Define:slash

One of the things I need to do within the paper is define slash, primarily because that was the reason for Ogas and Gaddam to approach fandom in the first place. The problem is that fandom itself hasn’t really come to consensus on how to define slash.

The first use of the term came about within the original Trek fandom and referred specifically to the punctuation mark set between character names to show a romantic pairing: Spock/Nurse Chapel. I think from that point on, it started to refer more to non-canonical romantic pairings (Uhuru/Spock) and then more specifically to non-canonical male/male romantic pairings (Kirk/Spock). Or possibly I have the sequence reversed. I’m not convinced the history of the term is necessary for the development of the paper, so I’m not going to get into it.

Broadly speaking, these days slash generally refers to non-canonical same sex pairings (McKay/Sheppard in SGA, Spike/Xander in Buffy, Catherine/Sarah in CSI) but not to canonical same sex pairings (Angel/Spike in Angel, Tara/Willow in Buffy). But there’s a school of thought that says slash can also refer to non-canonical heterosexual pairings if one of the characters goes against his or her own sexual orientation for the sake of the pairing (Tara/Giles in Buffy). And then there’s the school of thought that suggests slash can refer to any non-canonical romantic pairing (or threesome, foursome or moresome — fandom doesn’t discriminate against polyamory).

What each of these definitions has in common is the fic writer’s development of a non-canonical romantic (and usually erotic) relationship between characters. For the purpose of this paper and because Ogas and Gaddam focused on it, I’m going to define slash as: A story featuring a non-canonical romantic pairing between two characters of the same gender, with male/male pairings being the predominant expression of the genre.