Slash fiction

From its earliest days, slash fiction has been particularly inspired by popular speculative fiction franchises,[13][14] possibly because speculative fiction may lack well-developed female characters or because the speculative elements allow greater freedom to reinterpret canon characters. However, other large bodies of slash fiction, such as Starsky and Hutch or The Professionals, are based on non-speculative sources.

Slash fiction follows popular media, and new stories are constantly produced. There is some correlation between the popularity and activity of each variety of slash fiction and those of the source of the material. Some slash fiction readers and writers tend to adhere closely to the canonical source of their fiction, while other participants may follow the slash content without being fans of the original source material itself.[15]

Until the Internet became accessible to the general public in the early 1990s, slash was hard to find. It was published only in fan-edited non-profit fanzines (often called only "zines"), which were usually priced just high enough to recoup printing costs,[4] and were sold via adzines or at conventions. With the advent of the Internet, slash fiction writers created mailing lists which gradually took the place of amateur press associations (APA), and websites such as FanFiction.Net[14] (which gradually started taking the place of zines).

Forum boards and message boards were active during the first half of the first decade of the millennium, and sites such as Angelfire, Geocities, and ProBoards were quite successful. Other venues in which slash was, and still is, published are Facebook and private groups. Much later came Archive of Our Own. As slash publishing gradually moved to the Internet, the field opened to more writers, and a greater quantity of material was published.

The Internet allowed slash authors more freedom than print: stories could include branching story lines, links, collages, song mixes, and other innovations. The Internet increased slash visibility and the number of readers, as readers were now able to access the stories from their own home at a much lower cost, since zines cost more than an Internet connection. The number of fandoms represented increased dramatically, especially those devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and police dramas.[4] The Internet also increased the level of reader interaction, making it easier for fans to comment on stories, give episode reviews, and discuss comment on trends in slash fandom itself. Websites and fanzines dedicated to fans of The X-Files, Stargate, Harry Potter, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer became common, with tens of thousands of slash stories available.[14]

Several slash conventions run throughout the year and across the globe, mostly in the United States, including Escapade in California,[35] REVELcon in Texas,[36] Connexions in Maryland,[37] MediaWest*Con in Michigan,[38] CON.TXT in Washington, D.C.,[39] Con*Strict in Nevada,[40] Connotations in England,[41] Zebracon in Illinois,[42] Yaoi-Con in California,[43] Bascon in California,[44] and others.[45]

Slash fiction has created and appropriated words to denote peculiarities found within the fandom. "Gayfic" is sometimes used to refer to stories focusing on gay male relationships, and "femslash" or "f/f" used to indicate that a work features female characters in slash relationships.

Slash fiction, like other fan fiction, sometimes borrows the MPAA film rating system to indicate the amount of sexual content in the story. Not all slash fiction has explicit sexual content – the interaction between two characters can be as innocent as holding hands or a chaste kiss, or even contain nothing but unfulfilled yearning; stories may be labeled "UST" for "unresolved sexual tension". Some sites require all stories to be rated and have warnings attached, often by using a beta reader.

The term no lemon is sometimes used to indicate fan fiction stories without explicit sexual content. Anything with explicit content, especially with erotic scenes without accompanying romantic scenes, may be labeled "lemon". The term lemon arose from the anime/yaoi fandoms, referring to a hentai anime series, Cream Lemon. The term squick is most often used as a warning to refer to a reader's possible negative reaction to scenes in the text (often sexual) that some might find offensive or distressing, such as those including incest, BDSM, rape, "mpreg" (male pregnancy), gender swapping, and torture. The term originated in the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.bondage in 1991.[46] Squicks are often listed as a warning in the header of a fanfiction story.

The term "slasher" is used for someone who creates slash fiction, and the term "slashy" is used to mean "homoerotic". "Slashy moments" are those events in the canon storyline which slashers interpret as homoerotic, which in turn form the slashers' depiction of the characters in slash fiction.[16]

Femslash or femmeslash is a subgenre of slash fiction which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters.[47] Typically, characters featured in femslash are heterosexual in the canon universe; however, similar fan fiction about lesbian characters are commonly labeled as femslash for convenience.[48] The term is generally applied only to fanworks based on Western fandoms; the nearest anime/manga equivalents are more often called yuri and shōjo-ai fanfiction.[49] Femslash is also known as "f/f slash", "femmeslash", and "saffic",[50] the last term blending the words Sapphic and fiction.[8]

There is less femslash than there is slash based on male couples – it has been suggested that heterosexual female slash authors generally do not write femslash,[51] and that it is rare to find a fandom with two sufficiently engaging female characters.[52] Janeway/Seven is the main Star Trek femslash pairing, as only they have "an on-screen relationship fraught with deep emotional connection and conflict".[53] Although it is debated whether fanfiction about canon lesbians such as Willow and Tara of Buffy the Vampire Slayer counts as "slash", their relationship storylines are more coy than heterosexual ones, which entices Willow/Tara femslash authors to fill in the gaps in the known relationship storyline.[54] It is "relatively recently" that male writers have begun writing femslash.[55]

Another suggestion in which there is less femslash is its lack of strong female characters in media. TV shows are heavily skewed toward the portrayal of men, with only two notable predominant female TV shows: Xena: Warrior Princess and Orange is the New Black.[56] In these two cases, because there is an overwhelming number of strong female characters, femslash is much more popular. Otherwise, shows with a skew towards men are more popular, as women portrayed in these shows are weaker supporting characters.

Chanslash is the portrayal of underage characters in sexual situations in slash fiction. The prefix chan most likely comes from the Japanese name suffix used as a term of endearment toward children or women.[57] It may be a nod towards yaoi fandoms, in which underage pairings are more commonplace. Owners of the intellectual property rights to characters in this type of slash are often unhappy with chanslash because of the potential legal ramifications and concern over negatively affecting the popularity of the character. Some studios owning the rights to slashed characters have issued cease and desist orders in the past as a result of this type of slash. Chanslash is also called shotacon (abbreviated as "shouta" or "shota") when dealing with anime fanfiction.

Real person slash (RPS), also a subgenre of real person fiction, involves taking a celebrity's public image and creating slash stories with them. Real person slash gained popularity with the 1990s rise of boy bands in the pop music industry.[58] In the Supernatural fandom, slash fans who were uncomfortable with shipping the two main brother characters moved into writing and reading Jsquared/J2 fic (slash involving the lead actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles).[59] This led to the phrase "Supernatural fandom – where RPS is the moral high ground". Though increasingly common, RPS is considered a potential "squick" for slash readers. In addition, the use of celebrities in fictional, sexual stories remains controversial. Journals including RPS often include disclaimers that explain their true fictional nature. Henry Jenkins says that RPS may be "troubling" to the old guard of slash.[60] Fans of real person slash state that the personas presented by the common figures of RPS such as boy bands, celebrities, athletes and pro wrestlers are "largely manufactured" for the pleasure of female fans, "so why not just run with them?"[51]

Reverse slash is a term used for fanfic without any sexual content, or very little sexual content, compared to the canon. The term is believed to have originated when non-sexual fanfic based on the Anita Blake series began to circulate. Fanfic without sexual content can also be referred to as 'genfic', short for general fiction, non-romantic in nature.[61]

Original slash stories are those that contain male/male content, based on perceived homoerotic subtext between fictitious characters.[62] This can be sourced from a variety of media content, such as manga, TV shows, movies and books amongst others. These works are now generally published online[63] and use the same forms of rating, warnings and terminology that is commonly used by slash writers.

Slash has a different sensibility to gay fiction, probably because most slash readers are female and in a closed community that shares their tastes, which makes most stories in the genre centered into emotional relationships, even as sex is very prominent.

A different variety of homoerotic amateur fiction is original yaoi, from the manga/anime genre yaoi (boy-love), popularized in the West by subbers and scanlations.

Both (original slash and original yaoi) are terms that are considered somewhat controversial by some slash fans since they feel that the term 'slash' can only refer to works of fan fiction and not original works.

Omegaverse is a subgenre of speculative erotic fiction that originated as a subgenre of slash fiction. In Omegaverse works, humans are either dominant "alphas", neutral "betas" or submissive "omegas", and they exhibit sexual traits and behaviors based on those of wolves or other wild animals.[64] The first Omegaverse slash fiction was written about the TV series Supernatural in the 2010s. The subgenre has become so popular that it evolved into a genre of original erotic fiction in its own right, independent from its roots in fan fiction.[65] The earliest commercial publication using omegaverse tropes is With Caution by J.L. Langley.[66] The trope gained rapid popularity in Japan in the mid-2010s through fan dōjinshi and has become a subgenre of yaoi works.[67] In Japanese works, Omegaverse also introduces a caste system, where Alphas are depicted as the upper class elites while Omegas are at the bottom tier and face discrimination. Omegas can get pregnant in spite of being male.[67]

In addition to fiction, fans also create artwork depicting media characters in same-sex relationship contexts. Initially, slash art was mostly used in covers and interior pages of fanzines, and sold to other fans at media and slash conventions.

In recent years, more slash artwork has used widespread availability of imaging software, like Adobe Photoshop, to manipulate photographs of their subjects to produce romantic or erotic images (often referred to as slash manips[68][69][70]) which imply a homosexual relationship, either as static pictures or animated GIFs. When the manipulated photos depict real people instead of media characters, the creation of these images can be as contentious as real person slash, and for many of the same reasons.

Vidding has existed in media fandom since the 1980s, and slash vidding is still a popular movement within vidding.[71] Slash vidders take clips of characters (generally ones not written as gay, or in a relationship together), and through juxtaposition, song choice, and other techniques, portray a slash relationship on screen.[72] Vidding used to be very guarded within the slash community, among other reasons, because the songs used in videos are copyrighted. When vidders started putting their videos online, their sites were routinely password protected, etc.

Today, there are thousands of vids, and vid-like projects, available on YouTube and other video sites.[73] Many of these vids are made by slash (and gen) fans, but enormous numbers of them are made by people who have never heard of media fandom. The previous secrecy of vidding fans has come to seem unnecessary, but there is still a community ethos of not freely giving out a vidder's URL.

Sometimes referred to as yaoi (male/male) or yuri (female/female), roleplay involving same-sex characters in relationships can be either with canon or original character creations. There are slash roleplaying based on Dungeons & Dragons, Supernatural, Naruto, World of Warcraft and Dragon Age, among others.

There are many mediums used to approach the act of internet roleplaying including message boards, AIM, IRC and specially created chatrooms on servers. Some roleplay is very strict and requires players to be able to type a paragraph or two per each turn, some use strict guidelines involving roleplay dice and some are combinations of all of the above.

Not every roleplay community accepts slash, however, and some people specifically disallow the use of it in their community as not being canon or simply the operators do not care for slash.