I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy: new approaches to slash fiction

Abstract

This thesis uses slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural to suggest two new slash typologies. While existing frameworks — romantopia (concerned with sex) and intimatopia (concerned with intimacy) — are useful, I argue that many slash stories fall outside the scope of these two terms into two newly proposed categories: paratopia and monstropia. Paratopic slash is centrally concerned with psychological change or geographical repositioning and realises, like romantopia and intimatopia, potentials of homosocial desire. Monstropic slash is centrally concerned with perversity and realises potentials of homosexual panic; it is a genre of slash fiction until now unexplored by slash scholarship. To illustrate these frameworks I discuss Supernatural slash stories in detail. Supernatural was chosen to illustrate both paratopia and monstropia because it is arguably a text that promotes homosexual panic as much as it does homosocial desire. I also argue that Supernatural slash, which would ordinarily be classified as romantopic or intimatopic, is paratopic due to the changes necessary to negotiate the characters’ homophobia and authentically present them in either sexual or intimate love. In conclusion, I argue that paratopia and monstropia are useful frameworks for understanding the ‘other worlds’ that slash inhabits — worlds beyond the reach of ‘topias’ romantopia and intimatopia.