(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Gosh, there's a lot of rubbish reboot Trekfic on the AO3 these days. Benedict Cumberbatch seems to be inadvertently to blame for some of it, as there is the usual rash of badly-written Sherlock crossovers*, but even discounting that, the quality seems to have gone down dramatically.

Also, I wish people wouldn't tag slashfics with 'gay sex'.


* Stupid though Martin Crieff/ John Watson or Martin Crieff/ Moriarty is as a premise, it's surely topped by Khan Noonien Singh/ Molly Hooper?

Comments

[kerkevik_2014]

Slash fic is by it's very defintion gay sex; or it should be. The term slash comes from the days of K/S, or Kirk/Spock fic writen; exclusively by female Trek fans from the earliest days of fandom. Anything not gay sex related, and using the / should be labelled as 'not' being gay sex, or proper slash fic.

It's why the term femslash, or femmeslash, has become prevalent.

Het Slash is ok, but then you can get that in your every day media outlets everywhere anyway.

kerk

[ineptshieldmaid]

Slash fic isn't by definition gay sex, though. Slash fic does not by definition have to contain a sex scene. Presumably the additional tag is to inform you that, in addition to being a m/m romance, it has gay sex in it.

There are a number of reasons you might be annoyed about that tag: for instance, it would be more informative to tag 'explicit sex' or 'implied sex' or 'oral sex' or whatever, if you want people to know what they're in for. 'Gay sex' used to be used as a 'oh noes' warning in a way that you rarely saw on het fic, because oh noes two dicks touching (my impression is this is less likely to be the case on the AO3 than in older fandom spaces). It is also not necessarily true that an m/m fic is GAY: for instance, all parties could be bisexual, without substantially changing the content of the sex scene, so in that sense the tag "gay sex" is not helpful either.

But it's not true that slashfic is by definition gay sex. It's not by definition sex at all.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, I think , on further reflection, I was being overly grumpy, but I would prefer 'explicit sex' (or whatever).

[ineptshieldmaid]

Oh, it's definitely redundant, it's just not redundant because all slash fic is gay sex...

On 12 February 2016 at 15:19, tree_and_leaf - DW Comment < dw_null@dreamwidth.org> wrote:

[tree_and_leaf]

On further reflection, I think Inept's right.

I have to disagree with you about the '/' (as opposed to 'slash' as a genre) - that's pretty much universally used for any romantic pairing these days, whether it's Spock/Kirk or Spock/Uhura.

[kerkevik_2014]

Realistically you are correct; it's just that as a term and a genre; slash started as exclusively for the K/S fandom, and by extension stories containing m/m pairings. It has become more widespread, but it was intended and used for stories about, or implying gay sex.

Oddly enough I had a similar conversation with a lesbian friend last month, who felt uncomfortable that slash as a term was only used for gay and lesbian relationships.

Those eho invented the term and the genre are dying off now, and I feel obliged to honour that generation by not letting the term's true origins and meaning to go off peacefully into that dark night.

My apologies if I appeared overly didactic about it, but I knew some of those people, and they were a lot very good people who would make modern fanfic writers blush.

kerk