Slashy goodness
Dear Scarlett,
I never even considered taking a psychology course at school, a few of my friends did but I was more interested in not actually appearing, and bunking off. I’m regretting that now though.
But why psychology? It would explain a lot about what I’m writing to you about today. Only I can’t use official terms, I’ll just rattle on about what I understand about this phenomenon called Slash.
Slash is a term that is only connected to male/male relationships. Femslash is the female version. I have never written femslash, and I’ll probably never will. So this letter is going to be about Slash in its true form.
One thing that amazes me about the slash community in any fandom is how fans can instantly see slash. One episode in, or half an hour in and there is already pairings. And the other thing is that not all fans see or agree with the pairings.
It’s a mix of believable pairings and pairings that crop up because someone decided to be different.
Slash can and will vary from fandom to fandom, and the characters will react differently and be different people in a slash setting. This is why the author must have a good grasp of characterisation as well as a small ability to research.
Two male characters are going to have an easier time hooking up in a modern day setting than in the 1940’s. That and people were wired differently back then. The concept of same sex relationships wasn’t something brought up a whole lot and was so far across the moral line that the line was a dot to it.
A good piece of slash writing incorporates the following;
You can’t have one without the other though. Having a good grasp of the male psyche doesn’t always equal a good character. Slash is invariably based on existing characters that have a back story and are already well developed. You have to have a strong understanding of that to then apply it to what you think this character would do as a man. Situational awareness is also a must, if you have a strong character that will only act in one particular way you then have to reconsider everything else to then include where the character is.
I am aware of the existence of Porn Without Plot (PWP) but that will have to be a discussion for another day.
As a comedian once said:
“There is a crisis in masculine identity at the moment. Women are totally at home with their sexuality [...] Are there any blokes in? See? There’s a term that men feel more comfortable with. Bloke, blokey, bloke, bloke. It’s a kind of friendly term [...] It doesn’t impose any unnecessary demands on us as men. ‘Bloke’, that’s just basically ‘carry stuff, don’t get in the way’. ‘Man’, that’s all kinds of other things isn’t it? That’s nobility, gallantry, wisdom... that conjures up some image of a bloke in a cardigan with a pipe saying ‘Cover up those table legs, mother, they’re inflaming my sexual ardour’.”
In a vast majority of men, they have to be a man (or to use the example above, a bloke). They have to ‘out bloke’ each other. They might not do it consciously but it’s there. Add to that the already established traits of the character and you have someone who is not going to buy another man flowers and go all gushy.
What I am trying to get at is slash is hot only when it makes sense. Having two men fighting with emotions that neither want to admit in public is more exciting to read than straight up PWP.
With slash you can’t ignore the before or the after, the fallout from two men in 1940’s war-torn Europe having a sexual encounter is going to be huge. Not only for those around them but for the characters themselves.
Good slash is not the act itself, anyone can write porn- (well, no. That again is another discussion for another day. Good porn is hard to write. You don’t want people laughing as they read it). Slash is about the characters; who they are, where they are, and when they are. Everything adds up to the overall story. You’re writing with someone else’s characters, their actions have to be what they would do otherwise you’re no longer writing about them.
I now feel I am repeating myself. Slash is as much about the characters and settings as the sex itself. Good slash doesn’t need to have sex to work. Slash can be about interactions in a number of different ways between men. What makes it hot is seeing the characters struggle with something that is normally so alien to them, finding out about it and then living with it.
Let the character be themselves, use their action and their way of doing things to write the slash. If your reader thinks “That was good but I’m having a hard time imagining that character saying ‘I love you’” Then you’ve failed. Find another way that character could say ‘I love you’.
Remember; these are two blokes that would normally only hug each other if their team scores a goal/try/run/point, are they really going to have a loving embrace to say ‘hello’?
Think about it.
“Blokey, bloke, bloke, bloke.”
Quinn xx
I never even considered taking a psychology course at school, a few of my friends did but I was more interested in not actually appearing, and bunking off. I’m regretting that now though.
But why psychology? It would explain a lot about what I’m writing to you about today. Only I can’t use official terms, I’ll just rattle on about what I understand about this phenomenon called Slash.
Slash is a term that is only connected to male/male relationships. Femslash is the female version. I have never written femslash, and I’ll probably never will. So this letter is going to be about Slash in its true form.
One thing that amazes me about the slash community in any fandom is how fans can instantly see slash. One episode in, or half an hour in and there is already pairings. And the other thing is that not all fans see or agree with the pairings.
It’s a mix of believable pairings and pairings that crop up because someone decided to be different.
Slash can and will vary from fandom to fandom, and the characters will react differently and be different people in a slash setting. This is why the author must have a good grasp of characterisation as well as a small ability to research.
Two male characters are going to have an easier time hooking up in a modern day setting than in the 1940’s. That and people were wired differently back then. The concept of same sex relationships wasn’t something brought up a whole lot and was so far across the moral line that the line was a dot to it.
A good piece of slash writing incorporates the following;
- Good characterisation
- Good understanding of the situation
- Good grasp of the male psyche.
You can’t have one without the other though. Having a good grasp of the male psyche doesn’t always equal a good character. Slash is invariably based on existing characters that have a back story and are already well developed. You have to have a strong understanding of that to then apply it to what you think this character would do as a man. Situational awareness is also a must, if you have a strong character that will only act in one particular way you then have to reconsider everything else to then include where the character is.
I am aware of the existence of Porn Without Plot (PWP) but that will have to be a discussion for another day.
As a comedian once said:
“There is a crisis in masculine identity at the moment. Women are totally at home with their sexuality [...] Are there any blokes in? See? There’s a term that men feel more comfortable with. Bloke, blokey, bloke, bloke. It’s a kind of friendly term [...] It doesn’t impose any unnecessary demands on us as men. ‘Bloke’, that’s just basically ‘carry stuff, don’t get in the way’. ‘Man’, that’s all kinds of other things isn’t it? That’s nobility, gallantry, wisdom... that conjures up some image of a bloke in a cardigan with a pipe saying ‘Cover up those table legs, mother, they’re inflaming my sexual ardour’.”
In a vast majority of men, they have to be a man (or to use the example above, a bloke). They have to ‘out bloke’ each other. They might not do it consciously but it’s there. Add to that the already established traits of the character and you have someone who is not going to buy another man flowers and go all gushy.
What I am trying to get at is slash is hot only when it makes sense. Having two men fighting with emotions that neither want to admit in public is more exciting to read than straight up PWP.
With slash you can’t ignore the before or the after, the fallout from two men in 1940’s war-torn Europe having a sexual encounter is going to be huge. Not only for those around them but for the characters themselves.
Good slash is not the act itself, anyone can write porn- (well, no. That again is another discussion for another day. Good porn is hard to write. You don’t want people laughing as they read it). Slash is about the characters; who they are, where they are, and when they are. Everything adds up to the overall story. You’re writing with someone else’s characters, their actions have to be what they would do otherwise you’re no longer writing about them.
I now feel I am repeating myself. Slash is as much about the characters and settings as the sex itself. Good slash doesn’t need to have sex to work. Slash can be about interactions in a number of different ways between men. What makes it hot is seeing the characters struggle with something that is normally so alien to them, finding out about it and then living with it.
Let the character be themselves, use their action and their way of doing things to write the slash. If your reader thinks “That was good but I’m having a hard time imagining that character saying ‘I love you’” Then you’ve failed. Find another way that character could say ‘I love you’.
Remember; these are two blokes that would normally only hug each other if their team scores a goal/try/run/point, are they really going to have a loving embrace to say ‘hello’?
Think about it.
“Blokey, bloke, bloke, bloke.”
Quinn xx