little cloud

[crosspost from Pillowfort]

I love how much fannish meta there is on Pillowfort. I've been clicking around a lot and finding older meta further back in people's feeds, which is how I came across wellthisisnice's post on queerfic vs slashfic and this response by sciatrix. (I'm not commenting there because they're from some months ago and I get the impression the OPs are tired of the occasional flare in commentary. But I have thoughts, so, here.)

The thesis of both posts is that slashfic and queerfic are different things. I agree, broadly. But I draw the lines in different places, I think they're really different kinds of category, and I also think there is a huge area of intersection between the two.

Broadly speaking, I'd describe slashfic as a specific subgenre of romance that is based in fanfiction and has its own set of genre conventions and tropes. You can describe it in generic terms; here's a non-comprehensive list of features of slashfic:

• Romance that is m/m, f/f or another combination of genders other than m/f
• Plot can roughly be described as: something makes A realise they're attracted to B, OR A has been pining after B for a long time and a change prompts them to act on it; A examines their own feelings; things get weird between them; there's tension between characters not knowing what the other character is thinking/feeling; they sort it out and have sex.
• Events are propelled by unresolved sexual tension that is ultimately resolved.
• Often contains elements like sexual self-discovery, coming out, hurt/comfort, situations forcing characters together in close proximity, supernatural/inexplicable event changes dynamics between characters, [insert your favourite trope here].

I haven't included "is fanfiction based on another property" because that's contested. I don't really consider something slash if it's about original characters, but it often really stands out when an original author is using the genre conventions of slash. Because it's a genre, you can recognise the features of a slashy story outside of a fandom context.

Queerfic, as described by the posts linked above, is not a genre in the same way; or if it is, it's a far less defined one. It's, hmm, a subject, maybe? It's fic that's about the experience of being queer. Which, yes, includes romance, but includes a lot of other things that aren't romance. Queerfic, as I see it, doesn't have an expected plot trajectory, or standard tropes, or any of the expectations readers have when they click on some slash.

To me, they're just different categories of things.

They also overlap for me, a lot.

I cannot think of a single slash fic I enjoy that was not about a queer experience. About discovering your sexuality, about coming out, about navigating the world as a queer person, navigating a relationship in a world that treats queer people differently. Even AU subgenres like BDSM AUs and Omegaverse often engage with the idea of challenging social power structures around relationships in a way that is clearly informed by real-world queerness. I just can't see slash fiction as being very separate from fic about queer experiences.

The distinction I saw turning up a lot in comments was "slash comes from liking the chemistry, queer fic comes from wanting to see yourself in a story". But it's sort of weird to me to suggest that those have to be different. Seeing chemistry in a queer relationship IS seeing myself in a story. Sometimes slashfic is just about sex, yes, and not any deeper themes. But queer sex is a queer experience, you know? For a lot of people it's a huge and important part of the queer experience.

(This is without getting into the question of why the writer wrote a fic, vs why the reader enjoys it. An author could write a fic just for hot chemistry, only for a reader to find it represents a deeply held part of their experience. Whose intentions define the fic then?)

I guess I'm saying something contradictory here: that slashfic and queerfic are too different to be compared against each other, and that there are so many fics that are both that I don't find the distinction useful. Ah well. I stand by it.