why do we read and write, why fanfiction, and why slash? meta

[cimorene]

i wrote this embarrassingly long ramble as a response to trinityofone's slash survey  (which you should definitely participate in!), and then decided i wanted to preserve it so i can think about it more later.




1. What do you get out of a) fanfiction in general and/or genfic; b) romantic, 'shipper fic, regardless of the genders and sexualities of the participants; and c) slash fic, especially m/m slash?

a) for me fanfiction in general is about improving my experience of the source material--whether by simply providing more of it when there wasn't enough (as, for example, the genfic "virtual seasons" of popular tv shows), by dealing with the same stuff only with better writing, or by explaining away logical inconsistencies in canon.  here i would like to refer you to mirabile_dictu's essay, "why read?  why write?"  allow me to quote her directly a bit:

And for a long time I would have told you that I read (and wrote!) RPS because I wanted more of them.  [...]

Having seen Serenity, though, I realize that's not entirely true. Yes, I wanted more LOTR, but what I really wanted was better. I realize that, at heart, I'm a tinhat and a tinkilt and a tin-everything. I read and write LOTR RPS because those silly men didn't pair up in real life.

b) the quote above is a nice segue/answer to the second item too.  people want to see romantic resolutions they don't get in canon--whether that romance is actually canonical in some way or completely imaginary.

c) slash fic is much like het shipper fic in that respect--they can both deliver romance, smut, etc.  what does slash offer that het doesn't, in my view?  it: (1) allows and indeed forces you to indentify with a male protagonist. (2) is all about gayness (and if you're queer yourself, you may just enjoy hanging out with queer things and queer people--having your existence and your group membership externally affirmed, as it were)(of course many slashers are straight women, so that doesn't apply to them, but i think the percentage of bis seems to be on the rise).  (3) is one of the few remaining reliable and efficient ways to introduce a big barrier of taboo and element of the forbidden into a romance. 

those are the inherent properties of any m/m. 

i want to also speak more concretely.  my mother's an addict of paperback romance novels, harlequins (not the kind with fabio on the cover, but the contemporaries and regencies), and i was to an extent raised on those.  i'm a romance addict, and in my opinion romance, sensuality and erotica have reached a higher evolution in [the good parts of] slash than they have in any mainstream literature.  i know i'm not alone here; i've discussed it before with makesmewannadie, for example.  the slash community has been a fertile environment for research and development in the field of romance for decades now, and that has paid off.  once you've become accustomed to the quality of witty, well-written, subtle and sophisticated romance and erotica that slash has to offer, you will be spoiled for harlequins, and for commercially published erotica too--both of which are on a level, quality-wise, with mediocre to truly bad slash.  (of course there is still loads of bad slash that's worse than anything ever published, because internet publication is free;  and the bad probably vastly outnumbers the good.)

2. How does what you derive from all of these things differ a) from each other; b) from the source material; and c) from real life?

a) fic that isn't romantically focused is vastly different from fic that is.  all the genres of literature exist in fanfiction too, and what you get from a romance is very different from what you get from a mystery-adventure  or a comedy. 

b) sometimes you get a lot of the same things from fiction as from source material.  some fan writers are inspired by and devoted to canon, trying to reproduce the tone and mood and overall feel, the genre, the characterisation, the theme--even within the context of slash or shipper fic, although obviously in those two cases the canon can be slightly modified.  then there are writers who aren't overly concerned with their source material at all, or who even dislike it and prefer to write according to fanon.  obviously they produce very different kinds of stories, and it's possible to enjoy both, but in different ways.  if you like a show and a story does an excellent job of reproducing its qualities, you will probably like the story.  for fanon-based stories the pull would be something different:  perhaps you like one element of the show or one idea but don't like it so much as a whole, and a fanon-based story takes the parts you like and replaces the parts you dislike with something more congenial. 

c) certainly the average life doesn't include nearly as much smut and romance as slash fandom does.  neither do most of the other things you could be reading as an escape.

3. If you're a writer as well as a reader, do you derive a different sort of experience from writing than from reading? How do the two compare? (If you're a vidder or artist, please feel free to talk about that, too.)

for me, the process of writing a piece of fanfiction revolves around two things:  canon, and me.  there's canon, which i constantly refer to and think about, and then there's the stuff i'm making up--according to an inner plan, a personal wish of my own, but which i'm constantly trying to merge seamlessly with canon.  writing a slash romance is about bridging the gap between where the characters are in canon (usually not even apparently gay, sometimes apparently straight;  sometimes not even sharing a very close relationship with each other), and where you want to put them at the end of the story (usually in a sexual or romantic relationship of some kind).  you can't just fill that gap in with whatever you want; it's about making your filler blend seamlessly across, like a gradient.  in that way, your relationship with canon is very... involved, possibly dynamic and very messy, while you're working. 

when i'm reading fic, on the other hand, there's the story i'm reading, there's the canon i'm comparing it to, there's me, and there's the fandom as a whole, the body of all the other literature i've read about that show, or that pairing;  or all the other stories i've read with that plot, regardless of fandom.  i compare the story to canon, to my own personal preferences for slash, to all the other stories that i've read. 

so in a way, i'd say reading takes my thoughts further away from canon.  of course, there are other ways they're different--reading is easier, more passive (though not completely passive).  it rarely gives you the same high of accomplishment that writing can, but on the other hand, if you've ever felt the horrible lack of a story and eventually had to write it for yourself, you know that that is never a complete substitute to getting to read it written by someone else.

4. What were your primary reasons for entering fandom--specifically slash fandom? What are your reasons for staying?

when i first stumbled into slash, with just one erotic forbidden gay romance story, i found it incredibly compelling.  i read it over and over again, but i had no idea why i was so compelled.  that feeling and that curiosity led me to seek out other slash to read, and as i got more used to it the initial shock wore off, but i still find it exciting in a way.  (which segues nicely to #5.)

5. Why do you think slash fandom and slash fiction are the phenomena that they are?

people have theorised for decades about what exactly is so compelling and attractive about slash.  i'm still curious about it;  i still think about it a lot of the time.  but right now, i would say that in my opinion the factors which draw and keep the greatest numbers of people are:  1) the forbidden, taboo aspect i mentioned in 1.c(3).  i know i've heard resonant8 talk about this issue very interestingly in the past, but i don't have any links on me.  2) the possibility of writing romance/sex without gender roles.  this is related to penley's old theory about relationships with equal power dynamics and the lack of strong female characters in star trek, but not quite the same, because the idea is that the culture we writers have grown up in as well as the cultures of our characters would make it difficult or impossible to write a heterosexual romance that wasn't affected by gender roles and gendered power relations.

Comments

[penm.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't really think about why I like slash. It's the same as asking me why I like anything that I do like. I just do.

I haven't read all of this but I do agree with a lot of what you've said.

I will think on it. All this kind of hurts my brain.