random: how very ... unexpected

[iainpj]

Has Slash Made the World Better for Gay Men? | | AfterElton.com
Posted by Brent Hartinger on August 11, 2010
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on slash fandoms.

The Stonewall Inn Riots began on June 28, 1969 – an act of civil disobedience by some of our community’s more marginalized members that is widely believed to have sparked the modern GLBT rights movement.

But what if a similarly important moment in gay equality actually came a year earlier, in 1968, when a UK woman, Jennifer Guttridge, wrote what is considered by many to be the world’s first piece of slash fiction, “Ring of Shoshern,” about a relationship between Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock?

No, wait! Hear me out. ...

Comments

[nonelvis]

I think I'm going to have to reserve judgment on this series until I see part two, where he's going to cover "obsessive fans and the rise of social media." Watching the Save Ianto Jones batshittery in action, complete with fans charging RTD with homophobia (even to the point of writing fic in which he's ultimately run over by a bus as karmic revenge for killing off Ianto), has been fascinating, and not necessarily in a good way.

[iainpj]

Oh, if you want to see some differently epic batshittery, you should look at the Afterelton articles about the TCA presentation that Rusty and Julie Gardner did. Not the articles themselves, but the comment threads. I keep wanting to say, "You people are allegedly adult gay men. What the hell is WRONG with you?"

And the comment thread on the slash article is already very busy.

I just hope he's going to cover the rise of M/M publishers and romance in the next article, so then I don't have to! Yay! I hope! I can then just continue to be quietly snarky.

[nonelvis]

I like "What's Welsh for 'asshat'?" I also love the way the commenters just now seem to be discovering that Rusty can be a total ass in interviews -- have none of them ever read an interview with him before? Especially some of the things he's said about Ianto not coming back, and the fan campaigns about Ianto?

I am almost afraid to look at the comments for the slash article, because whatever's there now is going to be about a zillion times wankier when next week's article hits. Either way, I want to read your snark about it!

[iainpj]

Oh, I already started the snarkiness. (Well, for me, anyway.) Just click on the "books" tag over here.

However, the next entry in the series will be, shockingly, not actually snarky. Unless I read something bad. But both of the books of the line I've read recently have actually been pretty good reads, so far.

On the other hand, I just downloaded a bunch of free books from allromancebooks.com (they have 20 pages of free reads in various electronic formats -- about 200 e-books -- as well as others from various publishers that they charge for), so we'll see what happens. (An Officer and His Gentle Man is one of the free reads, if you want to give it a try. I discuss it in the first of the "books" entries, so you might want to look at that beforehand.)