Slash on FanFiction.net

Who agrees that they need to put in a separate section for slash fics or atleast put it something to Separate slash from nonslash?

 

I agree wholeheartedly.

FF.net would be much better with options like these.

 

And it will never happen, because at least half the admins if not more are slash fans...

 

If we could find a way to make a petition or something similar known to them, there is a possibility of having something like this done. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

 

It's definitely a good idea, but its unlikely to happen even though it would not take that much to get it done considering all the recent modifications they have made to search functions and categories. The main problems is the admins enjoy slash themselves.

 

That is a very good idea. It is really frustrating to have a nice fic turning out to be slash when you have read through 10-15 chapters. Most of these doesn't mention it is slash in summary and a lot of people doesn't bother to read author's bio page unless fic turns out to be pretty good.

I think if all of the DLP users submit a mass-petition or something, the administrators would atleast add a warning or something at the beginning of the story. They can't ignore if that many people have the same request.

 

Yeah really! And I want a filter so I can read fic about only white people too! I swear fanfiction.net is being over-run with authors who don't even mention that asians or negroes are in the fics in the summaries. Bastards! Not that I have any problem with negroes, I just don't like reading about them.

Err... okay maybe not.

And this would never work. There's too many 'degrees' of slash. If it's only minor characters, if it's mentioned in jest, if it's Harry/Draco but Harry's a girl, if it's femmeslash, and so on and so forth.

The only possible option I can see is that they make a "slash" genre. Like Romance, Humor, Adventure (got renamed without the Action), Drama, have a category entitled "Slash." But even then, it'd be up to the author whether to call their fic slash or not. There's no way to implement a retroactive measure on the 300,000 Harry Potter fics there already.

Because I'm quite sure most of your opinions of what constitutes a slash-fic will not be the same as the ff.net admins or the authors of those fics.

New sites could start that way though. Like http://www.hpfandom.net has an initial split between "General" and "Slash" and then the genres broken down further after that first one. Of course there's more than four times as many slash as gen by the site's classification.

 

I think an on/off tag (like "Completed") would be the best solution here. And an ability to sort through/mask fics with or without this tag.

 

. . . and they would code it so that you'd be able to browse either all fics or slash only. I'm certain there wouldn't be an option to exclude slash.

 

I would think that the people who enjoy slash fics would like having them separated too if they didnt like to read nonslash fics. But yes its not very likely although alot of people would probably prefer it to be separated.

 

I really don't give a shit about pairings. I'm perfectly happy to read slash if it's well written. The problem is that almost all of it is shit. What they should have are seprate catagories for good and bad fics.

 

That would make sorting through ff.net much easier, for slash and non slash readers. After all a person who only wants to read slash can filter away the het pairings as well.

@nonjon: You can't compare those 2 things. I myself have a friend who is gay and I still don't want to see/read gay porn/slash.

 

I don't see the reason why they couldn't make slash an actual category. I mean people who write slash are supposed to put up a warning anyways so what's the problem with them making an actual category out of it? It would make finding what you want that much easier. Slash and Het are as much of a category as Angst and Action/Adventure and I think it would help everybody from the slash haters to the slash lovers to those that like to read both.

 

A simple solution would be, in the search section, place a choosing of slash and non-slash.

 

It would have to be a selection like the Completed fics or In Progress fics that they have at fanfic.

 

It sounds good, but the admins over there are far too lazy to have to do all that work. I remember them whining about the complete/WIP marker. Maybe, though, a petition would do the trick. Who can set it up?

 

Yeah, having a Slash filter would be good. If the fic contains any form of slash it should be kept seperate from het and gen fics.

I think that FF.net should do a lot more than just add filters too. I don't know if they realize that the majority of the fics on the site are trash not worthy of being read by a 1st grader.

I always wanted ff.net to have some rules when it came to the quality of a fic. Nothing out of control that would make it impossible to post a fic, but their should at least be some guidelines a fic should follow; i.e, correct punctuation, capitalization, grammar, sentence structure etc. You know, save our eyes from the pain of reading the average fic on that site.

How do you contact the FF.net admins anyway? All I can find is their forum, do they have an email to send complaints to?

 

The problem with the crappy ones is everyones definition of shittiness is different.

And slash in the background where they dont actively show is okay in my book. If its a big part of the fic then it needs to be considered slash. But like the Second Chance at Life fics the vampires are bi BUT its in the back ground and there is just mentions of it so far.

 

I'm fully opposed to that idea. FF.net is the site it is because there are no checks or requirements on 'quality'. If I wanted a site with anal admins who have to okay chapters, there are several dozen sites out there. I know Fiction Alley is pretty strict on their grammar/punctuation sending chapters back for rewrites many times. I still like ff.net better than any other fanfiction site because anyone can post anything and as long as its within the site rules, it stays. Like Tara's crap. Horrible. Awful. A blight on society. But I'm almost impressed that ff.net hasn't deleted it and it appears likely that they won't.

They have some pretty shitty and random enforcement of their "rules" and their treatment of many authors has well-earned them the title ff.net nazis, but I still will take that system over something like harrypotterfanfiction.com where your first few chapters have to be okayed before you're allowed to upload on your own without moderation.

And while a slash/no-slash filter would be nice, it wouldn't be very helpful. Because there is too much grey area. I mean my fic Dimension Hopping has a gay Harry, so that one of mine would be slash. My humor trilogy featured Draco/Draco so those would be slash too. The vast majority of harem fics include femmeslash between the hoes and there are plenty of homophobes out there who get sickened by that idea.

What you all want is a slash-filter based off of YOUR interpretation of 'slash', and there are too many differing opinions on that. Not to mention it'd be impossible to implement retroactively.

 

I tend to agree with Nonjon, but a solution (should ff.net wish to consider the slash filter) would be to establish a universal and simple definition of what they are considering slash. Undoubtedly the oversimplification would cause problems with those gray area fics, but...shit happens (particularly at ff.net). That being said, I offer the following as a first shot at the simplest definition of slash:

"Any fic where same sex members engage in a sexual or romantic relationship."

Granted it may tag certain fics that have only small, inconsequential aspects of slash in them. But small and inconsequential doesn't mean "not slash" either. Though it is often used by my wife to explain why she always has a headache.

If we're picking on ff.net they need to offer more space for story summaries. So that after they make a slash filter, the author can say, "Yeah, but the slash in my story is small and inconsequential."

Cheers,
Omagic