introducing the concept of slash to a general audience by saying "SOME PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT MEN BUTTFUCKING EACH OTHER, HERE ARE SOME RECS!" is not the way to go, just like I wouldn't want anyone to get introduced to hetfics with a newspaper article saying "READ ABOUT THIS MAN BANGING THIS HOT CHICK FROM SOME SHOW").

[bigmamag]

YES YES. Especially at #2 again. Fandom's whole purpose is to make up what we want and to do what we believe and see. Slash didn't start by someone going, "hey you know what...there needs to be more cock in Star Trek! Let's have Kirk and Spock bang each other because there are no homosexuals in the media. But boy howdy, when we get a movie with a quirky gay bff to a straight couple, our mission to slash is over." Hell no, that's stupid. Fans looked at the subtext of Kirk and Spock and said wow, I really would like to read/write/share stories where they really do have a relationship and we can see it played out in text. It's a matter of having an interest and connecting with others, with taking ideas and stories and feelings inside of you and sharing them and finding out that others see it too.

This is not just slash, this is anything you see in a movie/tv show/book that you love. In the Harry Potter fandom, I loved Harry/Luna. This is not the main pairing. But I wanted it to be a pairing and to this day I can give you several reasons why this pairing makes a hell of a lot more sense than Harry/Ginny. And because of the internet, I got to read Harry/Luna fics and I found that a lot of people loved that pairing as well.

Fandom is just people gathering together and getting excited about these established characters, taking them off the shelf when the episode airs or the movie ends and playing dress up with them. It's like playing with Barbies. I'd like to see the kid who takes their brand spanking new barbie house and simply perform basic household tasks with it and when their friends come over, they bitch because their friend decided to have them move out and become an explorer out in the backyard. Imagine a kid yelling at a friend, "Barbie and Ken live in the $100 doll house and you're messing with canon!" Hell no, you take Barbie and that bitch is super fly. One day she's living in the doll house, then WATCH OUT, she's a motherfucking mountain climber or rock star. And you know what, maybe she's tired of Ken. Maybe G.I. Joe, that GQ motherfucker, caught her eye and she'd like to go commando on that fine specimen. Maybe MY otp wasn't Barbie/Ken. Personally, I saw Ken as a douche. And this is going way too long on Barbie. POINT IS, we play pretend with our dolls, fandom is just an adult manifestation of the desire to do this. Everyone does this, even if they are not online or writing stories. My sister, who barely functions on a computer, can read Harry Potter and then tell her sister, Harry/Ginny? WTF? It was supposed to be Harry/Hermione! WTF?? I'm just so superfly that I do more than just exclaim at it, I blog about it and I read fic to make me feel better about it all.

ANDDDD done. Btw, I re-uploaded the Were the World Mine OST. :)

[ifyouweremine]

Fandom's whole purpose is to make up what we want and to do what we believe and see. Slash didn't start by someone going, "hey you know what...there needs to be more cock in Star Trek! Let's have Kirk and Spock bang each other because there are no homosexuals in the media. But boy howdy, when we get a movie with a quirky gay bff to a straight couple, our mission to slash is over."
THIS!!! LOL, well-said!

ALSO YOUR BARBIE ANALOGY IS GIVING ME INSIGHT TO MYSELF THAT I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT. LMAO, I totally loved Barbies as a kid! Huh, I hadn't consciously linked that childhood affinity for directing pretend lives to my love for fanfic, but it makes so much sense now. WIN

And thanks for the link, wheee! I just listened to Timothy's audition song, now I think I'll track down the title song. Thank you! <333

[nianah_liene]

I totally agree with all of this. I went and read the article, (I was browising ifyouweremine's fic list, which, by the way, is AWESOME) and about two paragraphs in I thought: WTF??? She calls herself a slasher and yet she is discussing it like that?? Intentions aside (she might have been trying to introduce them to slash, but I'm not convinced), I'm actually feeling quite... dirty... from the way she described it. As I've had to explain to my friends countless times, reading slash is not necessarily about the porn - its also about the plot, the quality of writing and the characterisation, as well as the pairings we decide to ship. Yet many people don't seem to recognise this.

My family has absolutely no problems with homosexuality, and yet my sister, who also reads fanfiction, is never subjected to the slight disgust that I am. Why? Because she reads het (and she tends to stick to canon pairings as well), and therefore it's assumed that I must be reading kinky dirty sex (and OK I do, but still), whereas she must not be. Actually, like bigmamag, I started out reading het, and I probably read more porm in the first couple of months reading that, than in the first six months when I graduated to slash. Speaking as someone who has experience in both genres, I can say that there's just as much porn and kink in het as in slash.

In addition, saying things like: "The new young versions of Kirk (CP) and Spock (ZQ) trigger the fans into more and more deviant stories" does NOt help with the (often unconcious) belief that stories with homosexual content must be filthy, revolvong solely around sex. This implies that we're taking young, innocent people and entwining them in bizzare/depraved sex acts. And OK, we do write porn - we loves our porn - but slash is also, like any other romance, about the angst, the love and the denial.

Also, this: "Today - when TV is chock-a-bock full of velour-men and every otehr TV-show contains homosexual characters - is there still a need for slash? Apparently." gives me problems as well. I'm sorry. Do you know how many homosexual couples I have seen on TV before the watershed? One - that was Eastenders, I think, and as I don't really watch that, I'm not sure even THATS before nine. (Please tell me it is *begs* God I am sad *weak smile*) I said to a friend once: Why the hell don't they just do Arthur/Merlin in the series already. We all know its there." I was told that its a 'family show' and they'd 'have to put it after the wateshed'. "But het couples kiss before nine all the time...!" I wailed. Actually, the only fully-fledged gay couple I have ever seen on TV, portrayed fairly and not as comedy, is Jack/Ianto. And we all know how that turned out (*weeps tears of loss*). So much for every other TV show containing homosexual characters.

I agree completely with what other commentors have said about the idea that slash requires a "reason" to be written. We see the subtext and we want to write it. There's your reason, right there. Also, about there not being a "need" for slash because there are (apparently) plenty of gay characters on TV and in the media - Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione are HUGE ships in the Harry Potter fandom. Yet these are canon. They're in the books. So *wide innnocent eyes* wouldn't that remove the need for them?? Yet no-one has a problem with those ships.

So what ever Linda Leopold was trying to do with this article, I higly doubt she's won anyone over with this article - in fact we probably garner more disgust from the general public than we did before - and I'm actually quite shocked - I know the media aren't always the most accurate of people, but most of the time they actually check their facts before sending it to the printers.