Community Profile

Taking slash much too seriously since 2003.

Virgule is a community designed to foster theoretical discussions about slash. Or, rather, since we're having these discussions anyway, we figured we'd pretend they were something other people might care about. There are ::gasp in horror:: plenty of academics who are in the closet about their interest in slash, and plenty of slash fans who are in the closet about their interest in the more academic stuff on slash. So, hey, if we're outing characters, we might as well out ourselves, under pseudonyms because we are still, after all paranoid academic and fan types, so that we can talk about this stuff with other like-minded folks. In some fan communities, people occasionally feel like they aren't supposed to criticize fan texts at all. Those of us who are academics, sometimes want a place we can indulge in our fannish interests without having to check out intellectual approaches to new information at the door. None of us want the community to be limited to "academics" per se, though many of us are academics, but we do want to limit the discussions to academic discussions of slash. We solemnly promise to keep all "squee, did you see Lex on Smallville last night?" posts to our own private livejournals, unless we dress the squee moments up in nice, theoretically sophisticated language. If you're getting the idea that while we want the discussions to be focused on academic topics, and written by mature and articulate people, who still acknowledge that we grok on this stuff because on a base level, we just like it, then you're getting the idea about what virgule is supposed to do. Ideally, virgule will serve as a kind of clearing house for people who are interested in the more academic and theoretical implications of slash to exchange information. Since everyone here will be ::insert Jedi mind whammy here:: adult enough to attain scholarly distance even on subjects that he or she may personally find distasteful, we expect that anyone who joins up will understand that Virgule is a forum for discussing all issues relevant to all forms of slash, including the prickly ones that tend to make some people nervous like underage slash, real people slash, and so on.

So if you've got a nasty habit of accidentally quoting de Certeau on your mailing lists, or if people roll their eyes and wait for the ten page response when they see your name, then c'mon in and play with the rest of us.

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