#Two years ago ago I did queer music through the decades across the UK

[aeolianblues]

can’t actually up the queer input for my radio show, like I am already playing like mostly queer artists on air! What am I supposed to do for pride month now

[go-diane-winchester]

How Misha ruined slash fiction

I first got into slash fiction because of Lord of the Rings.  Those were the nicest slash fans and gave me the erroneous impression that slashers are really lovely girls.  How wrong I was.  But almost twenty years ago, I [and my generational demographic] had the semblance of mind to differentiate between fact and fantasy.  I came across the definition of slash fiction, way back then.  Its was generically defined as fanwork done by women for women.  Of course one would argue that men like slash fiction too.  Correction.  Gay or bisexual men like Bara.  That is something that they indulge in because it is attractive to them. 

Straight women are completely different.  How straight women show their attraction and what they are attracted to, is completely different to what gay or bi men like.  Even bisexual women are still women and still writing from a female perspective.  The majority of slasher are always straight women though.  For decades, and I am counting the pre-star trek era, that was how things were.  Women, for decades, had no other platform for sexual expression except slash fiction.  Why didn't they just write something with a man and a woman?  Well, they do, but not all women like to watch another woman's love story.  Its not satisfying for us.  Some women wanted to write themselves into a story and to be honest, its not the most popular genre because the only woman truly satisfied with the story is the writer herself.  Classic slash was hidden.  It was underground, which was good because the uncultured riff raff stayed away. 

It was the ultimate girl talk.  It surprised us, how similar our desires were and what we found attractive.  Remember the faulty character Becky Rosen?  Even though she is problematic, the moment Sam licked his thumb and wiped the ink stain off her nose, many of us turned into embarrassing swoony puddles.  Why?  He was cleaning her nose, for goodness sake.  What's so cute about that?  I don't know.  We all just gushed at him.  Remember Dean spinning the Impala in the episode ''Baby''.  I played that bit again and again.  It had nothing to with sex.  Dean was handling a car but we still became gushy about it.   

I read somewhere that foreplay starts in the kitchen.  This applies to women anyway.  So warming your girl up starts way before you even get her to the bedroom.  So you start with a candle lit dinner and soft music and slow dancing.  While he may be ready when he walks in through the door, she will need wining, dining, dancing and lovey dovey talk to get interested.  Usually.  [Sometimes, she will appear suddenly turned on, but no, she just saw her husband helping an old man cross the street, and she thought ''why is he so stinking cute?  Wait till I get my hands on him''.  But that is once in a while.  We don't switch on and off like men.  We are, by nature, cautious creatures.  Getting us in the mood is as important as the act of lovemaking itself.  That is why art that is geared to women, generally, is over-the-top and melodramatic, indulging the foreplay more than the sex. 

Ryan Gosling with a boom box [or whatever you call that thing] standing on top a car, confessing his undying love = foreplay.  Jack Dawson making Rose stand at the head of the ship [or whatever you call it], making her imagine she's flying = foreplay. Is it necessary to the story?  Nope.  Will the Titanic stay buoyant because Jack didn't make Rose fly?  Nah, its will still sink.  Do we like it, nonetheless?  Oooh, yeah.  

For the past 80 or so years, we have kept it solely to ourselves because:

men wont appreciate it because its not their ''thing''

men will misunderstand it [case in point: Misha Collins]

because it was sexual fantasy and some of us would prefer not to share that openly. 

Did male actors speak about it when they did find out?  Yes, in passing, especially if they were the subject of the story.  A reporter or director would always tell them.  In the case of J2, Kim Manners apparently told them what he had found on the internet.  The Lord of the Rings cast found out because of Peter Jackson.  What was their reaction?  The same as all the other actor's reactions: They would smirk/laugh about it, make a joke and move on.  Then Misha Collins came along.  The first time he had spoken about slash fiction, I had winced.  Apparently, judging from the audience reaction, so had they.  We really didn't want this spoken about openly for two reason. 

1]  He was speaking to a general audience during his panel.  Some of them don't care for slash fiction and no, homophobia has nothing to do with it.  If it doesn't float your boat, it just doesn't.  [Keep throwing the word homophobia around, unnecessarily, and its going to eventually lose its effectiveness because it is frequently being used to bully people into doing what you want rather than for equality.  So no, Jensen Ackles is not a homophobe because he doesn't want to be up close and personal with Misha Collins.  Grow up.]  I elaborate more on this in my Dear Misha Collins open letter post.  Please read that one. 

2]  The sane slashers of those days, [and it was a decade ago] didn't want their personal naughty little secrets spoken about so candidly in a public setting.  Why?  Let me illustrate.  If you tell your friends, in a personal setting, how you like when a man runs his hands all over your body, it will illicit some ''oohs'' and giggles followed by their own contributions to the discussion.  If you are sitting with that same gaggle of friends at a crowded restaurant and you say the same thing loudly for the whole room to hear, what will they think of you, especially if they have children with them. 

Slash used to be one of those things a lady never spoke about in public, no matter how empowered she thought she was.  [Personally, I don't think a lady has to relinquish her femininity and decency in order to feel empowered.  That's why I don't like women, like Kim and Briana, who call themselves bitches to show how tough they are.  Sure, I will break a man's face, if he puts his hands on me, but that doesn't mean that I have no feminine qualities, and I wont exhibit this aggressive side of myself with a loving and caring man.  I guess things have changed since the early days, and women are different now.  But this is just my opinion and not relevant to the subject at hand.]

If Misha knew how to gauge the audience, he would have understood there and then, that this is not a suitable topic to indulge in, where the audience was mixed and included some younger people, i.e., teens and children.  What he did, was to keep running his mouth off about something he didn't know.  He said he went on Wikipedia to learn more about slash fiction.  For a man who went to university, he is not very smart.  If you have ever done any academic research report at university level, you will know that any report that includes citations from Wikipedia are immediately rejected. 

Wikipedia is an unreliable source of convoluted, opinionated information that is sometimes not quantifiable and therefore cannot act an academic resource.  Plus anyone can edit those pages.  No matter what agenda they have or how stupid they are.  This fool didn't know that.  So he started to ''educate'' the still fixated younger batch [who have now grown into the hellers we loathe and fear] in the audience as to what slash fiction was and that is why they like him so much.  While other actors speak a line about it and move onto another topic, Professor Knowitall esq. will give his rather young audience a lecture on a subject he knows nothing about, thereby conditioning them to think that slash fiction is something that it isn't.  Is he that stupid or that arrogant?

If you look through Wikipedia, it will give you the impression that slash is homosexual in nature, and that it is an expression of gay love.  The fact that those stories and artwork originated with straight women and is powered by the artistic efforts of mostly straight women, is ignored.  There are topics about queer recognition and LGBT relevance on that page.  The page isn't telling you what slash fiction is.  It is telling you what other groups feel about it.  I can tell you, almost a century ago, slash fans were not indulging this art form for those reasons.  They were doing it for their own satisfaction.  If other people like it too, that's fine and dandy, but it is not about them.  And what Misha has done with this fandom, which is bleeding into other fandoms via intrusive destiel fans, is to make slash about the LGBT. 

That is why gay men are now getting angry because young impressionable girls are listening to him and turning a predominantly straight art form into an inaccurate gay platform.  They are using things like closetedness, gay bashings, bigotry and even AIDS as a gay ''trope'' or theme for their stories.  If you write about a subject you know nothing of, you will write it wrong.  These children [because they behave like that] are writing about some very sensitive and serious topics and they are romanticizing them.  What person wont get angry? 

In the old days, the two people who made up a pairing, were differentiated, by using two words:  Seme and Uke.  While slash was a straight female art form, gay men didn't give two hoots about these words.  They didn't read the stuff.  They didn't care.  They had bara.  When ''woke and non-bigoted, inclusive'' slash fans started speaking for gay men through their stories despite the fact that these men have a voice of their own, the guys got angry because they don't have a seme and uke role type in their relationships.  Well, of course they don't.  Slash is not about gay men.  Its about straight women and their sexual expression.  And in their fantasies, there are seme's and uke's. 

That is another problem with the Wikipedia page.  When you look at the history, it starts with kirk and spock.  The dunderhead who wrote that page, didn't know that slash started in the east, probably Japan, although Hong Kong might dispute that.  When it became animated in the 1970's, the anime version was called Yaoi.  The Japanese were actually making money from slash fiction way back when by making comic type books, essentially novels with pictures.  And it was those translated stories, which were almost always set in another world, that gave birth to Kirk/Spock slash fiction.  The westerners got hold of these books when the Asians immigrated.  I can't find the source to that information.  If someone has it, please forward it to me.  These words, seme and uke, originate from there. 

There is only one other person who over-indulged his slash fan base.  Harry Styles.  He regretted it, because it ruined his friendship.  So he stopped.  But he had a good excuse.  He was between the ages of 15 and 19 whilst in 1 Direction.  He was a baby and didn't know any better.  Harry learned his lesson within five years and stopped.  Misha has been on the show for ten years. He was in his mid thirties when he started on Supernatural.  He was already a grown man who has no excuse, because he is not stupid.  With the amount of damage they have done, you would think that he would stop.  He doesn't.  Because it gives him staying power.  James Franco, also over fixated on slash fiction, even writing a dissertation on the subject is also another cataract, but because he is so unpopular, due to not having a fandom, he doesn't cause the amount of damage that Misha has.

The one thing I have noticed is, overindulging a slash fan [not necessary a heller - any slash fan] is like feeding a Mogwai after midnight.  It turns into an uncontrollable gremlin.  That is exactly what Misha's fanbase is: a hideous collection of gremlins that he overfed and now they are attacking any mogwai that doesn't show gremlin traits.  What Misha's dumb section have now done [and no I am not talking about the nice sweet, sensible, non-intrusive destiel fans, just the destihellers] is they have taken slash fiction itself, and turned it into an increasingly hateful and problematic concept.  Because, the general public, which includes J2 [because they have nothing to do with slash fiction], now have the impression that slash is a means of bullying and putting your indulgences before other peoples' opinions and dignity. 

It also give the impression, to unknowing people, that homosexuals are boisterous and demanding people and you have to please them or else.  The general public don't know that predominantly female, heterosexual, entitled princesses are writing this crap.  They think that gays are pushing slash fiction because words like gay, queer and LGBT keep popping up.  Any gay man reading this, take heed, because these children are damaging your collective reputations.  And if you don't deal with it now, the PR headache you are going to have to deal with, in the future, as a group, is going to be immense. And it won't even be your fault but you will be blamed for it.  How do you go about doing that?  Speak directly to Misha.  Shut up the master Gremlin himself.  Tell him he is doing you a great disservice.  After all, the mostly straight heller girls are speaking for you and he is pushing the microphones into their hands. 

I always liked slash because not only was it a means of female sexual expression, but it was also a means of female creativity.  Sure, we all like Cinderella, but it was lukewarm for some of us because, she was difficult to emulate.  And growing up, we didn't know she was a character to enjoy, not to emulate.  Children always emulate what they see on screen.  She was thin, pretty, a good singer with nice hair and small feet.  I am club footed, bipolar and fat, with a lion's mane that brushes broke on.  I felt sorry for her because she was abused.  I felt sorry for her because she was crying at one point.  Then I remembered what I look like when I cry.  Soft tears don't roll gently down my pink cheeks.  Snot rolls down my nose, careening to the inside of my mouth.  Not pretty.  Not delicate.  The story was nice but it left me feeling inadequate.  Some women love it.  I am ''meh'' about it. 

When I read a bemusing slash version with actors in place of the fictional cast, I read the whole story smirking.  I didn't begrudge the beautiful lead [I think it might have been Jensen] because I was as besotted with him as Prince Charming was [presumably Jared].  I didn't want to be him.  I wanted him.  I wanted the prince too, just FYI.  I could be a fly on the wall in the story without actually picturing how my insignificant self would fit into the story.  That is what slash fiction meant to me.  It was an escapist art form into a fantasy 'verse, that is custom made to put a smile on my face. 

Now, Prince Charming is fighting for gay rights against his bigoted father, the king, and Cinderella is beaten by his ugly step siblings because he is a homo.  And I look at it and blink.  I am not the audience for this story.  Empathy is one thing, but replacing your sexuality with someone else's is something else all together.  Especially since every slash story now seems to be about gay characters and gay rights and homophobia.  Slash has turned into a one trick pony.  How much could you write about gay rights?  Slash's creativity is running on autopilot.  Take your ship, make them gay, make one closeted and unhappy, make the other out and happy, throw in a gay oriented trope, even AIDS [no decency threshold] and boom!  You've got a story.  

They've been writing in this way for the last ten years and they've ruined the whole genre.  So much so, that destiel and cockles stories aren't enjoyed by anyone except destiel fans, because Misha and Cas are in those stories.  And he is always written as a precious smol bean.  At this juncture I have to point out that, to be fair, other ships on Supernatural and other fandoms are doing the same thing, because destiel fans bend the will of others to their own.  I heard they are actually tagging destiel into posts about other shows.  Why?  Because Misha has turned a harmless indulgence into an addiction.  He is their only dealer and pursuing canon gives them their fix.  They are gremlins on crack with stunted creativity. 

Of course, the children argue that they cant read an unrealistic story which is why slash characters have to instead be gay.  Oh yeah, then how come in Cockles stories, Misha is something pregnant.  So you can take your ''realism'' and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.  When you write a totes realistic story, with gay characters rather than slash characters, you are disrespecting three groups of people:   

the actors, who are your, sometimes, unwilling muses 

the homosexual community, that you have absolutely no right to speak for

the other respectful slash fans who nurtured this art form, before you woke idiots flushed it down the toilet. 

Decent slashers say:  This is a work of fiction and has no bearings on reality.  Then they go out of their way to not include themes that are synonymous with the gay community.  The characters in a properly written story are never explicitly gay.  They just like some guy, even though last week they were with a girl.  And no, that doesn't make them bisexual either.  Remember, slash is a predominantly straight female platform and bisexuals don't want you speaking for them.  Otherwise, everyone will be wearing purple shirts because that is a bi color and bisexuals aren't allowed to wear any other color, apparently.  The fed up bisexuals reading insulting meta on how Dean is bisexual, because of his food and clothing choices, are a case in point.  So the character are fantasy slash characters.  If I were to coin a word, then they are slashsexual.  

They are just muses for the woman's sexual expression.  We don't need to tell them what we are doing, thereby putting them in an uncomfortable position to amend or dispute our opinion about them.  That is plain rude and borderline sexual harassment.  Even if we are women and they are men.  Treat them with the same dignity that you demand for yourself.  Its got nothing to do with them.  Don't ask them.  Misha, on the other hand, has no shame and will therefore never turn down a question.  Has Misha caused irreparable damage?  I am afraid so.  Older women get caught up in life so they don't indulge in slash as much.  And so the brats are running this art form to the ground, teaching nonsense to those that are younger than them, parroting whatever crap Misha spews about slash fiction, in the name of sexual equality. I am not even counting their online behaviour, just pointing out their horrible handling of slash fiction at the behest of Misha Collins.  They still listen to him and its going to get worse and worse, until slash fiction becomes THE most hateful thing about fan culture.