BigShinyThing

Of all of the stuff we learned about while studying Sexual Dissidence (true!) at the University of Sussex, the existence of Slash Fiction was the oddest and most intriguing. According to its (lengthy) Wikipedia entry:

Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction. It focuses on the depiction of sexual or romantic relationships between two or more characters, who are not necessarily engaged in relationships in the canon universe. While the term originally was restricted to fan fiction in which one or more male media characters were involved in an explicit adult relationship as a primary plot element, it is currently more generally used to refer to any pairing between male characters. The term is also sometimes applied to fiction focusing on relationships between female characters; however, some fans distinguish femslash as a separate genre.

The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/) in the description of the primary pairing involved in the story, as compared to the ampersand (&) conventionally used for friendship fiction.

During the 1960s, fan-created comics (vividly) depicting a romantic relationship between Captain Kirk and Mr Spock were apparently HUGE and mainly among heterosexual women. This consumer-created stuff ain’t new you know. Kirk/Spock was so big that it even merits its own Wikipedia entry:

Many believe that the origins of Kirk/Spock lie in deliberate homosexual subtext in the Star Trek episode Amok Time (1967), written by noted science-fiction author Ted Sturgeon. There is good reason to believe Sturgeon’s part in this is deliberate; Sturgeon was known for introducing homosexual themes to science fiction during the homophobic 1950s. He also wrote a scene in an earlier Star Trek episode, “Shore Leave” (1966), in which Captain Kirk apparently believes that Mr. Spock is giving him a backrub.

More fuel was added to the fire by certain emotionally-charged scenes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), and because of an ambiguously-worded footnote in Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of that movie. (Slash fans took the footnote as validation; those opposed to slash also took it as validation.) From the novelization also comes the Vulcan word t’hy’la, which is defined as meaning friend, brother, lover. Spock uses the word twice to refer to Kirk. It is important to note, however, that in the novel Spock is depicted as asexual.

The full text of the footnote runs thus: “I was never aware of this ‘lovers’ rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently, he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of his right eyebrow, which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself… I have always found my best gratification in that creature called woman. Also, I would not like to be thought of as being so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years.”

Friend of BST, Henry Jenkins, has a more elegant explanation:

When I try to explain slash to non-fans, I often reference that moment in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan where Spock is dying and Kirk stands there, a wall of glass separating the two longtime buddies. Both of them are reaching out towards each other, their hands pressed hard against the glass, trying to establish physical contact. They both have so much they want to say and so little time to say it. Spock calls Kirk his friend, the fullest expression of their feelings anywhere in the series.

Almost everyone who watches that scene feels the passion the two men share, the hunger for something more than what they are allowed. And, I tell my nonfan listeners, slash is what happens when you take away the glass. The glass, for me, is often more social than physical; the glass represents those aspects of traditional masculinity which prevent emotional expressiveness or physical intimacy between men, which block the possibility of true male friendship. Slash is what happens when you take away those barriers and imagine what a new kind of male friendship might look like. One of the most exciting things about slash is that it teaches us how to recognize the signs of emotional caring beneath all the masks by which traditional male culture seeks to repress or hide those feelings.”

[Fans, Gamers and Bloggers]

Anyway.

Slash Fiction is alive and well and kicking — and big in South Korea. As are comics full stop. Businessweek reports:

According to one manhwa (Korean for comic) publisher, comics accounts for about 25 percent of all book sales in South Korea, while more than 3 million Korean users access paid online manhwa and 10 million read free webcomics. And, thanks in part to a comics industry that tends to cede more control to artists, manhwa allows for a level of individual expression, in storytelling and style, that is not always found in manga.

Now, as a growing number of comics publishers in the U.S. have begun treating manhwa as a distinct form, newcomers to Korean comics have access to a diverse range of genres, from raucous comedies and tense science fiction and fantasy to high-octane adventure, period dramas, and slice-of-life romances. Even “boys’-love” stories for women—romances that don’t address gay themes in a traditional sense but focus on intense emotional connections between beautiful male protagonists—are making their way to American bookstore shelves.

We say, fandom finds a way.

Illustration from Kirk/Spock ezine SidebySide. Link NSFW unless you work at Prowler.

As anyone who has ever worked in a team will attest, much of the effort in group creation goes into the meetings, haggling, biting and scratching around the project, rather than into the project itself. With luck, the final creative product will emerge from the scrum relatively intact, and possibly even fit-for-purpose. Generally, unless the history of the end-product is written up by some third-party, its consumers remain blissfully unaware of the scrummage and niggles which led to its creation. So things have been since the dawn of time, and so they remained until the development of social media tools for group co-creation.

Choose some topical news on Wikipedia: Anna Nicole Smith’s sad demise for example. Or the history of militant Islam. The Wikipedia entries themselves seem relatively sedate and restrained. But take a deep breath, then click on the ‘discussion’ link at the top of the page. Welcome to the world behind the curtain of ‘the authentic’ — a seething cluster of white-hot forums where the content of postings is revised, fought over, denegrated and spat on, by as unruly a rabble of obsessives, freaks and zealots as you could find anywhere on- or off-line. Given at least tacit agreement as to the task at hand, empowered, focussed readers can generate excellent conent. But things get messy when the task is more open-ended. Mosey on over to Penguin’s A Million Penguins project: an attempt to produce a wiki-based collaborative novel. A nasty nasty mess on the surface — but as noted by the good people at if:book:

Far more interesting is the discussion page behind the novel where one can read the valiant efforts of participants to communicate with one another and to instill some semblance of order. Here are the battle wounded from the wiki fray… characters staggering about in search of an author. Writers in search of an editor. One person, obviously dismayed at the narrative’s dogged refusal to make sense, suggests building separate pages devoted exclusively to plotting out story arcs. Another exclaims: “THE STORY AS OF THIS MOMENT IS THE STORY — you are permitted to make slight changes in past, but concentrate on where we are now and move forward.” Another proceeds to forcefully disagree. Others, even more exasperated, propose forking the project into alternative novels and leaving the chaotic front page to the buzzards.

How ironic it would be if each user ended up just creating their own page and writing the novel they wanted to write — alone.

Reading through these paratexts, I couldn’t help thinking that this [the discussion page] was in fact the real story being written. Might [it] contain the seeds of a Tristram Shandyesque tale about a collaborative novel-writing experiment gone horribly awry, in which the much vaunted “novel” exists only in its total inability to be written?

The if:bookers are themselves active explorers of collaborative marginalia — check their Future of the Book site for some lovely examples of ‘networked books’ and commenting tools. We’re particularly excited about the possibilities opened up by their CommentPress plugin for Wordpress, which enables comments at paragraph rather than posting-level on sites built with WordPress (as is BST itself).

We’ve written before, and as believers, that a future of narrative involves transmedia: the tactical use of multiple media to build and spread a many-faceted story, or to sketch a fictional world. Transmedia, at its best, promises to punch through the screen, tear up the page, and engage audiences in a fluid, immersive experience somewhere between traditional story-telling and alternate-reality gaming.

With a few notable exceptions, transmedia is as much media-geek theory object as it is template for successful fictionalising — but it’s a hot topic getting hotter by the day. This week’s case study is the story of YouTube star-in-the-making LonelyGirl15, whose transmedial existence is described in loving detail by New York magazine. Word on the Internet is that her site is set up to promote a film. Or not. Whatever. The sign’o'the times is the degree to which the fantasy has been bought into and built on by others online:

Ironically, her most prominent critic—a YouTuber named ­Gohepcat, a film-geek hipster in mirrored sunglasses and a cowboy hat—has become a mini–YouTube star in his own right. And because anyone on YouTube can post responses or theories about Lonelygirl (and plenty have), her story now has its own metastasizing, David Lynch–worthy cast: Not just Lonelygirl, Daniel, and their ­monkey puppet (don’t ask), but the ­Javert-like Mirrored Cowboy; her defender, Nerd With the Headset; a nemesis called Lazydork; and Richard Feynman. (Yes, Richard Feynman, the famous physicist. He doesn’t appear personally—it’s a long story.)

There’s always been a section of the fan community willing to dive into co-creation, but post-Reality-TV, post clip culture, everyone wants their 15 click-throughs of fame. LonelyGirl15 is just the kind of cultural attractor to encourage them on their way.

If you haven’t read Convergence Culture yet, now’s a good time to get it on order: the wave of transmedia is still gathering speed, and when it hits the mainstream, it’s going to hit hard.

[Thanks to Andrew for the tip-off].

UPDATE: The LA Times has an interview with the LonelyGirl15 film-makers. In a nutshell, like the charming ‘How to be a chav’ Film, the work is the creation of aspiring film-makers:

“We did this with zero resources. Anybody could do what we did,” Flinders said Tuesday. The sum total of the equipment they used to create a sensation on the Internet, as well as perhaps the web’s biggest homegrown mystery: “Two desk lamps (one broken), an open window and a $130 camera.”

Goodfried said Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills got involved about a month ago — well into the lonelygirl15 story — through a friend who works at the agency. “We went in there one afternoon. I walked around the place, and met some cool young guys that got the idea and said they would help us,” he said.