As Slash Newbies

[riverfox]

Upon finding Slashfic, why do we first find the stories that tend to characterize Daniel as a teenage girl and Jack as his daddy? The corollary would be why are those characterizations predominant in our slash part of the fandom? Does this happen in Ship, too?

I expect that sort of thing when we're younger since we learn as we go, but for those of us who're older, it's a mystery. I've never been able to figure it out in the 14 years I've been writing slash.

Is this a Harlequin Romance thing perhaps? Do those of us who like those stories transfer that to slash? Or is this just a case of reading everything and whittling down our preferences over time? When I found slash, I read the sappier characterizations, but it didn't take long for me to gravitate to the more realistic representations. But it still begs the question: Why do we, as newbies, find the sappier, less accurate portrayals first?

What did you do when you found slash?

Comments

[freyasboy]

I don't know if this will help you get to the answer you want, but when I first started reading slash I read anything I could find, the longer the better, as there's more to get your teeth into in the longer ones. I must admit I read some of the ones you mention as well as much better ones where the characters are both on an equal footing. These are the ones I now prefer. I don't like weeping, whinging Daniel ones. He's not like that in canon, so why write him like that in fiction? There are some wonderful fics out there and some not so good ones, but the only way to tell is to read first, then either discard or keep to read again.

Chris xx

[riverfox]

Thanks for replying, sweetie. :)

It's just an overall question that's been bugging me. Why do we, in general, as new slash readers, seem to find the more sappy stuff before we locate the other types? It's just weird to me. ;)

[ivorygates]

I have no idea why that happens, but it certainly happened to me. I wasn't at all hooked up to online fandom at the time, and I didn't even have an LJ, but I managed to find Area 52, and ended up reading acre upon acre of Woobie!Daniel fics. Usually involving jammies and Daddy!Jack. And...wow. I'm deeply impressed by my own stamina and endurance, yanno?

I think this type of dynamic is inevitable from beginning slash writers (you saw A LOT of it in Professionals fandom, as I recall), and also very often in the beginning days of a fandom. It's as if fanwriters are born with these types of fics already programmed into their brains, since there's no other explanation of how they can produce a 1950's-vintage Harlequin Romance pretty much spontaneously and very often without being IRL readers of Romance of any kind. But since I came into the fandom a good five years on, there's no real explanation of how I ended up only encountering this kind of story. I tended to gravitate toward <10K fics almost exclusively, and I still found myself immersed in it.

IDEK.

[riverfox]

I know just what you mean. Back in 2002, I read hundreds of fics from Area 52 as well as the Alpha Gate group on Yahoo. Given my artistic background, it was inevitable that my Art muse would spawn a mutant bunny version that resembles Neanderthal Bugs Bunny. ;) I started with mushy writing and silly copycatting--specifically, writing out the billion-vowel orgasmic vocalizations by Jack and Daniel. It's something that seemed to partner with the reading of Baby!Daniel and Daddy!Jack. And then after a while, by 2003 or so, I decided that the characterizations were extremely immature. I was 43, fcol. To this day, I don't know why I began my fandom love with the Harlequin angles, in reading and writing.

Thankfully, I'm glad that you and I and dozens of other writers have matured and improved and walked as far away from the Harlequin Baby/Daddy thing as we started from. I don't even know how to write that sort of stuff anymore without making it sound like a parody.

[ivorygates]

Word.

I still remember one phrase from one story of my early reading, because it is burned eternally into my soul: Jack calls Daniel his "angel-eyed love Muppet".

I hope to all that is holy that this was one of TWTID (The Wonder That Is Daniel, urgh) parody slash stories. But I am terribly afraid that it wasn't. (Second runner up in this category: the one where Jack's internal monologue is primarily quotes from minor Elizabethan poets. BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THAT NOTHING SCREAMS JACK O'NEILL LIKE MINOR ELIZABETHAN POETS.)

*ahem*

Yes, it is a very good thing that most of us in the fandom moved beyond that phase. Very quickly. Very, very quickly...