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So, the most recent Bitch has an article on the culture of fanfic, “Fan/tastic Voyage,” by Noy Thrupkaew, which, as usual, has a heavy emphasis on the slash aspects. Though it’s a good article, and exactly the type of cultural phenomenon that Bitch covers, I was a bit surprised to see it. I mean, I had just assumed they would have touched upon this topic already (no, I haven’t read every issue).

It just all seems old hat to me. Though long part of fan and geek culture, I hardly was in the thick of it—yet I knew of slash fanfic for over ten years now. I mean, Becca’s journal directed me to a Globe and Mail article several months ago about slash fiction entitled “If Frodo Loved Bilbo” (though, really, shouldn’t it be If Samwise Loved Frodo…?). And there is a very good book about fanfic that was put out in the mid-90s called Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins that I read a long many years ago, which I was a bit disappointed that Thrupkaew didn’t even mention in her article.

Not that the whole thing isn’t still worth discussing, I just want articles that aren’t mostly “hey, look at what people are doing!” I know that there has been a huge boom of slash fiction with the widespread use of the internet—but even that was a few years ago. Still, I found the Bitch article interesting enough. Thrupkaew took a nice approach in trying to understand the appeal of writing slash by speculating on what type she would write.

Thrupkaew also got at what I believe is the appeal for hot man-on-man action for some women: not the fact it’s safe to fantasise about men or that male sexual desire is the dominant paradigm, but that it is an erotic experience women can’t experience firsthand, and so there is large appeal to explore on the dynamic. I would even go further to say that if you primarily like boys in your bed, than why not two for the price of one? And, as she points out, there is the fact that the most developed characters on any given TV show tend to be male, that’s it’s rare to find one, let alone two fully realized female characters to admire and latch on to. Notable exceptions being the Joss Whedon family (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and to some extant other SciFi shows such as Farscape and Star Trek: DS9. And, of course, there is Xena and La Femme Nikita.

Though not a huge follower, I like slash and fanfic, or, as I really haven’t read that much, I like the fact that it exists. I think it makes perfect sense and really the creators of these shows (and book and comics) should be flattered and pleased that people are doing this. It means they suceeded, that their stories have gotten under their audience’s skin and are part of their personal mythos, if only for a little while. Heck, my friends and I will do this in a mild way when discussing a show we all watch—not go as far as plotting whole scenarios, but musing on a characters motivation, their next possible action, how they interact with the other characters and so on.

It’s not unusual for me to graze slash sites. Like I said I’m not a big reader of the stuff; I’ve probably only read about ten all the way through—and a couple were actually well-written, with appealing scenarios. But I am endlessly fascinated by the pairings people come up with and the devices they use to orchestrate their bed romps. My favorite actual fanfic pairing is Joxer/Ares, God of War. My favorite speculative pair is Statler/Waldorf—you know, the hecklers from the Muppet Show. I know David Chess has gotten searches for Jellicle Cat Slash—which just boggles the mind. And then there are the places I just don’t wanna go—like Bill Gates/Steve Jobs.

Probably the most wretched turn fanfic can take is the “Mary Sue” syndrome, something that Thrupkaew does touch upon. This is when the writer none-too-subtly interjects her- or himself as a character in the story they write, usually as a powerful peer of the main hero. Mary Sue is actually a fairly recent term for me (though Kip swears it was mentioned in Textual Poachers. I knew of the concept, though, and it always makes me squirm in pitying embarrassment. I just knew them as twinks, or practioners of tiny sex.

I first encountered the term Mary Sue in Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s blog, Making Light, in the entry “Marching Mary Sues” (everything is better when it’s marching, even moreso when it’s a calvacade) It’s a great entry—beyond directing me to the MaggieFic’s Handy-Dandy Mary Sue Generator, it has one of my favorite lines ever: “If this power could be used for good, it wouldn’t be this power.” It also references the comment section of an earlier post that not only supplies one with the search phrases to turn up gobs of fan fic, but has a hysterical account of a Mary Sue at Hogwart’s.

I found the Mary Sue Generator fun, though I did misunderstand the intent at first; I just charged right in without reading the instructions. There are attributes and then blank word fields—I thought one entered the various attributes and then a little story would be genrated—a limited one, like Mad-Libs or They Fight Crime. But you actually just generate the attributes of your Mary Sue, which is actually entertaining enough—especially since I could get results very close to what I first hand-entered: Emerald eyes, raven tresses, an intrguing scar as opposed to a clever scar, though the closest I could get to “empathy out the ying-yang” was plain “empathy.” I have to say I didn’t know “Heiress” was an occupation and I was amused by the newly revealed relationship to a major character “Madame Hooch‘s Shady Ex-Lover”—but I actually decided to go with “Han Solo’s Catholic School Classmate.”