[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

Goodness. Such anti-slash feeling. I think that it's just misunderstood. I was asked by a current poster to address this question.

I am a slash writer, as well as a long-term (if inactive) member of the Barrow-downs. I mostly left the Downs because, after a year and a half, I found the discussions revolved through the same topics over and over again. I am very religious, but Buddhist, not Christian. Buddhism is a monastic religion and so has no rules about who you should or shouldn't sleep with -- since a Buddhist monk shouldn't sleep with anyone. The gay/hetero argument is irrelevant.

I write slash because it is outside of canon. It's a challenge for me as a writer to build plausibility for it, to keep true to the flavor and voice of Tolkien while ranging far afield.

It is so far "off the map" from Tolkien that I feel it is less intrusive on his vision. I'm on a completely different page, borrowing the world and characters and texture in much the same way that he borrowed from Beowulf (most here probably know Tolkien was a noted Beowulf scholar and began his lectures by quoting Beowulf in Old English; he's known for completely changing the view of that work with his essay The Monsters and the Critics).

I feel that to keep true to the flavor of Tolkien it's important to have a greater meaning, what Tolkien in his essay On Fairy Stories called a "piercing glimpse" beyond the fabric of story. But we are, fortunately, not restricted to the same themes as Tolkien.

The underlying theme of The Lord of the Rings is endings, death, and what lies beyond it. This theme is largely why the work has such spiritual meaning for many; (though if anyone asserts that the LotR is inherently Christian, I will bean them with the allegory stick - Tolkien's vision of fairy tales is both more general and more profound than any specific religious doctrine. According to Tolkien, indoctrination is the antithesis of the Fairy Story).

Endings, the afterlife and so forth are not the only themes for a fairy tale. Or for a Tolkienesque story.

According to Jung, mythological archetypal themes correspond to natural rites of passage, stages of life. Including the final stage into the next life - whatever that may be - which Tolkien addresses. Other main stages include crossing into adulthood, marriage, coming into one's inheritance or maturity. These are all troubled stages with no pat answers, thus the need for mythological archetypes (forgive me fellow non-Christians) to "work out your own salvation."

The romance contends with the theme of sacrifice and inter-dependence of relationships, and is a very important thread in the world of mythology and fairy tale. While it is appears superficial (like fantasy itself), in fact, the way a relationship subsumes the self is a very difficult and tangled matter. It is a crisis of identity, a negotiation of boundaries, and either taking ones place in the world of family, or acting against that role (such as in Tristan and Isolde, or the elven maiden Luthien). Anyone who believes romance does not belong in Tolkien's world needs to re-read the story of Beren and Luthien, and note what Tolkien has written on his gravestone.

Slash adds, for those who do not have doctrinal problems with it (note I do not say spiritual, as many Christians do accept homosexuality), an added degree of poignancy to this crisis of identity, boundaries, and ones role in society. Not to mention the confusion of ones role in an agrarian and feudalistic society of the majority of Middle Earth, and the complex class distinctions in the Shire. (I particularly am fascinated by the latter.) It takes the same fundamental questions of the romance and looks at them from another angle.

The vast majority of slash readers (and writers) are women, I think largely for the same reasons that little girls play house: relationships seem to be important to women. Men, regardless of their feelings about homosexuality, tend to be... uncomfortable with slash. Most are unable to bypass the visuals of two men together (let alone two hobbits) to even begin to deal with the theme. It doesn't have the same interest or impact. I'll confess that female/female slash makes me equally queasy.

But do not dismiss romance or slash as being automatically pornographic. There's a great deal of depth available in the subject, particularly if you have a perceptive author.

That said, much of fanfiction is really lousy, and slash is no exception. The LotR fanfiction tends to be worse than most because Tolkien's voice is unusually difficult to capture, and few people understand why the story is so powerful.

- Maril