Przepisać kulturę, czyli napisać slash

Abstract

‘Fanfiction’ is a term used for amateur, non-commercial stories written by fans, which relate to specific texts of culture. In my paper I make an attempt to analyze a special type of fanfiction, that is ‘slash’. Several academics identify this genre with pornography, because it includes a plenty of short texts focusing on erotic scenes. There are also many long stories among them with complex plots arranged only to depict a sexual fetish that confirm this view. However, other researchers claim that the most important context for fanfiction is heterosexual romance, not porn. It is a popular strategy in fics to rewrite plots taken from romantic comedies, harlequins or even Disney’s films and fairy tales, while replacing the original heroine with a male character from another text of culture. On the basis of the very definition of slash I also ask a question whether ‘slash’ equals ‘homosexual’ – that is, whether slash is or may be considered gay literature. In fact, ‘slash fiction’ does not focus on the realistic depiction of gay people; it is also far from being LGBT literature. Although fans’ fantasies demand texts about gay characters, it does not mean they are just about gay topics.