yuletide_coal | It's a Coal (w)rap Battle

Yeah, but what do most people really mean when they say "no slash"? I know that there's one of my fandoms that I might say it regarding, and I would simply mean that I don't see the main characters as gay, and please don't write them that way. To me, "no slash" wouldn't mean "don't mention the possibility of two guys being married" - now maybe I'm the exception?

There is such a long fannish history of bad attitudes to slash that yes, most people who see "no slash" will interpret it as "ew, gay" (or at the very least "ew, slash") rather than "I prefer canon pairings or sexualities for my nominated characters". And even that, tbh, I don't rly love.

DA

I think there is a difference between putting "no slash" in DNWs, and saying "Only het ships for Draco, please". I wouldn't have any problem with the latter. I've said "only femslash ships for (x character), please" before, so I'd be a bit hypocritical if I did. xD

Honestly, I think the best option instead of "Only het ships for Draco, please" is to just say "I like Draco/Pansy, Draco/Hermione, and Draco/Ginny" which are, coincidentally, all het ships.

AYRT

Yes, I agree that that's the best option! But it doesn't work for someone who wants Draco and would be fine with pretty much any het ship (or even excited to get a rare!ship), but doesn't want slash.

(I have some female characters that I identify with and wouldn't be happy to read het about, while being 100% okay with any femslash ship. So I know about the issue from that perspective.)

I would just be safe rather than sorry (no need to make the person reading your letter annoyed) and mention what pairings you do want or dont mind having in your fic. Saying "I only really ship xyz for the requested characters" sounds a lot better to me. Personally, I always do this because Im a monoshipper and its more of a pain to list all the pairings I dont want.

Some people mean "I don't want the main pairing in the story to be non-het" and some people mean "I will flip my lid if a minor character in the background mentions her wife in passing." And since there's no way to tell which, people are likely to assume the latter.

+1

+2

I don't want a background mention of Luna/Ginny to cause my recip to leave a stiff "thank you for writing" comment on my epic Harry and Neville fight space!demons together in a very heterosexual manner story.

Maybe what we really need are different terms to distinguish the two. Remember that kink-shaming post last year, and how most of us felt that saying no to something didn't mean OMG you're sick for being into that? Well, not getting turned on from reading explicit slash (or het) doesn't make one a homophobe (or hetrophobe). Neither does simply not seeing a particular character as gay or straight. And right now, there's no way to say that without either risking pissing off your author or jumping through linguistic hoops.

or hetrophobe

hmmmmmmmmmmm

Lol

There are quite a few ways.

"In this fandom, I've requested Harry & Draco. I don't ship them - I ship Harry/Hermione, Harry/Ginny, and Draco/Luna. If you're writing shippy fic, please only those three ships. :)"

"In this fandom, I only really ship the canon ships. Thanks!"

"If you're a porn writer, I would love to read porn for Snape/McGonagall, Luna/Dean, and Colin/Parvati. Other ships are fine, but I'm only into explicit fic for those pairings, sorry."

Etc.

Sure, there's no easy way to say "I'm not a homophobe, but please don't write me slash or femslash." You have to use your words.

Yeah, but the original question was "does no slash mean that my recip will have a fit if a gay person wanders through in the background?" I don't think that for most people it does mean that, but there's not an easy way to express that without tipping in the other direction and possibly making your writer think that you want issue fic and want to ensure minority representation.

But it is easy. If you don't want the characters you're requesting to be slashed, just say "I want these pairings, please do not put these characters in other pairings." If you don't want background characters to be in non-canon relationships, you say "Please, no non-canon background relationships" or "Please, no non-canon relationships other than the ones noted here."

AYRT

I think that putting it on a "in this fandom I only want canon ships"/etc. basis, instead of having "no slash/femslash" in the general DNWs, takes care of that problem. If someone requested Harry and Draco and said "please no Harry/Draco", I would know not to write Harry/Draco but that it was okay if Luna mentioned her girlfriend Pansy.

If someone wanted to just be up-front about it, they could say in their introduction something along the lines of "I like all kinds of fic, but in this exchange I ask that you don't ship my requested characters with anybody except the specific pairings I've mentioned. [Or, for this particular exchange I'm only interested in canon ships; or, whatever applies to the particular circumstance]. Other background ships are fine - if Luna or Draco have a girlfriend, I don't mind. The only exceptions: I don't ship Snape with anybody, and I OTP Neville/Millicent Bulstrode, so please don't ship either of them with anybody else, even in the background, sorry."

I run into this problem, mentally. Generally when I say 'no slash', I mean 'not in this fandom/for these characters'. There are some fandoms where I like a slash pairing - since I'm watching MeTV right now, Emergency! for example, or Fraser/RayK in Due South - but in most of my fandoms, I'm not interested. So I fret about how to express that without offense.

Just name specific pairings in your fandom DNWs, no explanation why.

DA

Yep. I'm not going to read the entire letter and realize that someone hasn't asked for any non-het pairings, and indeed has put the popular slash pairings in their DNWs. That's too much cross-referencing and reading about fandoms I duncurr about.

Whereas a big "no slash or femslash" in the DNWs leaps right out and feels quite confrontational.

+1

I used to say "No slash" all over the place in my Yuletide letters, even though I write slash all the rest of the year. I just wanted my non-canon het ships for Yuletide, dammit! But when I started to see complaints like these, and I thought about it. Were there really any unrequested het pairings that I cared to see in the background? It turned out there weren't. So my "no slash" turned into "no unrequested non-canon background pairings" and/or "I don't ship my requested characters, so please keep their relationship platonic." Which I don't think pings people negatively.

It's a Coal (w)rap Battle

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