I don't understand where the movement came from to make everything in fandom all-inclusive, that's all.

HetSex fans, Slashers, Gen-only readers, these are all designations that evolved in fandom because the fans wanted them.

The only overall descriptive term used to sound a lot like, "geek." Of course, that was long before Bill Gates and his billions make "geek" into something enviable, wasn't it?

Now we're all being scooped back into the melting pot, or at least slash, the former outcast portion of fandom is being asked to take a lot of other, unrelated topics under its wing.

I don't think so.

There are a lot of fans, what with the easy access of the internet and all, and most of the newer ones don't have much of an idea what fandom is beyond the fact that they finally found a place where they can gush and squeal and share badly spelled fantasies about their favorite television characters. (Don't get me wrong. I've done my share of gushing and squealing. I even make typos. But some of these newbies are making "clueless idiot" an art form.)

Even fewer of these newer fans seem to have any real idea of what slash is supposed to be. The proof is that so many people have been trying to define it for them. If we used the original description, then it wouldn't need al of this debate, but everyone's trying to broaden the term so that it gathers more and more of the fringe elements of fandom into one category.

Why?

What's wrong with some kind of mapping system where people interested in different things know where to find like-minded fans? I don't personally have a problem with people who want to form their own little list about two members of some boyband who get bit by vampires and become creatures of the night forming said list, okay? It moves some of the Real People Sex fans out of my orbit. In addition, it collects up some AU fans and removes them from my line of vision as well. Both very good things.

Me, I'd like to find a place where people interested in fandom can gather without being infested with the tens of thousands of twerps whose only real interest in it all is being able to read about sex without having to check out or buy a books and reveal their interest in the topic to (god forbid!) another human being.

I want to hang out in a different fandom than the one inhabited by people who find the characters and canon irrelevant to their enjoyment of the physical attributes of one or more of the actors.

There was a point where fanfiction was becoming a phenomenon. Almost a real genre. People were paying attention to what we were doing and trying to figure it out. It was something with an identity, something clearly evolving into a significant force.

Fanfiction took that most mainstream of mainstream entertainment, television, and started turning it inside-out.

Fanfiction started finding nuances, expanding on character potential, and writing the backstory and the off-screen stories that television didn't have time for or wasn't interest in. Creating depth and resonance from material that could not have been more shallow. (Come on, do you remember television in the late 70's and 80's?)

Slashers went one step further. They watched characters interacting, considered the personalities and the cultural and professional biases the characters might possess and then figured out a way to overcome those things to expose and explore a perceived emotional/sexual connection between the characters.

From the 70's through the end of the millennium, slash evolved as the writers' and readers' own cultural biases evolved. From something barely mentioned above a whisper, homosexuality became openly and publicly acknowledged. Slash gained respectability (in fandom) at the same pace.

Even F/F slash, originally a vanishingly small percentage of fanfiction, started gaining a significant fanbase.

As alternate sexualities became at least marginally accepted by mainstream society, slashers turned more and more to arenas where old-style prohibitions still existed, both because those situations were fraught with potential homoerotic interaction and because stereotypically male-only environments might be considered to be the venues where men were...well, where they were mostly like men as opposed to the domesticated male found in the average sitcom. And where the female characters in those traditionally male environments might also be free to explore different sides of their own personalities.

All that and it was hot, too.

And now it's just this mishmash of crap with six different kinds of kitchen sinks thrown in. As long as something getting off, it's slash. Animal, vegetable, or mineral, it doesn't matter. Bring it on. Want to turn someone into Puff, the Magic Dragon? Go ahead. Want to write some guy doing it with a tree? Please do.

Is this what we really want?

Instead of redefining what slash it to include more people, shouldn't we be sending them politely worded notes asking them to coin their own labels for what they're doing?

(A case, and a good one, could be made for the expansion of the fanfic genre because of all of this extra imagination being thrown into it. I'd probably even buy the idea if it weren't for the fact that this oddball stuff is mostly just crap. You're not exploring a brave, new world if you can't even spell what you're trying to write about.

And, again, the vital necessity of decent characterization comes into play. If it were actually canon characters being translated into these new areas, I'd buy that some interesting results might ensue. Since most of these stories consist of simply applying character names to completely unrelated beings, it doesn't hold water.)

P.S. I want points, big ones for not going off onto a tangential rant about the abysmally stupid woman who actually wrote a story where one (male) character bemoaned that is was his male love interest who was raped instead of a female co-worker since women, having vaginas and all, are better built for rape than men. The misogyny of fanfiction, even some purportedly hetfic, is a whole 'nother subject.