Alicorn comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong

13 Post author: dclayh 01 August 2010 10:58PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (696)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Alicorn 06 August 2010 06:41:32AM *  7 points [-]

It's short for "relationship", but it's also used as a verb, which means to portray or want two (or more) characters to be romantically and/or sexually involved.

Examples:

"I ship the Whomping Willow and the Devil's Snare." = "I am amused by imagining those two plants in a relationship" or "in at least one derivative creative work, I have represented those two plants as being in a relationship."

"This fic contains only canon ships." = "This work of fanfiction romantically pairs characters in the same arrangements they have in the source work."

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 August 2010 07:03:19AM 3 points [-]

Thank you. I would have assumed that non-canon relationships were slash, which goes to show how fringy I am.

Is there a word for making a character more wonderful than they are in canon?

Comment author: Alicorn 06 August 2010 07:23:30AM *  4 points [-]

Some sorta Sue.

Warning: TV Tropes.

Comment author: thomblake 06 August 2010 04:08:13PM 3 points [-]

Mary Sue being the generic version. Warning: TV Tropes

Wikipedia for the TV Tropes-phobic

Comment author: ata 06 August 2010 07:05:45AM *  1 point [-]

I would have assumed that non-canon relationships were slash, which goes to show how fringy I am.

I think slash refers especially to non-canon gay relationships, and fiction centered around or involving such relationships. (It may actually refer to gay male relationships in particular, I'm not quite sure. I only know the basics of fanfic terminology.)

Comment author: Alicorn 06 August 2010 07:12:59AM 3 points [-]

"Femslash" seems to have some currency as the lesbian equivalent of "slash". I've also seen "slash" used to refer to both types of gay relationships. I've also seen it used to refer to sexual content (straight or gay), and sometimes specifically to gay sexual content (to the point where some people say PG-rated fic with gay couples is not slash - in particular there's a tripartite division with "gen", "het", and "slash", where the first has no sex, the second has straight sex, and the third has gay sex). I don't think non-canonicity is part of any definition I've seen.

Comment author: Pavitra 06 August 2010 08:41:13AM 1 point [-]

It may be just me, but I get the impression that it's not really slash if the characters in question are gay in canon, even if not for each other. I might argue that, say, Ben Bruckner / Melanie Marcus (both canon!gay, opposite sexes) would count as slash, but I expect that's a minority position.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 August 2010 03:34:02AM 0 points [-]

It's short for "relationship", but it's also used as a verb, which means to portray or want two (or more) characters to be romantically and/or sexually involved.

Ahh, thanks for the explanation. It took me a few posts to become confident that A/B was referring to romance and I didn't notice the abbreviation and verbating of 'relationship' at all.