Erotica By Helen E. H. Madden

Someone (Emily) noted that I'm not posting often enough. I'm not, but then the past month sort of royally sucked on the personal end, as I noted a couple of posts back. However, I need to get back on the ball, so here's the latest post.

Recently, I talked about Shore Leave 29 and the panels I attended on e-books. To sum up, neither panel covered what I was expecting, but I did glean a few interesting tidbits on the subject. But now let's talk about something I saw at Shore Leave that I found very interesting... slash fan fiction.

If you have any interest in science fiction, chances are pretty good you know what slash is. For those of you who don't know, fan fiction is a genre of writing where fans create stories based on their favorite books, movies, or television series, using the original characters from those venues but putting them into all new stories. It should be noted that these stories are not licensed by the original creators of the material in question and may even be disproved of (some fan fic writers have been known to receive 'cease and desist' letters for their forays into someone else's playground). The "slash" in "slash fic" refers to the punctuation mark put between the names of two or more characters in a fan fic story who are, for the purposes of that story, involved in a romantic and/or erotic relationship. For example - Scully/Mulder. Princess Leia/Han Solo. Buffy/Spike. Or Buffy/Willow. Frodo/Samwise. Professor Lupin/Professor Snape. And so on. Male/male slash is very popular, and right now Harry Potter slash is incredibly popular (don't even ask about age limits on fictional characters, because I am not going there), but the erotic pairing that I believe started it all is...

Kirk/Spock.

Or K/S as it is known by the voracious, sometimes rabid, fan base of these stories. And no, I'm not kidding. Slash has been around a long time, and there are probably thousands of stories written about Captain Kirk and his Vulcan First Officer Spock.

Technically speaking, fan fiction is not usually written for profit. You can find it for free on the web, either in Usenet groups or blogs or personal websites and libraries people put up. Simply go to Google, type in the character pairing of your choice and add the word 'slash' and you will find a veritable treasure trove of interesting stories, some rated G, some rated PG, and some even rated NC-17 (why Professor Snape, what are you doing with that wand?). Like I said, interesting stuff, and usually it's free.

However, I saw at Shore Leave that you can buy slash fiction in printed format. The printed stuff is usually spiral bound or comes in a professional looking folder, and has some interesting cover art. Some enterprising writers have even put together anthologies on certain character pairings and offered them up for sale. I didn't check what the prices were on anything I saw at the con. I was too busy gawking at the covers (like a rube - yeesh). Some of them showed rather **suggestive** poses of the characters (is that a phazer beneath your kilt, Mr. Scott, or are you getting ready to "beam me up?"). A few covers were very explicit and kept neatly tucked behind some other slash fiction so that only a tantalizing but very noticeable glimpse of the artwork showed. I swear they had just about every slash combo you could think of, from Star Trek to Stargate SG-1 to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter. In fact, I think I saw some Harry Potter/Stargate cross-over stuff. There was also 'The Sentinel' and 'Due South,' two shows that are apparently amazingly popular with slash fic writers.

And there were several tables of this stuff lined up in the main dealers' room of the convention. I kid you not. There were so many tables that I now wonder how much money was being made off of the stuff. Was it enough to make a profit, or just cover the expenses of printing and binding the books?

It's an important question to ask because it's a matter of copyright infringement to make money using someone else's copyrighted material. The theory is that if you're not making a profit off of it, most copyright holders will look the other way when you play with their stuff. But go too far and you could wind up in hot water. Just recently I found out that someone wrote a Star Wars fan fic novel that ended up on Amazon.com. The novel was published via print on demand, and while the author claims it was not intended for mass distribution, just for family and friends, the publisher listed it on Amazon, where it apparently sold enough copies to cause Lucasfilms to ask that the book be removed.

So why write fan fic, especially slash, if you're not supposed to make any money off of it? I mean really, what is the appeal? Well for starters, a lot of people write fan fic to express their enjoyment of particular books, movies, or TV series. It's like any other form of fandom. It's a means for fans to participate in something they love. It's also a way to keep a particular show, book or movie alive long after it has run its course. Say your favorite television show was recently cancelled, and now you're just dying because you were so addicted to it but you can't get your fix anymore because there are no more new episodes. Never fear. A TV show can live on indefinitely through a thriving fan fic community. And when the stories are good, it certainly beats syndicated reruns.

Another reason people write fan fic is because they're longing to see their favorite characters in situations the original writers never wrote about. I think this is especially true when it comes to the slash. What really did happen between Mulder and Scully? Did Xena ever spank Gabrielle? And what really went on between Sam and Frodo up in Minas Morgul? Let your imagination go wild. If you're a pervert, it can be especially fun.

In the end there are probably millions of reasons why people write and read fan fic. But it's getting late and I need to wrap this up, so I'm going to stop here. Next post I'll be talking about how the Powers That Be (PTB - otherwise known as mainstream media) are attempting to co-opt fan fiction for their own purposes, and what erotica writers can learn from slash fic.

Labels: Conventions And Appearances, Fandom

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Notes From Shore Leave 29: Part II - Does Slash Sell?