Rogue Errant

At first I thought, "well of course it makes sense to mostly use 'said' since it fades nicely into the background" but then I was reading a passage from a Naomi Novik* book out loud to my spouse and all those 'said's that I hadn't really been noticing popped right out and I thought "dang that really is a lot of one word, even if it is an unobtrusive one."

*I love Naomi Novik's writing and find it both aspirational and inspiring, but none the less.

The obvious solution seems to be to use actions to indicate who is speaking. I am seeing a lot of this in fiction right now, where you have

Steve scratched his head. "Beats me."

or

"Beats me." Steve scratched his head. "What do you think?"

and thus we understand Steve is the one speaking. This is, in fact, mostly what I was doing in my own writing (while also using various dialogue tags sparingly).

This also becomes sort of ponderous and tiring though, and can expand time too much if you want something snappy. The action indicates something about the pacing of the scene and the attitude of the speaker, and sometimes this inhibits the flow of the story and often it is simply unnecessary. But I wasn't really sure what to do about it, and so continued to pepper my dialogue with superfluous action and wasted time trying to come up with unobtrusive dialogue tags without over using 'said'.

Then I started reading the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels by Dorothy L. Sayers, and discovered you hardly ever actually need anything besides the dialogue itself.

Dorothy Sayers writes a huge portion of her stories as dialogue. It varies from story to story depending on the cast and the setting, but I think some books may be more than half dialogue (I really want to check the percentages some time)*. She often has multiple pages of dialogue with nothing else - no action, description, or dialogue tags at all. Instead we follow who is speaking by the flow of conversation combined with character voice. This is largely true even in conversations with three or more speakers.

*[After writing this I went and read the first chapter of The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club and it is virtually all dialogue. Setting, room description, characters, everything is established in dialogue. Many of her chapters are like this!]

She does also use dialogue tags ('said' and others) as well as action to indicate speaker, but usually only when someone enters or leaves the conversation. She does this a bit more frequently the more people are in the conversation of course, but it is remarkable how much she gets away with pure dialogue.

Partly she is able to do this not only because characters have very distinct voices, but also because they have distinct positions/personalities/roles. If someone is being very silly and spinning up scenarios and quoting Shakespeare (and everything else, and possibly singing) that is Wimsey himself. If someone is dryly but fondly (and modestly) playing devil's advocate, that is Parker. If someone is peppering their speech with 'my lord' and hedging everything they say, that is Bunter. If someone is constantly going off on unrelated and very wordy asides, that is the duchess. And so on - even bit characters have their role, and thus their position to take in argument or discussion.

In the Bellona club example, Wimsey addresses another character who we have never met before. Within the first exchange we understand that Wimsey is his usual positive and cheery self, while his conversation partner is much more negative. Over the course of the conversation the roles of cheery/positive vs glum/negative remain fairly consistent, which helps us track who is speaking even though we have never met this other man before.

Her approach is perhaps extreme in some passages, where a whole chapter may pass with extremely minimal use of dialogue tags or any indication of who is speaking. It is also supported by her excellent character writing (something which I am still very much working on developing in my own writing) and so maybe not something everyone can get away with, but I am learning so much reading her books!

If two characters are engaged in some kind of dialogue/conversation where we've established the basic moods/positions of each character, then we are pretty much just getting the dialogue. There is no description of expressions, or posture, or so-and-so takes a drink. She will write dialogue where someone interrupts themself to say 'don't look at me like that' and then comment on someone else's expression, but she does it without stopping to describe the expression in question. She'll have someone interrupt themself to acknowledge a waiter or agree to a drink (or turn down a drink) but she often does this also entirely in dialogue.

There was a Q&A at the end so I raised my hand and said these terms seemed conflated. Moderator explained she'd run this panel for 10 years and it started out being about slash but drifted into erotica and she never changed the name. (She also said she was glad I brought it up and would keep it in mind for the future of the panel.) The guy on the panel who writes original m/f erotica said that slash and what he writes are basically the same thing. I said I had no complaints about the name of the panel or the panelists, I was just curious about what slash meant to them, and whether slash by necessity had to include sex scenes to be considered slash.

Two panelists answered that slash was romance between men but usually had sex. Eventually one of them did make clear that slash didn't have to have sex but that it was what they wanted to read. Another panelist said that to them slash really just meant dude romance but people wouldn't read their fic unless there was sex so they felt they had to put sex scenes in.

Person came up to me after the panel. Said they felt I didn't get my question answered. Then they explained that since the 70s, 'slash' has been used to mean m slash m romance, meaning explicit and sexual. Then they said it sounded like what I wanted to ask about was shipping. They explained to me that shipping is just wanting the characters to be together but slash meant sex. They explained that since the invention of AO3, people had begun to use the ampersand to mean the fic had two characters who were friends and that the slash was used to denote ships, but even though that punctuation just meant romance, the word "slash" in the last twenty years had become synonymous with explicit fic. I explained I had been in fandom longer than twenty years and this was not necessarily my experience. They said, "Bye!"

Though they seemed confused as to whether what they personally defined as slash had been mainstream since the 70s or since the last twenty years (the person was 24), they were well-meaning. The panel was great. I'd recommend it to anyone, though I'm not stating the name of the con here because I don't want anyone involved to feel this is really a critique of the panel itself. The moderator in particular was superb.

I think that this conversation just brought up a whole lot of feelings for me. I think it bothers me that people still think that all fanfic is smutty, that all slash requires porn, and that all fic must have porn in order to be read. I am familiar with this conflation and feel perfectly fine going to a panel that I think is about slash fic and finding out it's about erotic lit, some of which is fanfic. After all, I like both, and I recognize that fandom mushes these things together and teasing them out into separate strands isn't something everyone--or possibly even most fans--have any interest in. I recognize that I am pedantic to a degree that most people find uninteresting.

I have a little bit more of a problem with the idea that slash is "basically the same" as het, but this was said by only one of the panelists. If your panel is actually about straight up erotica and not slash, then the problem is just the name of the panel.

What I found the most frustrating, however, is that whenever I have this conversation, I feel like the default assumption most of my interlocutors begin AND end with is this: smut is why we're here. And I just don't understand that. Away Childish Things has 44,800 kudos, and it has no smut in it. My next most kudosed fic has almost 15,000 kudos and tons of smut. My next most kudosed fic has almost 14,000 kudos and it doesn't even have a kiss.

I'm not talking about kudos to show off how many I have, or because I think kudos make a point about quality of a fic. They have nothing to do with quality. But they do have to do with popularity, and the truth is, sex doesn't sell. It's something else. It's not good writing. It's not a great plot. It's not in-character characterization. IT'S SOMETHING ELSE. What is it?

I've had people say to me, "Well, you're lettered; it works differently for you." DOES IT??? Maybe they meant that because enough people know me as fic author, people will read my fic anyway, but let me tell you, it's always been this way for me, long before my fic was really popular. The ones with smut did not get more praise and attention. The ones that PEOPLE LIKED got more praise and attention. Do people like fic that has smut in it more than fic without smut? Some of the time! Does there have to be smut for people to like it? NO.

Have I had people tell me they didn't want to read something I wrote because it didn't have smut? YES. But the point I'm trying to make is, there are people who want to read fic that doesn't have smut in it. THEY are your audience for the fic you want to write that doesn't have smut in it. Fic does not have to have smut to be fic; it doesn't have to have smut to be read.

I think part of the reason I get so upset about it is that slash as we know it today didn't just emerge because some people weren't getting to read smut and they wanted to. It emerged because women and queer people and other marginalized communities were not getting to see what they wanted to in mainstream media. They weren't getting sex scenes, but they also weren't getting queer content, they weren't getting stories about sensitive men that defied patriarchal stereotypes of male toxicity; they weren't getting stories about disabled folks and people of color and folks who are into kink and folks who have different lifestyles. To reduce fanfic to porn is to remove the rich history of why it exists and who it exists for.

I asked earlier what makes a fic popular, and to me, it's exactly this. It's when you read a thing and you feel, "this is really satisfying to my id in a way that I am not getting from mainstream media." And sometimes what is satisfying to your id is very horny anal sex. Other times what is satisfying to your id is Bucky Barnes getting a blanket and facing his trauma. Sometimes it's Harry Potter being trans. Sometimes it's Naruto and Sasuke getting to just hold hands as the sun sets. I have no idea who those two people are but boy howdy do I know they just fucking need to hold hands.

But the other reason I get so upset about it is I'm so fucking tired of reading a great fic that devolves into mediocre mechanical porn that is there due to the collective brainwashing that states that this is the ONLY reason ALL of us are here.

I have been in fandom since about... 2007? but intermittently. In that time the primary thing I have interacted with was 'slash' content - fic, fanart, AMVs (back in the day), and of course just discussion of character dynamics. I read/watched a lot of fanworks online, but most of the fanworks I made were for irl friends or just for myself.

This post brings up a sort of grab-bag of thoughts and feelings, the general one being agreement.

I was a trans kid who didn't know it, and a gay kid who didn't know it, and in hindsight a lot of my experiences with media (and fandom) grew directly out of this - so what you said about queer stories really resonates with me. I liked the sex in stories, and sometimes I would specifically seek out erotica, but I always wanted gay stories whether I was horny or not. What I wanted from those stories was a sense of resolution of the tension between the characters, and I wanted that resolution to be gay. Gay does not equal sex, or even kissing, or even necessarily hand holding! (though all of those things are good too). It can sometimes just be an acknowledgement that what two people feel for each other is not some platonic friendship feeling.

Having substituted "gay" for "slash", perhaps some people would agree with what I said, but then say that those things aren't "slash". To me, for the entire time I've been in fandom, slash has simply meant gay, as applied to fanworks and shipping. Or perhaps, "not heterosexual", rather than "gay".

Usually if someone just says "Slash" or "Slashfic" I will assume they are talking about two male characters in some kind of romantic entanglement, where the fact that their relationship is not platonic is textually resolved. I will not assume it involves sex, though I wouldn't be surprised to find that it does.

I think the main point where I become confused by this idea that slash=erotica is... the reason we make this stuff in the first place. We see two (generally male) characters in some piece of media, who have A Dynamic. There is tension there, and we want to see that tension resolved (or explored). So, we make a thing, and write a story that explores what those characters might mean to each other if they were unmoored from their assumed/canonical heterosexuality. The dynamic that was compelling - it was there in the media originally (Even if what you want to explore is "what if things were different" we are still usually inspired by some canon aspect). Is the cathartic resolution that dynamic was missing really hardcore sex? I don't think so. It CAN be, of course! But if all you needed was the erotica to feel that satisfaction, why fanfic? Why slash?

[I should say, there are of course lots of other places slash fic can come from - theoretical dynamics between characters who have never textually interacted or who are from different pieces of media, time periods, etc. is certainly a whole category of fic, but I do think the situation described above still basically applies - that there is a dynamic we want to see explored.]

I definitely take issue with anyone saying slash isn't that different from het erotica. I don't know how common a sentiment that is, but its baffling to me. I (mostly) only read slash. Its difficult to articulate all of the reasons why. I think it ultimately comes down to "I'm gay and want to read about gay" but not just like... plop a male character in where a woman would normally go. The context for gay stories is different! The dynamics and tropes are different. I will never find myself in a heterosexual dynamic and they are alien to me. I will never see myself there. Perhaps for some people they are the same, but to say they are generally the same and should be talked about without distinction feels wrong to me.

I would be interested in a panel that is about erotica and erotic lit more broadly, personally -I think that would be a really cool thing to go to! I am very interested in erotica in general, regardless of whether it is what I would seek out for personal gratification. I would love to hear smart people talk about it.

However.

I would definitely be disappointed if what I thought I was going to was a panel on slash and slashfic, and what I got was a panel on erotic lit which includes het and isn't exclusive to fic.

I would be almost equally disappointed, certainly frustrated, and maybe even a little angry, if I went to a panel about slashfic, and the discussion assumed that sex (and specifically sex depicted for the purposes of arousal) was what defined slashfic.

Slashfic has been a key part of my exploration of my identity and homosexuality - and how my homosexuality and gender intersect. The fic that started that exploration didn't have any sex (and if I remember correctly, only one kiss, maybe two) - but it was so gay. Not just in the character dynamics, but baked into the story itself. There are fics where the sex itself taught me something about myself, but to reduce the impact these stories have had for me to just "smut" is maddening.

Certainly the (very common) Mediocre Mechanical Porn (as was said above) which is so often slapped onto a fic has not taught me anything about myself or my identity or made me think. Lots of porn does do that. I read a PWP very sloppy kinda gross porn about trans Vash The Stampede that did that. But the kind of porn that's just there because its "what people want/expect from slash"... idk. People are allowed to write boring smut of course, but I don't think that's what slash is about at all.

a woman is less likely to go "it's stupid that women are expected to be modest" than she is to go "there is nothing immodest about a woman going out without a chaperone" or even "i can go out without a chaperone because i am so modest"

In the legal field, this is how you get lawyers on opposing sides of a case both citing freedom, or public safety, or justice, as the value at the basis of their argument: they both think that that value is important or particularly compelling for the decision-maker they're appealing to, so they have to find reasoning and evidence that allows their opposite arguments to both lay claim to it. (A lot of the time that reasoning and evidence is incoherent "transcendental nonsense," as one of the originators of this theory Felix Cohen called it. But that's a subject for a different rant.)

Not wrong but it turned out to be better than if they were right wrong or they thought they were wrong but that's just because of their self esteem issues wrong or wrong but it was just because they had to be so brave and self-sacrificing and noble wrong but fully, flat-out, wrong.

Have them be wrong in a way that's a little bit unsympathetic. Have them be wrong in a way that's uncomfortable. Have them make the wrong decision and have that decision have consequences.

One of the ways that an author often deals with a main character who they are making Special is by softening all of those places where they could be wrong. Every choice is the right one, and even when it's not the right one, it's the right one. They are The Smartest and The Coolest and The Most Traumatized But In A Hurt-Comfort Whump-y Way, and eventually it becomes clear to the reader that any bad thing that happens to them will be because it's happening to them, not because they have screwed up in some way.

And even their trauma responses are often romantacized. They're just so disciplined, and so caring about their people, and so determined and so stubborn, and if they have eating issues it's always that they don't eat enough, because that's a romantic form of disordered eating when overeating isn't, and if they have sleep issues it's that they don't sleep enough because, because that's a romantic form of sleep issues, when sleeping too much isn't. Their flaws are what people view as "admirable" flaws; they're rarely lazy or uninspired or happy to let everyone else go first while they hang back.

None of those are inherently bad, but there's often a certain sameness that settles on characters who are written this way, a sort of glossy shine that takes away some of the tension of the character because the reader doesn't ever need to wonder if they're going to really screw up.