Checkered past

[scarfman]

It was asked on my friends list, of those "who were 'there'", when and where the term "slash" originated in fanfiction culture and what exactly was its original meaning. I'm compelled for uncertain motives to preserve my comment there in my own journal here.

I'm quite certain that I recall the term from the days when there was no slash but Trek K/S. If anyone can substantiate that the term originated later than that (Sentinel fandom?), I should be quite surprised. In any case the concept certainly originated there even if this vocabulary didn't.

Personally, when I got into Usenet fanfiction communities ten years ago I used "slash" to mean any uncanonical¹ pairing. One fellow writer in particular objected that it applies solely to same-sex pairings, and after a time I realized that the people whom I'd heard using it more generally were the people I'd hung with in the 80s who weren't proper "media" fans (their term) and in fact looked down on such as me, and were not unlikely to have been using the term incorrectly in ignorance.

¹ Of course, ten years ago I still applied the term "canon" to bodies of fiction. No more.²

² I still haven't posted that essay here, have I? ³

³

Edit Here it is.

Comments

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, the term "slash" originated with K/S. I think Jacqueline Lichetenberg et al mentioned the subject briefly in STAR TREK LIVES!, but it has been so long since I read it that I'm not completely certain. STL! was published circa 1976, so the term may have been in use before then.