foleyavatarhappy2007-02-19

Alright, to be honest we didn’t really do our homework here. There are as many variations on slashfic as there are fish in the sea and I have little doubt that somewhere out there in the dark recesses of the internet, that there is a burgeoning Gadg-Slash community 10,000 members strong, producing scintillating works in their chosen oeuvre, previously undreamt. Kudos, brave artisans.

For the uninitiated or simply curious, as always the wiki provides. After reading this, I’m left to wonder if the Starsky and Hutch slash community received a huge shot in the arm from the release of the 2003 movie. Are there grizzled S/H and Blake’s 7 slash-vets out there who’ve been holding it down for 30 years now? Also! As an astute NSP reader quickly pointed out, what’s with the name ‘Virgule’? This is the french name for the comma character, not the slash. Slash Community, is this some sort of joke?!? *CSI Teehee!*

Slash Timeline

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.

1974: “A Fragment Out Of Time” is the first known Star Trek slash to be published in fanzine. The author was Diane Marchant. The vignette was published in Grup #3. The language was highly coded and didn’t refer to Spock and Kirk by name but rather referred to them as he and him.

1975: In “Grup” #4 Diane Marchant published a rather indirect essay about K/S. The first public discussion of this essay occurred in the Star Trek letterzine, “Halkan Council”.

1976: According to the National Library of Australia, the Star Trek Action Committee was formed as a Star Trek Club. This Star Trek Club held its first meeting in April. Members included Susan Clarke, Julie Townsend and Edwina Harvey. This fanclub would publish the Star Trek adult fanzine Beyond Antares, which contained both het and slash.

1976: In June, “Alternative: Epilog to Orion” is written by G. Downes and published as a fanzine. It was the first K/S zine to appear.

1980s: Actors and fans of Blake’s 7 began interaction at conventions. This sometimes led to correspondences, personal phone calls, and general chit chat. In the midst of an unrelated fannish argument, some fans showed the actors slash fanzine based on Blake’s 7 as a form of punishment for things in other parts of fandom. The actors were upset because they did not view their characters as homosexuals and they saw slash as a violation of trust with their fans. One of the actors tried to ban slash authors and slash from the Blake’s 7 fandom. Eventually, this died down and the Blake 7’s fandom went on.

1980s Zebracon a slash convention is held in Chicago, IL. It was initially focused on Starsky and Hutch fandom (Zebra 3 was their car’s call sign). It then branched out to embrace Professionals and other cop/spy/sf shows. The convention was held annually and then switched to a 2 yr cycle. The next (and possibly last) Zebracon will be held in 2007. http://www.zebracon.net/

1981 The first MediaWest*Con is held under that name (following T’Con in 1978 and 2’Con in 1979) over Memorial Day weekend in Lansing, Michigan. A fan run, SF media based convention sponsored by T’Kuhtian Press, MediaWest*Con programming has reflected member interest in both slash and gen content. http://www.mediawestcon.org/

1990 Escapade – a fan run media based slash convention was first held near Santa Barbara, CA, bringing together slash fans face to face (some for the first time). Most attendees were women and the first fandoms focused on the Professionals, Blake’s 7, Star Trek and Starsky & Hutch. As of 2007, the convention has been held every year and has grown to encompass a wide range of attendees (men and women) and many fandoms. http://www.escapadecon.net/

1992: The Nifty Erotic Stories Archive, or Nifty for short, is established. The ‘Gay Male – Celebrity’ sub-section of the archive proves to be a breeding ground for many different types of slash fiction, particularly RPS and boyband fiction. It is one of the largest collections of RPS in existence, with more than 1,500 boyband stories alone, some of which were several megabytes of plain-text in length.

1993: First slash mailing list created, run from a private list-serv on the East Coast. It was called “Virgule” (another name for the / symbol) and membership was limited to women. It remained active through the 1990s, until more fandom specific slash mailing lists on Egroups and Yahoogroups became popular.

1995: Seven slash stories were posted to alt.tv.x-files.creative.

1998: On alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated discussion ensues regarding the issue of whether or not slash and het need to be rated differently.

1998: Real Person Slash archives for pop bands begin to emerge online. Boybands such as Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC figure prominently, but other bands such as Savage Garden, The Cure, and Placebo also had early archives. (The stories pertaining to *NSYNC and Savage Garden have recently taken on a certain irony. *NSYNC band member Lance Bass announced in July 2006 that he is, in fact, gay. In July of the same year, Savage Garden frontman Darren Hayes announced his marriage to boyfriend Richard Cullen on his website.)

1999: Star Trek OS writer Karmen Ghia publishes interviews with many of the more prolific contributors to alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated.

1999: On May 19, the Master and Apprentice archive was founded. Currently, this archive is the largest archive of Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon slash on the Internet with over 4,000 stories archived. This archive was also important in that it seems to have set the trend of writing stories based on media before the media is released to the public.

2002: On September 12, the FanFiction.net archive removes and bans real person fiction and NC-17 rated stories.

2004: Largely successful slash community slacken_ties is created on LiveJournal. It is dedicated to slash fiction featuring Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand. The band itself has acknowledged the site, with Alex Kapranos saying, “Slackening ties for the girls at slacken_ties!” in a 2005 gig at the Scala, London. Alex Kapranos also reportedly promotes the site by talking about it with fangirls after concerts.[citation needed]

2005 Butch Hartman, creator of Danny Phantom and Fairly Odd Parents, voices his disgust at slash, banning any user on his forum who posts slash material. [citation needed]

2006: Australian newspaper ‘The Advertiser’ acknowledges the Nick/Greg slash relationship from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in an online article about the Logies.[7]