Del Floria's Interview with Eilidhsd
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Del Floria's Interview with Eilidhsd |
| Interviewer: | Del Floria (Live Journal) |
| Interviewee: | Eilidhsd |
| Date(s): | September 9, 2012 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Man from U.N.C.L.E. |
| External Links: | full interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Del Floria's Interview with Eilidhsd is an interview with a Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan.
It is part of a series at Del Floria's. See Del Floria's Interview Series.
Excerpts
How did you find yourself in MFU Fandom? What was your first experience with MFU? I’m a first cousin, besotted since childhood. First episode I remember watching was the Love Affair, and the Deadly Games gave me nightmares for years. I queued for all the films at the cinema and when the Spy in the Green Hat (your Concrete Overcoat) came out, I went to the cinema three nights in the week it was on. (Oh, the glory of Uncle in colour when the televisions were still b&w!) I still have my cherished annuals, and my bubblegum cards and far too many magazines and photos.
How did you find MFU stories, zines/online/other?I have come very late to them. I’m like a wean in a sweetie shop with Uncle on eBay, and a woman selling MFU stuff had a couple of fanzines listed too. I’d never even heard the word before, but I grabbed them and liked them, and have bought a lot more since. It was still ages before I looked on the internet for MFU-related sites, and when I finally did and stumbled on to my first on-line fic, it was shocking. It was slash. And I did not know that word at that stage.
You would not believe how stunned I was. It was incredibly well written – I recognised the characters instantly. They were true to my conception of them; I recognized the scenario; everything was familiar; but it was slash. I was dazed for ages. I wandered around, still not believing what I had read, but kept going back to the computer to check it out, to poke it with a stick and see if it changed! It was a very strange time.
And I followed a link and, of course, landed in the Chrome and Gunmetal Madhouse!!! Yeah, I felt as if I had fallen into a strange universe too. And then I found the gen sites.
And I am elated about the whole fanfiction concept. The guys were lost to me, and suddenly there they are, still alive and well and active in Uncle!!! I think it is marvelous.
The fiction fills the gaps left in the series – there is no doubt about that. In the episodes they are told what to do, and go and do it; we don’t get their worries or reservations, their doubts or hopes, their reactions afterwards. (Take Maze for instance – what was Illya going through between Napoleon’s death and his return? There is a massive gap crying to be filled.) There is a vast emotional world almost untapped in the series, and the best fiction writers take up a lot of those threads left unused and weave them into something wonderful.
The morality, too, can be fascinating. In my childhood there was an absolute morality - whatever the goodies did was good – but looking back you start to wonder. (The bombers were getting closer in Concrete Overcoat, but was there any mention of an orderly evacuation of all the THRUSH personnel before the island was leveled? Or those in the complex dynamited by Illya in Nowhere?) One fanzine had a taut sketch where the Uncle agents started to feel that they were becoming assassins.
And there are the “What If…?” stories. One this week envisages a state trooper pulling out into a car chase to ticket the THRUSH pursuers and the Uncle duo for speeding. It is beautifully composed, perfectly rounded, as the Uncle agents try to act in a way which will let the trooper keep living. And, of course, it is a tragedy. But it is such a realistic little plot! You have a high speed car chase in a country with cops to enforce speed restrictions…..it was asking to be written.
And as for the writers who start from scratch with their own plots… Oh, I go on, and on. But, you see, I love them all!!
I still don’t read sex scenes. I have no worries about the boys being lovers, but I won’t read sex scenes no matter who they are with, not gen and not slash. The “squicky bits” other people have called them, and I’m happy skipping those scenes too.
I am Scottish Presbyterian and not into porn, but I suspect it is more because I fell in love (with Illya, of course) when I was about nine and it was a further decade or so before I discovered sex, so it has always been something of a childish asexual love! If he is having sex with someone else, that is fine, it is good for him, but I don’t need to know the details.