Sometimes a person's hobbies can be extremely strange and incomprehensible to other people. Someone collects candy wrappers and stamps, someone constructs ships from plastic bottles, but someone is fond of … slash. Unfamiliar word? Well, let's figure it out.
Who is the slasher?
Better start, as they say, from afar. Have you ever noticed a desire to change the plot in a book you read or a movie you watched? Let’s say you didn’t really like the fact that there is a happy ending in The Lord of the Rings - it would be much more interesting (in your opinion) if Sauron remained the ruler of the world. Or, say, you clearly see that in the famous "Potterian" Hermione is actually in love with Harry, and not Ron Weasley.
It's amazing, but thousands, hundreds of thousands of people have such feelings in relation to some works. Feeling the strength to write an alternative version of history - albeit not as voluminous and, frankly, less talented - girls (and sometimes boys) get down to business. Such fan stories are called fanfiction, and the people who write them are called ficwriters. “But who is a slasher, and what does it have to do withhim?” you ask impatiently. To which you will receive the answer: “We are already close!”
The fantasy of fiwriters does not always work in the standard direction. And instead of coming up with another sweet story about Harry and Hermione finally getting married, they come up with something completely unbelievable. In their opinion, Potter's real feelings are not for Hermione, not for Ginny, and not even for Zhou Chang, but for … Draco Malfoy. “They are both males!” you exclaim. But nothing stops fiwriters: if they see love between two characters, they will do everything to keep them together - even in the world they invented!
This kind of fanfiction that has romantic and sexual relationships between people of the same sex is called slash. Where did this name come from? Usually, the header (description of the work) indicates the pairing (the pair whose relationship will be described). It looks, for example, like this:
- Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter;
- Frodo Baggins/Legolas;
- Sawyer/Jack Shepard.
The slash is called a slash. This is where the name came from.
So who is the slasher? At first, this was the name of people who write fanfiction of this genre. A little later, when the wave of fan creativity became more and more extensive, ordinary readers, fans of slash, began to call themselves that. However, today such a title is awarded to anyone who is able to see the romance between two characters of the same sex in any work or film.
Slashers create art(drawings with images of their favorite characters), video clips, compose and sing songs - in general, they devote almost all their free and not very free time to their favorite couple.
Usually, others have big doubts about the adequacy of such people. Real slashers are able to see the "spark" even between characters that do not intersect in the original world of the work. Moreover, as the love for homosexual fanfiction and art grows, the majority of adherents have an obsessive thought that everyone around them is gays and lesbians, they are just encrypted.
From the terms used by fiwriters, you can make a huge list. You won't surprise slashers with words like:
- fandom - this is the name of the artistic world of the film/series/book/game that fanfiction is written on;
- pairing - a pair of characters whose relationship is described in fanfiction;
- disclaimer - a standard message that the work was not created for profit, and the characters belong to the original author;
- summary - a summary without revealing the intrigue;
- rating - age limit;
- warning - warnings about certain elements that may not be acceptable to some people;
- fem-slash - a type of slash in which the main characters are female;
- AU - alternate universe/reality;
- OOC - the nature of the characters does not match the canonical;
- RPS - slash with real people. It may be criminalpunishable, but actors tend to tolerate such displays of fan love.
And that's not all! There are a huge number of such terms, and it is time to devote a separate article to them.
The slasher community is growing by leaps and bounds. Many groups and publics have been created on social networks for those who dream of the wedding of Dean Winchester with Castiel or the birth of several children with Dr. House and James Wilson (mpreg - male pregnancy in fan fiction - has not been canceled yet).
Typical or atypical slasher - whatever you call it, but the essence is the same: they cannot live a day without thinking that Vince and Howard from "Mighty Boosh" or Raskolnikov and Razumikhin from "Crime and Punishment" have everything OK. And they find confirmation of this in endless fanfiction, art, videos and their own dreams.
Now that you know who a slasher is, ask yourself, "Have I got a new hobby?"