Girl/girl slash does absolutely nothing for me. Everything I've read so far reads like some slumber party gone bad. I like male slash because most males have to work harder to get to place where they'll admit deep feelings for someone else, especially someone who, for one reason or another, they don't think they're supposed to have those feelings for. I love seeing tough guys got all mushy.

The mushy thing is a large part of it, especially with men (Kirk, Luke, Legolas) who spend more time with other men than women. And with the others.

I'm not saying that very well.

Girl/girl only (first time I typed Giles/girl, which says a lot about my mind) does something for me in ceratin cases- women I can 'get inside'. Drusilla/anyone, yes; Willow/Tara, no.

I love seeing tough guys got all mushy.

hate seeing ANYONE get all mushy.

allergic to it, I think.

Nah - I'm pretty sure you're in a majority.

In the population at large, mebbe. In the fanfic community, I feel like I have two heads or something for not (normally) getting all that worked up by, as connie put it, "seeing tough guys get all mushy." The last time this came up in a discussion, someone said she liked het or girl/girl less as a straight woman, because it wasn't all about the delicious manflesh. (Paraphrasing here).

But I do agree that girl/girl, like any sort of erotica, depends on the girls. Drusilla/Darla or Faith/Willow, sure. Faith/Buffy, even, if the writer's good enough. But Buffy/Willow doesn't work.

For reasons that cannot and will not be investigated here, women write the majority of slash fiction.

Hmm. That's a very interesting statement. Very leading. I wonder why he bothers to mention that he cannot and will not investigate this, if he's not going to?

These writers obviously aren't professionals, but they have characters in their heads, and they want to tell stories. Who's to say they are any lesser, as storytellers, than this year's Booker Prize nominees? Most sane people, of course.

Ooh, ouch, Neal, I'm so mortally wounded.

All in all, what I found most surprising is that people wrote fan fiction about his anthology and then sent it to him.

hate seeing ANYONE get all mushy.

Um... you probably aren't enjoying that epic of mine, then. Humm.

OK, if not mushy, how about overcome with manly emotion and regard for someone they've seen as a comrade but now realize is much, much more?

t no, I have not been reading the badfic, my mind's in a weird place today

I generally only like slash if I can see the subtext on the show. I think that's probably why Fraser/Ray K. slash is my favorite stuff out there, closely followed by Clark/Lex. Sometimes, however, a really good writer can sell me on a pairing that would otherwise ring totally false to me.

I also tend to like slash for the emotional content more than for the explicit bits--just so long as the characters remain recognizably themselves and recognizably male. It irks me when slash authors write one of the characters in a way that makes him seem stereotypicaly female. I've seen this a lot in Sentinel fic.

"But Buffy/Willow doesn't work. "

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one. I find this pair quite eficacious. Of course, ymmv.

I don't go looking for slash generally. I'll read it when recced to me, and enjoy it if it's good. But it's not my only interest in fic, and some slash pairings (Mulder/Krycek) interest me a lot more than others (Spike/Angelus). I tend to like the painful kind of slash more than the warm/mushy slash, but then I've read several dS stories I really liked, and those were funny/warm rather than painful.

So all I can say is that there are just about as many reasons to read or not read something as there are stories out there, and the one sure way to start a flamewar is to assign reasons or rationales for why someone does or doesn't like/read/write a certain kind of story.

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