Fanfic Forensics

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Is it any more "subversive" to conjecture that a fictional character from CSI or Dollhouse or Star Trek is gay than to conjecture that I am straight, as no doubt happens every time I step out in public? Some percentage - and it's hard to calculate in reality, but definitely higher than 2 - of people are gay; if the show doesn't show us who they are, well, what if it were these two? What if they weren't evil? What if they weren't dead? What if they were the protagonist, instead of just a sidekick?

And that's why slash goggles are necessary, why by-us-for-us isn't enough, and why slash can be so much more satisfying than simply consuming a rare text that already acknowledged our existence in the first place: it's the media world that, dammit, we live in too, and we just want to take a piece of it back.

Tags: homosexuality media television

Posted by: Nele Noppe