Slash readers, would this be slash or not?

Cafe Society
1

I’m so confused… Usually I know if something is slash or not, but this is sort of a special case.

If anyone has ever followed the link in my sig, you’d find yourself at my fic site. It’s a crossover series - Mulder’s Creek- between The X-Files and Dawson’s Creek, and instead of having characters from each show, I combined the characters. For example, my main character, Mulder Leary, is an amalgamation of Fox Mulder and Dawson Leary. And because of this, I’m confused about if something would be slash or not.

My character, who is part Walter Skinner and part Jack McPhee is gay. On the X-Files Skinner is straight, and on DC Jack is gay, so I made Skinner McPhee gay (so far he’s only had the same love interests as he did on DC, and with an original character). That’s not the problem. The problem is, in the series finale of DC they finally decided that Dougie Witter is gay too, and hooked him up with Jack. I have a half Dougie character too, who is also half Kersh from the X-Files :smiley: Recap: the X-Files halves of their characters are straight, while the Dawson’s Creek halves are gay.

So here’s the question, if in my fics I follow the story line from DC and make Skinner McPhee and Kersh Witter love interests, is that slash, or just a gay relationship? :confused: If only their counter-parts from both shows had the same orientation…

2

I’d like to help you but I have no idea. I mean, fic about gay character is not slash. So like, Willow/Tara wouldn’t be slash. Ok, in your story has either character been in a relationship with a person of the same sex before? Or is it the first time for both of them? Maybe if it’s the first time for both of them, it’s slash. Pretty arbitrary, but so is most of the stuff in fanfic…

3

D’oh. Skinner’s had one boyfriend (Evan from DC) and one tortured love interest (Reed, an orginal character), but Kersh is rather…asexual; he’s had no relationships of any kind. I’m probably not going to hook the two of them up - since readers like Reed :slight_smile: - but it’s something I wondered about off and on since the Dawson’s Creek finale.

4

I’d call that slash. It’s fan fic with gay characters, so why not?

5

I think slash generally means that it’s a gay relationship between canonically (a perfectly cromulent word) characters. Willow/Tara–gay, not slash. Spike/Angel–not gay, slash.

6

Christ. Slash is between canonically straight characters.

7

I’m mainly in fandoms without canonically straight characters, so I’ve always just associated slash with any gay coupling- my friends and I (mainly me) have ended up using it for any fictional gay couple, regardless of the canonicalness (that cannot be a real word) of it.

It might depend on the fandom- you seem to just have the Buffy-verse perspective, and I’ve only got the Harry Potter fandom behind me, so we might not be the best judges. It is subjective, I guess.

Words.

8

C’mon, pepper. Spike and Angel? So gay. :slight_smile:

My definition of slash (coming from longtime residence in the Buffy, HP, Alias and Pirates of the Caribbean fandoms) stretches to cover same-sex encounters between two characters who are canonically straight and encounters where one character is straight is canon and the other is gay or bi. Harry/Ron is slash, as is Buffy/Willow or Jack/Will. (Yeah, Jack only sleeps with girls. Sure.)

You’re dealing with a slightly twisted universe, elfkin. Not that I don’t like it, but it’s twisted. I wouldn’t necessarily call what you’ve got going on slash, but I’d throw a warning in the header that there’s m/m in the story, just so you don’t get any crazy types flaming you. You’re making your own canon, you crazy trailblazer!

9

Yeah, i know. That subtext is about as close as you can get to being text without actually being text…

“Do you suppose that makes me some sort of…deviant?”

10

Well, since the characters are amalgams of straight and gay characters, it would seem that it would be half slash, if anything.

“Sla,” maybe?

11

One of my dearest friends is a strong contender for the title Queen of Slash, so I will attempt to contact her about your question. However, it’s been my impression that these terms don’t have strict definitions accepted across all fandoms or even within a particular fandom. I think it’s safe to say that any non-canonical homosexual pairing of canonically straight characters is slash, but beyond that…hard to say.

To some people, the definition of “slash” apparently may also include one or more of the following:

  1. Any non-canonical homosexual pairing of canonically gay characters
  2. Any homosexual pairing
  3. Any non-canonical pairing

Were you writing Dawson’s Creek fic, it would only be slash to people who accept #2 above. Were you writing X-Files fic, it would clearly be slash. But since you’re dealing with a combination of the two, I’d say just call it slash and be done with it. This isn’t an exact science, and your particular shade of grey seems closer to “slash” than “not-slash”.

12

Thanks! I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought it was confusing to muddle out. I like half-slash :smiley:

13

Personally I don’t think it’s necessary that the relationship be non-canonical for a story to be slash. There’s a lot of Queer as Folk fic that I’d call slash, for example. But really, it’s pretty hard to define and it basically comes down to personal preference I think.