oh, what the heck. I stayed quiet about the fanhandling kerfuffle...

[buggery]

For some reason or another, they would read a slash fic or two. They wouldn't like it. But, either because a friend of theirs wrote it or an author they liked did, they'd keep reading it. And, eventually, they'd learn to like it. They would begin reading solely slash. They would eventually become almost anti-shippers of Spuffy (and any other het pairings) and would be 'converted' entirely to slash. It wasn't their original taste, but they acquired it over time, and came to prefer it over what they'd originally enjoyed. The same was true for writers; almost everyone I read who stopped writing Spuffy didn't go for another het pairing, but went straight to slash.

Ladies, gentlemen, and other denizens of my friends list, meet kantayra and her theory of How Spuffy Traumatized Fandom and Made Fans Gay For Slash.

Lucy was admirably diplomatic: "You seem to have constructed a very elaborate theory here that is hinged on one very simple thing: you don't get slash."

I went a different route: "Congratulations. You have rooted out yet another sub-plot of The Homosexual Agenda. And soon enough we will RECRUIT YOU TOO." And then I appended a "/sarcasm" tag to the end of my comment, and frankly I'm worried that the post's author still may not get it, given the track record displayed just in this post. (Said post goes on and on and on, BTW, without making much if any more sense.)

It almost disturbs me more that so many of the comments are along the lines of "ZOMG you're so analytical I never thought of that" than that anybody would concoct a theory like this to begin with.

Did WAR GAMES turn anybody into a slasher? How about IDENTITY CRISIS, with its message of heterosexual relationships equalling doom? Or maybe it happened back during BRUCE WAYNE: MURDERER?

But wait, slash has been around for a long time. How did the first slashers get traumatised into it? Maybe it was seeing Kirk lose his space-babe-of-the-week week after week...

Comments

[flying-anteater.livejournal.com]

:-0 This is the gaping mouth of WTF!

I had to stop reading shortly after her Good Boy vs. Bad Boy examples, because the illogic made me choke.

I’m trying to come up with some kind of well structured argument, but all I end up with is picking up stray sentences, waving them around, and shouting, “What the hell is this?

Like this: In fact, some of these people turned into those batshit slash fans. You know the ones. The ones who say that heterosexual sex is wrong and icky, and real romance only happens with gay relationships. Yet these people claim themselves to be heterosexual women! What. The. Hell? o.O

Indeed. Has anyone met such a person? Because it’s entirely possible that I’m a cloistered slasher who just hasn’t had the right world experiences. But I doubt it.

Or: these people had been traumatized by the Spuffy ship.

Whoa. Taking fandom way to seriously.

Or any sentence with the word “convert” in it.

[unlovablehands.livejournal.com]

Actually, that attitude does exist in certain slash circles, but generally the older the writers/readers involved get the less they adhere to that. But hey, if Plato said something similar, it must be true. :D

[flying-anteater.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what I get for making assumptions based on the people I hang around.

*Bows to your superior knowledge*

And I never argue with Plato. Damn gadfly makes my head hurt.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I got nothin'. Trying to find sense in that post isn't only, or even mostly, complicated by the way the 'argument' wandered all over the place.