FAQ
A different type of chick flick. One so full of homoerotic subtext that it encourages slash.
The term “slash” describes fanfiction and other fanworks that depict a romantic/sexual relationship between two characters of the same sex, usually men. I have found it is often written by women who have concluded that pop culture, particularly pop culture created by men, usually lacks three-dimensional female characters and instead presents us with unimaginative stereotypes who are defined by the male protagonists’ sexual interest (or bemoaned lack thereof) in them.
Examples: Who’s Trixie? Speed Racer’s girlfriend. Who’s Lana? The chick Gough and Millar had a hard-on for. Clark’s first love. Who’s Cameron? The young doctor from House’s original team who had a crush on him. Who’s Cuddy? House’s sexy boss with whom he might have had a tumble. Who’s Ruby? The demon chick who shagged Sam. Who’s Sara? Michael Scofield’s love interest who - while played by a likable actress - ruined “Prison Break” by turning it from a thriller into Lanaville. Who’s Arwen? Aragorn’s future wife. Who’s Eowyn? The girl who wanted to be Aragorn’s future wife but ended up with Faramir. Who’s Mary Jane? Kirsten Dunst. Who’s almost any chick in almost any action movie? The woman by his side.
Therefore, when you want to see sparks fly or a believable emotional scene between characters who are each their own person, you often have to turn to the men of a story. Brothers (in arms). Deadly enemies. Romantic rivals. The Fellowship of the Ring.
Nevertheless, “slashy movies” are not usually “gay movies”. While Laura Craik’s statement about “Brokeback Mountain” being a slice of the finest soft porn for women ever committed to celluloid is undoubtedly true, the type of fare that seems to inspire slash fans the most is your average mainstream entertainment where any behavior that might indicate anything other than a zero on the Kinsey scale is classified as “bromance“. This is the stuff reviewed here. Slashy movies feature decidedly straight male protagonists who then - in primarily female fanworks that are, among other things, the equivalent of pseudo-lesbian-girl-on-girl porn for heterosexual men (where two women screw for the sake of screwing) - find true love with each other, share their feelings, and discover what it’s like to be nailed through the mattress.
Which, you know, is really freaking hot.
I’m a twenty-something fangirl who’s read and written fanfiction since 1993. I discovered online fandom in 1998 (before eGroups had become Yahoo!Groups and was in fact still ONElist) and have been active on livejournal.com since 2003. One of my earliest fanfiction experiences was jotting down stories about Trixie and Speed from “Speed Racer” in a journal I kept with my best friend (we had yet to realize that Trixie didn’t have a function).
They’re plotbunnies.
plotbunny: (plŏt’bŭn-ē) idiom, noun: An idea for a story that refuses to go away until written. Possibly inspired by John Steinbeck: “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
So your rating system is based on bunnies?
Yes. The gold bunnies indicate the quality of a movie (like the gold stars would on a more, um, respectable site), and the pink bunnies the slash factor. One bunny is the lowest rating, five bunnies the highest.
I’m not going to reveal a movie’s big twists (did you know that Darth Vader is…? Never mind). But if a specific scene is slashy and knowing about it won’t spoil the movie’s ending, I’ll most likely describe it in some detail. So if you don’t want to know that there’s this scene in “Casino Royale” that is so gay-bondage-website that I fail to see how James Bond can be the icon of millions of heterosexual men, you probably shouldn’t be reading my reviews. You can still check the slash or overall quality rating of a movie by having a look at how many pink/gold bunnies I gave it. These may be found directly below each review title.
Why do your reviews have unsophisticated titles?
For search engine purposes: If you wanted to read a review of a (slashy?) movie, you’d type in its title and maybe “slash” or “review” and hopefully come across this site. Alternately, if I had a review of “Titanic” and you were to type “Titanic slash fanfic” into google after watching it, you’d also find this site in the search results, along with a helpful link to the one and only Cal/Jack cross dressing story at the end of my review.
Not often enough.
Of course, I’d love that! If you would like to use a shiny banner, please contact me, I have a few available for use.
I might, particularly if it’s not a movie everybody and their muse has already seen. Feel free to contact me and tell me its title, why it’s slashy, and where I can find it. If I end up sharing your sentiments, I’ll definitely add it to my list of Slashy Movies To Review.
I suspect I lost it in the gutter where I keep my brain.