An Introduction to Slash Fiction

YAM Magazine seldom reviews books, but with the LGBT Blogathon we wanted to bring up something that some of our authors, as well as contributors, know very much about — slash fiction.

Before we dive into the topic, a small introduction about what it is and where it originates from is needed.

The YAM Magazine team has heard about slash, we just got a confession from two very ardent fans of such topic. Slash originates from the world of fanfiction via “shippings,” so we are about to give you a 101 on all three topics.

Bear with us because this is, after all, a form of literature. Just ask Julyssa, she is our literature expert here and she will battle with you what literature is and isn’t. According to her, although a sub-culture and not to be compared to canon fiction, fanfiction is literature.

Fanfiction 101

Fanfiction is, as its name implies, fiction written by fans. Fiction meaning stories, novels, short stories written by fans of a certain fandom — a sub-culture/community of people that share one certain interest — where they use the characters or people of said fandom to create new stories.

Here we say characters or people because certain fandoms are for fictional characters only, such as Harry Potter or anime/manga characters, or a fandom could refer to a musical band/group, actor/actress, movie or tv-drama series. Although the movies and tv-drama shows are also fictional characters, the actors are pretty much real people, and you tend to write with their faces as the template.

Fanfiction is so popular and far-fetched that fans write about everything. From how Brad and Angelina fell in love, to Jack Sparrow being secretly in love with Will, to how Harry in reality really loved Hermione, how Kirk and Spock did the nasty… We could go on forever.

If there are fans of a certain thing, then you can bet that said fans will write fanfiction about the things they love. Often, fanfictions tend to be an extension of a story, or a development. Fans write because they want what they want to happen in these fantasy worlds they indulge in. If fans don’t get the happy ending they want, then they can write a fanfiction and get the ending they truly want.

What we have noticed is that fanfiction, for the most part, tends to be of a romantic character. Fans seems to really love to pair up certain characters with each other. When pairings start to occur, then we have the next term we need to introduce: