Why isn't slash yaoi and why is yaoi slash?

by Maygra

Then she told me I had to write about it...and I thought, okay. I'm a writer. I can do that.

Uh huh. That was several months ago...

Every good essay needs a topic...here's my shot: Why isn't slash yaoi and why is yaoi slash?

Lets start with some basics. The simplest definition of slash comes from my friend Sandy's site:

"Slash is...amateur fiction containing a sexually-*charged* relationship between two same-sex media characters, usually men."

So what does that mean, exactly? Well, it means that you take any two guys from any media source: Television, Film, or Novels;  and you establish some kind of sexual tension between them, conscious or unconscious, and there you have it.

Because slash is primarily about subtext. It is taking the buddy show genre of  entertainment mediums and looking under the friendship (or the work relationship, or the fact that they share screen time) and you poke and prod until you come up with some tension. They may be antagonists in the show, but love is akin to hate. They may be colleagues who are trying to keep all that lovely sexual tension under wraps for fear of revealing themselves in a still somewhat homophobic society. They may be best buds, but with a little nudge, they could be better than friends if one of them would just WAKE UP!!

Eh hem.

So why isn't slash yaoi? Isn't that what happens in yaoi? Two gorgeous guys (by somebody's standard) doing the wild thing...well, no. Because Slash, more often than not, needs a reason. It needs subtext, it needs a (cringe) excuse. Oh, sure there are plenty of PWP's out there with just the wild thing...but more often, and what draws writers to the genre, is the exploration of that subtext, the exploration of the relationship.

But yaoi does that! Sometimes.

True, and that is why yaoi can be slash but slash is rarely yaoi. Because yaoi can exist without explanation. There may be a framework, but there doesn't have to be. Yaoi can be simply two gorgeous guys doing it, or dancing around doing it or cuddling and not doing it (called smarm in the western fanfic vocabulary) Or maybe they aren't doing it in the pro manga and never would, but darn if the dj's aren't having them do it anyway!

I'll grant the lines get blurred sometimes. You have slash writers who push the envelope and could be writing yaoi, if their favorite pair were being drawn rather than being acted on television or in the cinema, or being described lovingly in a novel. There are writers who don't justify anything...and yet, the characters they are writing about have an established relationship, position, interpretation on screen.

You can get nit picky and detailed: Well, I can, anyway. Yaoi, to me, is more about aesthetics than slash is. Yes, you can have realistic, gritty, yaoi relationships -- but they aren't that prevalent at this point. They aren't really trying to emulate anything even vaguely realistic. And while slash will pigeon hole characters based on physical size or demeanor, that only relates to what people like to read, not how writers establish the dominant/submissive or even equal status of the two yummy guys. There really isn't an equivalent for the seme/uke relationship in slash.

Yaoi comes with its own framework. Slash has to build the framework external to the story. Yaoi generates the situations based on the relationships. Slash generates the relationships based on the situation.

There are probably more psychological explanations as well -- as in the fact that even thought the models for the slash pairing are fictional, the actors are not, so, slash fen have a tendency to redefine the characters separate from the actors who portray them. (And some people kind of like to mix that up as well, which is why there is a whole subculture of "sim" stories and actor fic. Sim stories being the same actor playing multiple roles -- and you toss those 'characters' together. And Actor fic is well...my skin kind of crawls -- maybe another essay when I've had a drink or two. )

I could (and am) theorizing that because slash fen keep trying to redefine the character away from the actor, that's why you get Crossover fic. In slash, the characterization is important, and the situation has equal force -- so you can have Fox Mulder of the Xfiles with Jim Ellison of the Sentinel. Or Methos from Highlander with...well, anyone. There are Crossover fics in yaoi/shounen-ai, I'm sure, but not quite as prevalently. I think it has to do with the art style...but for some reason, I can't quite see Heero playing seme or uke to say, Zetsuai's Koji...okay, uke. Heero's really short.

Or maybe I could.

Slash requires subtext, externals...and a lot of rationale. The tension is oblique and not necessarily part of the plot. Yaoi can use all those things but it doesn't have to -- and the tension, when it's there is situational, not subtextual.

I'm not sure if this actually clarifies anything save lines up both the differences and the similarities. In a lot of ways, Yaoi is richer -- if only because it isn't burdened by explanation. Slash is almost more self-conscious.

And they both offer different things to the readers, even if the readers aren't sure what it is they are looking for.