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Eng  Minotaur's Sex Tips for Slash Writers Slash Fan Fiction Ring from Home(r) to Holodeck...Henry Jenkins |
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Eng Minotaur's Sex Tips for Slash Writers Slash Fan Fiction Ring from Home(r) to Holodeck...Henry Jenkins |
from Mona's glossary:
Smarm - in the words of Kitty, a Sentinel Smarm Queen: (n) the visible (or audible) expression of affection between two friends, in which the non-sexual love they have for each other is momentarily glimpsed via some action. (v) to act in a manner which displays affection for a friend, esp. to do or say emotional things which would not normally be expected.
(or my favorite misuse of this word: Shmarm,
which I use to denote the same idea, only softer.....eng)
Glom
Pronunciation: 'gläm
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): glommed; glom·ming
Etymology: alteration of English dialect glaum
to
grab
Date: 1907
1 : TAKE, STEAL
2 : SEIZE, CATCH
- glom on to : to grab hold of :
appropriate to oneself
Enough of that.
Suffice it to say, if you have never heard of slash, you have missed out on a whole chunk of genre literature, with its own terminology, its own essayists, proponents, opponents, sub- categories, lists, rings, and everything.
I had myself never heard of slash, when I was sort of introduced to it sideways, two years ago, by an eminence in the field. I heard it. I didn't get it. I heard it again.
I really didn't get it.
I read some.
Nope, still didn't get it.
But then I started drawing it and...
Well, the rest is history.
So then I was in the position to like it...some of it very much.
But I still didn't get it.
And what I really, really didn't get was the WHY.
Why was it out there? Why was it so popular? Why did I like it?
I didn't really buy that it was simply a gender reversal on the "guy thing" about how erotic it is to watch two women making love, and that this slash stuff merely represented a role reversal in the age of "I am woman, hear me roar."
Oh, Lord, gag me.
So I asked my male-in-residence what was the turn-on. He replied, "This is about that slash stuff again, isn't it?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, yes, Father of Mine Only Child," I replied. "but it's more in the nature of serious research."
"Sure it is."
And when he stopped rolling on the floor and had caught his breath, he explained how it was the idea that they (the two hypothetical women in question) were both available to him, that he could envision himself making love to both of them, that they would welcome his intrusion, as they were "making do" as it were, without any male companionship.
I told him he was making this up.
He said he was, but it was more or less a standard masculine reaction.
Hmmm. I tried to see slash in this light. No, that's not how I felt about it. That's not what "turned me on." Oh, well, okay, it is a pleasant notion--in between the guys between the sheets--but it isn't the main fascination.
A conundrum, for sure, every next essayist had a handle on the why of it, the wherefore, but nothing really rang the harmonic for me. I began to think I was either the primo dolt of all time or seriously in need of an insight retune.
I got to thinking about my time on the Navajo Res at Shiprock and how the kids liked to play Cowboys and Indians, how the Navajo children always preferred being the Cowboys.
I got to thinking about a family joke that concerned my fifth birthday when my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I answered, "A man."
I got to thinking how I used to like Hercules at the beginning, simply because it was so refreshing to see a heroic family man with wife and children at the center of his life. Heck, I used to like Highlander better when Tessa was so integral to the plot, before they started the string of K'Immie of the Week episodes.
I got to thinking how marginalized all the female characters tend to be in most of the fare we get to see in the realm of fantasy, how same sex buddies replace the loving unit in the stories, just so sexual themes may be avoided. Or, if there is a het relationship, it's more of a diversion than a central, informing presence.
And I got to writing a sexual relationship between the guys in Chaos. From an author's standpoint, slash is a wonderfully clean metaphor. Striving to come up with a loving relationship between two characters of equal strength--physically, emotionally, socially--is ever so much easier when the two people involved are both men. I hate to believe this is true. I hate that this is true. Sadly, it does seem to be.
But, upon closer inspection, there is a redeeming quality to the idea, after all. If you read the usual "First Time" stories, which are legion in slash, you will find that one of the characters is the "woman," in some cases, both are. I don't mean "bottom," just that one or both are anticipating an action outside the bounds of their upbringing (Good girls don't have sex--Good boys don't have sex with boys) in the name of a profound emotional connection with the other character. Despite social mores to the contrary, despite their own better judgment, despite the cost to themselves and the other character involved, still they pursue the course to completion, usually to revelation, if not epiphany.
Both Duncan and Methos make wonderful avatars for womanhood. They both work well in surrender, seduction, naiveté. They are both lovely objects, physically and intellectually, and diverse, splendid subjects. Each is independently strong and capable, though their strengths are so different as to be opposite one another. They are perfect complements.
Back to my resident-male scenario...
No, I don't want to have one of those strong, heroic, sumptuous men.
I want to be one of them.
...and of course MacGeorge figured this out, oh, about the second sentence of her essay, which follows, along with a bunch of nifty insights into other aspects that make slash such fun. I also noticed Maygra comes up once again, contributing to the whatever of -- well, not minors, surely -- hmmm? In any case, La eminence gris de slash, Madame Gritz, has surely attained the status of constellation in the galactic pantheon of that slash stuff. Suffice it to say that Herself continues to be a very bad (in a very good way) influence on us all.
MacGeorge's Musings on the Nature of Slash
I was first exposed to slash well after I started writing Highlander fanfiction. My initial interest was in this wonderful heroic fantasy world featuring a gorgeous, dark, angst-ridden hero who had faults, but was a genuinely 'good' man. Like many others who write and read heroic fantasy, it was not about admiring such a hero. It was about wanting to be such a hero. Strong, sensitive, caring, stoic, driven, conflicted -- all those traits so common to our (or at least my) fantasies.
Then I fell into the clutches of the wonderful and talented Maygra de Rhema who had the good taste to actually like some of my fiction, and who gently urged me to read this stuff called 'slash.' My first reaction was 'eeeeuw!'. But that was before I read what she had recommended, and (more specifically) read what she had written.
Much to my surprise and no small discomfort, I was first intrigued, then drawn in, then sucked in (if you will pardon the expression) to the unique universe of slash fan fiction. All the time I was reading, and then actually writing, these strange relationship stories, I mentally ruminated* on 'why?' it should be so fascinating and, sometimes, such a turn on.
I've read some of the essays, but none of them made me think "Yes!
This is what is going on!" So I just let it stew in the back of my
brain for a long time. Recently, those busy brain cells, working
quietly while I wasn't listening, came up with the following notions:
2) Women are almost universally self-conscious and extremely self-critical about their own physical appearance, regardless of what they see in the mirror. When I read a heterosexual love scene between the gorgeous male described in 1) above, and some lithe, perfect female, I can enjoy it if it is well written and is in the context of a good story, but it does not usually get me viscerally excited because I do not identify with that lovely female. That's certainly not who "I" am, or who I could ever even truly fantasize about being. Therefore, as a reader, I am always slightly removed from the action, unable to completely lose myself in the emotion and events.
3) But if you combine the elements of two gorgeous male bodies, complex personalities and relationships that allow both romantic love, as well as the rough-and-tumble "just fuck me because we both want it so bad" alternatives, you have incorporated all the desirable elements of physicality, emotion and circumstances, and you have provided an opportunity for total suspension of disbelief. The female, heterosexual reader does not have to mentally compare her own perceived shortcomings with either character. She can immerse herself (again, pardon the terms) in either (or both) of these hot, sexy characters having mind boggling intercourse with a beautiful, sensitive, intelligent man without even having to subliminally acknowledge that this does not and will not occur in real life. That is the essence of true fantasy. A lifting out of oneself. A lovely and uplifting moment of wish fulfillment. I am gorgeous and strong and heroic and loved, without any of that nasty backpack of self-perceived faults that might intrude if the situation were in any way comparable to 'real life.'
Okay, that's my take
on why slash. I invite commentary and feedback, ridicule and raspberries.
*(okay, the cow imagery
is mine, a compromise for "mentally gnawing on a bone" which originally
appeared in this line, but after due consideration was deemed a bit distracting,
even if infinitely more funny....eng)
and from Mama Gritz, the definitive word:
Hi. For the purposes of this interrogation, My name is Maygra. I write slash. I have been writing slash for two years. (Well, okay, I've been writing variations on it for longer but back then I thought I was really, really weird.)
Why slash? Wherefore art thou reason and motivation?
I try not to think about it too much but sometimes...you don't know what you think until you read it. (I have no idea who said that first.)
In my case, resistance was futile, I had been traveling down that Unknown and Treacherous Path for close to 40 years. The journey may be the fun for most, but I have to tell you -- getting there was a huge relief.
With a bow to the Feminine/Feminists Apologists, I really don't have a problem with being a girl. I like girl as opposed to woman (although I am that too) because there is a certain innocence and fun-being-the-point-of-it-all to girls. Innocence and slash? Pshaw.
But it is. Innocence being that which is without knowledge of good or evil. Innocence being wide-eyed with wonder that such marvelous things of which the world is made exist in all shades of dark and light.
I can't be a guy. I can't be a hero. Not in my own head, in my own life, anyway. I am way too occupied with all the other stuff that my life is about. I like my heroes to be guys. I like women to be heroes too. I have lots of women heroes, including Eng and MacGeorge who rank right up there with Mother Theresa and Joan of Arc and Bernadette and Hilary Clinton and my mother. But they don't think they are heroes either. They are also out there trying to make their lives work. Inspiring other people is not something they see themselves doing very often.
Silly girls.
Okay, so we get the guy as heroes thing, you say. But slash and heroes?
Exactly. Heroes are those ordinary mortals (or Immortals) who rise above the stuff that make up their day to day lives and struggle for something more. Fight for something better, for something they can't define, they only know they have to strive for. And they don't know why, they just do. They just are.
Viscerally, there is the appeal of two beautiful male bodies, entwined in an embrace that makes my breath catch whether I am reading it being described or looking at an image. Symmetry and grace, strength and form. (Still bowing to the Apologists, I get the same kind of reaction in a different part of my brain when I see a picture of a mother embracing her daughter, or women embracing each other. Non-sexual Symmetry and continuance.)
Intellectually, I don't see myself in those two men, but I see myself *there*. Not as voyeur but as an emotional reaction to something that makes my heart ache to be what they feel. Even if I am writing what they feel. There is a connection between two men that I believe a man and woman can never reach. A connection between two women as friends or lovers that men will never understand and a man and a woman can never share.
However, I can understand those connections between a man and a woman and a woman and a woman. I can never know what, precisely, two men can feel for each other.
But I can damn well try. I can sink myself into what I do know, and what I feel and what I think and wrench it out of myself and give it voice via the written word. I can, in slash, come as close to knowing what the meeting of two strengths, of two wills, of two identities that are tied up in their own gender that isn't my own, feels like.
Mystery and adventure, heroic and romantic love, being outside myself and that part of me that that wants to be something more or different but isn't. It eases the frustration between who I am and who I would like to be without battering at my self esteem. It lets me explore those parts of myself that could be more sensual, could be more stubborn, could be more heroic....more in love, more loved, more, not human but humane, more archetype than real.
I no longer have to be a woman living in a man's world, or a girl who wants to be a boy because they have the burden of asking me to dance first. I can reach past my upbringing and prejudices and morals and prudery and be that heroic character for a little while.
And sometimes, most times, I get to bring a little bit back with me. Even if I do still blush at frank sexual talk, or get all tongue-tied in front of a beautiful man or a woman who inspires me. I still can mind my manners and be petty and human.
I get all that and love and sex and romance and adventure, and lovely visual images of passion and patience.
It still sounds like I am putting myself into one or the other roles of a slash pairing, but I'm not. I am in both...not like mental masturbation, more like being the Matchmaker that gets her pleasure from seeing two wonderful people who deserve all the good things, to be happy and loved, put together. Duncan is my hero. Methos is my hero. They each deserve the best partner I can think of. Who better than another of my heroes?
If I could have a wish would I wish I were a man? Yup, but with a codicil -- I want to be, for a brief time, a man who is in love. And then maybe I wouldn't need or have the desire to write slash. Because then I would know.. Writing a woman and a man in love is fun and lovely but I can know half the equation -- I know what it feels like to love a man as a woman. I want to know what a man feels like when he is loved. And I can't get there from here.
So I keep going *there*.
Because the heroes are there. It's where the boys are. It's where I can visit and still come home to Seinfield and vacuuming. It's where I can be innocent of not knowing...and heroic in giving.
And in the end it's because real heroes do what they do, are what they are, for love and in total ignorance, and I know exactly how that feels.
Maygra...February 1999
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...and if you know who this is, you've been
spending entirely too much time researching fan fiction from the academic
perspective, and you should take a deep breath and go read or write something.
...or even take a stroll out there in (shudder) real life land. |