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Slash Culture in the World of Harry Potter Fan Fiction

"In more than 800 websites devoted to Harry Potter slash, some host 100 or more stories apiece, while others feature galleries of fan art picturing Harry and his boarding-school chums in relationships very different from those created by author J.K. Rowling."

- Christopher Noxon

Introduction

            Slash -- meaning the pairing of a male character with another male character in fan art or fiction -- is a relatively new phenomenon that extends across various fandoms.  The term itself comes from the slash symbol in, for example, 'Sirius/Remus' or 'Mulder/Krychek.'  The slash symbol itself indicates a romantic or sexual relationship. 

            People who consider themselves to be slash shippers (those who enjoy or support a particular relationship, hence the term ship) or slashers may read or write fan fiction.  This group of people, widely dispersed throughout the internet as they are, represent a very specific and distinct demographic.  Slash shippers being far removed from the norm (firstly involved heavily in fandom and secondarily appreciative of gay fan fiction) represent a subculture all to their own. 

Investigation

            Since there are thousands of fandoms which inspire slash fiction, thousands of pairings within those categories, and hundreds or thousands of authors who've written what possibly amount to hundreds of thousands of stories in those individual fandoms alone, I've chosen to concentrate on a fan culture I have personal experience with:  Harry Potter fandom.  Additionally, I've chosen to focus on one specific, although very popular, ship (relationship or pairing) -- Harry/Draco.  The pairing of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy is one of the top three ships within Harry Potter Fandom and, of those three, the only one which is homosexual.  It is likely that as the fandoms and pairings vary, so do some of the elements.  However, being such a popular pairing, it is safe to say that Harry/Draco is possibly the quintessential pairing for study. 

            A common denominator for most if not all slash (and fan fiction in general) is that it is more or less confined to the internet.  Although Japanese fan comics (Doujinshi in which slash pairings are referred to as Yaoi or Shounen-Ai) are openly traded in Japan, in the rest of the world the internet is by far the best if not only source for slash shippers to have access to or publish slash material.  Therefore, my research will be limited primarily to the World Wide Web. 

History

            Fan fiction has been around for a long time -- but not so slash fiction.  The history of fan fiction can be traced back to as early as the 15th century, with John Lydgate's 'The Siege of Thebes ,' written as a continuation of the Canterbury Tales.   In the 1920s and 30s, 'Jane Austen fans began to write their own stories based on her characters and to distribute those stories in fanzines.'  But the modern conception of fan fiction -- and also slash fiction -- was inspired by Star Trek:  The Original Series (TOS).  Fan fiction premiered in a very primitive form on the internet in the very late 1980s.  (Hale) 

            The first slash fiction pairing was Kirk/Spock of Star Trek: TOS, published by Diane Marchant in 1974.  In the meantime, slash fiction has come out of the closet, so to speak.  Today it is more popular than ever, and the authors and readers are nearly100% female.  The fandoms include everything from the X-files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to various anime, Hollywood-produced movies, books and even real-person slash, which features actual humans such as members of bands (i.e.:  Blink 182, Good Charlotte, or the Beatles), celebrities or other public figures (although Bush/Cheney slash is more than likely a joke). 

            Wikipedia cites the first Harry Potter fan fiction as being published in 1999 on FanFiction.Net (a free fan fiction archive), which has grown exponentially over the years -- now hosting over 245,000 pieces of Harry Potter fan fiction alone (none of which are X or NC-17 rated).  The total amount of fanfic (short for fan fiction) hosted on this one site is probably into the millions.  Now of those, stories involving the pairing Harry/Draco (aka Drarry) in the category of romance span over 200 pages, with about 25 stories a page.  You do the math.  Fiction Alley, a fan fiction archive dedicated specifically to Harry Potter fic, contains stories by over 10,000 authors.  218 of the stories hosted on Fiction Alley are Harry/Draco stories, second only to Ginny/Harry, which is canon (in the books).  HarryPotterFanFiction.Com features 7,656 Harry/Draco stories.

What is it?

            The introduction to a piece of fan fiction is usually set up something like this:

            As you can see, slash fiction is not limited to depictions of male on male (or, less commonly, female on female -- femmeslash) sexuality.  On the contrary, slash fiction can have any rating from G to NC-17 (the latter indicating graphic descriptors or images of sexuality).  It is a genre of writing as diverse as the individual writers.  There are straight-stories (no pun intended, I swear) and song-fics (or fics incorporating lyrics), darkfics, crackfics (fics that just crazy and meant to be amusing), and drabbles, which have exactly 100 words.  All fan fiction occurs in two possible settings:  the Canon Universe (what's in the original books, movies, et cetera) and an Alternate Universe (or AU) of the fanfic writers' own creation.  As in the example above, a timeline of post-Hogwarts would constitute an AU.  Some people don't like reading about AUs, so authors often include that it is set in an AU in the warning section, if they have one.  Other things that might be included in the warning section may be aspects of the story which could easily squick (or disturb) someone, such as particular sex acts.  The warnings in the above example include WIP (work in progress), MPREG (male pregnancy), spoilers (giveaways for canon) but they may also include things like rimming, non-con (non-consent -- a 'nice' way of presenting rape), fluff (cutesy lovey-dovey ness), angst, PWP (Plot? What plot?) also known as porn, character death, and a plethora of others.  There are some variations, such as lemon or lime used in fics about anime or manga to connote degrees of sexuality, but most of these are common to all fandoms.

            When it comes to the pairings, many authors insert adjectives in front of the characters' names to indicate a certain type of story.  For example:  drag!Draco, dark!Harry, et cetera.  The same device is also used in summaries (hate!sex or wall!sex).  Stories utilizing these descriptors are known as exclamation!Fics.  ' What do those exclamation marks stand for? You might have seen Veela!Draco or Abused!Harry or Dark!Harry or Bottom!Draco descriptions of fics somewhere. As many fanfics tend to be inspired by each other, there eventually emerged certain consistent themes that people tended to favour over others. The exclamation!fic indicates that the theme in that story is a typical one which shares many traits with others of the same theme. Eg, an Abused!Harry fic will definitely contain angst, bloodplay, rescue and healing.'  (Darkest Magic)  You may see pairings in the traditional A/B form but you might also see A x B.  In Harry Potter fandom in particular,  the combination of the characters' names is common (such as Drarry for Draco/Harry or Snupin for Snape/Lupin).  Harry Potter ships also have official names.  For example, Ginny/Draco is known as 'Fire and Ice,' while Harry/Draco is 'Guns 'n' Handcuffs' which is also referred to as 'U.S.S. Guns 'n' Handcuffs' (ship reference).  The list goes on, and can be found in full on FictionAlley.Com.  Fics can also contain more than one pairing, which can also be het (heterosexual).  Gen fics do not include pairings or sexuality.

            In these introductions, authors often credit their beta(s) -- people who have read and edited the stories for them before they are published for all to see.  It is expected that fanfic writers use betas to save the rest of us from their potentially horrendous grammar/spelling and plot holes. 

            Is slash porn?  The author of classic Harry/Draco fic 'Irresistable Poison,' had this to say on the subject:  '"I will take serious offense to anyone who labels my stories as 'porn,' because it insults me as a writer -- the majority of my stories are PG or R, and sex if any at all is only incidental to the plot and not its focus," says  . . .  Rhysenn, a twentysomething straight woman who has written more than 20 Harry Potter slash and het stories along with a few novellas. "Pornography is crude and blatantly sexual; slash deals with characters and romance and emotions more than the physical aspect of the relationship alone."' (Noxon)  That said, slash stories can be porn (hence the PWP warning), but oftentimes aren't.

Who and why?

            It is commonly known in the world of fan fiction that most slash readers and writers are heterosexual females.  'The main writers and readers of slash are young women ranging in age from 12 to 40 years old.'  (Darkest Magic)  Since the phenomenon of slash fiction has not received adequate study, we have little to go on in regards to other demographics, such as race, level of education, locality, et cetera.  However, we can make some inferences from the fact that the internet is pretty much the only place to find fan fiction these days (in everywhere except Japan ).  Who has access to computers?  Who has stable enough internet access to invest time and energy into reading or writing slash fiction (which ranges from drabbles of exactly 100 words to novel-length) and building web pages dedicated to their favorite pairings?  I feel it's safe to say that the vast majority of slashers occupy a middle or upper class status and, as such, are probably Caucasian (within the United States at least).  We can also glean from what we know that these are women and girls with a profound interest in reading and writing, respectively -- particularly when it comes to fandoms based on books, such as the Harry Potter series.  All of this indicates time not spent working blue-collar jobs, another indicator of class.  And from reading the personal blogs of many authors of Harry Potter slash writers I've noticed that while most of them are in high school or college, many of them are also working mothers with children and a lot of them are dating, engaged, or married.

          Is slashfic the result of boredom?  Over-active imaginations?  Why these women, who are often in relationships with men, have such a profound interest in these pairings continues to boggle the minds of outsiders and often the women themselves.  'According to MIT scholar Henry Jenkins, who has tracked slash since its appearance in photocopied zines circulated at fan conventions, slash appeals to young women because it lets them experience romantic bonds in a mythological universe far removed from the more familiar (and far scarier) world of boyfriends, dating and sex.' (Noxon)  Slash fan Dark Twin write an exhaustive essay on why heterosexual women like slash.  In 'Why do I Like Slash?  Plain Answers from a Het Woman,' she addresses the accusation that slash fans suffer from penis envis:   'The sheer scope of the range of experiences that are open to me in my fantasies are breathtaking. As opposed to the possibilities that my own body offers, my imagination is limitless, it’s the place where everything that I want can happen, and if that is what I get in return for the biological lack of a penis, I thank my maker that he (or she, as I always tend to believe when it comes to this matter) made me a woman.  So, Sigmund, wake up. Of course I don’t have a cock. I’m a woman. I don’t need a cock. I have a brain.  Ultimately, it’s the wonderfully two-fold way my imagination works that makes slash so appealing to me ­ it provides at the same time freedom and safety. Freedom to explore things I cannot, should not and do not want to explore in Real Life. Freedom from traditional role models and gender stereotypes, and even from the necessity of distancing myself from them. And all that in the safety of a scenario that is, outwardly, so far removed from any of my own (past or potential) real experiences that I need have no fear of the story coming too close to home for comfort.'  (Emphasis mine) 

            While it is evident in their work that many authors write under the influence of a society with very strict gender roles (for example, having designated tops and bottoms), slash culture still offers things to women in fiction that popular culture ultimately does not:  a variety of possibilities for relationships and intimacy, a refreshing perspective on the opposite sex (although the realism is questionable), and, most compellingly, a break from the role of surveyed into what resembles the more powerful role of the surveyor.  As John Berger writes in 'Ways of Seeing;' throughout art, entertainment and advertising, women are presented as objects to be gazed upon by men.  They are posed in such a manner as to be inviting to the male viewer, oftentimes in various stages of undress.  In slash fiction exists what could be seen as a more egalitarian parallel.  The readers and writers manipulate male characters in certain situations as women are manipulated in popular media and entertainment, but the attentions of the characters are never focused on the reader, nor are the characters sexualized for the reader but more so for each other.  It is voyeuristic at worst.  One reader/writer of slashfic commented on the supposed progressive and more egalitarian nature of slash as one of the reasons why women become involved in it.  'Sex scenes in slash … offer sex without the objectification of either member. Women become the observer rather than the observed … Slash is easy to read and write because a woman isn’t part of the action, she can sit back and feel emotionally attached without putting herself in a vulnerable position. It’s a way to test the erotic while remaining at a safe distance.'  (Dark Twin)  The Harry/Draco website 'Darkest Magic' offers similar insight:  'it lies in the satisfaction women find in the security and equality of a relationship between men, which due to cultural, political and economic reasons, is still often sadly missing from a relationship between men and women. In a relationship between men, there lies an inherent equality of the sexes, where the parties are free to respond to each other in the most frank of fashions.'  She also comments on the alluring factor of the pairings being forbidden, and, furthermore, 'as the fandom is primarily written and illustrated by women, the stories contain a psyche that would appeal intrinsically to a woman's sensibilities. These are women writing for other women about love and sex, in a way that only we can understand and appreciate.'  Therefore, slash fiction appeals to some women the same way that heterosexual pornographic stories may appeal to some men:  it is targeted to them and developed to suit them.

Conclusion

            If anything, the popularity of slash fiction should be taken as a social indicator.  Is something lacking from our society and their personal lives that these women and girls are trying to make up for?  What is it about the nature of sexuality in our society which drives these women -- and there are many of them -- to seek out depictions of male on male relationships and sexuality instead of depictions of heterosexual relationships and sexuality which are inclusive to their sex? 

Works Cited

Berger, John.  Ways of Seeing.  New York :  Penguin Books, 1972.

"Darkest Magic:  Quality Harry/Draco Fanwork."http://www.freewebs.com/darkestmagic/aboutharrydraco.htm"

Dark Twin.  "Why Do I Like Slash?  Plain Answers from a Het Woman."http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp164.htm"

Hale, Laura M.  "History of Fan Fiction." (Timeline) "http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp173.htm"

Noxon, Christopher.  "Harry Potter Slash."  Metro Newspaper:  June 26 - July 2, 2003

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