atheilen

Disclaimer: I love slash. I read it often. It does not squick me in any way.

Elizabeth Bear spoke in her journal about slash, and the subtext in a particular scene she was writing that she knows will lead to fic down the line. (For anyone who reads this who hasn't, go buy Hammered. And Scardown, too. Right now.) I responded by telling her about the fixation some of my friends already have with the Vakar/Melsaran pairing, which I didn't think of until they got ahold of it.

Now, I'm amazed and gratified that I have people who like my writing so much that they will speculate, fill in gaps, and advance their own theories. I would love to read slashfic or any fic set in my universe someday, though probably after all the books are done so I won't be sued. (My friends choose to pester me to write the fanfic, though, which I won't do. 1. That would be sad. 2. I barely have time to write the canon. 3. Probably, they would think any slash I wrote sucked anyway.)

But there is one thing that kinda disturbs me about this. It is that one friend especially seems to think that my story will be less objectively good if I don't slash these two men. I understand and accept that she might like it less; after all, that's a matter of subjective taste. But she seems to think that slash is required to make a writer good and that anyone who does not choose to put it in is either a wimp, a bad writer, or a homophobe. (I've met other people like this who also seem to think this applies only to male slash and that female characters are not necessary, which just sends me into a RAGE, especially because most people who say this are women.) The idea of subtracting merit points from a story because there's no gay smut baffles me.

Sex between any gender does not make a story good or bad. It's an element that can be used well or horribly. I've read both great and terrible slash. I've read wonderful and horrible het. I've read awesome and crappy gen. I understand preferring one genre over the others, although personally my preference is for good characterization and nothing else.

In my books, there will be sex. There will be nonconsensual, crossgen, 'normal' het, and slash, though not V/M slash. There will be loving, committed relationships, pure lust, friends with benefits, and rape. There will be people who care about each other without choosing to have sex at all. I think it would be great if people elaborated on these relationships, wrote about interpretations different from mine, and made up new pairings in fanfic. I just don't want to be judged, as a writer or especially as a PERSON, because my interpretation (which, I've learned, is not necessarily the One True Way)didn't contain Pairing of Choice. I would, however, like people to use my story as a jumping-off point to write their own, because I believve that any good story, no matter who has sex, has merit?

Or am I wrong, and it's all about smut?