Slash Fiction Authors Turn ‘Heroes’ Into Homos

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. (TNA) – “Heroes” is one of the hottest shows on TV, but some of the hottest scenes are strictly in the minds of fans like Rachel, a 25-year-old woman in Napa Valley, Calif.

When she’s not watching the latest episodes, Rachel keeps her fingers busy writing erotic vignettes where the seemingly straight male characters get down and dirty with each other.

Rachel, whose penname is “Mistress Titania,” is one of thousands of horny TV fans who get off by writing and reading slash fiction, a form of erotica where supposedly straight-edged pop culture icons are placed into explicit, usually homosexual, scenes.

She admits she’s got it bad.

“I’m a total slash addict,” she said. “I go through withdrawals if I don’t read at least one story a day.”

New York-based artist Mark Chamberlain takes his love for Batman and Robin into directions never intended by the original creators.

One of Rachel’s hottest pieces is “Who Ya Gonna Call?”, a “Heroes” slash piece depicting a gay love affair between former hospice worker Peter Petrelli and one-time bad guy Claude, the very straight characters played by Milo Ventimiglia and Christopher Eccleston.

The story kicks off with Peter waking up to watch Claude bake and masturbate in the kitchen, and ends with them frosting a batch of cupcakes together.

Rachel decided to pair the two together as touchy-feely lovers after watching them involved in hand-to-hand fighting scenes on the TV show.

“The chemistry between them screamed ‘slash,’” she said.

But she admits that she didn’t start watching “Heroes” and other television shows until her fascination with man-on-man fiction prompted her to pursue more stories.

“If your mind is twisted enough, then making some slash is easy no matter what the story on screen says,” Rachel said.

She first jumped onto slash fiction in 1999, but the roots of slash fiction actually go back to the 19th century, when Victorians rewrote Sherlock Holmes’ tales, eliciting homoeroticism between the private dick and his partner, Dr. Watson.

According to Henry Jenkins, a professor of humanities in the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, modern slash fiction and other fan fiction sprouted in the 1960s, when fans of the original “Star Trek” series started writing gay erotic fiction starring Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

But while the love scenes were guy-on-guy, Jenkins says the authors were and still are predominantly female.

“Overwhelmingly, fan fiction is mostly written by women,” said Jenkins, author of “Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking,” an essay on slash fiction. He says that it has been presumed that most of the women who write slash are heterosexual, but that theory has not been proven.

Still, it’s a theory that gets supports from Rachel, who says she’s tried to write heterosexual love scenes but they don’t get her motor running as much as the man-on-man manuscripts.

“It just didn’t do the same thing for me,” she said. “If it’s okay for two guys to fantasize about two women, it’s an equal opportunity for women.”
And women sure are getting their share of fantasizing.

Beth Brownell, a moderator for www.adultfanfiction.net, a website where heterosexual fan fiction and slash fiction writers can post their work, estimates that 75 percent of the site’s 60,000 carnal contributors are female.

Brownell, who has penned some slash herself (such as one involving the characters on “The Mighty Ducks” cartoon series), doesn’t have any big theories why women like writing gay porn.

“I think we just get turned on seeing two guys go at it,” Brownell said.

So does that mean Rachel would actually like to see Claude and Peter from “Heroes” bone in front of her, like a front-row skinflick show?

“Yes! Most definitely yes!”

But it’s not just about sex.

Jenkins, who has been researching fan culture for about 20 years, says the original “Star Trek” slashers were inspired to write their horny tales after seeing episodes showing how Kirk and Spock cherished their friendship, especially in episodes where one of them became lost in space.

“[Kirk or Spock will] stop dead in their tracks until they get [the other one] back,” Jenkins said.

Since then, slash fiction has exploded and Jenkins says contemporary kinksters are inspired not just from their favorite TV characters, but those from popular movies, books, and even video games.

But while sex is a big component of slash fiction, the scribes are mostly attracted to the relationship between the characters rather than the dirty deed itself.

“The writers want to explore that relationship through sex,” he says. “It comes out of a fascination for characters rather than the body.”

That’s certainly the case with Kat, a 27-year-old software engineer from Camarillo, Calif., who has written slash fiction about “House,” the Japanese animated series “Sailor Moon,” and the video game “Metal Gear.”

She considers herself asexual and says the characters and sex scenes themselves don’t turn her on; she’s more interested in pleasuring her readers with the meaty writing she elicits from her characters’ emotions.

“For me, it has a lot to do with the audience.”

Well, audience, see what this excerpt from an erotic tale featuring two characters from “House” does to you:

"Tritter's half-closed eyes moved back and forth between House and Wilson and he licked his lips. "Faster," he said, pushing his hips forward to coincide with House's thrusting of Wilson's head. Wilson gagged and choked, his eyes tightly shut. He tried to gasp in breaths around Tritter's now semi-hard member, but with the speed increase, seemed to be more and more dazed. He tried pushing his hands into House's leg. The other doctor swore a blue streak, but kept up with his movements, forcing his eyes to focus on the bottle of pills instead of his lover."

Currently, the Harry Potter characters are the most popular slash fiction stars, but Jenkins says television shows tend to generate the most pop culture porn because of the relationship viewers form with the content on their boob tube.

“This character comes into your living room and you live with him,” he said.

Jenkins also believes that the women who read and write about Kirk taking Spock-cock, or Claude making a two-backed beast with Peter wouldn’t mind actually viewing their characters getting it on.

“I think many of these women would find it interesting to watch,” he said. “Why do guys like to read and watch lesbian porn?”

So, does that mean that any old hack can publish a piece of pop culture porn without getting screwed in court? Not in the eyes of attorney Charles E. Petit, who specializes in intellectual property and publication law.

The Urbana, Ill.-based lawyer says that while some creators encourage slash fiction, others detest it and not just because they’re afraid of losing money.

In fact, Petit says that most of the time, the rights-holders of creative works are less interested in the money aspect than they are in keeping their property from getting screwed – literally.

Petit thinks slash fiction writers would be best advised to contact the original creators first before turning their characters into sex-crazed bondage freaks.

“If you really are a fan of that fiction, then common courtesy says obey that author’s wishes,” Petit said.

If anything, Kat has at least a little courtesy for the characters she throws into her gay-porn maelstrom. She says she tries not to typecast her characters too much, but, at the same time, attempts to stay true to them during their X-rated romps.

Chamberlain believes a real hero can 'take it like a man,' and say, 'Yeah, this is great.'"

For example, one star in the video game “Metal Gear” is named Solid Snake and he’s an assertive man who most likely would be putting his python inside soft-spoken Hal. But sometimes, she’ll make Solid Snake bend over and grin and bear it.

“Sometimes he’s the catcher and sometimes he’s the thrower.”

Meanwhile, New York-based artist Mark Chamberlain has made several watercolor paintings depicting sex acts between Batman and Robin – and many of which portray the Caped Crusader as the catcher.

“I was more interested in Robin stuffing Batman,” Chamberlain says. “A hero can take it in the ass and take it like a man and say, ‘Yeah, this is great.’”

Although Chamberlain’s Dynamic Duo work represents the visual side of slash fiction, he doesn’t attribute any of his paintings directly to slash or its writers.

“I just think you can be gay and still be a hero,” he shrugs.

Evidently, so does Rachel, whose “Heroes” slash gives male do-gooders a penchant for anal penetration.

As for the future, she plans to continue to feed her slash fix by working on a “Blade:Trinity” piece that has a vampire hunter sex-thirsty for his fanged prey. She’s also getting wet over the thought of new shows, such as “Reaper” and “Chuck,” making waves on the slash scene.

But regardless of what shows get her wet and wild, Rachel knows she won’t lose her lust for writing gay pop culture romance.

“I don’t see my interests fading anytime soon.”