House of the Rising Sun (Professionals story)
| The Professionals Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | House of the Rising Sun |
| Author(s): | LST |
| Date(s): | April 1988 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | slash |
| Fandom: | The Professionals |
| External Links: | |
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House of the Rising Sun is a 53-page Professionals story by LST.
It was published in Chalk and Cheese #1 in April 1988.
Reactions and Reviews
Unknown Date
This is the longest piece within the zine. It's also the closest to qualifying as an actual story despite the fact that almost the entire thing is told light-speed style rather than shown and developed in true fiction fashion. But this is actually a blessing.
Cashiered-out of the cavalry, Captain William Bodie makes a new start in New Orleans as the bouncer in a French Quarter whore house. Right away he falls in love with a curly-haired and chip-toothed man-boy -- no, not Huck Finn -- who happens to be the brothel's most popular male whore. Bodie, who was taken prisoner and brutalized by Mexican bandits during his military service in California, is now impotent. Doyle is a sexual addict who apparently likes to be manhandled. The two men become friends and Bodie tries in vain to protect Doyle from himself. Himself Doyle, I mean, not himself Bodie.
Theirs is certainly an interesting, if appalling, relationship dynamic. The characters initially show a certain amount of promise -- though neither is remotely related to canon Doyle and Bodie. The author makes an attempt at plotting, setting and research...but the story is quite insane. The characters don't behave like anyone on planet earth -- there's no reasonable explanation for any of the choices anyone makes.
Doyle is repeatedly drugged, raped and brutalized by his favorite customer. Bodie fights a duel for him and is wounded. There's a bit of hurt/comfort. Bodie recovers but Doyle decides he's now in love with an evil French "Comte." The Comte eventually kidnaps Doyle and takes him to his...official Comte hideout, I guess. Doyle is drugged with aphrodisiacs and raped day in and day out by just about everybody on the planet -- which is certainly unpleasant. No wonder that he fears for his sanity.
He knew now how horribly debauched his keeper was and was afraid that he would soon become shamefully depraved himself if he continued for very long in the man's possession.
But the worst is yet to come.
No pun intended.
Eventually, for reasons that utterly escape me, the Comte has Doyle fed "mind-stripping drugs," shaved, dressed in a white nightgown like a baby, and placed in a man-sized cradle that he apparently keeps in the attic for just such occasions. For two weeks Doyle is bound and unable to move, fed only breast milk from a black slave, and raped repeatedly by the Comte's servants.
Life was a series of bewildering sensations, pain and warmth, moments that didn't stay in his wondering mind.
Uh....
Eventually Doyle is auctioned off to Bodie who is injured in the process and takes to drink.
And who can blame him?
It would be interesting to know if the subsequent Chalk and Cheeses followed in this same vein. Without wishing to trample anyone's creative endeavors, I'd have to recommend this zine mostly as a curiosity. And to that extent, it makes for fascinating reading.[1]
1988
This is an addendum to the LoC I've already sent, and I thought it is important enough to write to T.H.E. This is prompted by my reading of the story, HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN, which appears in the current PROs zine, CHALK & CHEESE #1. I'd like this to be an open plea to all zine editors in the future: PLEASE, editors, when a story is actually a torture/wallow epic, PLEASE have the honesty and integrity to label it as such in your flyers and your ads! RISING SUN was labeled as "hurt/comfort", and it was NOT; there was plenty of "hurt", yeah, but damned little "comfort" apparent! I am sick to death of some of the stories I've unwittingly received lately in this fandom, without having been warned about the content first. I realize that on the circuit, you take your chances, but it should be up to a zine editor to be honest with her prospective customers. I am sick to death of reading sick "titillation" stories where one or the other of the guys (usually Doyle, it seems) is abused, raped with torture instruments, degraded, humiliated, perverted, etc. I know there's lots of fans out there that actually like this garbage; fine, they should have the right to read it, too. I'm not saying they shouldn't! What I AM saying is that the rest of us who don't care to see our favorite characters exploited and put through all sorts of S&M crap should be WARNED before buying the zine. I think that's fair enough, don't you? Mysti Frank (or any other editor in the future) could easily solve this problem by being HONEST in their ads: one little line would suffice! "THIS STORY CONTAINS SCENES OF GRAPHIC TORTURE AND SADISM." That's easy enough to do, I think. In the case of CHALK & CHEESE #1, if I had known ahead of time that the LONGEST story in the zine was a 'torture epic', I never would've bought the zine; after all, what's the point? I know I'll never read that story again, and it ruined the whole zine for me. Which was too bad, too, because the rest of the zine had enjoyable stuff in it. But that extreme S&M stuff in RISING SUN left a very bad taste in my mouth for the zine as a whole. (And, before anyone asks, yes, I AM listed already as being in CHALK & CHEESE #2 — but all I submitted were a couple of poems, which I submitted before I even received issue #1! I sincerely hope that C&C#2 doesn't turn out to be an S&M zine, because if it does, I don't want to be associated with it.) [2]
1992
There are still about 20 pages in the last third of that story that I never did read, and my tolerance for "get" is very, very high. That story turned me off, too. Truly awful. [3]
1993
House of the Rising Sun [was] for years the graphic rape story others were measured against...[4]
References
- ^ review by JGL at The Hatstand, Archived version
- ^ from The Hatstand Express #16
- ^ comment at Virgule-L, quoted anonymously (October 24, 1992)
- ^ Sandy Hereld posting to the Virgule Mailing List on June 9, 1993, quoted with permission.