caffeine diary

That's not wrong.

And if 50 people a day — can you imagine? 50 people a day! — call it boyslash, friends, they may think it's a movement.

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wisdomeagle

And now all I can think of is the biggest, baddest father-raper of them all...

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It also puts your post icon in a whole new perspective, too.

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wisdomeagle

I'm not sure if I'm supporting boys fucking, non-sexist fic terminology, or father-raping, but whatever it is, I'm all for it!

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wisdomeagle

And I realized I misread your comment. ::Facepalms::

But re: post icon - I'm thinking it might need a quick and dirty edit in paint. *g*

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You know, I wasn't even thinking about the femslash part. I was busy hung up on the "mother-stabbing" part.

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invisionary.livejournal.com

But femslash sounds cooler than slash.

Don't believe me? Say them both out loud!

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wisdomeagle

*tries it!* But now I just want to write stuff!

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gloss

I'd be all over that. OR! We could it call it breastfic. *g*

I like the term girlslash, though. A lot more than fem(me)slash.

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I was thinking of commenting that the term "femslash" is problematic because so many people (mis)spell it "femmeslash," but I'm intrigued by your preference for the term "girlslash." It mirrors "boyslash" nicely, but I would think that a lot of people would find it problematic due to the connotations of the world "girl."

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gloss

It mirrors "boyslash" nicely, but I would think that a lot of people would find it problematic due to the connotations of the world "girl."
*nodnod* It's problematic even in my own mind, because what I like about the term boyslash is that it's kind of dismissive of fandom's (over)emphasis on male characters and masculinities. So my liking girlslash is complicated; I can assure you until I'm blue in the face that I just like it for the symmetry you point out, but as a label....Yes, it is problematic.

I just *loathe* the alternatives. Femslash sounds awkwardly pretentious and plain weird (though its misspelling gave rise to possibly my favorite meta post *ever*, about how the term marginalizes butches *g*), and saffic is far too cutesy for me.

Clearly the best option is to go with Ari's original suggestion, reserve slash for the HGoGA and specify with boyslash. Or mascuslash?

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what I like about the term boyslash is that it's kind of dismissive of fandom's (over)emphasis on male characters and masculinities. So my liking girlslash is complicated

Interesting. I could definitely see the appeal of using both terms as playfully dismissive of the emphasis on sex/pairing fic, but for me it would be used equally for both. (And a neutral term for boyslash could be "maleslash.")

I've never had any problem with the term "femslash" (aside from the "femmeslash" issue) but hey, a friend of mine doesn't wanna identify as "queer" 'cause he doesn't like q words, so whatever milks your gurnsey -- or, ya know, doesn't.

One thing I was also thinking about this post was "Why do we even need these terms?" I mean, in what context do we ever actually need to use them? "Slash" as a verb is neutral (and I sometimes say that I queer/sexualize everything, because that is both comprehensible to nonfannish folk and also honestly more accurate for how I interact with the world -- not just fandom). I guess if you were categorizing fics/recs on a site? I'm honestly trying to think now of when these terms are actually needed. (I'm sure when someone tells me I'll facepalm at the obviousness.)

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wisdomeagle

"Why do we even need these terms?" I mean, in what context do we ever actually need to use them?

smashsc get into this a bit down-thread; thus far I've pretty much gone the community-solidarity argument... but I think categorizing fics/recs on a site is one valid time... also ficathons, which are a huge part of the fannish experience, and LJ comms and Yahoo! lists.

I generally get torn in these discussions because on the one hand I myself am all for the multifannish multipairing freewheeling crack-mobile all the time, but at the same time, I know there are many people who are very much here for just one genre - there are boyslash fans who go from fandom to fandom with an OTP in each and that's what they read and write and they discuss often with likeminded fen and don't hate on the girlslash so much as just not care about it. So, the self-identity of boyslasher, and why it's important to me that I'm both a girlslasher and a boyslasher (and I think there's a difference between how I queer boys and how I queer girls, something along the lines of how girlslash is more about projection and boyslash more about subtext, but that's neither here nor there.)

But to go back to your original question... I can think of many places in meta discussion where I feel it's appropriate to clarify my fannish experience - like, in a discussion of writing sex scenes, say, I'd bring up that I've written z explicit girlslash fics and z-3 explicit het fics and 0 explicit boyslash fics in the past year and that would change the perspective I bring to the discussion.

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viciouswishes mentioned m/m and f/f downthread, and when I saw that I felt kinda like, "Oh, of course I should have remembered that." I would think in, say, the meta discussion, just using m/m or m/f or f/f to describe one's ficcish experience would suffice quite well.

The idea of self-identifying as a specific kind of slasher makes sense to me. Though it is so not how I operate (as I said in my comment to gloss). Interesting about the difference between how you slash men and how you slash women 'cause that's so not true for me. *decides against long explanation/list of how I queer/sex things*

I've been enjoying your headers recently (which I independently surmised came out of the fic-being-about-pairings discussions). As per so often, I think actual explanations (or in this case, I suppose "descriptions" would be a more accurate term) so much better than easy shorthand.

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wisdomeagle

I worry about my own usage of girl for all female people from babyhood to grandmotherhood, especially since I'm far less likely to talk about older male people as boys... since BtVSAtSFF is my primary fandom these days, I really do think of the characters as boys and girls, but in something like SG, I think of them as men and women and using boyslash to refer to Jack/Daniel (frex) seems if not incorrect at least kind of silly -- but I agree with gloss's points below on "girlslash" and "boyslash" (though I don't mind "femslash".)

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wisdomeagle

Breastfic and its m/m companion cockfic? Or dickfic? :p

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leavethesky.livejournal.com

*<3s you and considers changing the name of LJ in support of the movement*

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wisdomeagle

Yay! <3

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If I were the sort, I'd be standing in the background chanting, "do it!" and offering large quantities of alcohol to tempt you.

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jenish.livejournal.com

I'm with you on this one :D

Hi! I am a (fairly) random person who got here via

su_herald and has decided to read your fic because BtVS! Firefly! BSC! Also, I read your post (http://wisdomeagle.livejournal.com/647058.html) about Matilda/Miss Honey (movieverse) and you are the first person ever to put into words what I wanted to say about that. (I'm a slow reader, so, it might take me a while to thoroughly spam your inbox with feedback.)

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wisdomeagle

Hi there!

Welcome to the flist, and I hope you enjoy all the crack. (Yay! Feedback! *awaits!*)

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viciouswishes.livejournal.com

I like f/f slash and m/m slash. It equalizes it, you know.

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wisdomeagle

It works. :)

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Yeah, f/f and m/m (one doesn't even need to say slash) seem a nice simple way to do it.

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smashsc.livejournal.com

(sorry if this gets a little ranty but this is a bit of an issue for me and I think/hope your LJ is a place we can actual have this discussion w/o it turning into wank)
I know categories are useful. I <3 organization. But why do we have to call it anything? I really love the way you do your fic headers by listing the main characters and whether they have sex (or want to). The reader knows the gender of the characters and can define the sex act as what ever term floats her/his boat. I know I'm in the minority on this one but I really don't like that the sex in fandom is always so gendered. I mean, obviously, there are body parts involved that are different depending on where someone falls on the gender continuum but shouldn't the prior knowledge of the characters be enough to set that up? Faith/Joyce, for example girl parts on both sides. But gender (and sex) just isn't always that binary. If I ruled the internet it wouldn't be about slash or het or boyslash or girlsex or threesome sex or whatever. It'd just be, you know, characters having sex (or not).

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wisdomeagle

I really love the way you do your fic headers by listing the main characters and whether they have sex (or want to).

Yay omg! That's a new thing as a result of recent discussion about how pairing isn't the point in some fic - it usually is in my fic, but that's another point altogether - and so yep, new thing. I keep changing my header format to try to please everyone!

I know I'm in the minority on this one but I really don't like that the sex in fandom is always so gendered. I mean, obviously, there are body parts involved that are different depending on where someone falls on the gender continuum but shouldn't the prior knowledge of the characters be enough to set that up? Faith/Joyce, for example girl parts on both sides. But gender (and sex) just isn't always that binary. If I ruled the internet it wouldn't be about slash or het or boyslash or girlsex or threesome sex or whatever. It'd just be, you know, characters having sex (or not).

That's a really good point. And you know, I don't think of myself as a slash fan or a het fan or a boyslash fan; I'm a fan of ship because I'm a fan of romance and sex and emotional relationships and I'm also a fan of queerness and queer narratives, but yeah, with the loving of all of them. But there are lots of people who are particular fans of one or another and I do like the sense of community (for instance) among girlslashers (

femslash_minis,

femslash06, and other favorite playgrounds) and am sure that the boyslashers who play in dS and 'Lantis and Supernatural all enjoy their sense of community too. Which is not disagreeing with your point! Just suggesting one of the reasons for me it's important to ID as a (girl)slasher.

But gender (and sex) just isn't always that binary

Which is totally true. But Illyria aside (and my Illyria is not gendered in Its own head, ever), most of the characters I write have pretty b+w gender identities. (Though Illyria raises another issue dear to my heart since It often gets tossed into femslash ficathons, which is cool but limiting in some senses.)

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smashsc.livejournal.com

I'm a fan of ship because I'm a fan of romance and sex and emotional relationships

So much word.

I'm also a fan of queerness and queer narratives

Oh yes, me too. But I think the gendering (boyslash, girlslash, het, whatever) normalizes the queerness in some way. Becuase a story that is "Faith, strapon, Wes" (and if that doesn't exist then it needs to) is technically het but is much more queer (in a way) that the teenage lesbians in love of South of Nowhere (not that I don't love SoN, I do). Or, for another example, last week on The L Word the character in my icon *points to the hotness* (the character is a born female who just started taking T last episode) had on a strapon and topped Alan Cumming's character. The consensus in my house was that the scene was the queerest scene ever on the show and yet, if it was a fic, it'd be het. Something just isn't right about that.

I do agree with your point that labeling things helps build community and helps likemindeds find each other and that is a very good thing. But those labels that help the likemindeds force gender as the defining feature in ways that make me uncomfortable and feel like I don't really fit in fandom sometimes. And I don't think I'm the only one but I don't know because, how would I? (It's a small thing most of the time and it doesn't bother me that much but it does annoy on occasion.)

w/r/t Illyria I think you are right on there and the frequency with which the character gets coded as female in fic really highlights the points about how often fandom sees gender as a binary thing. Illyria is an excellent example.

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wisdomeagle

Oooh, thank you for the concrete examples. And I've just realized how the perennial question "Is Tara/Giles slash?" fits into this... I've always used slash and its modified forms in a strictly literal sense - boybits=boyslash, girlbits=girlslash, little bit of both = het, and used extra-canonical to mean what the Buffyverse fandom sometimes calls unconventional. But it hadn't really occured to me how the idea of going-against-canon-sexual-orientation (which sometimes people think of as one of the defining characteristics of slash) is itself a thing, with definite characteristics and implications of its own (and for me, the ultimate queer narrative is self-discovery, hence my love of stories that play with that theme regardless of the genders of the characters involved.)

But those labels that help the likemindeds force gender as the defining feature in ways that make me uncomfortable and feel like I don't really fit in fandom sometimes. And I don't think I'm the only one but I don't know because, how would I? (It's a small thing most of the time and it doesn't bother me that much but it does annoy on occasion.)

Nope, I totally understand and can see where you're coming from.

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I almost want to write Tara/Larry. Or Tara/Sctt Hope. Or . . . hmmm. Are there really only two canonically gay male characters in the entire Buffyverse?

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wisdomeagle

Andrew!

I totally at one time had Tara/Andrew ~~plotted~~ um, conceived of, so I could use the tagline, "the queerest het that ever was gay" or something along those line.

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The first time I watched season 7, I read Andrew as straight. The second time I wondered how I could have possibly missed the subtext--but if there's strictly speaking canon evidence for anything, it's het Andrew. (And in terms of subtext, Andrew's bi.)

The only time I can think of I've written Andrew in a relationship, it was het (but there were special constrictions that 'thon fic were written for that really required it).

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wisdomeagle

"He's so cool... and the girl's hot too."

The first time I watched Firefly, I didn't see Mal/Inara, but that doesn't mean it's not, er, there.

It took me awhile to remember where there was support for het!Andrew and then remembered tGiQ. Oh yeah. Let's not get into that right now eh.

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Well, Inara's feelings for Mal a) provide explanation for actions which are otherwise incomprehensible, and b) draw on (heterosexist) conventions which are cinematic, i.e. the agreed-upon language for conveying information in film. Andrew's gayness, on the other hand, is based mainly on its equivalence with cultural stereotypes which exist outside of the text.

Ignoring Andrew's canonical relationships, he still has het subtext at various moments in canon--Anya and Fred jump to mind most quickly.

And subtext is a tricky thing, and not something I'd let override other canonical factors; cf. the "Is Willow Bi?" discussion.

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wisdomeagle

Andrew's gayness, on the other hand, is based mainly on its equivalence with cultural stereotypes which exist outside of the text.

As I've pointed out before, I think Andrew's crushes on malepeople are pretty nearly textual, e.g.:

+"He never really loved -- hanging out with us."
+Andrew watching the video he recorded of Anya/Xander talking about their relationship and taking Anya's role (by whispering her lines along with her) wrt Xander.
+As referenced above, "He's so cool... the girl's hot too."

It's not the case that I think Andrew's gay because of his mannerisms or compliance with stereotypes. I think he's gay because of his obvious strong emotional and apparently romantic attachments to male people he encounters and v. poorly disguised sexual interest in them (the girl's hot too).

And I don't see how Andrew's arc can make as much coherent emotional sense if he doesn't have stronger feelings for Warren than friendship.

I don't see how heterosexist cinematic conventions are any more textual than heterosexist cultural stereotypes, which are also part of the lens w/ which people view film.

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I'm arguing that cinbematic conventions are more textual because they don't have any existence outside of how we interpret the text--we (well, we do, because we have our goggles on, but most people) don't assume of two "real" people that they want to sleep together just because they bicker.

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