The moral choice of slash
I've been a very bad girl today, and instead of doing the mound of work awaiting me, I've written something for the debate currently going on on fcal, about whether slashers ought to pay attention to the objections of authors to litslash, in a way they would not pay attention to the objections of film/tv directors to mediaslash.

In fact, I think this question is the same that lies behind the RPS debate, so I'm posting a slightly amended version of it here. I almost certainly won't be able to answer any comments, given my timetable for the next x weeks, but it seemed a good moment. The examples, by the way, are those that came up in the conversation on fcal, rather than necessarily fandoms I'm active in.

To start with, what do I think of RPS? I'm not going into detail here, but actually, I'm agnostic: I don't think strongly about it either way. Some of the little I've read has been so extreme and unbelievable that it's hard to see how it differs from normal slash: those are definitely fictional characters! I don't see the point in the boyband stuff, either, except to the degree that that it explores fanonical characters, which is what a lot of what FPS does anyway, with no regard to canon whatsoever. But some of the more 'real' stuff - in particular the stuff which you could imagine having happened, like Baz/Ewan - does get my skin crawling a little.

Yet I find it hard to object to RPS per se. Not because I think it won't upset the actors: I'm pretty sure it will! But, see, I think slash in general upsets them, too, and the amount of 'upset' will differ with each actor, and probably with different characters they've played and how strongly they identified with them. There are all sorts of cute justifications for slash, but I think they tend to ignore that one fact: that the actors may well be deeply upset by the concept of slash itself. RPS is therefore little worse than FPS, and how much worse depends on a variable no writer can fully control. One actor might be deeply upset by what most slashers would think of as a mild story, whereas another might be amused by something much more explicit or hard-edged, or much closer to their own identities. Who are we to say?

Moving over to litslash, now. The argument being debated on fcal is that litslash is somehow different from mediaslash, and possibly subject to different rules, especially in regards to accepting author objections to publishing it. I find a lot of the justifications being proposed for ringing litslash into a little coralle of its own to be irrational, though the feelings behind wanting to do so are genuine. To paraphrase, they seem to be dividing into three categories:

• that the author will lose financially. This has pretty much been debunked in the conversation so far, since most people into litslash express a great willingness to buy the original fic if the author maintains the quality of output, and to abandon it if they don't, whether or not fanfic is available. Examples cited were that Harry Potter 5 was a must-buy, but Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles had gone so far downhill that even if all slash were expunged from the world, a new VC novel would not bring a rush to the tills. I'm sure J K Rowling is sighing in relief.
  
  
• competition within one medium: that it is worse to create slash within the same medium as the original work, which I personally think is an artificial distinction unless it has some sort of financial impact, as above. This is discussed a little below, as well, but on to
  
  
• ownership rights: that, because books are the creation of one individual, that one individual has more right to be upset by slash, and more to be upset about, than the hordes who create a media work do.

I've considered this a lot from the other side, mainly from the point of view of the actors in a media work. How much can they be said to 'own' their characters? Who owns media characters, if anyone, and who has a right to be upset by 'misuse' of those characters (characters being the core of slash)?

I would narrow down the creators of media characters to four or maybe six individuals: the writer, the director, the film editor, the actor, and on occasion, the costumer (since clothes and hair define a man) and the stunt coordinator (if the way he does that lovely little spin through the air is what gets you going, though how much that defines character is a bit more open to debate).

In a tv show, writer, director and editor can all shift constantly, and it might fall to the actor and the producer to maintain some continuity. In a film, there is much more of a single guiding vision. To take an extreme example, in TPM Lucas wrote, directed and edited it, had final say on casting and much else: if he isn't a creator, who is? So a short list of director, actor and writer, then. But there being more than one 'creator' doesn't make the problem less; in fact, it intensifies it, because any one of these three main creators can object to slash.

Majority vote needed, or what?

To move back to the second point about the medium, now. If the argument goes that mediaslash is in a different medium from the original works it slashes, tv or film, and thus is 'allowed' where litslash, being in the same medium as the original work, is not, does that mean therefore that directors have the right, say, to object to slash songvids, or the gen film-making that goes on, but not to written slash? Or, to turn it on its head somewhat, that a writer would not have the right to object to slash based around the film rather than around the book, as much of the LotR fanfic is?

I honestly think this is splitting hairs, and worse still, is an excuse to ignore the legitimacy of the feelings of all these creators - which is something slashers are rather prone to. As a group (and making gross generalisations here) we do tend to underplay how much the individuals involved in the creative process of film, tv and books might sincerely dislike slash in all its forms. And yes, sometimes this is because they are bigotted - as I'm sure J R R Tolkien must have been, given his religion, his age and the period he grew up in. (That certainly doesn't make his feelings less; no doubt if he were alive now, he would dislike slash intensely, not least because of the promiscuity of the characters, as much as because of their homosexuality.)

Sometimes it's just because they believe that thing belongs to them, and that they have a final say in what happens with their universe.

This is a subject where my feelings are at war with my reason. In purely emotional terms, I won't slash Tolkien, partly because it would be like dragging out into the open something that I do believe is there in the books, but which would have scandalised and upset him deeply if he thought other people saw it there. I will slash Lucas, because I don't think he's half as shocked as Tolkien would be, and I think he's probably come to terms with the shift in social acceptance of homosexuality over the last 25 years since the fuss over SW slash, in a way that Tolkien would never have done, even if he'd been alive now.

My reason says: there is no hard line that can be drawn here, just as there is little reason to believe that actors mighht not be just as pissed off by slash in general as they might be by RPS, and we're fooling ourselves to think otherwise. My activities are going to hurt people whom I admire: the people who created these great characters for me to play with. And I don't care to ignore this fact by drawing some arbitrary distinctions between genres or media or number of creators, or whatever.

Perhaps that's why people are happier slashing dead authors' books? So as not to face this moral choice? But to deny that the same moral choice exists for film and tv slash is, IMHO (and let me write that in very large caps, because a lot of people won't agree, and I'm not here to impose my 'morality' on anyone else), putting your head in the sand.

But. I'm still a slasher. Is that selfish, or what?