SlashLit: When Geeks Get Sexy

By Kate Mercier, Fabula. Posted August 1, 2000.

I had the fortune/misfortune in high school to be half-geek/half-popular. Where I'm from, it's the popular kids who are sexy (read: "sexual," but I didn't know that then) and the geeks who are, well, gamers. That is, while the cool kids were out drinking and fighting and having sex, the geeks were taking part in role-playing games and reading Anne Rice/Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy/graphic novels. Which is not to say that these "geeks" weren't also drinking and fighting and having sex, they were just doing all that stuff while engaging in a rich fantasy life, and when time permitted, academic studies. These are the people who created and populated the world of "Slash," or "/": a subculture of fan fiction, or "Fan Fic" -- stories written by fans.

For those of you who have extensively browsed the Internet but somehow missed this genre, it's a subculture of its own. You might even have seen it and not known what you were looking at. It's both geeky and sexy, and sometimes very smart, and more than occasionally X-rated. "Slash" was derived from the slash mark used in referring to a story involving two characters -- like "Kirk/Spock" -- and is usually subdivided into sections according to the characters that are involved. Slash is written with characters from well-known network televison shows or movies that already have a cult following -- ranging from the notoriously fanatical and geeky tribes of Star Trek (all offshoots, all eras) to the conspiracy-touting "X-philes" (as they often refer to themselves) to culty, dykey Xena, to the shiny, wholesome Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- and everything in between. I've seen slash for the Cure, Smokey and the Bandit, The Lone Ranger, Laverne and Shirley, the Backstreet Boys, The Odd Couple, and the long-canceled Saturday-morning cartoon, The Real Ghostbusters.

Slash stories are, by definition, gay, which is to say they all feature a romantic or sexual relationship between two characters of the same sex. Although I'm sure there are exceptions I'm unaware of, these couples are rarely, if ever, coupled romantically, or even favorably on the actual show or movies themselves, so their interactions are wholly invented by the writer. If the stories are about a het couple, they fall into the Fan Fic category. For example, Mulder/Scully Romance (referred to as MSR -- these fans like to abbreviate everything!). There are hundreds of stories about Mulder and Scully getting it on in their own terse, dramatic way, sometimes with Scully as dominatrix. But not in Slash. In Slash fiction, you might read about Scully and Xena the Warrior Princess devouring each other hungrily, in a story-type known as "crossover" slash (which spans shows, networks, and decades). A hugely popular archive of stories involves the psychologically dependent Mulder/Krycek Romance, which, like some Slash, incorporates one of the characters getting hurt (emotionally, physically, sexually) while the other offers comfort. Another common theme is sex as a method of revenge, or as gratification with ulterior motives. Did I mention that Slash is written almost exclusively by women?

This genre takes itself VERY seriously. An offshoot of Fan Fic, it's kind of the Trashy/Queer Romance Novel Quadrant of the Geek Fiction Galaxy. There are hundreds and hundreds of Web sites with full-to-bursting archives of stories that are often illustrated, rated, and categorized for your reading pleasure. There are well-known authors, published fanzines, conventions, newsgroups, and chat rooms. There is a story for every kink, a fable for every double entendre uttered on the real show, and several endings for every cliff hanger.

Some Slash goes completely over the top, like this Mulder/Skinner/ Krycek polyamorous novel by Jo B. Here is a love scene from Book 4 of a series that seems to have culminated in Mulder's pregnancy:

"They made their way down the steps and out onto the veranda. Mulder stretched and turned, enjoying the feel of the hot, afternoon sun on his wet flesh.

"Walter stood silently watching him. Admiring the well-toned body from the perfect round buttocks to the long legs capped by well-proportioned feet. The dusky-rose nipples looked darker today and stood out more pronounced against the tan flesh of Fox's chest. Delicious. Walter was longing to take them into his mouth and bring his lover to orgasm just by the sensation of his lips and teeth sucking and teasing those perfect nubs. Fox had no obvious tan lines, Walter smiled at that, watching Fox turn once more in the bright sunlight with his eyes closed and his face tilted up toward the sun. Fox and Alex both preferred sunbathing in the nude. Neither man had any shame over displaying their bodies openly on the private portion of beach they shared with their friends. He only hoped that Fox wouldn't start becoming self-conscious about his appearance, as his body started to show his pregnancy more and more. Even the slight swell of Fox's belly didn't diminish his overall beauty; it only made him more erotic looking in Walter's eyes. Walter finally rested his eyes on Fox's erect cock, standing proud against the tanned flesh of his belly.

"'Are you just going to stand there staring all day?' Mulder's voice teased."

Why are the overwhelming majority of Slash writers women? And why are they writing stories about gay men? Certainly not because sci-fi and fantasy geeks are only female. Unless all of these apparently women writers are gay men, using feminine noms de plume, I think the answer lies in the complexity of the relationship between the characters. Porn may exist for the beautiful, singular purpose of getting people off, but clearly every brain needs a different buildup in order to get off. Maybe it's a chance for these fans/writers to step completely out of the bounds of their "normal" heterosexual lives and into one that subverts the formula of aggressive male/passive female, recognizable in most television writing. Or perhaps it's just a way for fans to "play" with their favorite characters in roles that haven't had the life sucked out of them by mass media.

Plus, although the best lines in most television/motion pictures are given to men, in my opinion, those same characters are often stilted in their emotional/sexual expression. Not in Slash. These writers have imagined a passionate, complex world where men relate to each other in a much deeper way than just juggling around who has control of the "Bridge."

Kate Mercier thinks it's better to be "a nerd who is secretly popular" than "popular, but secretly a nerd." She can be reached at k8_mercier@yahoo.com.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »