It’s slash time! Further thoughts on slash fiction

Dedicated fan(s?) of this wondrous blog of mine may have been wondering how I’ve been getting on with my researches into the topic of fan fiction.

After all, there’s a hell of a lot of it about – and it’s a while ago since I last reported back.

Fear not, slash freaks of the world!

Yes, there is plenty more B7 fiction out there.  Yes, I have continued to download and read it as best I can.

And now I have bravely hacked my way back through all the dense undergrowth of the B7 fanfic world to bring you my second exclusive (in the sense that it is written by me, rather than anyone else) report.

Here for your attention are some of my latest thoughts and conclusions.  Please be aware that they are purely my personal opinions, so do feel free to differ whenever you like.

Because the characters have already been introduced to the public arena and displayed there for the enjoyment of the audience, they are considered by the fans to have become an integral part of popular culture.  This means that they are assumed by many to be public property rather than private.

Like famous characters from myth, legend and folklore, they now exist independent of their original creators.  They belong to the fans, not the television company, the people, not the masters.    

Indeed, it is clear that many fans from many different fandoms specifically employ fan-fic as a way of removing the characters right out of the control of the production company.  As amateur writers, they are not subject to market pressures.  Therefore, they can permit themselves much more freedom and flexibility in creative and artistic terms than the canon writers.

However, certain themes, concerns and dilemmas turn up time and time again in fan and slashfic.  This would tend to suggest very strongly that these more artistically independent literary genres have now developed a complete set of conventions and tropes all of their own.

Judging by the sheer number and huge variety of B7 fanfic stories out there on the Internet and elsewhere starring Kerr Avon, the charismatic computer fraudster's huge host of adoring female fans want to BE him every bit as much as they want to have sex with him or experience what it might be like to have him fall in love with them. 

By using him as their protagonist, they get the chance to see, hear, smell, taste and feel life from Avon's unique viewpoint.  And it certainly seems to prove a heady experience.   

As a man, society positively encourages you to be clever, sarcastic, greedy, selfish, an individualist, lecherous, disagreeable, anti-social, unhelpful and the complete antithesis of a team player or a follower.  Once under Avon's skin, you will now be congratulated and admired for all these defects of character, rather than rejected and condemned, as women so often still are when they display the self-same characteristics as he does.

It turns out that Vila Restal also has his coterie of women admirers.  This is much smaller than Avon's, but every bit as enthusiastic and dedicated.

Just as with Avon, it seems that there is much to recommend life from the male point of view, rather than the female.  If you are lazy, cowardly and dishonest, but also friendly, intelligent, quirky and amusing, you might like to try on Vila's personality for size some time (see Vila Restal's E-Mails for a particularly good set of stories in this respect).  Once again, you will probably find that society at least excuses these deficiencies in you, when it doesn't go all out to admire and celebrate them.

Fancy being a tall, strutting nasty bastard with a moody temperament and severe attitude problem but great line in savage wit?  (Bad-ass eye patch, sexy tight black leather uniform and seriously cool shit-kicker boots come included, plus fully charged laseron ring to zap the buggery out of anyone who's had the temerity to piss you off in any way at all.)  Then Commander Travis is the man for you.  In his guise, you get to be as rude, aggressive, hateful, unfriendly, determined, obsessive, unhinged and unkind as you could possibly want.  Yet again, these are not qualities that our present society likes to acknowledge in the female of the species, let alone condone in any way.

Now, as a woman, I understand perfectly that even today, many members of my gender still envy the greater freedoms and possibilities open to men in our society.  I can certainly identify and sympathise with the female actors from the original version of B7 when they complained that many of the scripts were sexist, leading the women characters to often lose out in dramatic terms compared to the men.  Nor am I exempt from secretly wondering what being a man is actually like.  So I can definitely appreciate just why so many of these fanfic writers are so keen to investigate a mode of life so radically different to their everyday reality.

What does continue to puzzle me is the comparative lack of interest in exploring the female point of view.  Okay, the nascent genre of femfiction offers a very promising corrective to this tendency, but it still has quite some way to go before it manages to catch up with the massive great splurge of male-centric fan and slash fic already out there.

Admittedly there is a hell of a lot of B7 fanfic out there that I haven't managed to read yet - and more is being produced and published in many different formats all the time.  I can only offer my personal opinion based on what I have had the opportunity to examine so far. 

Bearing this continuing sexist disparity in mind, you might think that the predominantly female writers of fan, slash and gen fic might make slightly better use of their artistic freedom and independence to start redressing the balance a bit more.  Whatever your personal sexual and emotional orientation might be, Servalan is still a very strong, attractive, charismatic woman with a lifestyle to envy.  So why not try enjoying her immense power and influence for yourself?  If you agree that Jenna and Cally, Soolin and Dayna never got the chance to shine properly, why don't you provide them with the ideal opportunity to do so?

True, there are some attempts at this already out there - but still not nearly enough.

No doubt many of the deficiencies of fan and slash fiction can be blamed on the fact that 90% of its products are, to put it bluntly, not very good (just like practically every other area of human endeavour you care to name, really).  Perhaps it is slightly unfair to start pointing the finger at writers who are often inexperienced, untrained and lacking in the basic talent to ever be able to produce an artistically successful level of fiction.  With time and practice, some fan fiction writers eventually learn how to create very good stories.  A few of them then go on to work as professional writers and even end up penning completely original series and characters of their own.  However, most won't.

Those who are lacking in experience or ability, as well as those who prefer to write slash, gen or fan fic for personal reasons as opposed to purely artistic ones, may find it quicker, easier and more reassuring to cling to the safety rafts offered by the tried and tested tropes.  Not only do they offer much needed support for their literary techniques, but they also ensure that the writers keep providing the fanbase with more of what it already knows and loves.

Let's face it, Avon is the most popular choice for a protagonist purely and simply because he is by far the best-loved and admired canon character in all of Blake's Seven.  If you stick with him and make him sympathetic to the readers in some way, then you are guaranteed a large audience for your story.  And the chances are good that many of them will be inclined to like it - or at least more prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.

At the time the original series was broadcast, Servalan was both greatly loved and celebrated by many viewers and critics for being a trailblazing superbitch.  Quite why so much of this appeal has since evaporated remains unclear.  Perhaps it is because the stiletto-heeled, red-lipsticked, immensely shoulder-padded Eighties dominatrix is so completely out of keeping with our current zeitgeist.  Can you imagine the Supreme Commander judging contestants on The X Factor?  Or owning a pink mobile phone encrusted with Swarovski crystals?  Or keeping a chihuahua in her handbag?  Or doing a Britney Spears and shaving her head in public when the stress all gets too much?

Even so, you might still think that Servalan would have a lot to offer a female writer pissed off at the way that modern society treats women.  Surely there is plenty of scope there for vicarious revenge and satisfaction, not to mention savage satire.  In the realm of gen fiction, she could have an absolute field day dominating the men.  Travis would seem the most obvious choice for her sub here, but I'm sure Blake, Tarrant and Vila might all also enjoy being bossed about a bit on the quiet.  If you want to be really naughty and subversive, even Avon himself could do with putting on the frilly pink pinny and polishing her floor some time.

Judging by the way some heterosexual male fans drool as soon as Servalan's name is even mentioned, there definitely does seem to be a market out there in fandom for this sort of thing.  There must also be heterosexual female fans who swoon at the very thought of being cruelly dominated by one or other of the male characters.  So where are the stories for them all?

Possibly Avon's overwhelming popularity with the fans might be inhibiting some writers from coming up with stories that could be interpreted as portraying him in any sort of a negative light.  Though judging by all the many wild and wonderful antics he already gets up to in slash and gen, I'm sure he wouldn't hesitate to try out and enjoy both domination and submission if he got the chance.

            

When it comes to dominating women, Travis would be a complete natural.  You might even argue that this would be the logical dark and disturbing flipside to some of the episodes from the canon series itself (most notably Seek-Locate-Destroy and Hostage). 

So why don't we get to see any of this? Perhaps it is because sexual enjoyment tends to be seen as a sure sign of a character's capitulation in both slash and gen fiction.  If you can make a character experience an orgasm, then you have won a victory over them.  If a so-called 'evil' character like Servalan or Travis manages to do this, it would turn the moral basis of the entire series upside down.

[At this juncture, I do have to admit to having discovered a few stories that attempt to address some of the above issues.  There was one very amusing one from a fanzine collection [A Short Tribute To Mr Hill - from Ultra 1] in which Avon teleported into Servalan's bathroom when she was still in the tub one morning, tied her up, injected her with memory erasing serum and had his evil way with her.  After he had vanished back to the Liberator again, she screamed at Travis to come and rescue her. Travis however was so fed up with Servalan bossing him about and humiliating him in front of the other officers that he simply undid his trousers and also proceeded to have his evil way with her.  Then he just left her lying there stark titty naked in the rapidly cooling bathwater. 

[For her part, Servalan didn't seem to mind either of these gruelling experiences too much.  But just in case she did, the memory erasing serum would blot them both out forever.  This seems a shame, as I'm sure both men would be more than keen to have her remember every detail for as long as possible, whatever their respective motives may have been.

[Following a bit of a bender at the pub over the road from the Adelphi campus after a hard evening's work on the MA course, I (with the aid of my trusty mobile phone) stumbled across another tale in which Cally was gay by inclination, but was having sex with Commander Travis because he was basically raping her.  He was quite determined that she should experience an orgasm - so of course she was fighting with all her might to make sure it didn't happen.  If she was gay and he was a rapist, you might conclude that it wasn't at all likely.  But this is gen fiction, so it doesn't follow the rules of standard narratives (let alone real life).

[This was an absolute shocker of a story for so many reasons - which is why I was snorting at it in sheer horror and disbelief not only on the bus, but also in Abduls while I was waiting for my post-prandial kebab.  I'm sorry if I upset anybody as a result.  It was truly disturbing to me as a woman to read such awful stuff, so I sincerely hope that Travis hasn't got up to any more of this sort of thing anywhere else (or any of the other male characters, come to that).]       

Some critics of slash fiction believe that another of its key functions is to provide its writers with the ideal forum to engage in a bit of underhand gender bending.  Presumably, this means that when Blake and Travis end up as the submissive partners in gay sex in these B7 stories, this might be a codified way of identifying them as women rather than men [Re-Education?]. 

Now, it seems there could be two potential ways of looking at this standard literary trope in slash fiction. 

Perhaps some women writers employ it as a slightly sneaky method of examining aspects of male characters and the relationships between them that weren't really addressed in very much detail by the scriptwriters of the canon series (who, you will remember, both were - and still are, even today - almost exclusively male).  Now fair enough, I wouldn't by any means be the first B7 fan to agree that the series could have well done with just a touch more tenderness every so often, and a few less shootings and explosions. 

But it's still slightly depressing that so many of these writers seem to feel that the only way the male characters can express and explore the gentler sides of their personalities is through sex.  If this is, in any sense, an accurate depiction of real men in our contemporary society, then my sisters, there is plenty of work still to be done.

Bashing Avon over the head with a massive great brick to render him (usually) temporarily helpless, so forced to accept the tender ministrations of Blake, Tarrant or Vila, strikes me as a bit drastic, to say the least.  I am still surprised that he hasn't ended up with permanent brain damage as a result of all this hurt/comfort genre induced violence.          

In nine cases out of ten, it is this fully functioning version of Avon that forces Blake, Travis, Tarrant (or sometimes poor Vila, of all people) to accept and embrace their 'femininity'. 

Now, what I want to know is - who the hell has decided that Kerr Avon is the so-called 'right-thinking' B7 fan's accepted paradigm of an alpha male?  Why does he so often seem to have the right to decide what 'masculinity' is and isn't in the B7 universe?  Who says in these type of stories that Blake, Travis, Tarrant or Vila aren't real men in any sense?  Why can't a 'true man' be idealistic?  Or a pompous berk?  Or paranoid?  Or nasty? Or cowardly?  Or pretentious?  Or gay?  (etc etc amen … )

Why does a man have to metaphorically conquer another person, win a victory over them, in order to encourage them to come to terms with their more vulnerable side?  Because the central theme of Blake's Seven is the refusal of the individual to buckle down and accept the tyranny of the system, many fans would argue that it is particularly right and fitting that this conflict should be expressed in artistic terms through vicious struggles for dominance between the different characters.

Whatever your opinion of Avon's various partners in slash sex/relationships, his frequent insistence on forcing his own conception of masculinity upon these individuals sometimes comes across as positively fascist.   

Many fanfic, gen and slash writers reveal themselves to be confirmed 'relationshippers'.  For them, it is essential that they use their artistic freedom from the constraints of the original canon scripts to ensure that characters who remained firmly apart on screen finally get it together on the Internet or in a paper fanzine.

If the scriptwriters refused to play ball with all those lovely hot cases of steaming sexual and emotional tension, then the fans lose no time in making up the deficiencies for themselves in one way or another.

Hence in B7 fiction, Avon and Cally are often paired for love, Avon and Soolin for sex, Avon and Jenna because they are both bored and frustrated and want to piss off Blake in some respect, Jenna and Travis because it forms a bittersweet secret between two tough cookies who have both suffered a lot behind the scenes and need something to cheer them both up a bit [Death Of A Friend], Blake and Avon for sex/love/who the hell knows what else on one or both sides (delete according to personal taste and need), Servalan and Avon because she is secretly hankering to be conquered by a REAL man, Avon and Vila because it seems so bloody obvious to those who want to combine it with the taste for classic slash.

Even though Carnell is meant to probably be bisexual in the famous episode Weapon (bit of a Freudian slip for a title considered in the current context, but can't be helped!), I agree you certainly wouldn’t have got away with two of the main characters being gay or bisexual and engaging in a gay relationship with each other at the time the series was originally transmitted by the Beeb.  So the slasher and fem-shippers in particular make the very most of the opportunity that fanfiction offers them to explore types of sexual and romantic relationships that couldn't really be treated by the original series.

As the Mary Sue/Marty Stu approach is so strongly discouraged by so much of fandom, fans who want to get it on with their favourite character but either can’t or don’t want to invent an original partner to help them do it, are probably best off assuming the mantel of another canon character as a sort of avatar.

Therefore, if you are a heterosexual female fan of Avon who wants to enjoy a heterosexual relationship with him, for however long, then you need to find a female character who didn’t get it on with him in the original programme – but you think there was still something of a definite attraction or interest going on between him and her.  Your precise choice of avatar depends on what type of fantasy relationship you want with him, how long you want it for – and the sort of canon female character you either identify with or would like to emulate.

So if you fancy yourself as tough but dreamy and sensitive, you love Avon and want to capture his heart, you would probably go for Cally [as in The Secret Miracle from Ultra 1].  If you reckon yourself tough and glamorous, but pragmatic and independent-minded, you’re bored, frustrated, feel subtly rejected by Blake, consider him a pompous dickhead and need to have your brains screwed out before you explode, you would choose Jenna [as in Unholy Alliance from Ultra 1].  If you are impossibly tough, outrageously glamorous, totally selfish and eat other men for breakfast, but secretly long to be conquered and turned into a REAL woman who finally knows what true love is, then you must be Servalan [as in If You Would Have Power from Horizon 15]but how many of us are lucky enough to have a personality or real life anything like hers, let’s be honest?).