Taking romance seriously as a genre and romance readers seriously as a community, which means a fair number of chapters devoted to one author or to just a few works exploring a particular theme (PTSD in romance as a critique of patriotic ideology, for example). Deborah Kaplan’s essay on the Harlequin Romance challenge in SGA fandom makes the really interesting point, to me, that the normatively expected structure of a slash story at this point in time diverges from that of a conventional romance in one key respect—the declaration. While conventional (heterosexual) published romance generally requires both parties to declare their love in explicit verbal terms, the stories often judged successful in the slash circles I frequent don’t. Often, if there’s a declaration, it’s only from one side, with the other’s equal love presumed, provided by the POV, or inferred from actions. (Also she points out that romance readers tolerate POV shifts within the narrative much more than many slash fans currently do.) I wonder if the missing declaration/less explicitly emotional dialogue can be connected to broader questions of what functions slash serves for its authors/audience. ( )