Slash fiction: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Slash fiction is fan fiction, describing gay pairings between media characters, often in explicit detail, and very frequently outside the canon of the source. The name arises from the use of the slash character in phrases such as "Kirk/Spock" to describe the stories. ("Kirk/Spock" is widely thought to be the first type of slash fiction, first appearing in the 1970s in Star Trek fanzines.)

Slash fiction was actually the very first type of fan ficion known to have been created for Star Trek, with many show principals recalling letters sent in from mostly fmale trekkies", a reference to "groupies" and stand as marked contrast to the modern moe male-dominated trekker phenomenon.

Today slash fiction is written, or at least explored, by a wide variety of people of all backgrounds and orientations. Horror author Poppy Z. Brite's works, aong others, could be conidered slash fiction by extension, although several of her characters are already gay and there is little need to further pair them off.

Although such descriptions (e.g. "Kirk/Uhura") are also used to describe heterosexual relationship fiction, the term "slash" usually implies a homosexual pairing (het or gen being commonly used for similar heterosexual speculations). Indeed, the exact definition of the term has often been hotly debated within the various slash fandoms. The strictest definition holds that only stories about relationships between two male partners ("M/M") are "slash"; this has led to the evolution of the term femmeslash to describe lesbian (F/F") ficton. The recent appearance of openly gay characters on screen, notably Willow and Tara in the television series Buff the Vampire Slayer and many of the characters in the Queer as Folk series, has added much to the discussion. Some hold that the term "slash" only applies when the relationship being written about is not part of the source's canon, and that fan fiction about canonical same-sex relationships is hence not slash. However, abiding by this definition leaves such stories without a convenient label, so this distinction has not been widely adopted.

In addition, some groups diferentiate between same-sex pairings in which people just happen to be friends and any adult activity is tastefully done or implied, as being "no lemon", while tales in which making out on some level does occur, outside of, say, kissing are labeled "lemon". Lesbian equivalents in stories have been known to use the phrase "lime" instead.

Some fan fiction aficionados might find erotic pairings of characters, regardless of gender, unpleasant for one reason or another, and so it is considered impolite to publish slash fiction without giving readers fair warning of explicit content within (sometimes including detailed warnings to the level of adult activity undertaken by the characters). However the prevailing attitude is that once a warning has been given anything goes, and readers who complain that they found a story with clear warnings, which they continued to read, offensive are generally derided. Occasionally some forms of erotic fiction can prove to be potentially controversial: in particular slash involving underage characters (such as Harry Potter) or real people (often the members of boy bands) could be considered distasteful by those who otherwise find nothing objectionable about erotic fiction. An obvious viewpoint is that those who do not wish to read a certain story do not have to do so. It should be noted that in the case of stories involving real people the legal issues involved can be more complex than usual in fan fiction.

It should also be noted that slash fiction can be of any rating: G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17. Not all slash fiction has explicit sexual content: the interaction between two characters can be as innocent as holding hands or a chaste kiss. In Harry Potter fandom, all fanfiction portraying relationships - whether homosexual or heterosexual - involving underage characters paired with adults is labelled "cha". It is true that this is a very controversial subject, but most slash fans find slash as natural and tasteful as het. They believe that since romance is not one of the overarching themes of the books, it is impossible to conclusively state that any character is straight, gay or bisexual. There is vociferous debate on the canonicity of any relationship (slash or het) on websites such as Fiction Alley.

Academic treatment of slash

Slash fiction was the subject of several notable academic stdies in the early 1990s, as part of the cultural studies movement within the humanities. Notable studies included Constance Penley's work, originally written as an article and later expanded into her 1997 book Nasa/Trek, as well as Camile Bacon-Smith's Enterprising Women and Henry Jenins Textual Poachers. All of these books, as is characteristicof cultural studies, approaced slash fiction from an ethnographic perspective, talking primarily about the writers of slash fiction, and the communities that form around slash fiction, and focusing minimaly on any sort of textual analysis of slash stories. Following the heyday of cultural studies, academic work on slash fiction has declined, but not disappeared, and occasional papers still pop up from within queer theory.

See also: Sex in science fiction