When did you know?

[emmagrant01]

What was the first moment you realized you were a slasher, that homoerotic subtext was your thing?

For me, it was this one:

I saw this in the movie theater in 1994, and this scene... OMG this fucking SCENE! I remember sitting in the theater and digging my fingernails into the arms of the seat and gritting my teeth and thinking, "JUST FUCKING KISS ALREADY!!"

And then I knew. I bought the book and then the next one and read them all, frantically looking for more than just subtext, and was disappointed. I fantasized about these characters, and even wrote some (long lost) fanfic that no one else ever saw. It was 8 more years before I found fandom online, but that was the moment I realized that I was far more interested in imagining pretty boys together than in pretty heterosexual couples.

This was prompted by a post pennswoods made about great kissing scenes in movies. I still think about that almost-kiss...

Comments

[mania-regale.livejournal.com]

Mine was some really bad fan fic over at the Leaky. After I had gotten really hooked on HP, I was browsing around a number of sites, and came across fan fic. Yes, I'd been under a rock until then and had no idea it existed. At the Leaky I found an HP/DM story that was atrocious in its writing, but intriguing in the premise.

That cued more searching, and I found LJ and all of the slashy goodness there, and let's just say that I had a really great method of procrastinating while studying for finals first semester of my 1L year.

[marciadanielle.livejournal.com]

For me it wasn't until I discovered online fandom which was summer 2003 (yea, I was a late bloomer - I didn't know fandom itself existed until Harry Potter!) I started off reading gen, then Severitus, then Snarry. I think my first Snarry (though I could be wrong about this) was a story on ff.net called Bound by Miasnape. I didn't get into Drarry until about I discovered Left My Heart (true story!) :)

[saladbats.livejournal.com]

I fell into watching the TV show 'Forever Knight'. I already had a love of vampires, so I watched the show just to see if it was any good. And the male lead's maker was this guy who seemed basically obsessed with his progeny. I started seeing subtext practically every time they were on screen together. Certainly didn't hurt that the actor Nigel Bennett is a bit easy on the eyes as well.

I liked the show well enough I went to a charity auction near Toronto to bid on items from the show. And when I was there, I met other people who saw the show from the same perspective as me. I had no idea there were even other people out there who celebrated this kind of thing. And that people were writing fiction based on the relationship we all thought was pretty obvious. Hell, they had even put together a 'zine. They all invited me to join their listserv. And someone was putting together a web site archiving this type of fiction. It was just so incredible to know I wasn't alone. And also not the only lesbian into slash either. I was convinced I was going to be seen as a freak for being a lesbian but really liking the idea of M/M fiction and art. There was no judgement at all, just pure acceptance and glee that another person was a part of their 'tribe'.

[mania-regale.livejournal.com]

That was pretty close to my timing too. Dec. 2002 for me. Oh, shit - it's been almost 10 years? How is that even possible?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Considering how much bad fic is out there, I think the odds are really good that anyone's first fic experience will not be so well-written, especially if it was found with a google search!

I'm just grateful I didn't find fandom until I'd finished grad school. I don't think I would have finished otherwise. :-P

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I didn't discover fandom until 2002. I also didn't realize other people wrote fanfic and fantasized about fictional characters like I did. Now it seems silly, but I really thought it was just me. Discovering slash fic online was one of the best days of my life, seriously. I wasn't alone anymore, and that was awesome!

And how cool that LMH was your first H/D! :-D

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I can so totally identify with the discovery that it's not just you, that there are whole communities of people out there who are also interested in these things and want to share their creative work with people who get it. :-)

[littleroo27.livejournal.com]

I don't really remember, to be honest. I think it was early in college. I'd made close friendships with two gay boys and discussions were had, websearches were made, and I found this website called www.nifty.org I read one of the fics in particular and ended up being good AIM friends with the author who was a lot like my dad except for the whole buttsex thing. Over time I discovered some of my kinks but avoided fics that said "slash" because I thought that meant violence or something icky, lol! A few years after graduating college I discovered fanfic and very quickly moved from het buffy to slash harry, and the rest is history! I still hear from that AIM author every blue moon, and his writing is still pretty damn awesome.

The first slash fic I ever read, ever:
http://nifty.nisusnet.com/nifty/gay/encounters/hotel-stories/straight-senior-cock-2

He has some amazing fic out there (the nick and jonathan series - OMG)
http://search.nifty.org/search.php?q=stonewolf

It's funny that I still think of slash writers as being female, since the first one I met was extremely NOT!

[jessicaqueen.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Anne Rice days. From what little I can remember of this film - or the corresponding book, really, since the film itself draws a blank in my mind - this isn't so much subtextual. It's just unrequited, and not dealt with much since it's told from the wrong PoV for it to have real significance. Because, if I remember correctly, Armand is in fact homosexual, and in love with Louis (or at least obsessed with him to some extent), and Louis is aware of it. Wasn't Armand, like, a rentboy who was turned into a vampire because his lover couldn't bear to see him die of sickness or something? Or am I thinking of another character? Or another badly written vampire novel series altogether? THERE ARE TOO MANY! I CAN'T POSSIBLY BE EXPECTED TO KEEP TRACK NOW THAT I AM GROWN AND HAVE ACTUAL (though admittedly still questionable) TASTE! WOE!

*ahem*

Anyway, as for my own experience, this is an interesting question. I wouldn't really shove myself into a box marked 'slasher', because I'm equal opportunities, but in some of my fandoms I do almost exclusively read/write slash, so it bears thinking about how that came about. I was always completely convinced, even when I first read them at age 13, that Sherlock Holmes's asexuality and Watson's barely-mentioned marriage were just a Victorian cover-up, but I don't think could have been the start of it. By 13 I'd already discovered online fandom, so I was already into slash. The real answer is probably Star Wars. For all that I like Han/Leia, Han Solo gives off enough sex appeal that I see subtext with everyone. And also, what was the point of The Phantom Menace except to give us Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan? :D

[littleroo27.livejournal.com]

I remember very vaguely mentioning women liking gay erotica to my girlfriends during my junior year of college and getting the response "that's actually really common, it's like straight men watching lesbian porn" and thinking i'm not alone!!! I'm NORMAL!

[bostongirl2003.livejournal.com]

I think Louis was in love with Armand as well, but Louis didn't want to leave Claudia. Then Claudia was killed and Louis couldn't forgive Armand for his part in it. Idk, I haven't read the books in like 5 years myself but that was how I remembered it happening.

[bostongirl2003.livejournal.com]

I think Anne Rice might have been what it was for me, as well. But not the subtext, I remember reading Queen of the Damned and how the relationship between Daniel and Armand developed was just sooo much more intense and romantic to my 12 year old self that I was hooked.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

omg, I was on the forever knight list way back in the day! But I mostly lurked.

(I honestly cannot remember 'discovering' slash. I remember getting quite fed up that the relationships in media were always heterosexual and that there was almost always a damn relationship, no matter what the story was actually about, and I remember reading the Last Herald-Mage books and going 'well, that's different, at least...' and being intrigued, but it's been so long I can't remember what my first fandom as such was.)

[singlemomsummer.livejournal.com]

I def think Interview did it for me too, especially reading the later books where Lestat and David get together, lol. Their glorious time together in Tale of the Body Snatcher made me happy, I remember rooting for them for a long time.

[ausmac.livejournal.com]

In recent times, it was Star Wars: Phantom Menace. First time I saw the dying scene with Obi-Wan holding Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon touched his face, I went, oh MY GAWD they are SO together. So I went home that night and began searching the internet, pre-LJ days, and found a Group called Master/Apprentice, and it went from there.

I had very early contact with slash fandom though Star Trek. But that is another life (:

[aubergineautumn.livejournal.com]

I came in through nifty.org, which had a page for original slash fiction, which led to PL Nunn's page, which had links to gundam wing and weiss kreuz, which had links to the lj Harry Potter H/D community, around 2004/5.

[metal-dog5.livejournal.com]

The moment I realised it was in the late '90s while reading a XFiles fic with Mulder & Krycek in a dub-con story. Until then I'd only ever read het or gen, so the first slash stories were eye-openers. Those were the days when I'd read something and have a WTF moment trying to imagine the position & the magic of the self-lubing ass; no fingers required ;)

But if I go back to my teens when I spent a summer at the cinema watching The Lost Boys & Top Gun (despite how much I loathe TC), I wasn't aware as to why I liked these movies so much. By the time Interview hit the screen I was more aware of subtext & thought it obvious that Lestat & Louis were lovers.

[hiddenfacade.livejournal.com]

I read/watch anime/manga and I have for years.

Anyway, I was watching Naruto and two of the characters accidentally kissed. I found myself fascinated by that scene and wanting to watch it more than once. I was already into fan fiction so when I started wondering if people wrote stories with that pairing I searched for it on FF.net. They did so I started reading and I've been hooked ever since. I was probably around 13/14 around that time, maybe even 12. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but it was definitely before high school.

[anelma-unelma.livejournal.com]

Aww... it was definitely Anne Rice for me, too :) But not the movie so much (even though I love the movie!) as the books, since many of the characters indeed are openly gay/bi in the books. For mee, too, it was a lot more romantic than your average straight romance.

[anotherslashfan (from livejournal.com)]

I didn't know until about 1999 maybe, but I sought out literature related to homosexuality since circa 1997 or so? (Mind you, I was born in 1985.)

[eurydike.livejournal.com]

That probably was the moment for me too. I simply loved that scene.

Or maybe the first seed of almost-realization was planted into my mind already when I watched "Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves" when I was about 12 back in 1991. There was this scene between Robin Hood and Will Scarlet where a astonished, teary-eyed Robin hugs Will going: "Brother? I have a brother?"

And then there were all the concerts of regional bands I went to. I used to have a crush on some of the band members and realized over time that I just love it when these guys hug each other or ruffle each others hair in the end.

Yes, that was that.

[mijeli.livejournal.com]

afsasfdhfkl! Thanks for linking that! :D
I watched this movie so often back when I was a little goth, and I always loved the relationship between these two. So angsty and dramatic. I couldn't define "slash" back then, so I suppose I didn't recognise it as such... but yeah, it definitely appealed to me. A lot.

First slash couple I got hooked on is from my favourite tv series, "Metalocalypse": two guitarists who are constantly bickering.. and there are so many slashy references, it's hilarious ;D
Couldn't find a really good clip, but this is them.

[hollys_tree]

I was about 16 and watching Billy Elliot. While all my friends liked the movie as well there was something about Billy's friendship with Michael (wearing a dress and his mother's makeup) that really touched me. I thought about it for weeks. Then I forgot it and years later I found Harry/Draco and thought me liking slash had started then. But I watched the movie again a few weeks ago and I realised it had started a long time ago.

[germankitty]

I discovered fanfiction in the late 70s, a couple of years before ST:TMP was released. (Yes, I started with the mother'ship. Shaddap. :D) Anyway, I soon started reading NC-17 fics, but it was either Mary Sues or a constant stream of Kirk/Uhura or Spock/Chapel, neither of which felt right. Then one 'zine I'd ordered had a flyer advertising a novel about a Kirk/Spock relationship, and -- after I'd picked my jaw up from the floor -- I went "wait, whut?!? *boggles* ... MUST. READ. THIS!!!11!!eleventy" Iimmediately ordered my first K/S 'zine, and was hooked. HOOKED, I tell ya! Of course, it helped that back then K/S tended to have the better (read: more mature) writers ... and the gorgeous artists!

Well, the rest was pretty much history; watching the ST:TOS reruns the subtext just JUMPED off the screen, and when ST:TMP gave the fandom this scene ...



... it was all over bar the shouting, really. :) I've been drawn to similar subtext-y slash airings (between equals!) ever since -- which also means I don't slash characters just because they're just so pretty together.

[dracavia]

Fall of 2002, my freshman year at Uni, I was having a rough time of things due to various school and non-school related issues. What was frustrating me even more was that I didn't really have the time to retreat into my normal haven of books because my opportunities to read for enjoyment were so few and far between. Then a friend from High-school emailed me a link to a gen, Draco-centric comedy ficlet. I read it and thought "Hey, this is great, and short enough I can read it in one sitting!" so I moved onto the rest of the author's stuff, which turned out to be H/D and it was all, as they say, downhill from there.