The Slash Phenomena

On my first viewing of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace I hardly thought that I was on the verge of opening up a new erotic world. Sure, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan was fodder for fantasy, and the duel was, for lack of a better phrase, kick-ass, but I was almost 30 and in a stable, though ultimately doomed, relationship at the time. Star Wars had been the imaginative bedrock of my upbringing, but strictly in a PG fashion.

So when George Lucas’s chump’s death for Darth Maul began to bother me on repeated viewings, the new world of the Internet divulged one of its deep, dark secrets to me. Two words: Slash Fiction.

If you’ve never heard of slash, here’s the quick and dirty definition: Fiction, usually written by female fans, about two male characters (who are not necessarily homosexual in their original—or “canonical”—fictional universes) in romantic or otherwise sexual relationships. 

In my case, I went looking on the Internet for more information about Darth Maul, intrigued by the character’s short and relatively unexplained life. I found fansites devoted to the Sith Lord, which led to other fansites where people posted fiction, and finally, fansites where people wrote fan-fiction about Darth Maul and Obi-Wan in a hot and heavy relationship. Weird as it was, I discovered that this was actually a turn-on.

Slash fiction began when fans of the original 1960s Star Trek series started writing inventive stories about Kirk and Spock . . . together . . . in that way. At the time, these stories were published in fan-produced “zines” sold for no profit at conferences and the like. Shorthand for this pairing was “Kirk/Spock” or simply “K/S,” and the genre of homosexual fan-fiction became known as “slash.” Most fan-fiction pairings are still referenced in this way, even if they’re actually written about heterosexual pairings such as Leia/Han. 

As with most obsessive behavior, the Internet made the dissemination and therefore creation of slash and general fan-fiction much easier with online archives popping up for a great many fandoms. These days you can find talented (and not-so talented) writers “slashing” just about anybody from Doctor Who/Captain Jack to Jack Sparrow/Will Turner to Jack/Sawyer from Lost. 

Anyhoo, as I began to read more and more fan-fiction and slash fiction I came up with some theories to explain why otherwise straight women would read and write about gay male sex. 

Here they are:

1) The sci-fi/fantasy genre (out of which the majority, though not the entirety of slash originates) has largely been written and populated by males. Take the Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings universes: men, men, and more men. There are just not enough Leias to go around and other female characters (Uhura, et al) are generally marginalized and just not as interesting as the boys—who are, after all, the heroes. The fan-fiction community frowns on the creation of “original characters,” largely because most of them are poorly written, idealized substitutes for the writers, so-called “Mary Sues.” I mean, it’s fine to write a thinly disguised, perfect version of yourself into a story, but nobody else wants to read that shit. And that’s the second part of the slash phenomenon.

2) Community is part of the game. Writing, posting, reading and commenting are all important facets of the online slash world. It’s about loving a fictional universe and wanting more of it, wanting to expand it . . . and let’s face it, wanting to get to the raunchy bits they are always teasing us with on television. Sharing all this forms a community—a community in which, unfortunately, popularity becomes part of the game. So if you write a story about two already known and accepted characters (Mulder/Krycek) it’ll get read by a lot more people than if you invent a new female FBI agent for Mulder to have sex with. Mulder and Krycek are already established as characters. People know what they look like, how they talk, and can easily imagine them together so basically you can piggy-back on all the work Chris Carter and David Duchovny have done to make Fox Mulder a good character and just go from there. This goes for reading and writing such stories. If you’re looking for a quick erotic fix you don’t have figure out whether or not you hate Agent Featherbrain, you can just get it on with Mulder and Krycek. (And you know they totally wanted each other, it was right there, clear as day, on the show!) 

But, you ask, doesn’t the X-files already have a perfectly good female character to write about? And doesn’t that refute both of the above points? Sure . . . you could write about Scully/Mulder and lots of people do. You can also write about Buffy/Angel and/or Buffy/Spike but then, why does so much Angel/Spike fiction exist? And why are predominantly straight women writing about it? The third theory.

3) Twice the sexy minus mental competition plus forbidden love = HOT. To put it in basic terms, if you’re a straight woman . . . imagining a man can be hot. So if you read about Spike/Angel now you have two hot men. Let’s say you’re “beyond the first blush of youth”—there’s no eternally youthful, impossibly skinny Sarah Michelle Gellar-type to compare yourself to in your fantasy. Finally, if your two male characters aren’t necessarily gay in their original setting, or at least not overtly so, then having them fall in love leads to all sorts of angst and soul-searching and searing sex in unexpected situations, which, in turn, leads to highly readable and oft-times good fiction. And easily accessible erotica.

I sincerely doubt that Gene Roddenberry imagined Kirk and Spock as a couple back in the day, but as our society’s views about homosexuality have evolved so has our openness about slash. These days, some slash pairings have even been given a sort of pseudo-blessing by the characters’ creators (Joss Whedon has been said to have speculated in DVD commentary that Angel and Spike probably did do it in all their years together) and shows like Torchwood are like a slasher’s wet dream. 

So say all you want about how odd it is . . . maybe it IS odd, but it’s an odd a lot of people like! Don’t believe me? Pick your two favorite guys and do a quick search online with a slash between their names. You’ll see what I mean . . . and you’ll never watch The Phantom Menace the same way again.