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.

t polishes bofq badge

Is it the same sort of mushy a het guy/girl would display towards each other? Do you mind that, PMM?

a really good writer can sell me on a pairing that would otherwise ring totally false to me.

Very true. I can be sold on a very good Willow/Tara, for example, and I've been known to read and enjoy very well written Spike/Riley.

Shrift, I too found that very very odd.

I tend to skip over the explicit sex bits too, especially if it's the third or fourth (or sixth etc.) time the pair has been together. Come on, we know how the parts interlock, by this time I'm more interested in how the relationship is developing.

I'm also a romantic at heart- I believe, however strangely or crazily, in 'true love'. I want a fanfic writer to sell me that for whatever pairing.

So Spike/Angel, not Spike/Angelus, for example.

I'm with Am-Chau. Odd couples finding each other and making it work after trials and tribulations. "Making it Work", however, almost never includes white picket fences or adoring children. My idea of "Making it Work" more than likely includes the ability to snuggle up together in some hiding place for a little bit of quiet time in the lull of hte firefight.

ita, could you fix the open t font tag a few posts back? Everything's itty-bitty.

Edit: Whoops, never mind.

in the lull of hte firefight.

So many intresting things replacing l with f does.

"Making it Work", however, almost never includes white picket fences or adoring children.

Very true. I like a bit of angst, and then some mush, and not going too far beyond the probable.

Everything I've read so far reads like some slumber party gone bad

Predictable self-pimpage But, that said, on the whole I agree. Which is perhaps because I've not read the right f/f stuff. Hmm. I was sold on Buffy/Faith by a couple of writers - now that's a pairing with gallons of interesting dimensions to it. Very Lindsey/Angel. But on the whole the girly slumber party vibe does put me off.

How did I fall into slash? I think it was via Buffistas.org - but I've been seeing the big gay subtext in various things for years, and various mates have come out to me at various points, so the whole Escher-like shift in viewpoint seems fair enough and normal enough. So reading a dynamic between character X and character Y in terms of unresolved sexual tension didn't seem remarkable.

eta: I'm SO not going to read that bloke's article. It wouldn't be good for my bloodpressure - and besides, I'm not really here. No siree. I'm working. Yes I am. Still -

Who's to say they are any lesser, as storytellers, than this year's Booker Prize nominees?

Man, I can't speak for this year's Booker Prize nominees, but I've read Booker Prize nominees' fiction in the past, and it isn't always all that and the proverbial bag of potato chips. I'd cheerfully put fanfic by Herself or AJ Hall up against The Restraint of Beasts, for example. Because it may have been 'literary fiction', but that isn't actually a synonym for 'good'.

YMMV.