derridian | Random post is random (Reply)

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost five and a half years since I got a LiveJournal account, which means it's about seven or eight years since I discovered slash fiction (having already come up with the concept of wanting my male characters to be romantically interested in other male characters of my choice on my own).

I don't post much. There are excellent reasons for this, one of which is that I like to not feel obliged to interact with people, which is easier when one lurks. But I have been thinking about doing a post for awhile, and tonight there's been a confluence of reading a certain conversation in someone else's journal and randomly re-reading emails from 2006 that has given me the push to do it.

So this post is about my fannishness and how it has changed over the years, which is something I've never really talked much about.

My first slash stirrings, I seem to recall, was during The X Files when there were some intense scenes between Mulder and Krycek and I really, really wanted them to kiss. I don't think I thought much about my reaction at the time. I've always been a little odd, and my friends expect that of me, so that wasn't particularly strange behaviour. Also, bisexual, so. Anyway, that's the only memory I have of my tendency to slash before I got to Stargate and the massive Jack/Daniel thing. This is where I fell into fandom and I fell hard. Funnily enough, I'd watched a lot of odd episodes of Stargate out of order on reruns and had kinda got into it but wasn't religious about watching for a couple of years before I started watching semi-regularly in Season 5 and then religiously, ironically, in Season 6. It was the human-form replicator episode that actually tipped me over, for some reason, into intense fannishness. And made me google Jack and Daniel slash. I don't even know how I knew that the term for what I was looking for was slash - some form of osmosis I presume. I fell down a rabbit hole that I didn't even look up to see daylight from for about four years. I spent from four to eight hours almost every night reading slash fiction or finding websites where fans talked about the show, the pairing, the squee. This was before I'd even heard of LiveJournal and there was a Jackslashdaniel website with forum for me to read. It was also when Area52 had maybe 4,000 stories on it which seemed like a lot at the time but probably only took me a few months to work my way through.

I was exclusive to my OTP for four years, which is probably a long time in fandom. I didn't read any other pairing or universe and had no interest in doing so, and I didn't particularly watch other t.v. shows with slash goggles on. I started writing fic of my own but never got around to finishing much which is a bit unfortunate because some of my story ideas I was really in love with. But writing for me is a completely fun thing and the instant I try to push it it dries up. I did feel bad for a long time there about not being able to give back to fandom because it has given me so much, but I participate as I can and I'm happy to accept that as it is now.

The big change came for me when I moved house (from the country back to the city) and therefore lost access to the Stargate DVDs a friend had been sharing with me. In retrospect it was a good thing, because it allowed me to back off from my obsession slightly, and eventually I started exploring different fandoms. Partly abetted by my housemate who kept foisting things like Torchwood and Merlin on me because they were so slashy (she doesn't read slash but is entertained by my love of it and will watch shows with an eye to the slash aspect). I also, weirdly, get really into slash for shows I didn't watch much of. I only managed about a season and a half of SGA before I found it completely unwatchable, but I will read John/Rodney any day of the week. I' ve read Sentinel in crossovers and really loved the characters even though I've never seen an episode. Interestingly, I seem to go the major pairings: Jack/Ianto; Merlin/Arthur; Brad/Nate (Generation Kill); Steve/Danno (H50); Sherlock/Watson. I don't know why that is. I also don't usually want to get as involved again as I did with SG1/Jack/Daniel. A lot of these are pairings I'll read randomly when I'm in the mood, though I do vaguely poke around H50 fandom as it's current, just to get a feel for other people's reactions to episodes. The exception to this is Generation Kill which I fell heavily in love with for about six months, obsessively rewatching the series and actually interacting in the fandom.

Recently I've discovered something that's kinda like slash come to life, which is gay storylines on German soap operas. I've been watching these obsessively for the last couple of months, starting with Verbotene Liebe and moving on to Alles Was Zahlt. It is so cool to see gay romance played out onscreen in something that is for the general market. These are soap operas that are screened at 7p.m. in Germany, not tucked away late at night where "normal" people wont see them. And the characters are treated almost exactly like any of the other characters on the shows (I say almost because there is some difference in how the gay sex scenes are handled; but there is lots and lots of kissing which is very satisfying).

So, that's my slash journey. I've skipped a massive amount about how fandom has expanded my education in gender and race issues; how lovely it is to be able to sit around reading intelligent people discussing things intelligently; how I"ve used slash as a way of looking at my own ideas of romance and relationships; and a whole lot of other small and large ways it has impacted on my life, entertained me and made me think.

And that is the longest journal entry I've ever, ever done. I could have read a couple of slash stories in the time it took me to do this. I don't know why I've written this but then I don't know that I really understand the motivation for telling things to the internet at large. But an impulse took hold and I'm trying to follow them from time to time.