slash fiction

English

WOTD – 20 February 2012

Etymology

From slash + fiction, from the use of the slash symbol (/) to separate the names or initials of the characters or persons involved.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

slash fiction (countable and uncountable, plural slash fictions)

1. (uncountable) A genre of fan fiction focusing on romantic and/or sexual relationships between characters of the same sex (typically men).
   • 2005, Milly Williamson, The lure of the vampire: gender, fiction and fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy, Wallflower Press, page 169:

     But Buffy has also generated enormous amounts of slash fiction. The cult television text and the rise of the Internet have both had an important aspect on the development of slash fiction.

   • 2009, Mark Bould, The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Routledge, page 208:

     They analyze slash fiction (stories about romantic and sexual relationships between two male characters, some of which involve graphic descriptions of sex), and argue that the similarities between romance novels and slash fiction prove gender differences exist.

   • 2009, Robin Anne Reid, Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy, page 282:

     Over the years, slash writers have started dismissing as homophobic this trope of men having sex with men without identifying as homosexual or bisexual; nevertheless, much slash fiction retains the trope's underlying sentiment of true love and devotion transcending all external rules.

2. (countable) A work in the genre of slash fiction

Synonyms

• slash
• slashfic

Hyponyms

• (female/female slash): altfic, femslash, f/f slash
• (male/male slash): boyslash, m/m slash

Coordinate terms

• shipfic

Derived terms

terms derived from slash fiction

• boyslash
• f/f slash
• femslash
• femslasher
• m/m slash
• pre-slash
• slash
• slashable
• slashdom
• slasher
• slashfic
• slashy
• slashzine

 

Related terms

• slash
• slasher
• slashfic

 

Translations

work of fiction

References

• Bury, Rhiannon (2006) “A Critical Eye for the Queer Text: Reading and Writing Slash Fiction on (the) Line”, in The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, Springer Netherlands, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 1151–1167