Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

This leads Maygra 2 , a prominent figure in both slash and yaoi
fandoms, to argue in an online essay that yaoi is slash, but slash is not yaoi
(2000b):
Because slash, more often than not, needs a reason. It needs
subtext, it needs a (cringe) excuse [...] that is why yaoi can
be slash but slash is rarely yaoi. Because yaoi can exist
without explanation. There may be a framework, but there
doesn’t have to be [...] Yaoi is richer – if only because it
isn’t burdened by explanation. Slash is almost more selfconscious.
(Maygra 2000b)
While Maygra admits that the boundaries may be blurry occasionally, she
argues that slash is always an interactive search for subtext and for
justification of a relationship between two actors, while yaoi does not need to
justify anything and may indulge everything. Though this may be true
historically, both slash and yaoi have changed so much that this distinction no
longer works: both yaoi and slash fandoms have produced so-called PWPs (or
“Plot? What Plot?” fictions), and both have generated novel-length epics.
Yaoi- as well as slash authors indulge in fantastical pieces situated in alternate
universes (or AUs) as well as in strict episode, movie or book-specific texts.
A distinction between yaoi and slash may still be drawn, but not along
the lines of content. As yaoi has come from Japan, and is a term often used by
writers and readers of Japanese animation (or anime) slash, I distinguish in
this project between slash and yaoi by using the term “yaoi” specifically for
Japanese-media-based fandoms in particular. Yaoi and slash may be
2 While collaborators’ names are changed throughout the text, Maygra and other prolific
writers are left with their online names, because they receive wide recognition as a fan, and
use the same name to write self-reflective essays about slash.
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