Sun My Beloved. ❤️

Went to a panel about slash fanfic at a con. Moderator said, "Welcome to the panel about erotica." The words "slash" and "erotica" were used interchangeably throughout. Panel was great.

There was a Q&A at the end so I raised my hand and said these terms seemed conflated. Moderator explained she'd run this panel for 10 years and it started out being about slash but drifted into erotica and she never changed the name. (She also said she was glad I brought it up and would keep it in mind for the future of the panel.) The guy on the panel who writes original m/f erotica said that slash and what he writes are basically the same thing. I said I had no complaints about the name of the panel or the panelists, I was just curious about what slash meant to them, and whether slash by necessity had to include sex scenes to be considered slash.

Two panelists answered that slash was romance between men but usually had sex. Eventually one of them did make clear that slash didn't have to have sex but that it was what they wanted to read. Another panelist said that to them slash really just meant dude romance but people wouldn't read their fic unless there was sex so they felt they had to put sex scenes in.

Person came up to me after the panel. Said they felt I didn't get my question answered. Then they explained that since the 70s, 'slash' has been used to mean m slash m romance, meaning explicit and sexual. Then they said it sounded like what I wanted to ask about was shipping. They explained to me that shipping is just wanting the characters to be together but slash meant sex. They explained that since the invention of AO3, people had begun to use the ampersand to mean the fic had two characters who were friends and that the slash was used to denote ships, but even though that punctuation just meant romance, the word "slash" in the last twenty years had become synonymous with explicit fic. I explained I had been in fandom longer than twenty years and this was not necessarily my experience. They said, "Bye!"

Though they seemed confused as to whether what they personally defined as slash had been mainstream since the 70s or since the last twenty years (the person was 24), they were well-meaning. The panel was great. I'd recommend it to anyone, though I'm not stating the name of the con here because I don't want anyone involved to feel this is really a critique of the panel itself. The moderator in particular was superb.

I think that this conversation just brought up a whole lot of feelings for me. I think it bothers me that people still think that all fanfic is smutty, that all slash requires porn, and that all fic must have porn in order to be read. I am familiar with this conflation and feel perfectly fine going to a panel that I think is about slash fic and finding out it's about erotic lit, some of which is fanfic. After all, I like both, and I recognize that fandom mushes these things together and teasing them out into separate strands isn't something everyone--or possibly even most fans--have any interest in. I recognize that I am pedantic to a degree that most people find uninteresting.

I have a little bit more of a problem with the idea that slash is "basically the same" as het, but this was said by only one of the panelists. If your panel is actually about straight up erotica and not slash, then the problem is just the name of the panel.

What I found the most frustrating, however, is that whenever I have this conversation, I feel like the default assumption most of my interlocutors begin AND end with is this: smut is why we're here. And I just don't understand that. Away Childish Things has 44,800 kudos, and it has no smut in it. My next most kudosed fic has almost 15,000 kudos and tons of smut. My next most kudosed fic has almost 14,000 kudos and it doesn't even have a kiss.

I'm not talking about kudos to show off how many I have, or because I think kudos make a point about quality of a fic. They have nothing to do with quality. But they do have to do with popularity, and the truth is, sex doesn't sell. It's something else. It's not good writing. It's not a great plot. It's not in-character characterization. IT'S SOMETHING ELSE. What is it?

I've had people say to me, "Well, you're lettered; it works differently for you." DOES IT??? Maybe they meant that because enough people know me as fic author, people will read my fic anyway, but let me tell you, it's always been this way for me, long before my fic was really popular. The ones with smut did not get more praise and attention. The ones that PEOPLE LIKED got more praise and attention. Do people like fic that has smut in it more than fic without smut? Some of the time! Does there have to be smut for people to like it? NO.

Have I had people tell me they didn't want to read something I wrote because it didn't have smut? YES. But the point I'm trying to make is, there are people who want to read fic that doesn't have smut in it. THEY are your audience for the fic you want to write that doesn't have smut in it. Fic does not have to have smut to be fic; it doesn't have to have smut to be read.

I think part of the reason I get so upset about it is that slash as we know it today didn't just emerge because some people weren't getting to read smut and they wanted to. It emerged because women and queer people and other marginalized communities were not getting to see what they wanted to in mainstream media. They weren't getting sex scenes, but they also weren't getting queer content, they weren't getting stories about sensitive men that defied patriarchal stereotypes of male toxicity; they weren't getting stories about disabled folks and people of color and folks who are into kink and folks who have different lifestyles. To reduce fanfic to porn is to remove the rich history of why it exists and who it exists for.

I asked earlier what makes a fic popular, and to me, it's exactly this. It's when you read a thing and you feel, "this is really satisfying to my id in a way that I am not getting from mainstream media." And sometimes what is satisfying to your id is very horny anal sex. Other times what is satisfying to your id is Bucky Barnes getting a blanket and facing his trauma. Sometimes it's Harry Potter being trans. Sometimes it's Naruto and Sasuke getting to just hold hands as the sun sets. I have no idea who those two people are but boy howdy do I know they just fucking need to hold hands.

But the other reason I get so upset about it is I'm so fucking tired of reading a great fic that devolves into mediocre mechanical porn that is there due to the collective brainwashing that states that this is the ONLY reason ALL of us are here.

Discuss.

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

Day 23 of the HPRecFest Part 2

A soulmate fic

@hprecfest

I’M SO EXCITED

Less than 12 hours away! How to Claim / Info / AO3 / Discord / Prompt Gallery

Day 8 of the HPRecFest

A canon-divergent fic

@hprecfest

LETS MAKE ROTTMNT #1

so ROTTMNT is #8 in trending so let's make that 8 in to a 1

post or reblog with #rottmnt or #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles

That what I’m fucking talking about‼️‼️

Round 2 Side A

Day 12 of the HPRecFest

A WIP you’re following

@hprecfest

Some of these I’ve recced before!

Reblogging to save my life and the lives of others.

Reading amazing fanfiction, then forgetting to bookmark it

HP Knot Fest 2: Knot Again Masterlist

Thank you to everyone who participated! The collection can be found on AO3 here.

Lavender's Plan by @herochicklyrrie007 - Hermione/Fred

Just as You Are by @puuvillaa - Remus/Sirius

Ustulation by @badhairred - Dorcas/Marlene

Tell Me Anything by @crescentcitytorchwood - Remus/Sirius

Toying with You by @heartofspells - Remus/Sirius

I'll be livin' in heaving when I'm inside of you by @ducky1783 - James/Regulus

Are You A Werewolf by @lucigoo - James/Regulus

Needy by @effiepotterisamilf - Lesbian James/Regulus

Knot Just Roommates by Thorned Huntress (ao3 & Instagram) - Hermione/Draco/Theo, Draco/Theo

Harry Potter's Bedroom Tips for Snake Animagi by @xalandrix - Harry/Draco

Call it Magic, Call it True by @stopme - James/Sirius

Bigger Problems by @orange-peony - Harry/Draco

Riding Out the Family Curse by @midnightlumoswrites - Hermione/Draco

Bad Dog/Good Owner by PigeonOnACloud - Sirus/Regulus

Love and Black Madness by @charmstwit - Sirius/Regulus

A Little Discretion by @alissiawrites - Tom Riddle/Harry

Good Grief by @fiendishfyre - Orion/Alphard

Knot Your Average Coworkers by @thecouchsofa - Harry/Draco

To Hold You in the Earth's Unholy Din by @hoko-onchi-writes - Harry/Draco

An Embarassment of Witches by @thesnapeofwater - Hermione/Various

What Are Friends For (if knot this) by @sillywives - Draco/Pansy

Alcoves in the Library by @shewritesmaybe - Sirius/Hermione

Purchasing an Alpha by @stars-of-a-wolf - Remus/Sirius & James/Regulus

Wait, you're the wolf? by @lucigoo - Remus/Sirius

to live for the hope of it all by @the-houseryn - Draco/Ron

Weird Werewolf Sex Things by @phantomgrimalkin - Remus/Sirius/James

Down the Hall by @gaeilgerua - Hermione/Blaise

You can have my everything by @berserkerrose - Bellatrix/Rodolphus

[COMIC] - This is Love by @pato-roldnart - Harry/Draco

Between Her Alphas by @articcat621 - Remus/Hermione/Fenrir