Vulcan Love Slave: Fan fiction on the Internet allows viewers to project their darkest fantasies onto their favorite shows

Vulcan Love Slave: Fan fiction on the Internet allows viewers to project their darkest fantasies onto their favorite shows is a 1998 article by Zack Stentz for "Metro," the arts section of a San Jose, California publication that billed itself as "Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper."
It is the usual rundown of a journalist trying to explain this crazy thing called fan fiction to the masses, complete with some short background about the subject, astonished awe, riveted mockery, and a focus on explicit BDSM elements of slash.
==Spawns Another Article==
Six months later, another journalist and Zack Stentz wrote Out Of Character: Online Fan Fiction Lets Devotees of Movies and TV Shows Boldly Go where Hollywood Fears to Tread. This article even included the same fanfic excerpt.
 
==Some Topics Discussed==
* the beginnings of fanfic, including references to Lovecraft and Star Trek
* advent of the Internet and how it gives everyone a chance to be heard
* alt.tv.x-files.creative and alt.startrek.creative
* a quote from a "one former Star Trek writer [likely John Ordover] who often logged onto Internet discussion group" who says he/she stays away from fanfic discussion
* the sexual element of stories, first focusing on m/f fic, then delving into slash: "Slash enthusiasts, who are sort of like Relationshippers in leather and nipple clamps." And "Slash fiction imagines a universe in which TV's favorite male pairs (Kirk/Spock, Starsky/Hutch, even Simon/Simon) engage in explicit, often sadomasochistic sexual encounters with each other." And "Almost all the Trek Slash stories seem to involve a situation in which Spock goes into pon farr (Vulcan heat) with Kirk as the only available sexual surrogate."
* the femaleness of slash
* "actor/professional weirdo Crispin Glover"
* the film Basic Instinct and male's love of lesbian porn
* "David Duchovny often riffs on the Skinner/Mulder theme in interviews.'"Yeah, he's my bitch,' Duchovny recently deadpanned to a radio station in L.A. 'The only problem with Mitch [Pileggi, the actor who plays Skinner] is that his bald head means there's nothing to hold onto when he starts to buck'."
* TPTB telling Deep Space Nine actors Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson "to stop engaging in ribald speculation about their characters' true feelings for each other at fan conventions/"
* stating that "Lucasfilm several years ago launched its own crackdown against the burgeoning crop of Luke/Han, Luke/Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan/Darth Slash."
* "Still, one might think that Slash fans would object to their fantasies actually being incorporated in the shows they love. In an age when TV production has become increasingly impersonal and remote from the viewers, fanfic in general and Slash in particular can be seen as subversive acts that tweak the characters' corporate owners, sort of like the old "Black Bart" bootleg Simpsons T-shirts."
==A Fic Quote and Comment==
It starts with a quote from an X-Files fic by J. Bast called Harder Than It Looks: 
==Excerpts==
==References==
Category:Fanfiction News Media
Category:X-Files News Media
Category:Star Trek TOS News Media
Category:1998 News Media
Category:Slash Fandom
Category:Perspectives on Fans