A long time ago, a friend and I were talking about slash in X-Files, and how we felt that the show really didn't have much of a foundation for it, and besides, the real good stuff was between Mulder and Scully, and it was like the classic buddy shows that led to slash anyway. Het slash, my friend said.
I asked, huh? Het slash? What the heck is that?
No one, oddly, had ever given me a good definition. When people would talk about Mulder and Scully, they would often bring up the concept of how Scully was the man in the relationship, that it was a classic buddy scenario, that the way the two are kept apart, were all symptoms of a het slash aspect of the show. I still didn't get it.
I didn't think of Mulder/Skinner slash until after that conversation, but once I saw that it could be done feasibly, I started writing that, and enjoying it. Het slash vanished from my mind in the face of real slash.
A while later, I started watching two shows which have become my primary fandoms, along with X-Files--La Femme Nikita and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Strong (both literally and figuratively) female characters who are central to the show, in love with men they either should not or cannot have, dire straits faced every day. What's not to love?
I've watched these shows religiously now for years, made songvids in all three of them, and read e-mail lists or newsgroups about them at times. X-Files is the only one where slash even remotely interests me, or where I see its possibilities (at least, as far as slash with Mulder and Skinner). In both BtVS and LFN, the heterosexual relationships between the two leads are impossible for me to ignore; in X-Files, I can fantasize about three separate relationships (M/Sk, Skinner/Scully, and Mulder/Scully), all of which I've written in or created vids in. What can I say? I'm creative (or delusional, depending on your point of view) in how I look at things.
But even after all this time, I still came no closer to a definition of het slash, or at least one I could understand, until just recently.
Slash as thwarted love
People come to slash for many different reasons. I won't even pretend to analyze anyone else's reasons but mine, because that's a disservice to fellow fen--let's face it, we know our own motivations best. When slash was first pointed out to me, in The Professionals--my ur-fandom--it picked up on something I'd always enjoyed privately: male/male relationships, unspoken attractions, and relationships that should not/cannot be. And while my new fandoms don't always have the same-sex relationship quality I've liked (although I would desperately love to see Michael forced to seduce or be seduced by a man in the same fashion as Nikita so frequently must seduce or be seduced by someone--even a woman on occasion), they do have the thwarted love component. In a major, major way. Which brings me back to het slash.
In the past season or so, X-Files has been more blatant about pushing the Mulder/Scully relationship and has played off it significantly, teasing the fans and even having other characters comment on it. Although this pleases some, it certainly brings with it difficulties for many fans, who are dissatisfied with having such a subtle and underlying attraction pushed into the forefront, made the focus of the show; still others feel the quality has deteriorated as the producers have become more obvious in their pimping of this relationship. For them, as it is for many slash fans, the joy of the relationship comes in its interpretation, in seeing what is not necessarily blatantly there, what is open to interpretation if you're wearing glasses that allow you to see it.
But I confess that the near-miss kiss in the movie, or scenes where Mulder and Scully touch or hold hands, make my 'shipper heart skip a beat. The nearness and yet-so-farness of it all appeals to me tremendously, possibly the same quality that led me to enjoy slash in those early days. It's the Almost but Not Quite quality (henceforth known as ABNQ).
ABNQ has drawn me further and further into LFN and BtVS, although I began watching them both for different reasons. For LFN, it was the techy toys, the cool music, the clothes, the whole hipster glumness that appealed to me. I fell instantly in love with Roy Dupuis, but it took some time to warm to Peta Wilson, whom I now admire tremendously. Buffy intrigued me for many things--I'd loved the movie, loved Anthony Stewart Head, the look and feel of those first episodes seemed like a good omen: dark, funny, subversive.
The not-to-be romances didn't really intrigue me until later, but in both cases they became the focus of my interest in the show. They were like slash was to me--necessarily thwarted relationships where it was clear the characters connected, wanted each other, needed each other beyond the call of duty (fighting terrorism, fighting conspiracies, fighting evil monsters), but they could not have overt relationships.
The price of love
When Buffy finally consummated her relationship with Angel, havoc ensued. People died, were tortured, the world nearly ended. All because of love and happiness and passion. They were destined to be thwarted, even after Angel regained his soul, because to have that true relationship would mean more misery and death and possibly even the end of the world.
For Nikita and Michael, love brings with it death. Section One has gone overboard in their determination to thwart Michael and Nikita, threatening them with death, using the brain-be-gone machine to wipe away Nikita's love for Michael.
It was these actions by Section that finally made me understand the concept of het slash. As Michael and Nikita met in secret in a hallway, furtively looking around to see if they were alone, stealing kisses, knowing full well that it carried with it such dangerous consequences, I suddenly went, oh! I get it now.
Since slash, for me, has long been about that underlying relationship that should never be public, realizing these three het couples were either hiding, having to hide, or deathly afraid to acknowledge, their feelings for each other carried with it the same frisson as Bodie and Doyle or Mulder and Skinner hiding their relationships from the prying eyes of CI5 in the '70s and the FBI in the '90s. It's a thwarted love wing-ding, but they're straight!
It's helped a lot, too, by the fact that the female characters are strong and independent, are not there for window-dressing, and are either the titular lead of the show (it is, after all, Buffy who's the vampire slayer, and Nikita who is our femme fatale) or are a part of the central focus of the show (Mulder without Scully would be boring, as he would lose his foil). I'm not sure that an idea like het slash could have existed before this surge of such strong female leads.
This also leads to a similarity to traditional slash, in that you have characters of roughly equal weight, equal importance, and equal ability. For many people, slash is cemented by the buddy relationship, the proximity of the two lead individuals, the fact that they are a team, together. They often look for a "further adventures of" quality to fanfic, stories where the characters are as they appear in the show, but doing something we wouldn't get on the actual show.
(Digression: But this is certainly not always the case for slash appeal. For a hell of a lot of people, it's about two guys having sex, or inequality in relationships--say, non-consensual sex fans or those who are looking for the perfect S&M relationship--or they don't generally like the typical hero type, so they choose another guy in the show to pair one of the lead characters with. There are a lot of diverse reasons for slash fandom; I'm mostly talking here about my own, and those of people like me who tend to look for equality as a relationship basis.)
Masquerade
So, at long last, I get het slash. I see Michael and Nikita sneaking around, trying to hide their sexual relationship from the prying eyes of the Section leaders. They fake kidnappings, beatings, anything in order to masquerade for the public, all the while carrying on in private. As the audience is part of it, we get the little thrill of knowing they could be found out; it adds a weight to their missions or activities they might not otherwise have.
And for Buffy, now she not only carries this enormous weight of having to essentially be responsible for stopping all supernatural evil in the world, the girl can't even have a normal relationship. Her friends and her watcher may have forgiven her for still loving Angel even after he murdered and tortured those in her group, but they can't forgive him, not totally, and there will always be underlying suspicion and mistrust that spreads to her. Which makes my heart go pitty-pat.
When Angel was dying in the third season finale, and Buffy forced him to drink her blood (the blood of a slayer being the only thing that would save him), everyone assumed that Angel had thoughtlessly, selfishly forced himself on Buffy. And he stood there and took it, took their doubt like a boxer receiving his blows, because he felt it was what he deserved after everything he put them through. Never mind that Buffy had forced him into it, that he had fought her as best he could; in the end, it was decided that this relationship was bad, bad for everyone involved. In fact, should never have been. It's so slashy!
There have been a lot of primo moments on television for me, but few have carried the agonizing thrill of Giles' discovery that Angel was back and Buffy was hiding her relationship with him; or when Michael had to beat Nikita to within an inch of her life in order to bring her back to Section so they could be together. These were perfect moments of horrible discovery, or of suffering because you love someone, or of the dishonesty and shiftiness that comes from loving someone so much you'd pretty much throw everything away for them, or allow yourself to suffer cruelly in order to have them. The things that all my favorite slash has been based on.
Slash, by its nature, often keeps its characters apart for awhile, they suffer for want of the other person. Some of the greatest fanfic slash moments have been based on this long-suffering desire, the will-they-or-won't-they quality. The ABNQ.
In these favorite TV moments of mine, it was just like slash fanfic ABNQ, brought to life with het couples. I could see, instantly, Bodie beating Doyle to within an inch of his life because he had to, knowing that it was the only way he could be with Doyle, knowing that only Bodie could do this to Doyle and get away with it. I could see Doyle hiding his relationship with Bodie from Cowley, and Cowley's feelings of betrayal at finding out what was going on, that it was destroying the effectiveness of his top team. Yum!
I don't know that het slash is something I necessarily want to go looking for. I like slash, and I like het. Unlike most fans, I don't think I have that much of a preference either way; I tend to write slash more for various reasons, but by and large it's been because slash gives me that big thrill-- thwarted love. It's easier to find reasons to thwart two men, even in today's world, than it is to thwart a het couple (and that, I think, is a different ramble I may tackle someday, but which Sandy has done well in her "It's the '90s, you can't just say they're gay!" rant). But what a thwart-fest LFN, X-Files, and BtVS are for me--action and suspense, wonderful characters, and tortured love that cannot be. What more could you ask for except, well, slash?