navel-gazing and the tilde
I was thinking today about how I first found out about slash, because it was through a somewhat odd set of circumstances. It was '97-'98 and it was because of the internet (surprise). I may have been in the first wave of people who found it themselves on the 'net, rather than being "pimped" into slash by someone.
I used to read and like these books called the Sime~Gen series, a sci-fi series based on an interesting take on the vampire idea. Anyway, I was on a Sime~Gen mailing list, and one of the topics that seemed to come up quite a bit was why they used the tilde as the separator symbol. (You can see where this is going.)
I kept reading these messages about how they didn't use the "/" because that was strongly associated with this slash thing that Sime~Gen wasn't part of. They were circumspect about it to the point where I was like "well, what the hell is this slash thing?" So I started hunting around on the 'net, and I think I found Sentinel slash first. The concept made me go all melty, but I didn't really fall hard until I found Due South slash. And, bam, there ya go.
Anyway, I've always thought it was interesting, the importance of that tilde. That the dogged insistence on that separation ("We're not that. No, we're not. We're not slash.") was what prompted me to go looking for what exactly they were talking about.
I've lost interest in Sime~Gen. But I still love slash.
I used to read and like these books called the Sime~Gen series, a sci-fi series based on an interesting take on the vampire idea. Anyway, I was on a Sime~Gen mailing list, and one of the topics that seemed to come up quite a bit was why they used the tilde as the separator symbol. (You can see where this is going.)
I kept reading these messages about how they didn't use the "/" because that was strongly associated with this slash thing that Sime~Gen wasn't part of. They were circumspect about it to the point where I was like "well, what the hell is this slash thing?" So I started hunting around on the 'net, and I think I found Sentinel slash first. The concept made me go all melty, but I didn't really fall hard until I found Due South slash. And, bam, there ya go.
Anyway, I've always thought it was interesting, the importance of that tilde. That the dogged insistence on that separation ("We're not that. No, we're not. We're not slash.") was what prompted me to go looking for what exactly they were talking about.
I've lost interest in Sime~Gen. But I still love slash.