Reasons to love slash

[jedusaur]

People who don't read slashfic seem to be fond of telling those of us who do why we do it. I think my favorite example of this is Ogi Ogas, of SurveyFail fame, wisely informing Time magazine that women like to read about gay men because it "doubles" the "psychological cues of a man's characture, stature, passion and emotional communication." Yep. Double the stature, double the pleasure. God, fuck that guy so much.

But why do we do it? I think about this question a lot, and occasionally consider doing my graduate thesis on it. (I study the neuroscience of preference, it's totally relevant!) There's not just one answer, though--there are a lot of reasons to love slash. Here are some of mine:

• It's hot. There's a lot to pick apart in that--no one knows why exactly it pushes so many people's buttons, although I'm pretty sure it doesn't have to do with doubling anybody's stature--but it undeniably does. Nom.
• There's a lot of high-quality slashfic available for free. Of course there's also a lot of low-quality slashfic, but once you find the right channels and have a good rec system set up, there's essentially no limit to the amount of good, engaging slashfic out there to be read.
• It treats sex and sexually arousing material as a normal part of life. (This is true of most fic, not just slashfic.) Most books and movies and such leave out the details of sex scenes unless they're specifically intended to be pornographic, in which case they leave out everything else, but slash transitions in and out of sex scenes like any other kind of scene. Like real life. This is especially true of kinky sex; aside from fandom, I have found exactly one work of fiction that successfully incorporates kinky sex into a coherent not-solely-pornographic plotline. (That one work of fiction is The Administration, a series so excellent that I continued buying the books as they were published when I was in college and so broke that I didn't attend a movie in theaters for two years. Do yourself a favor and check it out.)
• Slash neatly sidesteps a lot of gender issues. Straight romance comes with a hefty load of preconceptions, assumptions, and implications that aren't always apparent to either the consumer or the creator. When I read about het relationships, I'm kind of always on guard for potential gender fail. Slash has its own potential for fail, of course, but it's easier to avoid problematic gender dynamics with same-sex pairings.
• By often presenting same-sex relationships as the norm and minimizing the difficulties of being gay in the real world, slash is a queer safe space for me. I specify "for me" because I know that there are queer people in fandom who dislike it when fics pretend homophobia doesn't exist. But I get enough stories about gay-bashing and overcoming the challenges of coming out from mainstream media--sometimes it seems like that's all queer characters ever get. I like reading about queer people who are more than just their queerness, where "gay" isn't sufficient characterization.
• Subverting traditional narratives and expectations is fun. I fucking love slash AUs of shitty romance movies, where the story is mostly the same except the main characters are both dudes. It's incredible how much of a difference that one detail can make.

Got any reasons to add to the pile?

This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/70314.html.