Pure chance

[resonant]

Why am I a slasher? Maybe pure chance.

I first encountered the concept of slash in the mid-'90s, in an article in some tech-industry magazine. The article described a Next Generation-related slashzine called Science Friction, and somehow even after reading the whole article, I ordered the zine expecting it to be mostly meta.

Uh-huh. There was a nude drawing of Data on the cover, and the content matched.



I doubt I would have ordered a zine that I knew to be erotic fanfiction, het or slash; I thought my erotica needs were being fulfilled by romance novels (poor fool), which are of course much easier to read in public than zines with drawings of naked androids. And I doubt I would have ordered a zine that I expected to be meta about het relationships, because in some ways 99% of my culture can be seen as meta about het relationships. It was the queering of the text that interested me.

However, the only story from Science Friction that I remember with any sort of pleasure was actually mixed het and slash. And when I had gotten over my shock (and acquired personal internet access), I went looking basically for all varieties of nu-Trek erotica, particularly Voyager. I read Paris/Kim and Paris/Chakotay, and Janeway/7 and Janeway/Torres, and I also read Janeway/Chakotay and Paris/Torres and Chakotay/7. Without knowing it, I had lucked into one of those rare fandoms that had multiple interesting female characters and multiple non-creepy het pairings.

But the inevitable happened. One ravenous fan can read faster than five hundred authors can write, and eventually, despite all the mailing lists I had subscribed to, on one doomed day I ran out of Voyager fic. And in my desperate search for something else to read, I happened upon flambeau's recs page.

Now, here's what that means: When I read het, I was reading it fairly indiscriminately; I just opened whatever came over the list and read it for as long as I could bear it. But when I read slash, I read it with torch's guidance. I got the good stuff.

When I'd read all the good stuff in Voyager, I began to read it in unfamiliar fandoms. One of them was Sentinel.

Sentinel became the first fandom I entered via the fanfic rather than via the canon. It became the first fandom in which I actually made direct contact with other fans. (My first-ever fan letter was to cesperanza. I was too shy to say, "This really turned me on.") And naturally it became my first writing fandom.

But it all could have been different. I wasn't particular as far as gender. Bad het is more painful to me than bad slash, for a variety of reasons, but I was just as ready to enjoy good het as to enjoy good slash. Suppose that instead of torch's page, I had happened upon a recs page with equally high standards that was het-oriented rather than slash-oriented?

Well, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been in Sentinel, for one thing; Sentinel's het possibilities were very weak. A het reader would probably have wandered into X-Files and thence into Buffy; that's where the interesting women were.

A het reader would have different friends. A het reader would be writing different things.

Except -- here's the strange thing -- a het reader probably wouldn't have been poking around in recs pages to begin with.

I was perfectly ready to enjoy reading good het, but het wouldn't have interested me enough to make me order a zine, because I was surrounded by it. Het wouldn't have interested me enough to make me seek out fanfiction, because there's non-fanfictional het everywhere.

I'm sure there's plenty of het out there that's just as good as the slash I love. But I doubt it would have inspired me to change my reading habits.

So if it weren't for slash, probably I'd still be up to my ears in romance novels.

Comments

[idahophoenix]

This is so interesting. I'm endlessly intrigued about how people stumble into slash--I'm a lesbian who adores m/m slash--and was stunned to find that there are many of us. It's part of why I love the term queer so much--because really that's what I think is so gripping about the things that appeal to me--the fact that even a simple romance, when done well, is just a little off, skewed because it doesn't fit the strict binary. I'll have to go explore Voyager fic to discover some good femmeslash--although I suspect that for erotica I'll still tend towards m/m. I do LOVE stories with strong women.

I was discussing this with my lover the other day--I think it's partly because I get overly critical of f/f stuff, more irritated by something that doesn't ring true and squicked more easily. I get irritated with het stuff for different reasons and can actually adore a good het erotica. Taking me on erotic journeys that I don't go on in my real life. But oh the BOYS! You've given such great tips on how to write good m/m erotica--and I know that part of what appeals to me is the very difficulty so many men have in expressing feelings--and the way that can build an erotic charge. Anyhow, these are random thoughts, so very very glad you found your way into slash fandom!

[resonant]

I'll have to go explore Voyager fic to discover some good femmeslash

I don't remenmber any that I would recommend, though that Janeway/7 relationship in particular had good tension and intensity. I also was always waiting for someone to write Naomi Wildman as an adult -- her friendship with 7 as a child was very sweet.

One thing I remember hating was when a writer would write a woman with a man's hair-trigger sexual response! I mean, enjoy the differences, you know?

It's part of why I love the term queer so much--because really that's what I think is so gripping about the things that appeal to me--the fact that even a simple romance, when done well, is just a little off, skewed because it doesn't fit the strict binary.

Yes, that's very well put! I love that, too.

[idahophoenix]

Thanks for this reply. On a completely different subject, Time Magazine here in the U.S. just had a four page, pretty good, article about fanfiction. (They took the time to talk with actual fanfic writers like astolat) that was inspired by the end of Harry Potter movies. They recced four HP fanfics as must-read classics and didn't include Transfigurations. An outrage--although in some ways maybe it's just as well not to have your work front and center in mainstream media. I'm curious about what you think about that--you already have an incredibly large readership for fandom--are you eager for more readers outside the world of fandom, or happy to continue in our bubble of a universe.

Also, for some reason I often find myself thinking of the Blue Raincoat fic you wrote. I think I've been yearning for the rest of that story forever--and now can listen to song and feel like I "get it" It's also a great reminder to me that it's ok to follow our fannish whims down obscure alleys--we may write something that only a couple of folks read, but, it it's any good, somehow that one or two right readers will find it and think it's a gem.

[myalexandria]

Yeah, for me Transfigurations is *the* HP fanfic -- well, ok, and I have a not terribly secret love for the long-as-sin "After the End," but Transfigurations is WHERE IT'S AT. In fact, I think I'll go reread it again, right now, for approximately the 15th time.

[out_there]

Except -- here's the strange thing -- a het reader probably wouldn't have been poking around in recs pages to begin with.

I was perfectly ready to enjoy reading good het, but het wouldn't have interested me enough to make me order a zine, because I was surrounded by it. Het wouldn't have interested me enough to make me seek out fanfiction, because there's non-fanfictional het everywhere.

I'm sure there's plenty of het out there that's just as good as the slash I love. But I doubt it would have inspired me to change my reading habits.

That's very interesting. I've never really thought about why I fell into slash nearly ten years ago and happily keep reading, but that's a good point. Good het stories are all around; good slash stories are rarer in mainstream entertainment and the fannish side comes with a variety of recs as a source of the good stuff.

[resonant]

the fannish side comes with a variety of recs as a source of the good stuff.

I guess one of the morals of my story is that fans who keep recs pages are, in some cases, the arbiters of destiny!

[geekturnedvamp]

Except -- here's the strange thing -- a het reader probably wouldn't have been poking around in recs pages to begin with.

I think you're totally generalizing from your own experience, because as a het reader who then got into slash, I was still always looking for recs for explicit het AND slash AND romance novels! (I get that you're talking about your experience here, of course, just saying that it isn't true for everyone.)

I also think some of that is because I didn't break it down by het vs. slash, it was more about fanfiction vs. romance novels and other pro/original fiction--that is, I think I got something from reading fanfiction that I didn't get from the romance novels, and I think it has to do with the fact that most of the romance I read wasn't set in a conceptually interesting shared universe with characters I wanted to keep reading and telling stories about, because the characters in the romances were getting their happily ever afters in that book and the author was already essentially telling the story I wanted to read and it was about the relationship. However, fanfiction which was a way of getting to read and tell more stories about the world and characters and their relationships than I was already getting from the show/books/comic books/whatever, and that was why I wanted it. If a standalone romance novel hadn't sufficiently satisfied me in that regard by the time I turned the last page, that book would have been a failure for me as a reader, whereas that wasn't true for other genres or for media fannish sources.

[resonant]

most of the romance I read wasn't set in a conceptually interesting shared universe with characters I wanted to keep reading and telling stories about, because the characters in the romances were getting their happily ever afters in that book

Wow, yes, very true -- for a romance novel to do its job, it has to be pretty closed-ended (except for setting up a secondary couple for a sequel, of course).

And actually that explains something I never really got before: soap-opera fandom. Because of course soap operas are famously open-ended -- just full of gaps for fans to get into!

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think about how I got into slash. I started reading het fan fic in the Harry Potter universe more or less by accident, and I was always more attracted to the fan fiction than the canon. Once I discovered slash, though, that became my more compelling interest, although I read and write in both. I guess the question I have for myself is why is slash so hot for me? I suppose because it contains so many forbidden impulses, chief among them to change genders and get that penis I've always been curious about.

[resonant]

There is definitely an element of that, and I do love playing around with the male sexual response, which is so different from mine. I think a lot of straight men would be surprised at the things that female writers put front and center in their erotic fantasies. "This is the eighth story I've read about premature ejaculation! I thought premature ejaculation was supposed to be a bad thing!"

For me a big part of the appeal is what idahophoenix is talking about above -- "the difficulty so many men have in expressing feelings--and the way that can build an erotic charge." (Now, these are characters -- most of the actual men I know are better at expressing feelings than I am.)

[kass]

What a marvelous story of how you came here and why you stayed. :-)

[resonant]

In chat, Dira called it an "origin story," which made me feel a little like a superhero, so there you go.

[lobelia321]

I love you.

More coherent comment later. Possibly. :-)

[lady81bird]

Actually - this sounds sort of, kind of... familiar. For me the fandoms were other, but I wonder how many people stumbled onto Torch's page and got addicted to slash.

[laurenthemself]

I'm infinitely glad that you did end up in the slash area of fandom, because the URL to Transfigurations was quite easy to memorise and hand out whenever people ask for HP recs ;-P