What constitutes a slash story?

[lunabee34]

I have a question.

A few days ago, I read the delightfully funny The Awful Truth by blade_girl. The rec in which I found the story states: I rec this one with a caveat to slash fans - as a fan of both slash and gen, I must tell you this story contains apparently slashy elements, but is ultimately gen (regardless of the author's notes); and may prove unsatisfying to a slasher. That being said, I find it a plausible, positive, and touching take on the characters and their friendship.) I found this description intriguing and it was pretty much the impetus for me reading the story. The notes for the story itself state: A slash story AND a gen story at the same time. I can’t explain that without giving away the ending, so I ask you to read regardless of your preference. Both the writer of this story and at least one reader of the story (and I assume probably more) seem to think that labeling this fic as slash is problematic.

So my question is the following: what makes a slash fic?



In "The Awful Truth," John and Rodney attempt to have sex. Poorly. By the story's end, they have not had sex but they have kissed several times and rubbed each other's torsos awkwardly. Each reveals that although he had lately been wondering whether the deep and abiding McShep friendship was concealing sexual/romantic attraction, ultimately only friendship exists between them. This story is hilarious but also contains sharp character insights and very astute observations of the McShep friendship dynamic.

In my estimation, this story falls squarely in the slash camp. Even though John and Rodney don't have sex and even though they decide that they don't even WANT to have sex with each other, the fic is about them exploring the possibilities of a romantic relationship with each other. John and Rodney both legitimately believe at the fic's beginning that they might have romantic feelings for each other, feelings that they should act on. Just because when the fic closes, the two remain friends instead of lovers I can't handwave away that the majority of the fic is about them coming to terms with their feelings for each other and how they will proceed based on those feelings.

We all seem to agree that when a fic contains same sex sex, we've got slash. Elizabeth and Teyla necking in the Gate Room? Check. Slash. Sam blowing Dean in the backseat of the Impala? Check. Slash. Even when the characters having sex with each other don't like each other at all (Spike and Xander hate sex in the Basement of Doom? Check. Slash.), we still consider the story slash. When same sex characters are having sex in a story, we don't consider character emotions or motivations at all in labelling the fic. Two or more dudes doing it (for various definitions of doing it) or two or more chicks doing it (for various definitions of doing it) is slash.

When a story lacks sex, though, we run into differences of opinion. I think most of us don't believe that a story has to contain sex in order to be slash (but I might be wrong). I don't believe that. We don't think stories have to contain sex in order to be labeled het. Many excellent het love stories never expose more skin than a flash of delicately bared ankle. I think that when a story deals with at least one character's romantic and/or sexual feelings for another character of the same sex, we've got a slash story. These feelings may be unrequited or never admitted to the object of interest. They may be rebuffed. And like in "The Awful Truth," the characters may decide that they were mistaking deep friendship for something more.

So, what do you guys think? Am I way off base here?

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Coming late to the conversation...

It's very interesting to me that you used that example, because the author actually ran that story past me before she posted it and we went back and forth for a while on whether or not I thought, and she thought, that it ought to be posted as a John/Rodney story or not. I adore the story -- it's really one of my (many!) favorite stories in the fandom, precisely *because* it does such a nice job with relationship ambiguity and there's so little of that out there. And personally, I do consider it to come down more on the gen than slash side because of the affirmation of the gen and very specifically not slash relationship at the end. (When she asked me about it, one of the main criteria that I applied in trying to figure out how I'd label it was, "Would a slash or a gen fan be more satisfied/affirmed by the ending?" And I think it's a fairly gen-affirming story.)

On the other hand, I hadn't considered your argument that experimentation stories are inherently slash (or, as the case may be, het) -- because they specifically deal with the characters working out their own position on the sexuality spectrum -- and I think there's a lot of merit to that!

The above discussion of slash as descriptor vs. slash as genre really strikes a chord for me, because I do think of slash as a genre more than a descriptor (I wouldn't call most published gay lit "slash", for example, because it doesn't follow what I generally consider slash genre conventions). I wonder if the way that an individual fan would categorize a marginal or gray-area sort of story is very dependent on where ze falls in the descriptor vs. genre continuum!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I think so.

Also, I think how long a person has been in fandom and how the people around hir have defined words makes an impact. I don't think it's immediately clear what words mean and unless your flist is engaging in lots of meta or linking to it or what have you, you sort of pick up amorphous definitions for words that aren't necessarily as nuanced as the ways in which people are using them.

Also, I think it's really interesting that you looked to the ending to determine which segment of fandom would be more affirmed by the story discussed in this post. I don't think that way of looking at story labeling has ever occurred to me, maybe because I write so many unhappy endings?

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would occur to me in general to classify stories based on their endings, but since this story is very specifically about two characters exploring their sexuality and relationship in a way that ultimately does not affirm a slash reading, I don't think it feels right to me to call it slash. I felt that it settled fairly decisively on a gen reading of the characters, ergo it seems more appropriate to call it gen. On the other hand, I don't really like having to fit marginal stories into hard-and-fast categories anyway -- it tends to end up feeling like very awkward hair-splitting.

Re: nuance - hahaha, yeah. It's not just a time-in-fandom thing, but also how your particular social circle uses the words. There's been a lot of debate about the definition of gen over the last few years, and I think the only thing that's really been established is that different people draw the lines in different places -- but I think that the same is true of different fans' personal usage of "slash" and "het" (as well as other common fandom terms: h/c, for example, or smarm, or amtdi).

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh yes.

*nods*

And if you don't have a lot of aca-fen on your flist, you might not even realize that the terms are contested.