Home > Slash fiction

Slash fiction was among the earlier fan fiction known to have been written for Star Trek, with many show principals recalling letters sent in from mostly females. Slash writers were the first to call themselves " trekkies", a reference to " groupies" and stand as marked contrast to the modern more male-dominated trekker phenomenon. At least one officially licenced Trek novel was published containing slash elements: the 1985 novel Killing Time by Della van Hise . According to the Web site The Complete Starfleet Library, an early draft of the novel was erroneously published in which the author had included homosexual subtext between Kirk and Spock before an editor requested a revised version (which was subsequently published in place of the original version).

Today slash fiction is written, or at least explored, by a wide variety of people of all backgrounds and orientations. However, the majority of slash authors and slash fans are heterosexual women. Horror author Poppy Z. Brite's works, along with others, could be conidered slash fiction by extension, although several of her characters are already gay and there is little need to further pair them off.

Although such descriptions (e.g. "Kirk/ UhuraCommander Uhura is a character from the fictional Star Trek universe and was played by Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek: The Original Series and several movies. She was the Chief Communications Officer on the Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-A).") are also used to describe heterosexual relationship fiction, the term "slash" usually implies a homosexual pairing (het being commonly used for similar heterosexual speculations). Indeed, the exact definition of the term has often been hotly debated within the various slash fandomKeen aficionados of any phenomenon such as authors, hobbies, ideologies, genres or fashions can collectively manifest as fandom . Fans (or the plural fen typically are interested in even minor details of the object of their fandom; this is what differentis. The strictest definition holds that only stories about relationships between two male partners ("M/M") are "slash"; this has led to the evolution of the term femslash to describe lesbian ("F/F") fiction. The recent appearance of openly gay characters on screen, notably WillowWillow Rosenberg is a fictional character in the popular television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer played by Alyson Hannigan. Willow was introduced in the first episode of the show as a naive and fairly stereotyped brilliant high school nerd capable of per and TaraTara Maclay is a fictional character in the television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Amber Benson. Tara was introduced in the popular episode " Hush", in the fourth season of the show. A member of Sunnydale University's Wicca group, she encoun in the television series Buffy the Vampire SlayerDVD collection Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a U. television series loosely based on the 1992 movie of the same name. It first aired in March 1997 on the Warner Brothers network; after five seasons it transferred to the United Paramount Network ( UPN) for t and many of the characters in the Queer as Folk series, has added much to the discussion. Some hold that the term "slash" only applies when the relationship being written about is not part of the source's canon, and that fan fiction about canonical same-sex relationships is hence not slash. However, abiding by this definition leaves such stories without a convenient label, so this distinction has not been widely adopted.

Some fan fiction afficionados might find erotic pairings of characters, regardless of gender, unpleasant for one reason or another, and so it is considered impolite to publish slash fiction without giving readers fair warning of explicit content within (sometimes including detailed warnings to the level of adult activity undertaken by the characters). However the prevailing attitude is that once a warning has been given anything goes, and readers who complain that they found a story with clear warnings offensive, that they continued to read, are generally derided.

Some groups differentiate between same-sex pairings in which people just happen to be friends and any adult activity is tastefully done or implied, as being "no lemon", while tales in which said activity on some level does occur, outside of kissing, are labeled "lemon". Lesbian equivalents in stories have been known to use the phrase "lime" instead.

It should also be noted that slash fiction can be of any rating: G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17. Not all slash fiction has explicit sexual content: the interaction between two characters can be as innocent as holding hands or a chaste kiss. If a story contains themes which may offend or which some readers may find distasteful (e.g non-consensual sex, incest, BDSM, or - gasp - heterosexual sex), it is considered polite to include warnings in the story header.

Occasionally some forms of erotic fiction can prove to be potentially controversial: in particular slash involving underage characters (often termed "chanslash;" examples include Harry Potter slash) or real people slash ("RPS:" initially members of boy bands, and lately including actors (LOTR), musicians and sport figures) could be considered distasteful by those who otherwise find nothing objectionable about erotic fiction in general. An obvious viewpoint is that those who do not wish to read a certain story do not have to do so. It should be noted that in the case of stories involving real people the legal issues involved can be more complex than usual in fan fiction.

In recent years, slash fiction has become so prevalent on the Internet that an inaccurate stereotype has emerged among those unfamiliar with the genre that all fan fiction is slash (or at least romance) based, which has sparked concern among writers of non-slash fanfic.

While true that it could be a controversial subject, most slash fans find slash as natural and tasteful as het. They believe that since romance is not one of the overarching themes of the books, it is impossible to conclusively state that any character is straight, gay or bisexual. There is vociferous debate on the canonicity of any relationship (slash or het) on websites such as Fiction Alley.

In addition to fiction, slash artwork is widely available. In recent years, the advent of imaging software such as PhotoShop has allowed slash artists to manipulate photographs of their subjects to produce erotic images, either as static pictures or animated GIFs.