I’ve been browsing the murkier sections of fanfiction.net this evening. The site is generally a haven for every twelve-year-old AOL user wHo TyPeS LiKe ThIs, but tonight I actually found a cubic zirconia in the rough - a story I enjoyed reading.
It was a slash story. I’ll freely admit to loving slash fanfiction - it’s my hobby and my vice. “Slash” is, for those less geeky than me, fanfiction involving a homosexual relationship in it somewhere. There are many different types of it, and while most of it is very, very bad, some of it is really well-written and a joy to read.
So, tonight, after reading that nice story, I naturally wanted to leave a review. While I was doing so, I skimmed through the other reviews, and found the following little gem:
“I find your “slash fiction writing” to be repulsive. Who, in their right mind, would write stories about heterosexual children’s characters, and turn them into soft-core porn?! It’s a bit disheartening to be lead to a site containing such filth. I find this to be extremely immoral and unecessary. Please, think about what you’re writing before you do, and where you post your link to your works.
May God be with you, so you don’t have night after night of eternal hellfire.”
Note - the characters in the story are sixteen, which is the legal age of consent in this country, and it makes very little difference anyway, as the story was rated PG.
I don’t feel I need to add any ranting to this - it just about stands alone, don’t you think?
The grievous thing about slash is that some very, very talent authors write it almost exclusively. It’s…God, it’s wrong, I know, but I’ve read some of it too.
hides face I was young! I needed the money!
[Kyle]
But Ninja, you read it just yesterday!
[/Kyle]
And the writing is…astonishingly good. Though I tend to skip over the gay sex parts. Must be my inner Puritan kicking in.
But honestly, if a person has a problem with slash, they ought to read the headline of a story on fanfiction.net. It’s not like they don’t say: “Warning – Slash” on the headline and “Warning – Slash” in the Disclaimer. There’s no need to get all offended just because it’s what someone enjoys reading/writing. Just don’t READ it, that’s all.
Preparing my Handbasket for Hell now. I’m not packing it yet, because I’ve never written any slash…
I seriously love slash. Star Wars slash, mostly.
There was a huge debate over at theforce.net to allow slash stories on the board, under the same guidelines as het stories-nothing more than PG13. It failed, unfortunately, but some of us are still hoping.
To the reviewer, I only have to say this-if you don’t like it-DON’T FUCKING READ IT!!!
Well, at least they read it before saying they didn’t like it (I’m guessing). That’s a hell of a lot better than not reading it before slamming it.
Are they not allowed to give a critical review? I mean, yeah, this was perhaps a bit more preachy on the whole concept rather than a true critique, but still.
And a nice suggestion to be careful where the links may appear. Not bad. Overall, a bit sanctimonious, but far from the worst I’ve seen.
Some people get so indignant about the existance of slash fics, or lemon fics, or whatever. You’d think someone had tied them to a chair and was forcing them to read it. It’s not like the stuff is all that hard to avoid.
BTW, can we have a link to this story? It wouldn’t be inappropriate, seeing as how fanfiction.net no longer accepts stories that go beyond PG13-if only because some jerks complained because they didn’t think they needed to read the warnings. So adultfanfiction.net opened up.
I read slash. I read bad, dirty NC-17 slash. On purpose. I go to Google and search for terms like “bad, dirty NC-17 slash.”
I think the critique was inappropriate. Not because everyone has to like slash, but it’s silly to read a slash story and then criticize it merely for being slash. If you don’t like slash, then don’t read this. You aren’t obligated to read Every Single Thing On the Internet.
I like Slash quite a bit. Unfortunately the best slash writers in Buffy Fandom write Spike/Xander shudder. I’m all for gay sex, but I want to read hot gay sex, like Spike on Angel(us), or Wes…not Xander.
I belong to a SW fan group that does a lot of stories-including very hot and heavy PWP (Porn without Purpose, for those of you not in the fan fiction community).
When I first joined, I was like, SLASH? No way!
But then I read it, and I found-I loves me some man on man pilot stories. Wedge/Luke, Face/Ton, etc.
I also found an ER slash with the ultimate: Luka/Carter. drool
No, the best Angel-slash is Wes/Faith/Lilah. Slash, het, AND threesomes! What could be better?
sigh I miss the good ol’ days when FF.net was full of badly written smut, when it was a toss-up between which was worse, the writing or the pairing. Now it’s all white-washed.
The quoted comment in the OP reminds me of that website that went to the trouble of attemtping to count the number of acts of violence/incidents of “sexuality”/swear words in movies such as Blade, Terminator 2, etc. Makes one wonder just why you’re doing what you’re doing if you count 341 swears used and say something like “We had to watch this movie eleven times to count all this stuff up.”
Hint, person: if you don’t like it, then unless the Devil hisself is holding a gun to your head (insert double entendre about devil and gun here) you can always alt+left to go back.
