In my post about my Star Wars stories, I did mention that some of my stories contain Han/Luke (you kids call it Skysolo, that’s adorable), but I didn’t feel the need to put “homosexuality” in the list of warnings along with language and drug use and violence.
The reason I point this out is because back when I wrote most of my Han/Luke stuff, ca. 2004-2006, a slash warning would have been pretty much necessary to avoid hate mail.
We would almost always put a warning on stories where two dudes got it on when posting a story, and it wasn’t a trigger warning, in case someone had a traumatic experience, and it wasn’t like a “if you don’t like this particular ship don’t read this” warning.
IT WAS BECAUSE TEN YEARS AGO SOMEONE JUST BEING GAY OR DOING A GAY THING IN A FICTIONAL STORY WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET TELL YOU YOU WERE DISGUSTING AND THEY HATED YOU AND THEY WISH THEY’D NEVER CLICKED ON YOUR WORK.
It didn’t keep us from writing it, but we understood the warnings and disclaimers to be part of the packaging.
I know we’ve come a long way in ten years, but I just wanted to tell you twenty-year-olds that when I was your age, I had to warn people about gayness in advance, or I was a bad person.
Your generation doesn’t need that. You guys are amazing. Thanks for building on what I did when I was your age and making it so much stronger.