Let's be honest here - slash fiction is a sensitive topic at the best of times.
In literary terms, it often tends to be regarded as the embarrassing cousin whose existence you prefer never to acknowledge - until they turn up at your wedding drunk, loud and disorderly as your typical Wetherspoons bar on a Friday night at 11 pm and proceed to regale all your prissy new in-laws with the tale of how during your student days you once decided to impress a new acquaintance with your ability to fly like Superman, only you miscalculated your flight path and fell 10 feet down the nearest manhole.
Actors frequently hate it because they often feel that in some fundamental way, the characters they portrayed in the series that inspired the fanfic somehow 'belong' to them. Any differences between their views of the character's sexuality and those exhibited by the fans in the slash fiction can therefore be seen as a threat to their artistic integrity.
However, slash fiction must fulfill a vital role in fandom, otherwise there wouldn't be so much of it written across the different fandoms, nor would the actors and the fans clash so seriously over it.
I have been reading a lot of slash fiction recently because I am hoping to attend the Redemption 2011 convention in Coventry next February and am seriously considering taking part on the slash fiction panel.
Because Blake's Seven is my favourite sci-fi fan show, I feel I am best equipped to comment on the slash fiction associated with it.
Here are my basic conclusions so far:
1.) There don’t seem to be any physical descriptions of what the people who enjoy sex with the canon characters actually see/hear/taste/smell of that character’s body.
For example, in Ask Tell Pursue, the Travis in question is specifically stated by the author to be the Stephen Greif version of the character. Stephen Greif and Brian Croucher both were and still are very physically striking men – but distinctly different in appearance.
Why was the Greif version chosen for this story? No indication is given.
Very little attempt is made at describing what Travis 1’s body looks like, whether clothed or unclothed (apart from stock generic descriptions like ‘leanly muscled’.) So you get almost no indication of what it is like as a physical sexual experience for Avon to make love to this specific man.
(Incidentally, if you want an example of a key physical detail that a lover of either gender would probably notice in Travis 1’s appearance – and that doesn’t make Stephen Greif want to dive for cover with sheer, utter embarrassment – he has surprisingly long, languorous eyelashes on his remaining eye.)
I would presume the almost complete lack of physical descriptions of the characters is due to the slash stories being written specifically for people who are already great fans of this particular series. Therefore, they are assumed to be pretty conversant with all the canon characters. Any additional or subsequent descriptions are considered not to be needed, because this would suggest the reader remains ignorant of the most basic details known to all the other fans and thus does not count as a properly paid up admirer of the series at all.
Readers who still require descriptive details after this would probably be considered ignorant newbies or interloping lurkers, not proper fans.
2.) Characters are often portrayed in their most basic, archetypal version – more like a mythical figure than a three-dimensional human being.
This would tend to suggest very strongly that a major need of the readers is to turn the canon characters into figures analogous with gods and goddesses, Jungian archetypes or key characters from the great myths and legends of the world’s many cultures.
Therefore, Avon = Superman/Superlover, Servalan = Evil Bitch Glamorous Stepmother Queen, Vila = the Trickster figure etc.
Any sign of frailty or imperfection in the canon characters means that they are obviously human beings rather than gods or archetypes. All signs of everyday reality will be ruthlessly stamped on.
By the way, this may be another reason why so little specific physical description of the individual characters and their sex experiences is given. If a character in bed with Travis 1 notices the surprisingly long, languorous eyelashes on his remaining eye, for example, the obvious implication is that Travis may not be the icy-cold, evil, hard psychopath that most people take him for.
You are forced to confront the fact that he is a real man, with depths and nuances to his personality that perhaps you never suspected before. He has stopped being a mythical archetype – and we can’t have that sort of thing going on when we need our heroes and villains to get us through the night!
3.) Characters never seem to worry about the sexual consequences and emotional fall-out that the rest of us stuck here in the real world do.
So far, I don’t think I’ve come across a single B7 slash fiction story in which Servalan, Jenna, Cally or Soolin end up conceiving an unexpected baby after sleeping with Avon. Or Servalan has slept with both Avon and Tarrant during the same week, and now she is not sure who the father of her baby is, so she has to ask them both to take a DNA test.
Or Blake has to confront the fact that he may be gay or bisexual after Avon has seduced him and he has ended up having sex with another man for the first time. Or Travis catches the clap off Blake during gay sex, so he has to take himself down the Space Force Officers’ GUM clinic for treatment.
Critics will probably argue that the primary purpose of the slash story is to get yourself off in the best way possible by seeing your favourite characters getting off in the best way possible. Reality only gets in the way of pleasure.
(Though I would pay bloody good money to see the B7 soap opera in action! Who’s the father of Servalan’s baby? Tune in next week for the shocking surprise twist finale … Avon’s determined not to pay any maintenance, whatever happens. If he needs to, he’s quite prepared to stitch Tarrant up.)
4.) No-one ever has rubbish sex in any of these slash stories.
Although I must admit to finding Office Politics highly amusing and effective as a story, the sexual encounter between Servalan and Travis remains a stylised skirmish, rather than anything approaching a realistic intimate relationship.
Why doesn’t Travis refuse Servalan’s overtures? He might well not fancy her at all in real life. He might consider an affair with his boss a guaranteed form of professional suicide (quite apart from what he is already managing to arrange all on his own …). Or he might consider the time, the place or both highly inappropriate.
Even if he does still decide to go ahead, he could end up suffering erectile failure, due to nerves – or exhaustion from all his hard work chasing Blake (fnerr, fnerr etc).
Perhaps Servalan discovers he is not as well equipped as she had hoped in the trouser department and decides not to bother after all. Or maybe she plots the big seduction in great detail – then has to bail out at the last minute because it's the wrong time of the month.
Why can’t Travis just be crap in bed? Or Servalan?
Even with the best will in the world, they may just not be in the right frame of mind to experience an orgasm that day.
(Please see point 3 for the expected critical reposte to this issue too.)
5.) Sexual encounters are used as a symbolic means of establishing and exerting dominance and control over another character.
Hence Travis is symbolically ‘defeated’ and ‘punished’ through gay sex with Blake or Avon, as in One Afternoon.
[Though if Travis suffers from sensitive skin as claimed in this story, I think it unlikely that the cream he has been prescribed to combat this has been laced with a spicy scent. He might also be allergic to strong perfumes, particularly on his raw, inflamed skin. Just a minor observation, but there we go.].
Servalan has also done the same in this delightful little tale because it seemed the ‘ideal’ way of conditioning him to total unquestioning obedience of her (hee, hee, doesn’t seem to have worked very well, does it?).
6.) Sexual encounters are used as a symbolic means of a character being forced to confront their more tender, vulnerable side.
Practically EVERY Blake and Avon slash going falls under this rubric.
Avon sleeps with Servalan not only to ‘defeat’ and ‘punish’ her for her evil – but also to ‘prove’ to her that she is ‘only’ a woman.
An orgasm is regarded as the classic signal of defeat/surrender.
I must confess that I am NOT at ALL keen on either of these two tropes, as I consider them both terribly sexist and homophobic.
7.) ‘Humiliating’ sexual encounters are used as a symbolic means of demonstrating that a so-called ‘evil’ character is a dishonest hypocrite.
Hence all the innumerable tales in which Travis is gay or bisexual, but does not face up to this vital fact about himself until Blake or Avon buggers him into the most mind-bendingly ecstatic orgasms, despite himself.
In these stories, Travis always seems to slope around shagging the trade on the quiet, trying to persuade himself that he is either just engaging in a bit of men who have sex with other men in order to get himself through the dark night of the soul - or he's so pissed-up on booze that he is no longer responsible for his own decisions and actions.
You never seem to get a story in which Travis is out – and proud. But if he can take an odd sort of pride in his facial disfigurement, why not his sexual orientation too?
While we’re still on the subject, incidentally, I have not yet come across a narrative in which Blake is the one who constantly cruises for the most lurid forms of gay sex wherever and whenever he can find it. Why not? Is the great revolutionary too fine and noble for that sort of thing?
