Sometimes a person’s hobbies can be extremely strange and incomprehensible to other people. Someone collects candy wrappers and stamps, someone designs ships from plastic bottles, well, someone is fond of ... slash. An unfamiliar word? Well, let's get it right.
Who is a slasher?
Better to start, as they say, from afar. Have you ever noticed a desire to change the plot in a read book or movie you watched? Let's say you didn’t really like 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, let’s say, you clearly see that in the famous “Potterian” Hermione is actually in love with Harry, and not with Ron Weasley.
Surprisingly, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people experience such feelings in relation to some works. Feeling the strength to write an alternative version of the story - albeit not so voluminous and, frankly, less talented - the girls (and sometimes the young men) get down to business. These fan stories are called fan fiction, and the people who write them are called fixtures. “But who is a slasher, and what does he have to do with it?”, You ask impatiently. To which you will receive the answer: "We are already close!"
Not always the fantasy of freak writers works in a standard direction. And instead of coming up with another sweet story that Harry and Hermione are finally getting married, they give out 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 male!” You exclaim. But nothing stops the freewriters: if they saw the love between the two characters, they will do everything to be together - albeit in a fantasy world!
This kind of fan fiction, in which there is a romantic and sexual relationship between people of the same sex, is called a slash. Where did this name come from? Usually in the header (description of the work) is indicated peyring (a couple whose relationship will be described). It looks, for example, like this:
- Draco Malfoy / Harry Potter;
- Frodo Baggins / Legolas;
- Sawyer / Jack Shepard.
A slash is called a slash. This is where the name came from.
So who is a slasher? At first, they called people who write fanfiction of a similar genre. A little later, when the wave of fan art became more and more extensive, ordinary readers and slash fans began to call themselves that. However, today such a title is awarded to anyone who is able to see romance between two characters of the same gender 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 to their beloved couple almost all of their free and not very free time.
Usually, the surrounding people have great doubts about the adequacy of such people. Real slashers are able to see a “spark” even between characters who do not intersect in the original world of the work. Moreover, the majority of adherents, with increasing love for homosexual fanfics and art, have an
obsessive idea that everyone around them is gay and lesbian, they are simply encrypted.
From the terms used by the freewriters, you can make a huge list. You won’t surprise slashers with phrases like:
- fandom - the so-called art world of a film / TV series / book / game, according to which fan fiction is written;
- Peyring - a pair of characters whose relationships are described in fan fiction;
- Disclaimer - a standard message that the work was not created for profit, and the characters belong to the original author;
- sammari - summary without disclosing intrigue;
- rating - age limit;
- warning - warnings about some elements that may not be acceptable to some people;
- fem slash - a type of slash in which the main characters are female;
- AU - alternative universe / reality;
- OOC - the nature of the characters does not coincide with the canonical;
- RPS is a slash with real people. It may be criminally punishable, but actors, as a rule, are tolerant of such manifestations of fan love.
And this is far from all! There are a lot of such terms, and it is just right to devote a separate article to them.
The slasher community is growing by leaps and bounds. Many social groups and public groups have been created on social networks for those who dream of Dean Winchester’s wedding with Castiel or of the birth of several children from Dr. House and James Wilson (no one has canceled mpreg - male pregnancy in fanfiction).
A typical or atypical slasher - whatever you call it, the essence is the same: they can't live a day without the thought that Vince and Howard from Mighty Boosh or Raskolnikov and Razumikhin from Crime and Punishment are fine. And they find confirmation of this in endless fan fiction, art, video and their own dreams.
Now that you know who a slasher is, ask yourself: “Have I got a new hobby?”