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 Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:06 pm
This is the guild's obligatory slash thread.
Slashing is the act of romantically shipping a pair of characters whom are the same gender. Usually male/male. Fem-Slash is for female/female ships.
Discuss:
Your opinion(s) of slash.
Found any good slash fics?
Found any terrible slash fics?
IYO, what makes slash good/bad?
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 6:52 am
Well...I almost exclusively read and write slash and yaoi, and sometimes femslash/yuri (but a lot of them annoy me so I usually stay away).
Because this is what I'm usually in, I've come across good fics and loads of bad ones. The thing that annoys me most though is the uke-ization of characters (uke being the "bottom" in yaoi, who's always more or less a chick with a d**k). It doesn't occur quite so much in slash as in yaoi, but a lot of people who originally wrote in a yaoi fandom take that attitude when they go into writing slash.
But yeah, I like slash. The problem is when I ship em to hard and thay aren't usually canon so the canon breaks my heart crying
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 4:29 pm
That's basically the same problem I have with most slash. They tend of over-feminize one (or even sometimes both) men. So that it really reads more like a het-pairing where they just happen to use the masculine pronoun for both partners. As a bi-sexual male myself I can tell you, its very frustrating.
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:59 pm
I've heard yaoi described as being homophobic, and I kind of agree. The idea that one of them must be effeminate for the relationship to work is adhering to societal norms for a hetero relationship. Which seems silly to me since I've always thought the point of such a relationship was that there was no woman.
I think the problem with yaoi and the feminized character is that those types of stories are mostly written by women, and the character is a stand in for women. This is partly why it usually ends up with a massive ooc in fanfiction. The girl writing it doesn't know how to separate what the character she is using would do from what she would do.
The writer uses the character they identify with the most as a stand in for themselves and write said character as though he was the writer and not as though he was himself. Then they pair him with the character the writer finds the most appealing in a sexual way. Sometimes the character the author wishes she was like is the "dominate" guy, who she uses as a mouthpiece to be with her favorite character. Either way, the character is still just a stand in and suffers for it in his characterization.
The absolute stupidest thing I've ever heard in defense of yaoi was that it was supposedly meant to show an equal relationship. But it really doesn't when one of the guys is pigeon holed into a female submissive role both in and out of bed. I've seen hetero relationships easily depicted as more equal then what I've seen in yaoi.
I like characters for who they are and tend to prefer slash, because it's more likely to produce fanfiction with the character I want instead of an author avatar masquerading as that character.
Yaoi vs. slash aside, I do appreciate two good looking guys together a bit more then two girls or one of each. But then, I'm mostly asexual with hetero leanings, so women just don't do it for me.
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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 12:48 am
I'm not even sure what I am, but I prefer slash, then femslash, and then het. Not entirely sure why. I'm a lot more picky about femslash/yuri, and I usually won't touch it if I don't already like the writer.
I agree with Aha though. I greatly prefer slash to yaoi, and in yaoi I mostly stick to authors I know don't fall into the seme/uke thing. Like, there are a lot of good ones out there, but in a fandom like Naruto, which I primarily read in, there are way too many fics fixated on that seme/uke thing.
One of the stupidest things in yaoi is the ongoing argument over who's seme and who's uke. It's like bashing other ships, but it's really the same ship that you're bashing. And then whoever's seme suddenly has a huge growth spurt and ends up at least a foot taller than the uke, who is, likewise, a foot shorter.
Slash is usually (or a lot of the time) written by better writers, I guess, than yaoi, so they don't fall into that trap. One anime/manga fandom I read in, Saiyuki, is probably the one manga/anime fandom that mm pairings are more "slash" than "yaoi" and I think that's at least partly because it has an older target audience than, say, Naruto, and it's also not as popular as Naruto so there are less inexperienced newbies in it.
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Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2012 4:45 pm
Hmmm, I'm rather fond of both slash and yaoi though I do agree there are to many feminized characters that don't really adhere to the characterization of the participants. Yet I do have a guilty pleasure of liking and reading the seme/uke ideology, it doesn't work in real life. I think the best story I've read were both from the Naruto universe...Art and Artifice by Daggat I think is well written and touches on issues that are found in everyday society.
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Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:13 am
I read and write almost exclusively slash, but lately I have crossed over into the dark side of hurt/comfort because there is no good slash in my favourite fandom, which is Hawaii Five-O (the old version).
The feminisation of characters is something which happens in my fandom quite regularly. There are only a handful of active slash writers (just me and 2 other people) and the other two seem to think that just because they are the only slash writers posting to FFnet that what they write is canon. It's more like the seme/uke dynamic on steroids with a hefty amount of ooc thrown in for good measure.
I try to actively avoid it in stories. In my latest one, I tried really hard to keep them in character. I hope I have succeeded sweatdrop
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Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 11:40 am
Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin ... and the other two seem to think that just because they are the only slash writers posting to FFnet that what they write is canon. It's more like the seme/uke dynamic on steroids with a hefty amount of ooc thrown in for good measure.
I try to actively avoid it in stories. In my latest one, I tried really hard to keep them in character. I hope I have succeeded sweatdrop
I've found that its kinda hard to keep a character (or characters) IC when shipping them with a non-canon partner. There are some pairs that just don't work because their personalities don't mesh. With slash pairings specifically this problem is doubled because most canon characters are some version of "strait" and that usually tends to be a large part of that character's over-arching personality. When you alter their sexuality, you alter their character. So, I understand a little OOCness when it comes to writing slash.
But as a bi-sexual man, nothing annoys me more than altering a character's personality so drastically that they turn into the stereotypical "woman" archetype (or vice versa). If a person's gonna write a story about two men getting together, then is should be about two MEN, not one man and one valley-girl in a man's body (or worse, TWO valley-girls in men's bodies).
Its for this reason that I actually prefer to read ho-yay more often that slash.
... Hm, I sem to have swung off on a tangent. We were talking about cannon IC vs. non-cannon OOC. My bad.
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Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2012 3:18 pm
Renkon Root
I've found that its kinda hard to keep a character (or characters) IC when shipping them with a non-canon partner. There are some pairs that just don't work because their personalities don't mesh. With slash pairings specifically this problem is doubled because most canon characters are some version of "strait" and that usually tends to be a large part of that character's over-arching personality. When you alter their sexuality, you alter their character. So, I understand a little OOCness when it comes to writing slash.
But as a bi-sexual man, nothing annoys me more than altering a character's personality so drastically that they turn into the stereotypical "woman" archetype (or vice versa). If a person's gonna write a story about two men getting together, then is should be about two MEN, not one man and one valley-girl in a man's body (or worse, TWO valley-girls in men's bodies).
Its for this reason that I actually prefer to read ho-yay more often that slash.
... Hm, I sem to have swung off on a tangent. We were talking about cannon IC vs. non-cannon OOC. My bad.
It's quite easy to get canon and fanon mixed up, very deadly easy.
I once read a story in a fandom I am in where the two characters slashed are Steve and Danny, two really tough and resilient cops. The two slash writers wrote stories based on underwear and in one of them the alpha male in their stories buys leopard print underwear, which the partner ends up taking off and leaving behind at a crime scene just so they know he was there.
Now, normally I just steer clear of it, but it gets to me here because they are the only other slash writers still active in fandom gonk
LOL bad characterisation is non-canon ooc rofl
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Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 10:45 am
I'm generally not much of a fan of slash. My problem is it is in the fact that most slash has to severely take both partners out of character just to get them into aforementioned pairing. I don't mind BL or GL, in fact, I'm a complete supporter of gay rights, but it especially irritates me when authors take characters who are blatantly of one orientation, and make them the other for the sake of slash. Mainly because, again, this takes them completely out of character; you mine as well write original fiction at that point.
I do have a few guilty pleasure slash pairings, though, but mine are so weird that there often aren't any fanfictions with those pairings in existence (I joke about Oghren x Nathaniel from Dragon Age Awakening, so that should prove my point).
If someone likes slash/writes slash, that's fine by me, I just don't generally enjoy reading it.
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Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 10:53 am
Aha I've heard yaoi described as being homophobic, and I kind of agree. The idea that one of them must be effeminate for the relationship to work is adhering to societal norms for a hetero relationship. Which seems silly to me since I've always thought the point of such a relationship was that there was no woman. I think the problem with yaoi and the feminized character is that those types of stories are mostly written by women, and the character is a stand in for women. This is partly why it usually ends up with a massive ooc in fanfiction. The girl writing it doesn't know how to separate what the character she is using would do from what she would do. The writer uses the character they identify with the most as a stand in for themselves and write said character as though he was the writer and not as though he was himself. Then they pair him with the character the writer finds the most appealing in a sexual way. Sometimes the character the author wishes she was like is the "dominate" guy, who she uses as a mouthpiece to be with her favorite character. Either way, the character is still just a stand in and suffers for it in his characterization. The absolute stupidest thing I've ever heard in defense of yaoi was that it was supposedly meant to show an equal relationship. But it really doesn't when one of the guys is pigeon holed into a female submissive role both in and out of bed. I've seen hetero relationships easily depicted as more equal then what I've seen in yaoi. I like characters for who they are and tend to prefer slash, because it's more likely to produce fanfiction with the character I want instead of an author avatar masquerading as that character. Yaoi vs. slash aside, I do appreciate two good looking guys together a bit more then two girls or one of each. But then, I'm mostly asexual with hetero leanings, so women just don't do it for me. Japanese yaoi/BL manga are often written by straight women to entertain straight women, so that might be part of the issue there with one of the partners becoming, essentially, a chick with male anatomy. If I wanted to read a man and a woman, I'd read a man and a woman. Likewise, if I want to read two men, they best act like two men, and the same goes for two women.
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Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2013 7:16 pm
Strawberry Requiem (I joke about Oghren x Nathaniel from Dragon Age Awakening, so that should prove my point). before i even say anything, i have to point out that this made me laugh really hard. (anders/nathaniel holla)
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Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2013 7:20 pm
i usually prefer slash over yaoi because, one, it's usually better written, and two, it doesn't make characters ridiculously masculine/effeminate.
that, and the fact that i haven't shipped anything in anime/manga that wasn't het for quite a long while.
but mostly, what i really don't care for is people who whip two characters just because they're both male or both female. um okay that's known as fetishizing homosexuality and that makes me really uncomfortable, and it's also kind of insulting in a really roundabout way?? someone on tumblr explained this a lot better than i am.
but yes bottom line: i prefer slash over yaoi but usually i just ship two characters based on their interactions and chemisty, not their genders
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Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 5:58 am
tu fira Strawberry Requiem (I joke about Oghren x Nathaniel from Dragon Age Awakening, so that should prove my point). before i even say anything, i have to point out that this made me laugh really hard. (anders/nathaniel holla) I actually rationalize that pairing with several of the conversations they have in which Oghren shows latent homosexual desires. He has a couple with Zevran too, and if you read into it a bit, Anders. I suppose it had to be Nate in my mind though, since I think Zev and Leliana are kind of cute together ( but I think Zev and everyone is cute) and I have a hard time believing that Anders would do his Spicy Shimmy for Oghren, so it had to be Nate, after ridiculous amounts of booze and they never spoke of it again. But, to be fair, I do like Nate and pretty much everyone. I'm particularly fond of him and Bethany as well, but I do read into his quest in 2 a lot.
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Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 7:18 am
Strawberry Requiem I actually rationalize that pairing with several of the conversations they have in which Oghren shows latent homosexual desires. He has a couple with Zevran too, and if you read into it a bit, Anders. I suppose it had to be Nate in my mind though, since I think Zev and Leliana are kind of cute together ( but I think Zev and everyone is cute) and I have a hard time believing that Anders would do his Spicy Shimmy for Oghren, so it had to be Nate, after ridiculous amounts of booze and they never spoke of it again. But, to be fair, I do like Nate and pretty much everyone. I'm particularly fond of him and Bethany as well, but I do read into his quest in 2 a lot. i'm dumb and so i don't actually ship a lot of things for dragon age outside of the standard warden and hawke romances, and even then i somehow almost always end up romancing alistair in da surprised and anders in da2. ;u; i honestly have no idea what to think about oghren, other than the fact that he's pretty great. i don't really pay attention to the conversations that my companions have, because for some reason every time i hit a conversation point i'm almost always attacked by enemies. at least, that's how it is in da surprised . but yeah, anders/nathaniel. that's good fuel for a hate!ship right there.
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