Slash fiction: Elisabeth Easther on a new twist to the rings tale
(apparently an article from Metro, one of London's many newspapers)

Net pick up bad hobbits

'Legolas panted: "I need you so badly," grasping Boromir's face to
steal a passionate kiss from the human who'd stolen his heart.

"I am yours," Boromir gasped, surrendering to the elf, who dominated
his dreams and his desires, his every waking thought. Bugger the
Ring, they thought, those hobbits will just have to wait.'

If you're racking your brains, trying to remember when exactly in
the Rings trilogy Legolas and Boromir got it on, stop now because
the quotation is not Tolkien at all - it's pure Slash.

Slash Fan Fiction, to give it its proper title, describes scenes
between existing media characters (or real people such as musicians,
actors and sports starts) that are usually homoerotic, often
explicit and almost exclusively written by young, heterosexual
females.

Screen queens

Shirasade (an assumed name) is one such woman. She's a 24-year-old
university student from Switzerland who started writing Slash before
she even knew what it was. Then, when her family got Internet access
at home, she got discovered she wasn't alone in her passion for
writing up steamy gay scenarios using characters borrowed from film
and TV.

She explains the tendency towards homoeroticism by the fact that in
The Lord of the Rings, ad indeed most fantasy fiction, there just
aren't enough girls and the subtext is often very gay.

'In most action/adventure-oriented movies/TV shows,' she
says, 'women are little more than eye candy; damsels in distress or
prizes for the hero. What really leaves an impression is the
relationship between male characters. And of course, there's the
fact that the thought of two good-looking men crossing the
boundaries of friendship into love appeals to me.'

Fan meet fantasy

She's not the only one. Rosie (who was unwilling to divulge any
personal information other than her age - 24) started writing Slash
five years ago as an antidote to her college essays. 'It's just like
men fantasising about girls together, only the other way around,'
she says.

Elves, hobbits and humans are not alone in being given the Slash
treatment. In fact, the fiction genre was originally made popular in
the 1970s by Star Trek fans who put Kirk and Spick into compromising
positions. Ardent fans would write stories to distribute at fan
meetings, where the term Slash was coined - a reference to the /
that splices the two characters together, for example Harry
Potter/Han Solo.

Since then, the genre has grown into a phenomenon; type Slash
Fiction into Google and you get 410, 000 pages returned. There are
sites that specialise in reviewing it, sites that explain it, sites
that direct fans to academic papers on it and even sites that give
instructions on how to write it.

Actor Craig Parker, who played the Elf Lord Haldir in The Lord Of
The Rings, learned about Slash at a fan conference in Australia.

'I was at an autograph signing when a very polite young woman handed
me a stapled wad of paper that she asked me to read later,' he said.

'Basically, there were endless scenarios that began with Peter Jack
crying: "That's a wrap!" and ending with various combinations of
cast members sated and sticky. In fact, I'm amazed anyone had the
time or energy to film anything at all.'

For some actors, it could be unnerving to find themselves featuring
in explicit adventures, but not Parker. 'Slash,' he says, 'is not
something I would fill my bookshelves with. And while I take no
offence at its existence, I have no desire to read it or to find out
what my fictional alter ego is up to. I do take some comfort in
knowing that one of us at least is having an exciting Friday night.'