I've been a fan of slash fanfiction for years now. And that's the first time I've ever admitted it in writing. Why is that? There's something about that particular genre that seems like it should be taboo; when my friends first became interested in it, I was very sure that it 'wasn't my thing'. However I soon realised that I was only pretending not to like it, even though I was still too embarrassed to admit that I was secretly searching for slash fics in my spare time. I suppose my embarrassment resulted from the fact that most people assume slash fiction is nothing but porn. Although that wasn't necessarily what I was reading, I didn't like the idea of people assuming that I was, and thereby judging me in some way. There was also the fact that people won't necessarily ship the same characters as you, and even now I am reluctant to publish any of my work on the internet because of this.
So when I came to uni and heard Kathy talking about slash as though it was a normal topic of conversation, I have to admit I was pretty surprised. I found it unusual that people didn't care to hide the fact that they liked it. And when offered the chance to attend a conference on the topic, of course I wanted to go.
My initial thought when I first arrived was that I was surprised to see that the majority of the people in attendance were adults. Of course in hindsight I don't see why that would seem strange, but at the time I felt slightly out of place. However I found it very interesting to hear their perspective on slash fanfiction; it was, as expected, much more insightful than the usual "omg liek he's so gay for that other guy" that one usually encounters.
The talk that I enjoyed most was the first one I attended: Panel Two: True Pairings. Although I can't say I am a fan of SnapeXHarry (or 'Snarry' as it is known in fandom), the first part to the talk, The law of master and servant: officers, batmen, and slash subtext in the context of World War I looked very interesting. The talk itself was split into three sections, with the speaker discussing Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, then PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, and finally JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Unfortunately Kellie Ann Aki Takenaka had to go through her paper very quickly as there wasn't a great deal of time alloted for each talk, however she went into detail about the connections between her chosen novels and the experiences of men during the First World War, with comparisons to fanfiction written about the main characters. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed this part of the conference so much was because I am both a fan of WW1 literature, plus enjoy reading hurt/comfort fics, which were mentioned a lot, particularly concerning Bunter and Wimsey. People with different interests would still have found the talk interesting though, as Kellie Ann gave a talk that was easy to follow, and had plenty of humour to keep the audience both amused and involved.
The second half of this panel was a paper by Vera Cuntz, on The mentor and his disciple: on homoeroticism in the relationship between Harry Potter and Severus Snape. As previously mentioned, this is not a pairing that I ship, however what I liked about the talk was that Vera acknowledged that (obviously) this was not a canon pairing, and that not everyone would agree with her opinions. The use of film clips and a powerpoint presentation also made it different and easy to follow. She compared certain scenes from the Harry Potter movies with scenes from traditional love story films such as Gone With the Wind. Rather than focussing solely on the script, she compared the technical side of filming, for example when the two characters destined to get together first meet, the shot-reverse-shot technique is often used. I felt that the paper was fascinating and also quite convincing in terms of Snape and Harry being a valid couple.
As someone else as already mentioned in a blog, this was the last slash conference being held for Cultural Exchanges, which is a great shame as it was a very interesting day. Hopefully there will be opportunities to attend similar events in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment