Slash fiction
These fan-written stories are not often accepted in a work's canon, and the characters are usually not engaged in such relationships in their respective fictional universes.
It was published only in fan-edited non-profit fanzines (often called only "zines"), which were usually priced just high enough to recoup printing costs,[3] and were sold via adzines or at conventions.
The number of fandoms represented increased dramatically, especially those devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and police dramas.
Websites and fanzines dedicated to fans of The X-Files, Stargate, Harry Potter, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer became common, with tens of thousands of slash stories available.
[17] However, slash fiction has been described as important to the LGBTQ community and to the formation of queer identities, as it represents a resistance to the expectation of heterosexuality.
[18] In a society in which heterosexuality is the norm and homosexuality is highly stigmatized, an online forum is sometimes the only space where young members of the LGBTQ community can be out.
By writing slash fiction, queer youth can use their favorite characters and stories in order to create scenarios that allow them to explore their feelings, thoughts, and selves.
Slash fiction fandoms tend to be diverse and segregated, and each has its own rules of style, etiquette, history, and favorite stories and authors.
[23] Today, slash fiction is most commonly published on Tumblr, LiveJournal accounts and other websites online, such as Archive Of Our Own.
The strictest definition holds that only stories about relationships between two male partners ('M/M') constitute 'slash fiction', which has led to the evolution of the term femslash.
In addition to the legal issues associated with traditional fan fiction, some people believe that it tarnishes established media characters to portray them in a way which was never illustrated canonically.
Renaissance Pictures invited femslash author Melissa Good to pen scripts for Xena: Warrior Princess.
The newsgroup asked Haggis if he had a problem with fans seeing the characters he created (Detective Ray Vecchio and Constable Benton Fraser) as being in love with each other and having a closeted relationship.
In addition, their stage show, The Amazing Tour is Not on Fire, included a section called Fanfiction Live.
The revival of Doctor Who led by the openly gay writer Russell T Davies has also seen nods towards the slash fans beyond the omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness and other characters from the spin-off Torchwood.
Many fans see exchanges between the Doctor and the Master (played in the new series by John Simm, whose Life On Mars character Sam Tyler is also the subject of a lot of slash fiction) as indicative of a previous relationship, or current attraction.
[citation needed] The term no lemon is sometimes used to indicate fan fiction stories without explicit sexual content.
[citation needed] The term squick is most often used as a warning to refer to a reader's possible negative reaction to scenes in the text (often sexual) that some might find offensive or distressing, such as those including incest, BDSM, rape, "mpreg" (male pregnancy), gender swapping, and torture.
[48] The term is generally applied only to fanworks based on Western fandoms; the nearest anime/manga equivalents are more often called yuri and shōjo-ai fanfiction.
[52] Janeway/Seven is the main Star Trek femslash pairing, as only they have "an on-screen relationship fraught with deep emotional connection and conflict".
[citation needed] Chanslash is also called shotacon (abbreviated as "shouta" or "shota") when dealing with anime fanfiction.
Real person slash gained popularity with the 1990s rise of boy bands in the pop music industry.
[citation needed] Fanfic without sexual content can also be referred to as 'genfic', short for general fiction, non-romantic in nature.
These works are now generally published online[63] and use the same forms of rating, warnings and terminology that is commonly used by slash writers.
In Omegaverse works, humans are either dominant "alphas", neutral "betas" or submissive "omegas", and they exhibit sexual traits and behaviors based on those of wolves or other wild animals.
[67] In Japanese works, Omegaverse also introduces a caste system, where Alphas are depicted as the upper class elites while Omegas are at the bottom tier and face discrimination.
[67] In addition to fiction, fans also create artwork depicting media characters in same-sex relationship contexts.
In recent years, more slash artwork has used widespread availability of imaging software, like Adobe Photoshop, to manipulate photographs of their subjects to produce romantic or erotic images (often referred to as slash manips[68][69][70]) which imply a homosexual relationship, either as static pictures or animated GIFs.
The previous secrecy of vidding fans has come to seem unnecessary, but there is still a community ethos of not freely giving out a vidder's URL.
There are many mediums used to approach the act of internet roleplaying including message boards, AIM, IRC and specially created chatrooms on servers.
