From Here to Eternity

Fanfiction
Title:	From Here to Eternity
Author(s):	Hestia and Ginny
Date(s):	1999
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:
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From Here to Eternity is a Bodie/Doyle story by Hestia and Ginny.

It was published in Celebrations.

Summary

From The Hatstand: ""From Here to Eternity" by Cherilyn and Hestia is a post-death story in which ghost Doyle keeps attempting to arrange for Bodie to join him, only to discover a Catch-22 situation."

Reactions and Reviews

"From Here to Eternity" is sadly a zine-only story by Ginny and Hestia, but along with the other thirteen stories in Celebrations: Volume 2 it's a brilliant reason to splash out and buy a copy from Gryphon Press. It's funny, it's touching, the lads are completely the lads, and its one of those stories that I just want to cuddle...

The trouble is, if someone read a spoiler for this story, they might be absolutely put off reading it, because From Here to Eternity (no connection to the film) is technically a death fic. Except - that it's not. True, Doyle is dead, and Bodie has been left alone, but it's not for want of trying by our Ray... We watch the lads interacting with each other (well, sort of) from beginning to end of the story, and there's a tingle all through that tells us that there's going to be a happy ending, so we're free to concentrate on all the things that are happening along the way. There are a few cliche-type moments - Bodie dusting himself down after yet another close shave - but they fit with the atmosphere beautifully, rather like children's books which are read over and over until it's comforting to be able to shout out the lines along with the author...

Anyway - this should have been a much longer, and much more detailled review, but I shall have to get to bed instead, so you're spared my rambling...

I know it's not online, but I know there are lots of people out there who do read and buy and adore zines and it seems a shame not to rec zine fic just because it is zine fic... To anyone else - The Celebrations pair of zines were written to celebrate 20 years of Pros, and there are some fab stories in them (including this one) - two zines, 261 pages altogether, authors such as Sebastian, Kitty Fisher, Cherilynn and O.Yardley, Felicity Parkinson, Jenny Parkinson, HG, Liz Bradford... No fancy artwork, just pages and pages of fic... *g*

And I'd buy it for From Here to Eternity alone... *vbg*

I found it quite a pleasant read, especially the fact that Doyle didn't know exactly which role he was playing in Bodie's after-Doyle-life until close to the end. Also the image of Doyle floating in the upper corner of Bodie's bedroom was nice, in fact it reminded me faintly of a film scene I've seen (don't remember which one that was, though). There was one thing which disturbed me slightly, but as it was part of the plot, I might be overreacting: To really love means not to want the other dead too, IMO. On the contrary you would like your love to go on living and enjoying it in the end, I think. Nevertheless I liked it, it's fiction after all. ;-)

"To really love means not to want the other dead too, IMO."

But that is from our point of view here on Earth, not knowing what is 'on the other side'. In the story there is nothing that convinced me that life in Heaven is worth it... , but nonetheless Doyle is 'There', he now knows that there is a 'There', and he knows that Bodie would be happy and together with him.

But somehow you're right. Probably the story wouldn't work with Bodie dead first, because it's Doyle who has the reputation to be a selfish and moody bastard... :-)

Probably the story wouldn't work with Bodie dead first, because it's Doyle who has the reputation to be a selfish and moody bastard... :-)

Oh I totally think it would work - it'd just be a slightly different angle on it. Bodie'd be trying hard to get Doyle to die too (so that they could be together, just as Doyle wanted) but instead of writing the grumpy bits it'd be full of Bodie's brand of black humour, perhaps in "asides"...

And I'm never convinced that Doyle is selfish from canon - moody I can see, but selfish? At least not any more than Bodie, who stays off "sick" so that Doyle has to cover for him, for example... *g* (I don't think either of them are selfish though - even Bodie being off "sick" is a fairly typical kind of bloke-ish teasing, just as when Doyle gets him to carry the bags...)

Who? Bodie? Unselfish and disciplined? The man who's fencing after crawling out of a bed he can't remember with a horrible hangover? He's no more disciplined and unselfish than Doyle. I think it's whichever character the reader loves more that ends up being the "saint" and put upon. Poor Bodie. So misused and abused. LOL! Bodie's a guy like Doyle is a guy. They're pretty darned equal I'd say. I wouldn't like the lads if one was so good and the other was always the bad one. My boys are fairly equals in all things, in and out of bed. *beg*

And this is a death fic I can happily live with!

In fact it is a really funny Pros fic, a feel good reading.

There are so many 'nice' moments. For example Doyle's anything but 'heavenly' behaviour when he torments the pigeons, or his hangover when Bodie drowns his grief with spirits, or his killing of the poor dog.

I like the idea of the story. A cheerful variation of a "death fic".

While I avoid death fics, this one is quite entertaining. The mere fact that Doyle is relentless in trying to kill Bodie to have him beside him is cracky enough to make me laugh. The dog is so funny. The entire thing is a hoot. So this sort of death fic isn't what I generally consider to be in that genre. This is definitely what we'd call today as crack, but humour works too. When the boulder falls, I was laughing. How sick is that?

From a writer's perspective, nothing is quite as boring as writing or reading a story that tells me every character's thoughts and explains their actions and motivations. Nothing against the readers who want this, but it's doesn't make for what I'd consider a good story. I prefer to envision what could be happening "off camera" on my own, but then I don't like movies that do this either. I want some surprises, some drama, so that there is some reason to be drawn into the story. I don't want to sit and "watch" what's going on. I want to actually feel something, to be in one of the character's shoes. But that's just me.

I'm not even big on those stories about a happy afterlife for both lads, but this one is the exception to that preference.

I never know what "crack" is supposed to be as different from stories like this that we'd've just called comedy, but that's me... *g*

Crack these days is something utterly ridiculous, even more so than comedy. Fly on the Wall is comedy to me. Crack is bordering on almost so utterly inconceivable that the story is hilarious. Like this S&H story about Starsky actually shagging his car. That's crack to me. Going out and falling on a pie, where he rips his trousers and his dick falls out in front of some old lady is comedy. LOL!

And I think 'crack' is fitting. If it wouldn't be so exaggerated the story wouldn't work (for me). Thinking about it - it is one of very few really funny Pros fics for me. Fly on the wall for example was IMO quite boring after a while, chewing the same idea much too long, but not as nicely overdone as here in this story.

I do get that crack is supposed to be something ridiculous, but that's just it - to me something's either funny or it's not, and it's got nothing to do with how exaggerated and weird it is. To me it's not the situation that's the funny thing, it's more how the people in that situation react to it...

To me Fly on the Wall is comedy, not because it's a believable situation (that Doyle might be undercover as a rent boy and the other agents joking about it and trying to set him up) but because of the way they're shown to do that, and how Doyle himself reacts to them - and then at the end how he turns it all upside down on Bodie. (So to speak *g*)

A story about Starsky shagging a car? That premise doesn't suggest at all to me that the story's going to be funny. It might be funny, depending on how it's written, but...

I suppose that's why I'm not into all the fuss about "crack" and people being desperate to write it - I don't read a story for the situation, or the setting, I read it for the people in it and how they react to something.

So okay, FHtE is based on an unlikely supernatural premise (hmmn, thinking about it, that would presumably make all ghost-stories "crack" by this new-fangled definition... *g*) but that's just the beginning of it to me, and doesn't make any difference to whether I'll read it or not... Actually the opposite might be true, when a story calls itself "crack" and the author is talking about how whacky she is to have come up with the scenario then I'm probably going to assume that the story is more about the writer than the actual characters, and just not bother reading it...

In the case of FHtE the setting is fairly "ordinary" - there are dozens of such ghost stories in the world, so it's not someone being "whacky" it's someone using a particular scenario to tell me more about the characters - and that's the bit that I'm interested in. Ginny and Hestia told me that the lads were utterly devoted to each other, even when separated by death, and not only showed me that, but made me laugh at the same time... Perfect! *g*

I admit that it's not a story I bothered with before because of the death fic angle, but as it's apparently comic, you've convinced me to give it a shot. Oh, and that's so what I hate about all this labelling guff in fandom! I appreciate that some people do and don't want to read this-that-and-the-other, but they somehow cope in the world of "real" fiction, so I wish they'd do it here too! Because labelling has a much more negative effect too - it demonstratively puts people off reading some stories, when they might otherwise have ventured in and then enjoyed them!

I think I prefer to have characters from a film/book/series end up in the same state of health the original writer left them - ready to go again, perhaps? Whereas in other fiction the characters will behave as people do in real life and I will accept whatever happens to them even if I don't like it. The exceptions are the stories that have the fandom characters eventually die in old age, like the one we discussed the other week. I feel this in all the fandoms I read and write in. The other thing, of course, is that when I choose original fiction to read/films to watch I know from the advertising blurb if it's a particular genre such as crime, romance or tragedy and so I can pick a book/film to suit my mood.

I really don't want to get into the labelling debate again here (been there, done the recent faff etc) but I do think that sometimes labels can actually mislead a potential reader and mean they miss out on some fab fic, which is all I was saying above, and I think, a shame...

I don't really want to get into the same old why-do-some-people-want-labels thing, I think it's established that they do, and when they respect that others of us don't then I don't have a problem with that - to each their own and so on! *g*

I do think it's a shame that sometimes they can be as misleading as they can be helpful - there's no label on this in the zine (yeay Gryphon Press! *g*) but there's presumably one over at prosficspoilers now, for instance, or else there would have been one under a cut in the announcement or whatever method was being used for the people who demand request such labels. Someone seeing those labels might avoid it simply on seeing the words "death fic", even though it's quite probably not what that really means...

The other thing, of course, is that when I choose original fiction to read/films to watch I know from the advertising blurb if it's a particular genre such as crime, romance or tragedy and so I can pick a book/film to suit my mood. It's an odd thing. I feel vested in the characters in a way I typically don't for original fiction, and yet there all kinds of original fiction stories I love to pieces and read again and again. So I don't know what it is, but the obscure workings of the reading brain (even my reading brain) always fascinate me. *g*

... I have favourite fics that I read over and over again depending on my mood, and I have fics that I know will suit moods, or ones that I don't read until I'm feeling a certain way, and... To some extent I do the same with "original fiction" and I definitely do it with films and vids, but it's definitely more intense in Pros! I wonder if it's the familiarity thing - there's a smaller world, in some ways, to both Pros and the films etc I most adore, so they're more... not cosy exactly, but welcoming, perhaps? Whereas with original fiction, no matter how much I adore it, it's almost as though it has a wider and wilder world to it, there are more possibilities that I can't see, that could spin off in all directions. Maybe it's just to be with being human as well, and appreciating excitement and danger but also very much have a home-making brain of some kind, our "safe places" too...