To Slash or Not to Slash: That is the Question

Why the sudden increase in the amount of slash out there? It’s something I’ve been dying to know that I don’t think I’ll ever find the answer for.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not intolerant of the stuff, after all love is love. But it’s the sheer increase in popularity that has me stumped.

Is it the product of rabid fangirls who seem to think that if they can’t have their favourite character, neither can the women who interact with them? Solution: Pair your favourite guy up with another guy. That way you protect them both, and people might stop writing those horrible Heero/Relena stories. (NB: I really wish they would…die, Relena-bitch! DIE! Duo’s cuter than you anyway! The only good Relena's a dead one.)

Or maybe it’s just payback for centuries of oppression of homosexuality. I don’t know.

What is the draw to it? Do people write slash/yaoi just because nobody used to and it’s now on the borderline of social acceptance? Who can tell? Sure as hell not me.

Granted, in anime there are often characters who are far from straight, and are subsequently edited for it. (Go visit Kat for a rant on censorship and examples, she knows the subject matter much better than I do.) But why do people feel it necessary to change the sexuality of defined characters, or in the case of undefined characters (eg. Marron Glace in Sorcerer Hunters) assume 8/10 times that he or she is playing his/her own field?

Again, I don’t have a problem with it, I just don’t understand the ‘why’ bit.

Incest. Where I definitely do have a problem. Oh, icky-icky-icky. I’m really not into the hentai thing, but if I was given the choice between reading a badly written, triple X rated yaoi lemon and a well executed incest fic, I’d take the lemon anyday. Why in blazes would anyone want to set people (even fictional ones) up with their siblings? May I repeat, ICK. As far as I'm concerned, if you wouldn't screw your own brother, don't make the unfortunates you write about screw theirs!

And what’s worse than incest? Why, twincest, of course! If I come across one more fic featuring poor innocent Vash doing yucky things to Knives and the other way ’round, I’ll projectile vomit my own intestines.

But I digress. And I still for the life of me can’t think of a reason other than the rabid-jealous-fangirl one for why yaoi and yuri have become so popular recently. Maybe it’s the boost in foreign markets for that type of thing, maybe it’s simply a different choice, it might even be the position of the planets for all I know.

But that’s half the point – I don’t know, I hate not knowing, and I can’t figure out why.

~Owari~ (for now)