Roses Are Red

You may be looking for Roses are Red, a Pros story by Lily Fulford.

Bodie/Doyle Fanfiction
Title:	Roses Are Red
Author(s):	M. Fae Glasgow
Date(s):	1996
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	The Professionals
External Links:	online at Morgan Dawn's Bare Bones Website
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Roses Are Red is a Bodie/Doyle story by M. Fae Glasgow.

At the bottom of the pdf too, much is revealed: "If aging memory serves, Roses are Red was originally written in January of 1996 to be read aloud at the bedtime story reading of that year's Escapade slash convention. Dueing the initial reading, the audience quickly learned to join in at the end of most chapters and chant in unison "they didn't have sex that night either." Afterwards the tale was released to the Pros Circuit as a Valentine's Day Story."

This story was also slated for inclusion in Orbital Resonance I, a zine that was never published. It is at Morgan Dawn's Bare Bones Website.

Reactions and Reviews

I'm a fan of M.Fae Glasgow's Prosfic anyway, because even when she seems conscious of "being a writer", or perhaps "experimenting" she's got just the rhythm and flow to keep you reading, and she tends to imbue her stories with very specific atmospheres and emotions - they exist in their own right, rather than being words than can be interpreted in one way or another by the reader, they're complete somehow. Roses are Red is one of what I think of as her "storyteller" stories - we're sitting down listening to her tell a story, rather than being in the story ourselves - and in this case she's gently teasing herself, and the reader, and fandom in general as we go along, so that I found myself smiling and nodding along as I went - absolutely involved the whole way through...

I found it highly entertaining. She can definitely tell a story and this sort goes over well in a read-aloud setting. I could almost hear a quite posh woman with a British accent telling the tale. No clue of the author's voice, but my imagination had no problem supplying my own. *g* There was indeed a story in those words even if it was written very much tongue-in-cheek. Thanks for the rec and thanks to MD for posting this one.

Since I don't know the author personally, and since this story is clearly being narrated by the author, I had to supply my own voice. See, what I'm doing when I read, in order to hear a "voice" is taking the words of the story and creating a voice from them - for instance words like "cooried" and simply knowing that MFaeGlasgow is a Scots pun/name/author gave me a headstart into a slight Scottish accent for this story. That's why something alike "I was goin' to the ladies, is all" will have me reading in an American "voice" and so on... But you're actually talking about the literal voice of an author, as if she might have made a podfic of it, by the sounds... Interesting!

Ingenious in being able to tell a slash story at the same time, yes, but it's an M. Fae Glasgow slash story - which means stringing out the misunderstanding and lack of communication. For the first few pages I felt quite pleased with myself, to be *enjoying* a MFG story (leaving aside that this is MFG for six year olds, metaphorically). Could it be my tastes are finally maturing and becoming more discerning?

But by the time Bodie has the flowers and the champers, and he still won't do anything to resolve things between them although Doyle's good intentions are now perfectly obvious, the drawing out of the miscommunication has gone beyond reasonable behaviour and I'm not enjoying it so much any more.

It's certainly different, and I'm glad I read it...

I did, [read it] but I probably won't again. I've a fiery burning hatred of double-column format .pdfs.

Oh gawd, I can't be done with being that picky about format - I'd miss out on way too much brilliant Prosfic, especially from Oblique!

My pdf version, complete with the lovely scroll-y bits as headers, came in 'normal' format Excellent point! I've just looked at the version that I read and it's single-column! *headdesk* I know alot of Oblique's/MFae's fic is double-columned, but this does rather beg the question of what Squeeful's talking about that's relevant to this fic now! *g*

I'm glad I read it too. If it hadn't been a Reading Room rec I might not have finished it because I don't much enjoy parody or the slightly arch style. But I was fascinated by the story that, as you say, she managed to unroll underneath the 'read aloud and let's giggle' bit and I was intrigued to find out whether they would ever get to bed! They did and I was happy. So thanks!

I don't know the author but have always assumed she is Scottish - and there were a couple of words in the story that reinforced my opinion: 'dunted' and 'cooried'. I think they mean 'nudged' and 'snuggled' respectively but I'm not sure. Anyway, whilst I had read the note and knew I was supposed to be hearing the story rather than reading it I heard a Scottish accent rather than a posh English one! (For all I know she could be posh Edinburgh...)

Something that sort of threw me was the conversation about Dr. Who. As I possibly keep saying, the lads are almost exactly my age and in those days (I now feel like Methuselah) people only watched the good doctor if they had kids, so I doubt if they'd have been so familiar with it - maybe the author had kids to watch with?!

Now that I know the ending I don't think I'll ever reread it because the style still doesn't appeal, though I can imagine someone reading it aloud at a convention and everyone loving it!

I was struck, and momentarily distracted by 'cooried' too (and 'dunted', although that is kind of self-explanatory). I've never seen it before and can't find a definition - need a dictionary of lowlands Scottish, presumably - or ask Cowley!

Odd for such a skilled writer to use a word that neither the characters nor the readers would understand.

M.Fae Glasgow (read her name out loud, in a Scots accent) is from Scotland - Glasgow at a wild guess, though she also uses Edi N. Burgh and Cally Donia as pseuds.

I found her occasional Scots-ism less jarring than a plethora of Americanisms, to be honest, though as you say still not right for Pros. (Same with "handsy" that I once read in an otherwise good fic..!)

Odd for such a skilled writer to use a word that neither the characters nor the readers would understand. You speak for yourself! *g* Not so odd, either, if it's in common usage where she's from - and I do get a very Scots vibe from her other fics too, though never enough to "throw me out" of a story - but it's in keeping with her writing style of teller-of-the-story too, for me, so again I don't mind so much in this case.

I'd guess there were science fiction fans of Doctor Who back in the day too, whether they had kids or not - and who knows what the lads might have watched if they were messed in with other blokes in police accommodation, or somewhere they're passing the time... Doyle refers to "those talking adenoids" and is is corrected to "androids" by Bodie, and Bodie talks about a "tractor beam" in another ep. And in fact I'm pretty sure I noted that Doyle was reading an SF book in one ep, but I can't remember what it was now... So again, DW didn't throw me as much as it might have if she'd made more of it... Though I suspect it was an authorial indulgence to include it!

I think she's one of the great Pros writers - some of her writing is very dark, and there's often a twist to it, but I like her alot.

I'm considering why I don't like it.

It's not the form of the 'storyteller stories'. Normally I like any 'experimenting'.

I think, I would have enjoyed it immensely, if for example, I would have been a part of the 'show', there at the convention in 1996. It sounds very intriguing! Or I could imagine that in our times it could have been born on a whim in a LJ discussion.

But from my point of view as a reader who is sitting in front of her screen, lacking all the nice Pros company and the excitement of new impressions and good discussions and laughter and wine and..., - No! It doesn't work for me! It's like suffering from the distance an omnipresent narrator creates without the possibility to share the fun of the genesis...

Plus there were some insulting comments about Bodie that threw me out of the story... What is that for? And I've never heard Bodie falling into anything like falsetto voice! That's ridiculous

Ah, I wonder if this is perhaps a language/cultural thing, because in the parts you've quoted it was really clear to me that M.Fae wasn't insulting Bodie, she was making fun of the fanfic writers who characterise Bodie in those kind of ways!

For example - "execrable accent" - in actual fact, though fanfic makes much of him being from Liverpool and the way there is just a hint of an accent there, Bodie in the eps speaks "received English" almost all the time, and when his accent does occasionally come through, it's very very light. So M.Fae was being gently sarcastic, describing him this way - he barely has any accent at all (so as you say, why do fanfic writers make so much of it!). She might also be poking fun at opinions of her own (Scottish) accent.

That's exactly what I love about this story - the way M.Fae isn't taking any of it too seriously. But I suspect you have to understand alot of the cultural references, and the way things are treated over here (eg, a Liverpool accent being considered dreadful, and a Scots one almost incomprehensible! They're not really, that's more... cultural myth? But you have to know that's the cultural myth!)

She does a similar thing with the "ugly brown floral towels" that she mentions more than once in the opening scenes - I think she's a good enough writer to know that really no one cares what the towels look like, unless you're pointing them out for a reason, which she is. She's poking gentle fun at the horrendous fashion sense of the 1970s - I just picture excactly the sort of towels she meant, and it gives me a sense of time in the fic, a sense of nostalgia for my childhood, and therefore a sense of warm connection to the story... But again, that only works if you have those cultural references to start with!

Because I get most of the cultural references, and can wiggle my way into others ("cooried down" sounds snug and Scots to me, in the context used, though I'd never heard it before!) I did feel that I was sitting there as part of the audience, being told this funny story - and made to feel a part of it! But I do think she is a very culturally-specific fanfic writer, which might make her harder for some people to read