Slash Fiction - Slash and The Original Media Sources

Slash and The Original Media Sources

For many people, slash is a controversial subject. 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. But official disapproval of slash, specifically, is hard to find. As early as 1981, LucasFilms has issued legal notices to fans who wrote sexually-explicit stories). J. K. Rowling/Warner Brothers has sent cease-and-desist letters referencing "sexually explicit" writings on the web, (Example cease and desist letters at Chilling Effects), though Rowling approves the writing of fan fiction in general, posting links to fan fiction on her website and openly acknowledging slash fiction while maintaining that pairings such as those between Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape are non-canonical.

Some media creators seem down-right slash friendly. In the Angel DVD commentary for "A Hole in the World", Joss Whedon, the creator of Angel said, "Spike and Angel...they were hanging out for years and years and years. They were all kinds of deviant. Are people thinking they never...? Come on, people! They're open-minded guys!" as well as Spike saying "Angel and me have never been intimate. Except that one..." to Illyria in the episode "Power Play." Some people say they see similar evidence of such relationships in other shows such as Smallville, Due South and Supernatural.

In the episode The Monster At The End Of This Book of the TV show Supernatural, the main characters encounter fictional representations of themselves in series of books. They find the on-line fandom, and comment about their activities including the writing of slash fanfiction. This is often referred to by fans of Supernatural as Wincest, based on the characters' surname (Winchester) and the fact that they are brothers (incest).

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 a previous relationship, or current attraction. At one point the Master says to the Doctor "I like it when you use my name.", and in a Children in Need special, the tenth Doctor tells the fifth, after being asked whether the Master still has "that rubbish beard", "no, no beard this time. Well, a wife. " - which fans point to as a reference to gay men marrying a woman for public respectability, the wife being referred to as "a beard". The term for shows that seem to be giving material for slash writers to use is "pre-slashed", sometimes "pre-slashed for your convenience".