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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Slash Fiction
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We step away from our sci-fi channel mini-series for Pride Month to give slash fiction the spotlight it deserves, because it is not just “spicy fanfic.” It is a long-running tradition of readers and viewers naming queer subtext, building community around it, and creating stories where mainstream media stays silent.
Cold Open And Naming Chaos
SPEAKER_00We started the show. You understand that it's not just me. We both have agency here. We both have agency running after it. It's not me dictating.
SPEAKER_02Because we are the combined one.
SPEAKER_00If we were a hive mind, maybe this would go smoother. Or make good podcasts.
SPEAKER_01Gentlemen, let's rotten our minds.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. I'm Jake. We're Jake Ampersand, Skip. Oh, or what would be our what would be our name? It's not Jip, because that is a racial slur. Uh Skake? That is not a racial slur, but sounds like it should be.
SPEAKER_02Get out of here, Skake.
SPEAKER_00Or a fish that I wasn't previously aware of.
SPEAKER_02Hmm.
SPEAKER_00Nervy? That sounds pervy.
SPEAKER_02Hellson.
SPEAKER_00Helson! That sounds like a band I would totally have listened to that was under rate in the 70s.
SPEAKER_02The Helson Revival's playing at my local club just down the street next Thursday.
SPEAKER_00Didn't Helson used to hang out with John Lennon a lot?
SPEAKER_02Uh I think he wrote Skakes Revenge, if I remember right.
SPEAKER_00Skakes Revenge. Hashtag justice for Skake.
SPEAKER_02Escape from New York. They play the game Skakes and Ladders.
SPEAKER_00And now in the mobile phone era, it's just called Skake.
SPEAKER_02Conan is looking for a Skake worshiping cult that killed his family.
SPEAKER_01Two skakes coming together over a son. Skakes over a son. That right there sounds like a slash fiction.
SPEAKER_02It just used to be another skate cult, but then they took over.
SPEAKER_00And now it's a group of women running slash fiction.
SPEAKER_02Skakekliskin.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna get that tattooed on my chest.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're off to a good start.
Why Slash Fiction Matters
SPEAKER_00So, in today's episode, we wanted to take yet another break from our mini-series about the sci-fi channel, which we will get back to tootsuite. But because it's Pride Month and we are allies, we wanted to do something in tribute to that. And do something that fits in also quite well into our ouvre. So, we're doing a primer on another huge pillar that I think is not talked about widely enough in a lot of mainstream geek culture. Slash. Ah So we're gonna be talking about Slash Fiction, its history, its background, Slash Gordon. Why didn't I start with Slash Gordon? And how is that not also a porno? Slash Gordon, but not Slash Gordon? Come on. They're not trying anymore. Well, maybe we're just not paying attention. That could be, but either way. There's a band called Slash Gordon. Is there really? Yeah. Uh that probably isn't what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02A 1980s Horror Inspired Synthwave, Dark Fantasy Worlds, and soundtracks of yesteryear.
SPEAKER_00Which sounds awesome.
SPEAKER_02Kinda digging it, actually.
SPEAKER_00It probably doesn't have anything to do with what we're going to talk about, but I love it.
SPEAKER_02Ooh, a Slash Gordon running up that hill Kate Bush remix? What? Check this out.
SPEAKER_00I love Kate Bush. I think she's a savant.
SPEAKER_02You can't listen to it and listen to us at the same time, so.
SPEAKER_00But they're out there, man. You can't have a jetpack and a cool uncle.
SPEAKER_02Where were the skakes we were promised?
SPEAKER_00Flying cars, bubble domes, underwater cities, skake fiction.
SPEAKER_02Skake fact, my friend.
Queer Love In Ancient Stories
SPEAKER_00So, to start off, a little background. Legendary heroes in same-sex relationships date back to basically the beginning of humanity. Its earliest recorded history. It's depicted in ancient art and poetry from literally all over the world, going back to the oldest, commonly remembered tales, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Greek mythology and in documented Greek history, same-sex couples weren't as stigmatized as they would later become. Maybe the best known of these today is Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, which I believe is portrayed by Colin Farrell and Jared Leto in the movie Alexander by Oliver Stone. But there are so many others, it's countless. Cyclically, mainstream societies often shunned or even criminalized these ideas, forcing interpretations or the tellers of whole tales to create shorthand terms that may seem ambiguous to normies, but serve as signals to those in the know. For instance, in China, the story of the passion of the cut sleeve. Although the Han Dynasty included many emperors that had male lovers, the most famous was Emperor Ai and his lover don't laugh at this, Dong Jian. Straight face. Damn it.
SPEAKER_02Not a peep.
SPEAKER_00To whom the Emperor constantly gave preferential treatment and unearned political positions. To the extent that Dong became the supreme commander of the kingdom's army. The story goes that one afternoon, after falling asleep for a nap, embracing each other, Emperor Ai was said to have cut off his sleeve rather than disturb the sleeping Dong Jian when he had to get out of bed. In another Chinese tradition, Duke Ling was maybe one of the most famous representatives of the often hidden or little talked-about queer tradition in China, as portrayed in Han Fei Zhi by Han Fei. In the chapter Shunan, Duke Ling favors a courtier named Mi Zi Zai, who he admires for having handed over the remainder of an especially delicious peach. Han Fei records that once Mizi Zai looks faded, the Duke turned against his former lover, accusing him of degrading the Duke by giving him a half-eaten peach.
Japan BL And Reclaimed Labels
SPEAKER_00Japanese art and literature have a long tradition of male same-sex romances. In today's Japan, the slash genre is known as boy's love or BL, and the women who write and read it are called Fujioshi, which means rotten girl. That term was meant as a derogatory but was reclaimed by that community, and now is worn as a badge of honor.
Sherlock Pastiche And Drawerfic Zines
SPEAKER_00In the modern day, a similar tradition continues, beginning with the Sherlock Holmes canon, which gave rise to the first true media fandom in the Western world. Holmes and Watson fanfic, which was then called Pastiche. If you're in the art community, you would understand what that is. It's a mashing of genres. It's existed since their first appearance in 1887. The earliest such example would be a story by J. M. Bari that was written in 1893, called Speculation on Holmes and Watson's Relationship. I mean, they were talking about this a long time ago. And basically, it's been rolling downhill since then. By that I mean gaining momentum. This era, however, in the modern era, it's a branch of pastiche fiction known as drawer fic. D-R-A-W-E-R-F-I-C.
SPEAKER_02Ah, fiction that you'd store in the drawer.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. It's only shown to a few friends. Sometimes it was referred to as pass-around or underground story fiction. Even that community still exists as an anachronistic branch of current slash fiction. And in those scenarios, it is almost exclusively published as a zine. And if you don't know what a zine is, a zine is sort of an underground punk thing. It's a story or a collection of stories that are literally self-made and published, and then distributed often freely, but sometimes donations or or charged in unofficial communities. Draw Effect refers to the idea of keeping stories in your desk drawer. This is a direct progenitor of modern fanfiction, and thus slash. Now slash is shorthand for romantic entanglements between characters mostly in the same genre or shared universe. Because, and we'll get into that later, that does happen. It's not necessarily in the same well, it actually expands. They don't even have to be in the same universe anymore. When we get into the supernatural Sherlock Doctor Who slash fiction universe. Which is a thing. It's overwhelmingly about male and male romance, and is overwhelmingly written by female fans for one reason or another. It's not exclusively male on male, but we'll get into the hetero version of that later, because that's a little bit different.
Star Trek Makes Slash Mainstream
SPEAKER_00It was, in fact, to fast forward a bit, Star Trek the original series that popularized the slash subgenre. The first such story may have been, it's hard to prove, but I did a lot of research, I think this is true. The Ring of Sochern, written by Jennifer Gutridge in 1967 or 68. And it's hard to track down because it was published privately, but it was a zine. The first, actually officially recognized, slash was published in a zine. It was called A Fragment Out of Time by Diane Merchant in 1974. Star Trek slash stories began to circulate in the mid-1970s, slowly picking up steam to the end of the decade, with entire lines of publications devoted to this concept, and eventually even created, which I think is completely appropriate, slash conventions. Because Star Trek and Star Trek Fandom created conventions. So of course they were gonna create the subgenre conventions. In the earliest days of Star Trek fandom and thus modern fandom, between 66 and 72 or so, there were few, if any, relationship stories in the sense of characters exploring their feelings about each other in mainstream media. So most fanfiction was devoted to creating the equivalent of episodes of scenes of the show, including straight-ahead venture tales, dramas, murder mysteries, and oftentimes these stories were submitted officially back when studios used to do this to studios as pitches, ideas for new episodes. And that actually used to happen. There were people who would submit fan-written episodes that would eventually become episodes. At some point, studios just stopped doing this in general, uh for good reason, on both sides, both to protect the writers of things like this and also the studios, and it mostly benefited the people that submitted these things so they weren't exploited and had their IP stolen, essentially. But a lot of this stuff was submitted after Star Trek was cancelled. So it was cancelled after its second season. Fan engagement and rallying brought it back for a third season. After it was cancelled again after the third season, that's when this really started kicking up. Because now they were like, well, we know the power of fandom now. We feel empowered. We're going to submit not only our love and devotion for this show, but we're also going to submit stories. We're going to submit script ideas. Just in case a fourth season can magically be picked up or a different network even picks it up. Some examples are Judy Burns and Who Will Guide the Blind, Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Remote Control, were two episodes that were actually considered for future Star Trek stories. Then there were then it gets into like speculative, it starts going tangent, alternate universe stuff, and it just kind of got off the rails at some point, and that's one of the reasons the studios are like, just stop. Please, please just stop. And in fact, some of these stories that did win awards in certain legitimate literary arenas, like a story called Federation and Empire, where they revisit the mirror universe. Relationships, romantic or not, were extremely important in these stories. That's one of the reasons that fans were so devoted. Stories had to be about something, and it often focused on the relationship between James Kirk and Spock and their feelings toward each other, which would later be reflected in the mainstream and actually be the heartbeat, the lifeline of the series in the movies. By the time you get to Star Trek 2 and then search for Spock and then Voyage Home, you can very easily do a queer lens on that and go, this is a love story. This is a man who's in love with someone and doing everything he can to save him. The practice of Slash most likely began in its modern form in the mid-1970s about Star Trek. Prior to all this, the virgul, or forward slash, that's actually the name for it, has also been used to designate things that focus on non-sexual relationships between characters. It was kind of a shorthand that people used in writing, especially the professional writing community in Hollywood. The term slash comes from the fact that the practice is to visually represent the names Kirk and Spock with a virgul or slash between the two of them. There's a more granular way of representing this by creating a portmanteau of characters' names. And we all know this. I mean, it became popular even in the mainstream with Benefer, bullshit like that, right? Though this wasn't really popular with Star Trek, not only because it hadn't really quite manifested itself, but I do think the reason it didn't manifest itself was because of the unpleasant options you have between Kirk and Spock. What do you got?
SPEAKER_02Take all three for the table, please.
SPEAKER_00I'll take Cork for 500, Alex. Though it was far less realized fanfiction from previous IP universes, specifically, there was a lot of fanfic around the Lord of the Rings universe when those books came out. Those stories often focused on a character with the writer themselves or a proxy representing the writer joining in and just making out with the male characters. Though not exclusively male, that was overwhelmingly the case. Star Trek fanfic really solidified the genre by focusing on the I don't want to say obvious, but rife for the picking homoeroticism of Kirk and Spock's relationship. Sometimes Spock and Bones, though way less common, even though I kind of see that too, it was mostly Kirk and Spock, or Kirk slash Spock, or K slash S. Those kind of relationship stories came in more as we know them, as it evolved, with the second wave of Star Trek fans, the ones that discovered it after the show was on the air and already been cancelled and watched it in syndication, who were less interested in necessarily sci-fi, space exploration, or really what the show was about as much as the things that they identified in the relationships between the characters. This is according to a fan and someone who researches this, publishes, and critiques Slash Fiction, named Joan Verba. In her History of Star Trek fanfiction book Boldly Writing, both Slash Stories and Mary Sue type characters were produced by newcomer amateur authors who had become attracted to the series. Having little or no background in science fiction, they saw Star Trek primarily as a buddy show about three guys exploring the galaxy together. She's not wrong. I think that is kind of one of the general universal appeals. One that JJ Abrams doesn't understand. Still mad about that. Verba says that these writers perceived a necessity to isolate the characters away from the Enterprise, the Federation, and any and all characters or storylines that would have been essential to a regular series episode, but were a mere distraction to the relationship fan. That's what people wanted in this genre. These, not the very earliest fan writers, were the ones who whose writing focused on emotions and relationships between the characters rather than the plot. So they were going off of a muck time, where Spock was in an arranged marriage to a woman who didn't want him and had another lover, and used the Vulcan ritual of combat to the death to win your mate if the arranged marriage is ever challenged. Just watch the episode. You'll understand. Kirk sacrifices himself to make sure that Spock lives. It's a great episode. They skip over a lot of stuff that definitely happened, like Spock and Taprink definitely bang behind the scenes, but they don't want to have to come out and say it out loud, and then Voyager ends up ruining that continuity by taking it too literally. In the second edition of The World of Star Trek by David Gerald, talks about how this even happened within Canon as the TV series progressed and the films were made. In the beginning, the show was about the Enterprise and Space Exploration, with Jim Kirk and a diverse crew of specialists, but a fan devotion to the characters and their actors, especially to Spock, which is I think great. I think it's Jim Kirk was designed to be the love interest, the swaggery, handsome dude, the Bond character type guy, but Star Trek fans swooned over Leonard Des Moy and Spock from the beginning. And now that's kinda the standard. They caused the mission of the Enterprise to be diminished in favor of stories about Kirk and Spock and their teamwork and their friendship. So even the narratives that go along from Nicholas Meyer to basically today are about the relationship between those characters. Slash fans, unfortunately, had an
Backlash And The First Fandom Fights
SPEAKER_00uphill battle to be accepted. In early fandom, one of the many examples of anti-slash commentary about Kirk slash Spock goes back to here's an example, late 1979 in a different zine, which ironically touted the Vulcan concept of infinite diversity and infinite combinations. Quote, there are two or three fanzines out today that deal with Kirk slash Spock relationship, but in a most unconstructive way. The zines emphasize the darker aspects of human behavior, I don't like that, and in general reduce the two men to the status of oversexed homosexual lovers. This very simply is not necessary. To concentrate stories and entire fanzines on such a non-existent relationship is bad enough, but to do so to the exclusion of all that is positive and good about Star Trek is a crime. Toxic fandom has always existed, hasn't it? Star Trek presents a world of optimism, hope, and love and understanding, and of constant challenge and growth. Let us not get mired down in unnecessary excursions into human sexual abnormalities. Such fanzine writing is myopic, in that the writer seems unable to handle everything other than a dark kirk slash spock relationship. Such writers need to examine their own motives. That is such a tone-deaf look at Star Trek and Star Trek Phandom. It's baffling. So here is an essay from a Star Trek fan talking about this era that I found online. His name is KS Langley. To quote: The first piece of published slash in Star Trek Phandom was called A Fragment Out of Time by Diane Merchant in the zine Grupp No. 3, September 1974. Grupp was the only adult fanzine being printed at the time. Diane's story really was only a story fragment. A couple of pages of the he and him, no names were mentioned, but all the drawings were of Kirk and Spock. But an illustration by Diane of Kirk and Spock was included. I have actually read this. I have seen this, I've held it in my hand. Because it was published in an adult zine for a more specialized audience and likely with a small print run, fandom as a whole did not register this piece as the first unofficial published Kirk slash Spock. Other than that, Kirk slash Spock fiction was being written and circulated fan to fan and talked about underground, just like Drawerfic. Jennifer Guttridge, one of the earliest and most popular writers of the fan-circulated K slash S stories, later allowed one of her earlier stories, quote, The Ring of Sashurn, considered by many an early classic, to be published in a fanzine called Alien Brothers No. 1, 1987. She also wrote stories which were published in later zines, some of which fans later reported as leading into the idea of Kirk slash Spock. Then later on, Diane Merchant printed Pandora's Box again, a brief essay on the relationship between Kirk and Spock. Still pretty indirect, but it sparked the first publicly printed discussion about this phenomenon. In the they referred to it as a letter zine, so this is a zine that you basically subscribe to and then people just physically mail out to you, beginning with number 12 in 1975. This led to some fans writing stories about Kirk and Spock, most notably Gary Downs and Leslie Fish. Gary made it to print first with Alternative Colon epilogue to Orion, which she wrote, illustrated, edited, and published. Alternative got a lot of attention and really set the match to the fire. Although Kirk slash Spock's fiction was not alone in this, adult fanfiction in general had become more into its own and being hotly derided by many fans. Furious debates raged in private conversations and public forums when Kirkslash Spock was the only example of what would later become slash fandom. Debates surrounded the issue on several levels. People disagreed because they were anti-homosexuality for various reasons. They disagreed because they thought that people had no right to do that to their sacred characters. They disagreed because they thought it wasn't in character for Kirk or Spock, or illogical, given the premise of the show. Which also doesn't make any sense. In 1978, a zine called Thrust was published. It was the first all Kirk slash Spock anthology zine.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's specific.
SPEAKER_00And it features an explicit cover of Nude Spock on Kirk, like it's a Greek mural. I mean, there's dick in everything. It's all over the place. Warped Space, which is a general Star Trek zine, published by a person named Lori C. Printed every 10th issue as a quote special adult issue. The contents of Warped Space number 20 in 76 primarily were what is now called Het, which is the shorthand for heterosexual fanfiction. Sexually explicit heterosexual fanfiction. But also featured a Kirk slash Spock story called Shelter. It decided to expand their adult issues into a separate title because it got really popular, leading to Opsxine OBSC Apostrophe Z-I-N-E. No wonder it didn't catch on. Number one, that's rough, dude. You need some marketing people on your side. In March 1977, which included the story Poses by Leslie Fish. Also in 1977, Contact was another zine that focused very specifically on Kirk slash Spock stories. And this sort of goes on and it gets dirtier and dirtier and dirtier as it goes. We get Sensuous Vulcan in 77, Desert Heat later that year, The Naked Times in 1979, which is a short Kirk slash Spock story based on the episode The Naked Time, published by a zine called The Ponfar Press. That's really good. And then later that spawned Beyond Sitarakos and Knight of the Dragons in Thrust Zine in 1978, the first all Kirk slash Spock anthology zine. And blah blah blah blah. It just keeps going on and on and on. In fact, it goes all the way into the 90s, which is crazy. Other famous story titles uh include This Deadly Innocence or The End of Hurt slash Comfort syndrome. Oh boy. So there was a whole series of these hurt comfort stories which were they were sort of like vaguely alluding to the relationship by being like, oh, one of them's hurt, so I have to be here and comfort them, you know, like the English patient or whatever. But this is one finding love with the other in extreme circumstances, sort of like Brokac Mountain. They never thought of this before, but now that they're in this situation, they find love with each other, that kind of thing. And that goes all the way up until the 90s. In 1998, a fan on a Star Trek slash blog wrote, quote, a lot of what makes a show or pairing slashy, according to this theory, has nothing to do with the element of danger intrinsic to the relationship. In the 1970s, Kirk slash Spock was a dangerous concept simply because the writers put Kirk and Spock in a homosexual relationship. However, attitudes are changing in the 1990s. To paraphrase a fellow attendee, uh it's it's escapade, which was a zine con back then. If Mulder and Kryczek are having sex and Mulder's biggest concern is, does this mean I'm gay? Then the writer needs to seriously re-evaluate their story concept. And that is 100% valid. If you have to go, if you have to like have a weird, self-doubting conflict just because two characters are into each other, it's a bad story. And you have problems that you need to really evaluate. You really need to do some internal reflection.
The Internet Era And Shipping Culture
SPEAKER_00So then, with the arrival of the internet, more and more fans began tuning in and communicating with each other in ways that were never before possible. That's when fan fiction in earnest really started circulating, and it just became exponential. Usenet, which was one of the main internet forums before the modern age of search engines, was felt to be too public for Slash fans. Even among fandoms, they were marginalized. So members-only mailing lists sprung up, and then invite-only FTP fanfic archives became a big staple. Eventually, more and more and more Slash fans began posting their stories, talking about it publicly, it stopped becoming as stigmatized, and there was this unfortunate brief feeling that things were being more accepted in society. That wasn't true, but there were more and more increasing worldwide fans of actually accepting communities. Because the whole being gay thing in the West, especially, became more and more controversial in the 90s because of the sort of evangelical revival that happened after evangelicals abandoned Jimmy Carter and went to Reagan. And so these communities, which did, you know, pop up organically, were finding backlash even in places where they felt like they were safe expressing themselves. It would take a while for that to change. A quote from a person who used to post on Usenet back then. Even when we post SlashFec on the internet, many of us feel that we're not being public. Our sites may be known only to Slash fans in our particular fandom. Our lists may be restricted or even closed to everyone except current members. The belief that we are exposing ourselves only to other peers in the slash community makes us feel safe and secure, which is understandable. There was a lot of alienation going on. And not the cool one with Gary Graham. By November 28th, 1996, Slash had actually become a defined term on Yahoo's website index, which sounds like Greek to people today, but that was a thing. That's before you had Google, indexing things on sites like Yahoo meant that they were more easily searchable and showed how numerous the subject was. Here are the names of some of the links that it had to the web pages of that day. The generic slash defense letter by Susan Beth. Pass the Crisco, Spock! Uh Satiriacon awogo. Jen Ridler's website for her slash fiction slash fiction index. Slash summary by Catherine Anderson. What is slash? Index dash slash information about slash fiction and television shows, which was later called slash fiction on the net. And of course, today it would be innumerable. They are so prevalent and so common. And to address it, today, some younger fans may be less familiar with the term slash, and instead use the term ship as a stand-in. However, the term ship or shipping is related to, but not interchangeable with Slash. Ship originates with the X-Files fandom, where the trope of, and this is what we used to call it, will they won't they, or the moonlighting scenario, of Mulder and Scully had way more proponents than the show's Slash community, which was mainly focused on Mulder and Krychek. Though by the time you get to Buffy fanfiction, it got both shipping and slash as recognized, understood, incorporated, official phenomena. And that's basically where we leave off today.
How Slash Shapes Modern Canon
SPEAKER_00On a personal note, I did serve as one production designer on a film called Slash about Slash Fiction, starring Michael Ian Black and various others, where I got to do uh production design for a lot of the costuming and some of the sci-fi elements. Pretty decent film. If you wanna you have a chance, I I'd go I'd go watch it. It's a pretty innocent, sweet coming of age story about a queer kid discovering his identity through the lens of fandom of a superhero project.
SPEAKER_02I'm trying to think of something funny and clever, but well, don't worry about that. Unlike this fiction that we were talking about, nothing came out.
SPEAKER_00Touche, sir. Well done. Tip of the hat.
SPEAKER_02I put a little cap on it. Trying to be safe.
SPEAKER_00I think most people today are aware of what slash fiction is. They know it exists. A lot of people have seen Geated Rivalry, which is sort of born out of the idea of slash fiction. I think most fandoms, including Supernatural, Doctor Who, Sherlock. The Sherlock thing I think is a little hilariously not ironic, but maybe apropos, considering Sherlock comes out at a time where slash fiction already exists, even though it is what is the origins of slash fiction. And I think it's a really important part of fan culture. Not because it's a fetishy, kinky thing that's secret and quiet, even though that's part of it, that's part of the excitement of it sometimes. But it also allows people to express the the things that they find in the subtext of the IPs that they enjoy, the things they identify with, and continues the lore. And you know what? Sometimes in those scenarios, even the fanfic leaks in to the actual text of the stuff. I mean, like, there are examples in comic books and sci-fi and everything where uh where f the the slash fiction, the speculative stuff turns out to be more popular, or at least helps create the unstated, maybe vague or undefined parts of certain fandoms actual canon. Seven of nine, for instance. And it's a way for them to engage with each other and discuss and take from the things that they identify with, but also help push the things that they love in a direction, one way or the other. Just like Friend of the Show, Holly Conrad, cosplaying as female Commander Shepard in her Mass Effect cosplay, and then female Commander Shepard being the standard. So it's a way for direct engagement through fan enthusiasm, which makes total sense because fan enthusiasm and community and letter writings and pre-internet solidarity is what got Star Trek back on the air for its third season to begin with. Also, this is the kind of dirty shit that a lot of wine moms love. So it ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
SPEAKER_02It's giving them an outlet for the type of stories that they want to see, they want to read. You know, the same way it's giving an outlet for feeling included when you're on the outside of the mainstream. Yep. But you wanna see what you envision in your own life being expressed with your favorite characters that you love and enjoy.
SPEAKER_00You would not have Xena kiss Gabriel. That is a direct result of slash fan influence in tribute to its fans. It was realized, manifest by the fervor and the enthusiasm of the slash genre.
SPEAKER_02Classic.
SPEAKER_00That's our short primer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just take it. That's what we say.
SPEAKER_00Just lay back and think of England, you know.
SPEAKER_02Uh why don't we uh want to reverse it?
SPEAKER_00Okay. Oh, I see what you're saying. I I was like, I was like, what, you want me to like un unship people? You want me to go real hardcore about heteronormative fiction?
SPEAKER_02You know what? Uh we need we need heteromonth too, okay?
SPEAKER_00Why is it always why is there no white pride month? Exactly. Fuck that shit.
Pride Month Wrap Up And Listener Support
SPEAKER_00Well, we would like to thank you for joining us on this small adventure into the history of slash queer fiction, fandom. I'm sure later we will be doing a at least an episode on the idea of fanfiction in general, but this was a very specialized one that we felt like needed spotlighting because of Pride Month. Just know that we are allies, we stand with you and all of our fans. So please make sure that you like and subscribe. Make sure that you follow on whatever social media that I manage to post to during the course of a busy day, when our apartments or houses are not flooding because of the fact that we're killing the planet and ruining the environment. And we will be putting out more in our series on the early sci-fi channel. We'll be wrapping that up very soon. But until then, until we get to that point, Jake, what should our listeners do?
SPEAKER_02Well again, they should like, share, subscribe if they wouldn't mind tipping all of their weight staff, bar staff, staff staff, staff infections, staffs of raw. Any DJs, KJs, RJs, BJs. If any of their dominators, dominatrixes, their pets, their pet players, their kitties or daddies.
SPEAKER_00Make sure they reduce their staff by one kadam. Otherwise, you're not gonna hit that spot, that G spot.
SPEAKER_02And you always want to hit the G spot.
SPEAKER_00Or prostate, whatever works for you.
SPEAKER_02Anyone who is providing something to you, show your support. They deserve it just as you deserve it. And for all of us here at Dispatch Ajax, we would like to say remember, wherever you go, there you are.
SPEAKER_01Please go away.