As a 'dirty old fan' (I started getting involved in fandom back in the Star Trek days, and still attend conventions) I find the current prevalence of slash...interesting. There was a time not too many years ago when the publisher of a Star Wars slash fanzine got a cease and desist letter from Lucasfilm--now it seems every other fic on the internet is slash.
I will read slash but I prefer het or gen--too many slash stories just don't ring 'true' to me in the sense of characterization or tone of the source material, and some stories just fall into what my friends and I call the Why Dogs Lick Their Balls Theory of Slashfic--the authors do it just because they can.
The original theory behind slash fic was that the source materials had no strong female characters the fanwriter could identify, and for many years adding an original female character (OFC) drew instant cries of "MarySue!" In my opinion that theory is no longer valid (if it ever was) as nowadays movies and TV series have some great women characters to work with, and I've also seen some wonderful OFCs in fanfic too. There are some fandoms now--for example, The Sentinel, where almost all of the fan work produced is slash. I'm sure there's no one explanation for the whole phenomenon, but it's interesting.
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Some fannish comments
Date: 2008-06-23 11:07 pm (UTC)I will read slash but I prefer het or gen--too many slash stories just don't ring 'true' to me in the sense of characterization or tone of the source material, and some stories just fall into what my friends and I call the Why Dogs Lick Their Balls Theory of Slashfic--the authors do it just because they can.
The original theory behind slash fic was that the source materials had no strong female characters the fanwriter could identify, and for many years adding an original female character (OFC) drew instant cries of "MarySue!"
In my opinion that theory is no longer valid (if it ever was) as nowadays movies and TV series have some great women characters to work with, and I've also seen some wonderful OFCs in fanfic too. There are some fandoms now--for example, The Sentinel, where almost all of the fan work produced is slash. I'm sure there's no one explanation for the whole phenomenon, but it's interesting.