From Slash to the Mainstream: Female Writers and Gender Blending Men‪.‬

Slash fiction, the subset of fan-fiction which eroticises the homosocial bonds depicted between media heroes, has generally been considered as, in Constance Penley's words, a "unique hybrid genre of romance, pornography and utopian Science Fiction" (480). Since Penley's essay of 1992 the slash genre has significantly expanded and now appropriates media sources, which could not be considered science fiction. Nevertheless, it remains true that the original slash fandom, that which appropriated Star Trek's Kirk and Spock, is infused with science fiction elements, and that many science fiction and fantasy sources have proved popular with slash fiction writers who create homoerotic fan fiction from sources as diverse as Lord of the Rings, Highlander, The X-Files, Buffy and Harry Potter. It is also the case that science fiction and fantasy elements, perhaps imported from other fandoms, find their way into slash fiction which is not based upon a science fiction or fantasy source. For instance, in the case of Bodie and Doyle from The Professionals slash writers such as Anne Carr and Helen Raven have, respectively, created fantasy and science fiction backdrops for their appropriative fictions. Clearly, despite its diversification much slash fiction does retain an element of fantasy and science fiction (though not always a utopian one), as much as it continues to contain both romantic and pornographic elements. Thus, although three of Penley's original assertions continue to hold true, the first of her assumptions, that of the "unique" nature of slash fiction needs, I believe, to be re-addressed. More recent considerations of slash fiction do suggest, as Matt Hills does, that fan activities should not be isolated from "wider consumption patterns" (2). However, Hills' main concern is not with the literature that slash fans produce but rather with their interpretive practices, a focus which facilitates his discussion of how some fans have become academics and how this may, or may not, differ from cases where academics have been informed by their knowledge of fandom. There is a great deal of academic debate about whether the fan is instinctively doing something academic ("Interview" Jenkins, Hills, Fiedler) but, given the literary nature of fan-fiction, surprisingly little discussion of whether the fan writer is producing something inherently novelistic. Traditionally the academic focus on fan and mainstream interaction has been on how fans interpret the mainstream texts which inspire them. Both Henry Jenkins in Textual Poachers and Sara Jones in "The Sex Lives of Cult Television Characters" discuss how resistant, or otherwise, slash interpretations should be considered to be, in relation to the source they are derived from. Slash fiction has rarely been considered from a literary perspective which could draw parallels to mainstream texts with which slash has no direct derivative relationship. In the mainstream science fiction and fantasy markets there are many non-derivative texts which share a significant number of features with slash fiction, so many that very little slash fiction can realistically be considered unique. By drawing parallels between certain subsets of slash fiction and mainstream science fiction and fantasy texts it will be possible to elucidate the ways in which fan and mainstream writers are frequently dealing in similar forms of representation.