Slash hits the big time

[ivyblossom]

I went over to visit with my sister Bee today, and she tells me, "Hey! I got my issue of Bitch, there's an article in it about slash fiction!" Suddenly our worlds are colliding. Of course the first thing she does is scout through the article looking for references to her sister, sadly not finding any. Hehehe. How I love Bee.

Fan/Tastic Voyage, by Noy Thrupkaew for Bitch Magazine.

Oddly, on Sunday I saw a short documentary on SexTV about slash fiction as well. Both this and the Bitch article were well-researched, not reactionary, not horrified or disgusted, and not trying to denigrate or mock anyone. They both used the terminology current in fandoms, and showed that the writers of the pieces were actually familiar with the concept and history of slash fandom. The Bitch article goes so far as to call slash feminist and politically important, while the documentary examined the 'queer' angle (women writing smut about men for...other women) among other things. Very interesting.

Is it just me, or is slash getting higher profile? I mean, I'd never heard of it when I found it two years ago. And when I did hear about it it was not in a positive way. Both of these sources I encountered this week were very positive. I know this is just a drop in the bucket to the kind of press attention slash has been getting recently...we have thamiris to thank for some of the more literate information getting out to the popular press. After the Bitch article, I'm wondering if we're going to see a flood of feminists come in search of us.

What they may find, though, is that slash is not the feminist mecca they were told that it is.

I wonder what all this attention means for slash fandom, really. Good/bad? I don't know. The more high profile the more we're likely to get attacked. But at the same time, the more they talk about us the more normalized it all becomes and the less drama it's going to cause, I would imagine. These two sources, at least, show slash as being more intelligent than porny, which, having seen some very very bad fics lately, I wonder about. I mean, neither of these sources mention the gigs of pure stinking drivel that exists in slash fanfiction, as well as fanfiction at all.

Possibly they were both newbies and still had that new car smell.

Comments

[taijasa.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me, and also sounds really interesting. I'd like to read that... What happens when a dissertation gets published? Does it get published anywhere that other people can read it?

[meadowman.livejournal.com]

All dissertations are held at the institution for whom they were written and should be available (via the university/college library or similar) for the public. Getting it properly published will be quite difficult, unless it could be cut down to the size of a journal article - or possibly to essay size to go into a current book as a stand-alone chapter.