![]() “Slash is a genre of hobbyist creations (“fanfiction”) which depicts sexual relations between same-sex characters of well known works where said characters had no homosexual feelings for each other in the original. It’s amazing to me, after reading article upon article in English over the past few years where fanfiction was treated as inferior, threatening, weird, illegal or amoral, how completely neutral and nonchalant the Russian description here is and how accurate, considering some of the ways I’ve seen slash characterized elsewhere. He was surprised when one of the first questions he got from the audience was “will we be discussing slash themes?” It was then that slash was explained to him. This general disregard for copyright, prevalent in Eastern Europe to this day in every major industry (film, music, books) and a much more favorable attitude to fannish pursuits in general, brings us back to the priest, father Alexei, who’s decided to fight slash on the internet.Īs the article states, father Alexei originally came to meetings of a Sherlock Holmes fan club in Moscow, where most fans were into the recent BBC version. Where to me it was so obvious – all my friends had read Perumov’s books, I had them up on the shelf, in beautifully illustrated hardcover, right next to the original trilogy. It took me a very, very long time (since I was never active in LotR fandom) to discover that in the English speaking world, no one knew that Tolkien’s work had sequels. Under the New Year tree, one year I received all six of Nick Perumov’s books – the first three set in Middle Earth. Having read Lord of the Rings in Russian (highly recommended, by the way, but that’s a different post), I was delighted to discover that Frodo’s adventures had sequels, past “Return of the King”. The starkest example, to me, of how differently fanfiction was treated in my world as opposed to the English speaking corners of the internet I inhabited, was this: my parents bought me printed, illustrated, hardcover fanfiction when I was in middle school, without even bothering to tell me that it wasn’t canon. Many authors, poets, musicians of the Soviet era were scientists by trade. People sang, acted, wrote, composed, all in addition to their day-jobs. To put it simply, in a country where the overwhelming majority of college graduates were engineers, everyone had a hobby. ![]() This wasn’t because my parents were “geeks” (indeed, I never identified as a geek despite being actively in fandom since I was 13), but because of the different status of both science fiction as a genre and creative spare time pursuits in general in the post-Soviet Russian speaking world as opposed to the English one. There was no shame in creativity and devoting my time to science fiction in particular was always considered a worthy intellectual pursuit. I never had any trouble telling my parents or friends that I wrote fanfic or made vids or graphics or anything of the sort. ![]() Or slash itself.Īs a Russian speaker who grew up on the fringes of the Russosphere, the way the article described fan culture was emblematic, to me, of how I’d always experienced it within my community. The thing I find particularly fascinating about this is that in all of this it seems like the article finds the priest and his focus on fighting slash a bit odd but what the article doesn’t find odd is, for example, fanfiction. Some background on Russia and Fan Cultures ![]() I mean, “battling slash” using internet memes? Earnestly explaining that an overinvestment in fictional characters screwing each other would lead young girls to ignore boys their own age who were trying to court them? A genuine attitude of “slashers are wonderful people! We only want to save them from the evils of this terrible hobby”? It had to be a joke, right?īut no, according to the article – posted originally on a news site covering the southern regions of Russia – it was all completely serious. When I first read this article titled “Russian Orthodox Priest Starts a vKontakte Group to Battle Slash”, thanks to a tip from from teddybearsandspaceships, I clicked straight to the vKontakte group in question (vK is generally known as “the Russian facebook”) and at first was convinced the page had to be a none-too-clever satire. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |