Once More, With or Without Feeling You, OR: Running QL Into the Ground
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| Title: | Once More, With or Without Feeling You, OR: Running QL Into the Ground |
| Creator: | [B T] |
| Date(s): | May 1995 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Quantum Leap |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
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Once More, With or Without Feeling You, OR: Running QL Into the Ground is a 1995 essay by [B T].
It was printed in Strange Bedfellows (APA) #9.
The topic is how the oddities of Quantum Leap (Sam and Al can't physically touch each other) affect its potential for slash or other fanfic.
Some Topics Discussed
- Quantum Leap
- Sam/Al
- what is slash
- fanfiction shorthand
The Essay
The kick of any slash story isn't quite in just seeing two guys in love (as women conceive "in love" usually), but seeing two particular guys in love. I theorize, mostly from what I like, that any story that describes two particular guys well enough to delineate them for the reader as individuals can support a slash feel, but in the absence of fairly good character writing in a slash story, the TV characters as seen for hours and hours on screen supply the particularity for the story characters. Even without showing much personality, two characters in the very particular situation of the given TV show can evoke the show's characters for the reader either by deduction (a close-working pair of anti-civil-terrorist government agents in London are assumed by the fan to be Bodie and Doyle - who else could they be?) or by actual similarity, when the story action presents the same problems with the same sorts of solutions necessitating the same sorts of characters as the TV show presents, just by virtue of the plot.
In QL, the oddity of the Leap situation is unique; the basic assumptions suggest the character outlines in themselves. Writing a story purely on the basis that a time-leaper pops into someone else's place, must solve a crucial problem for someone in the near vicinity to get away, has a holographic observer from his own time for informative but totally nonphysical support, and may or may not remember what he invented of the time-travel device, will produce a story with some QL-ishness to it just by following those guidelines.Sam and Al in QL are given enough characterization that they should be recognizable in non-Leap situation as well, but a number of slash stories (and other fanfic, for that matter) that do use a non-Leap setting neglect all recognizable characterization for Sam and Al - the qualities that brought a polymorphous genius quantum physicist with compassion and ability to identify with other people, and a crass-talking, quick-thinking, emotionally worn but not burned-out Navy admiral ex-astronaut, into a time-travel project
in the first place, are just not addressed. One doesn't need most of these qualities simply to show sex, but removing them also removes the particularity of the two guys. A fan supplies that from her memory while reading, but one needs some minimal support in creating the illusion, and some fanwriters evidently find it impossible to supply even the most minimal character tags with any accuracy. That's a weakness (maybe the weakness) of too much fannish writing — it depends on the show and the reader's memory for much of its exposition, including characterization.
There's no ongoing setting in QL. The project itself is invisible in most show episodes; there's no continuity of place or ancillary cast to support the slash couple's interactions. Only pure characterization supplies the similarity between Sam and Al working in a Leap and Sam and Al interacting in a story where they're physically together, especially if they're away from the QL project. And character is what isn't actually written in, in too many fannish stories; even gen. Leap-based stories tend to become mechanical exercises, in QL. The ongoing show "setting" of the QL premise is Sam and Al. Period. If the story can't evoke some hint of them as characters, nothing's left of QL except the problem-solving. Which may be attractively QL-ish as far as that goes, but isn't slashy in itself.
QL fan stories have evolved an ongoing cast of characters from the show's occasional mentions of them and sometimes do revert to the QL project setting in 1996-2000 New Mexico; fans are doing their best to create a stable setting. I've noticed that stories that use it are more likely to work for me. The fannish consensus background for the show's universe provides character tags that can enliven slash (and other) stories by substituting the fan reader's memory of previous stories, as well as TV episodes, for on-the-page developed characterization. Stories outside the QL project setting, however, don't have that advantage.
I've noticed that "vacation" stories in any fandom (when they are not just a way of setting an otherwise normal-for-the-characters plot in an exotic locale) tend to disappoint, perhaps for this reason. Does anyone else see this difference? Vacation (and, hmm, many a/u stories as well) are not necessarily less fun, but the different setting leaves the characters on their own with nothing but their personal relationship to hold them together.
This certainly leaves more time for sex and may make the story effectively slashier, but if the author's vision of Sam and Al (Bodie and Doyle, Napoleon and Illya, whoever) doesn't convince me, it has nothing else to connect it to the original source show. One isn't always looking for replicas of the source, of course. . . And fandom has more than a few writers who can convince me of nearly anything at all, for the length of a story.