Strange Bedfellows (APA)/Issue 012

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Strange Bedfellows (APA) · Issue 001 · Issue 002 · Issue 003 · Issue 004 · Issue 005 · Issue 006 · Issue 007 · Issue 008 · Issue 009 · Issue 010 · Issue 011 · Issue 012 · Issue 013 · Issue 014 · Issue 015 · Issue 016 · Issue 017 · Issue 018 · Issue 019
cover of issue #12 (NOTE: This issue was mislabeled both on the cover and on the tribber list inside as "Issue 11.")
-- "Our cover this issue is from Cat, featuring a couple of characters from the A-Team: Howling Mad Murdoch and someone who is called Baracuda in the French versions. She thinks he's Baracas in English, but isn't sure, and I don't know either. ..does anyone else? I probably have a cover for the next issue, but suggestions and submissions are always gladly received."

The artist states in the next issue: "Looking at the cover, I feel I've done something terribly wrong to the bridge of H.M. Murdock's nose. I hate that feeling."

Strange Bedfellows 12 was published in February 1996 (The cover is mislabeled as #11 and November 1995) and contains about 102 pages.

There were 35 members sharing 24 subscriptions.

Some Topics Discussed in "Strange Tongues"

Excerpts from "Strange Tongues"

There's a dearth of good, or even halfway decent, UNCLE writing, as I'm sure you know, despite a few stellar exceptions to the rule. Comedy in UNCLE, as in anything, requires more skill than many fans have as beginners, and since UNCLE in the original never got serious to speak of, attempts to make it serious weren't always terribly successful, with no model or even suggestion to work from. Taking the characters seriously as individuals was all that really worked. (Attempts to make UNCLE as an agency serious are equally problematic.) UNCLE fanfic therefore tended to fall down whether it was serious or funny, and only the few examples by writers whose gifts exceed the show's problems were ever readable. Maybe there are tons of hurt-Illya h/c stories and so little else simply because nothing else can be written satisfactorily by many fans? Illya bleeding, like Starsky bleeding, Spock bleeding, ad nauseaum and ad infinitum, is a fan story more or less by himself.

On Sheridan vs. Sinclair being sexy: I think the TV powers-that-be badly underestimate the appeal to many women of a hero's competence. (Not to mention the appeal to all viewers of competence in screenwriting.) Sinclair was very much the right man for the job of B5 commander, and that's part of his being sexy in the role, regardless of face or figure (not that they merit complaint); Sheridan came on very slowly in knowing what he ought to be doing, though he is redeeming himself now. How his looks could be "sexy" is a mystery to me, but I may be the wrong person to ask.

I've never seen any mediafan-style stories, slash or any others, based on computer games or RPGs, though some have pro (as in "promotional,") paperback spin-off novels. The idea sounds entirely possible: if I were interested in a computer game enough to know its set-up and characters, I might think of them in slash contexts as well. I won't say slash fans as a group eschew computer games, since they don't, but the biggest computer game players, teenaged boys, are NOT part of slash fandom, as a rule.

Slash fans overall are definitely more interested in their character agonizing over individuals ("am I in love with Vinnie/Sam/Illya?") rather than categories ("am I gay?"), except insofar as the categorical angst supports the individual angst ("am I in love with Avon/Frank/Bodie, and will he love me if I'm gay?"). I also prefer fanfic that doesn't take "gay" as a single stereotype - I prefer fiction of all kinds that doesn't take gays as stereotypes, if it includes gays at all, and I prefer fanfic that does so as well.

But it's true that how this specific character, Dorian or Doyle or Napoleon or Garibaldi, handles his sexuality (including what he and others feel about the label "gay") is what makes the story go 'round. At the level a lot of fanfic is written at, and at a self-indulgent reading level for me too, ignoring gay politics and terminology is an agreement I can live with. That doesn't mean I enjoy being slapped in the face. If the writer (not meaning a shown-as-homophobic character in character) starts taking potshots at the social facts that make slash thinkable and workable instead of grounds for exile or imprisonment, I don't like it and I have no objection to saying why. I'd also prefer writing that sees individual gays as having only one less barrier to intimacy than any two male (or female) individuals, period.

The we-fuck-because-we-love-each-other reasoning is no less monolithic and stereotyped, no less destructive of divine uniqueness, than we-fuck-because-we're-gay. If the characters are all that divinely unique in their love, the story of their relationship should be equally singular, whether they think of themselves as gay or not. This isn't a challenge much slash actually addresses in detail, but writing that claims any quality on that basis, can't claim that the characters' previous sexual experiences and perceptions, whether hetero or homo, are relevant to this new and unique relationship. It's also as unique character pairs that I keep wanting lesbian slash to be as possible and exciting as male/male, though I fear that the very absence of viable lesbian slash indicates that divine uniqueness is pretty damn thin on the ground in fanfic as practiced, and we might as well just appreciate the fascinating fucking it does serve up with the help of some (but perhaps, one hopes, not all) stereotypes.

In media-based fanfic, there's the stereotyped action-adventure world of TV to consider, in which (with a few high-profile exceptions) until recently, men were pictured as the main action heroes. A "normal" active character was male. If a fan wanted to think herself into a sexual situation in the TV universe as a normal person (rather than a specialized sex object), or think of sexual situations between normal members of the universe, she'd have to think in terms of male characters. Hence slash. I'd guess that this happened intuitively, without being understood very clearly as a decision by some fans, so that legitimately active female characters didn't register very well when they did appear. By the time a fan had gone to the trouble of writing a K/S (or B/D, or S/H, or whatever) epic or two, and reading hundreds more, she had a habit of distrusting women on TV and didn't see that there might be genuine exceptions. Whether there were real exceptions was a good question in any case before the 80's; 60's practice tended to undercut its hopeful principles even when it didn't mean to.

The possibilities for Garibaldi/Sinclair, however, seem to me more slashy, if not more frequent, now than earlier. Consider that they are both working in (or with) the Rangers, an elite, idealistic, action-hero band of guerillas. Excitement, danger, sudden death! In a good cause! No doubt they see each other seldom, but if the feeling were there, they'd have every excuse to spend an extra half-hour in, er, personal reassurance, when they do meet. They might not ever see each other again! Each time! It's the Minbari War (the good parts) all over again! Well, but that's no excuse for mucking up a tight timetable or risking more not-where-he's-supposed-to-be points than necessary. It's mostly that the atmosphere of high-minded risk, galaxy-shaking danger, and necessary trust is consistent with many slash styles, rather than the given logistics being really favorable for good sex. But, as far as the circumstances of this (unfortunately offscreen) relationship encourage certain literary-sexual tendencies among us, I think G/S could be even more highly charged than it would have been earlier in the series.

More thoughts about holodeck characters: There should be an enormous difference between the screen character who thinks s/he's playing with a fiction, and one who knows s/he's playing with another person who can be hurt. Motivation may matter a lot here. Does, say, Picard choose holodeck sex because he knows it's a bad idea to develop intimate relationships with any crewmember, or because he has less time and energy for emotional relationships than he thinks they need? One could also ask what mattered most to Riker in the story in one of the Oblique Press Paean zines [1] which started as, apparently, a very dangerous Riker/Whorf encounter, revealed at the end to be a holodeck fantasy of Riker's.

There's nothing intrinsically improbably about male/female love stories (except for the difficulty of understanding each another sexually, that is :-> ) when the two characters are actually involved in one another's lives. Slash, among other things, recognizes the truly strongest relationship in many shows, the partnership of two male characters, rather than going along with the socially-approved fiction that a m/f romance must naturally supersede the m/m bond even when it is given only a small fraction of the time and energy spent on the action-hero job with the male partner. That's the only reason slash isn't just a new kink in sex stories, due to wear out as fast as the fad for drawstring pants. When a m/f relationship really is the strongest human element in an action show, why shouldn't it look slashy, or at least legitimately interesting?

Have recently been shown an episode of Xena, and while its main attraction is its laughability, the slash/camp/dish quotient is quite high, if you can stand it at all. Not only did the eponymous heroine (if she's supposed to be a princess, it didn't show — maybe that's the pseudo-Greek-historical equivalent of "Green Hornet," rather than a mundane title) have a female sidekick who contributed measurably to the Dramatic Escape Plot, but the episode guest was another woman (a Robin Hood clone - for legendary Greece, there are an awful lot of similarities to Medieval Europe) with whom Xena spent a good while recalling the old days when they played around under the old oak tree, with heavy implications that it Meant More. And then some. This was good, stupid fun at the kid level, and it's chock-full of adult subtext for viewers over the age of consent, as well as offering the pleasures of playing "spot the anachronism." Besides, wouldn't someone armed with steel in the Bronze Age qualify as a comic-book, er, picture-scroll, superhero by virtue of using a "magically indestructible" weapon? The use of lamé in the clothing of Olde Hellas does seem to have been badly underestimated by academic historians, as well as the use of sunscreen #48 among the creamy-skinned natives.

Have recently been lent a copy of The Best Lies, by Cody Nelson, which prominently bills itself as a slash X-Files novel, presumably to warn off those who want to retain the illusion that FBI agents are too pure for such things. The story has a working plot and enough character development to make the Mulder/Krycek relationship credible. It's also a relief to see that the author managed not to leave Scully out of the story, and overall it's definitely worth it.

After taking a deep breath or two and stepping back from the reading experience, I am regaining my former perspective that anything that insists on finding a m/m pairing in XF just because slash in the past has been like that, is quaintly ignoring the really juicy partnership directly in front of our noses. On the other hand, this isn't hearts-and-flowers, only-death-do-us-part romance; this is Mulder having an impulsive affair with one of the few people who'd put up with him. I've been wanting more of that in slash since about the fourth (well, okay, the tenth) K/S story I read with a telepathic Mindbond substituting for characterization. The indication/ that Mulder and Scully are an unbreakable team is a relief — Krycek is in the role of the standard slash character's wife/girlfriend/au pair who takes second place to the professional partner when the emergency hits the fan.

I appreciate the writing effort that went into making Krycek a believable character, but how far can M/K go without spinning out of XF altogether?

Or would it? This is a show with an infinite capacity for spinning paranoia, and anything can be assumed to be hidden behind the next layer of shadows. That is, anything could be; but I'd prefer a story that makes clear what it is and why it's there, other than it being a favored fannish motif. I've seen a couple of shorter XF slash stories as well which are, shall we say. Not As Good. I do think slash that isn't really strong at using the characters and specific themes of this show comes off as fannish exercises on Mulder (or whoever, but it's always Mulder so far) that ignore the only trustworthy relationship he already has. What seems clearest about them is that some fans are expressing their hormonal admiration for Mulder in graphically active terms, same as they often do for Illya and others; if I were hormonally attracted to Mulder, I can see that the stories would instantly take on a much juicier aspect.

Why doesn't something like Scully/Skinner pop out of the woodwork, if we're looking for mindless slash-or-something scenarios? Actually, on that one I can see some reasons why not from the characters: Mulder knows what he wants and has backing from higher-ups than Skinner; their wary alliance is within shouting distance of equal power, even if there's a nominal rank difference in the Bureau hierarchy. Scully is a lot more junior and until her loyalty to Mulder supersedes her loyalty to the FBI, doesn't exceed her Bureau role enough to get around the don't-mess- with-the-help rule. And they both know it. By third season, it might be possible, but she'd have to convince Skinner she wasn't doing it to get something on him, which sounds nearly impossible. Still, would that bother slash writers if she weren't a woman?

Some Topics Discussed in "Cat's Darkling Zine"

Excerpts from "Cat's Darkling Zine"

What I see in [Star Trek: Voyager] is Janeway/Tuvok, Janeway/Chakotay, Janeway/B'Elanna Torres, Janeway/Kes... So many possibilities. Well, there's also Tuvok/Chakotay (yum), Tom Paris/Harry Kim.

[...]

As to Tom/Chakotay, after a start with sparks, except for exchanged looks now and then, there is nothing going on. No crackle in the air.

I have slash friends, but none of us is like-minded! Haven't found anyone who wants to watch Randall and Hopkirk in a slash manner with me either. Or in any other manner for that matter. Mutter Mutter... Randall and Hopkirk... Hopkirk is so deliciously emotional, and as a ghost, had the choice of being heard and seen by only one person. He chose his partner over his wife. Sweet and Yummy. I bite the next person gloating about [having] a roomful of slashfen [to talk to].

Those seem like new videos. They're made faster than a person can watch them. I don't think that a version of "Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places" can be better than the Illya/Napoleon one, where both Illya and Napoleon did their own searching. The pornographic inserts were wonderfully convincing (if you closed your eyes to the fact that both Kuryakin and Solo were more graceful than the pornographic performers.)

Sinclair replaced because not sexy enough? I always thought that actors dropped out of series to go on to better things. I must be mindwarped by Blake's 7. But if so. Who defines "sexy men"? I can see a board of executively dressed men debating on the subject. And not a gay man among them.

B5: Someone's lent me tapes. I've seen enough to understand what you are talking about, but I've got a lot of catching up to do. Talia is not quite real yet. She's very cool and very controlled, and except for Ivanovna avoiding Talia, there is not much inter-action yet. Seeing the Horrible Something Out There story not in the right order is a bit puzzling, but one works things out in the end. I hope. My own favorite up to now has been Garibaldi's descent into hell. As an alcoholic, it makes him so deliciously vulnerable. I liked that Londo, the guy with the flat spread bush hair helped him. In fact, I like Ambassador Londo, and I dislike what I see him getting into. The line about the quacking nibblers still has me in stitches.

The best thing it's got is Diefenbaker, and he's not one of the slash pair. I like the Canadian cop, Fraser, as comics shaped my mind, and he's as daft as Superboy. However, the Chicago Cop, Vecchio, I will dislike as long as "the loose canon", who wasn't REALLY Sonny Steelgrave's nephew, so that Sonny and Vinnie could not be a proper pretend-family. Sonny seemed so disappointed, and so was I.

When Vecchio and Fraser roll together on the floor in slow motion, I think to myself, oh, what a waste of a good slash shot. Waste on them, I mean.

In the long run, I could be convinced since, as far as I go, where there's slash there's a way.

Garak/Bashir? [A] has ordered some. My lungs fill with the air of euphoria, and I might break into a song yet. The character of TNG I liked was Geordi Laforge; it wasn't a reasoned thing. The French dubbing introduced him by having him say: "Geordi Laforge is sending me. Captain."

Q and Loxwanna Troy are the only contributions of TNG to humankind. Keiko and Miles O'Brien, endearing as they are, are in fact retro-active after-images.

TNG is the only show where a naked man was tortured for two episodes, and it bored me.

[...]

Best of all. Slash possibilities in DS9 are numerous and fecund as flees on a stray cat.

Some Topics Discussed in "Menage a Deux by C J"

Excerpts from "Menage a Deux by C J"

I have only watched Lois and Clark sporadically, but have enjoyed what I have seen. In terms of het romance, I actually liked what they did at the beginning of this season. I was amazed, staggered, dumbfounded. I am so used to getting totally pissed off at television for romances that are so annoying they aren't fun that when I watched that couple dealing with each other in what was at least a semi-mature fashion (quite capable of being annoyed but also capable of listening and understanding) it was great. My problem is, I am afraid to continue watching. The producer has publicly suggested (I paraphrase here) that he thinks happy relationships are boring and lack the spark that keep audiences interested and so he will find some sort of blocking device to throw into this relationship later on. I really don't want to see another series pull back from a relationship that simply ought to be.

Trek's stab this season at "gay issues" aired here just a few days too late for me to comment on it in the last apa distribution. I am curious to hear the response of other viewers. Doubtless if succumbed to the temptation to subscribe to discussion groups I would have a better sense of the range of response, but so far I have resisted, so I have to get my response the old fashioned way, late. Actually they did a better job, on the whole, than I was expecting, given the show's history. The kiss was the only one I remember seeing on series TV where both parties looked like the meant it.

Help! I'm having a crisis of faith, or something. I have just gotten my hands on the translations of the Eroica stories that were published last May and June and somehow, reading them, I find myself facing something I sort of realize, but think I have been trying to avoid having to confront too directly. How do I put this delicately? Perhaps that I do not find the original source material is providing useful insights into the characters? Perhaps I am feeling like Aoike and I are writing about such different characters that my Dorian, James, Klaus, etc. have about as much to do with her stories as they do with Led Zep. Alright, maybe that's overstating things Just a bit. Maybe I'm just in the wrong mood to be reading today. Maybe her recent venture really does strike a very different tone and what I need to do is to go back and reread earlier stories. I've certainly been going around wishing I had translations for long enough that it would be hard to stop wishing too quickly. But should I? Some of what was going on in the last story I really didn't like -- although seeing Klaus and Mischa wind up on the same side was kinda fun.

Some Topics Discussed in "Piles of Snow Turn Into Piles of Paper!!"

Some Topics Discussed in "(the trib with no name)"

Excerpts from "(the trib with no name)"

Krycek/Mulder? On one hand, Krycek killed Mulder's father, on the other hand he's cute. Father killer...cute. It's a tossup. But then he also helped get Scully kidnapped, and oops! killed Scully's sister. Then again, he's cute.

The writer is gong to have to work really hard to make me believe this one. But, like Mulder, I want to believe!!!! Krycek is a doll. I just watched Dwayne Barry again (Mulder in the speedo with Krycek getting an eyeful). I loved the scene where Krycek asks the lady in charge if there is anything he can do and she tells him to get out his notebook, then orders a cappuccino!

I am kind of intrigued with the idea of Mulder and Skinner. OK, it is about as far fetched as Krycek (but Skinner hasn't killed any blood relatives of either Mulder or Scully, definitely a point in his favor) but then I have a thing for power issues in slash.

You H/C essay: Loved your "stories that drive me gibberingly insane are the ones where the whole plotline (and often enough the characterization) is not just determined by, but based entirely on fannish stereotypes..."

Amen!!!! You were asking about Due South slash and this illustrates your point. The slash I've seen so far has been strictly fill-in-the-blank variety. Personally, AND THIS IS JUST AN OPINION AND IS NOT MEANT TO STIFLE, INSULT, OR MAKE UNCOMFORTABLE ANY PERSON, ENTITY OR ANIMAL COMPANION, when I look at the show I don't see the slash. Benton Fraser makes Dudley Doright look like a slacker. I mean, he seems to have trouble dealing with what he would deem "correct" sexual urges (and Fraser is nothing if not correct, actually he is nothing if he isn't correct. Doing the right thing seems to be his core value, with right being defined sometime in the 1890's. We're talking about a guy raised in the middle of nowhere by librarian grandparents who were also missionaries in China.)

Now, a good writer, taking all that into consideration (plus dealing with Ray's catholocism) could write one hell of a good slash story. But if you ignore them, then you have generic slash. Kind of like the way Simon and Simon slash ignores the fact that this is INCEST.

Too many slash stories seem to ignore the character they are supposedly writing about. Instead, it is the standard, "their fingers brushed as they reached for the same french fry. Passion flared between them..." boom they are in bed together and I'm left wondering, who the hell are these guys? I've read two Law & Order slash stories slashing (when did this become a verb?) Logan and Robinette. Now, there is no way in hell Logan is going to go to bed with a guy and a BLACK guy on top of that! Logan is a neanderthal and for me to say that (I know some of you think I live in a cave) it must be pretty obvious.

The only "reason" needed to get two partners in bed together is the fact that they are partners. I swear to God (used generically, not meant to imply that other spiritual entities are less valid) I had a conversation with someone who was whining (an admittedly biased characterization) about the lack of New Adam-12 slash. When I hazarded the opinion that there wasn't a lot to suggest they were sexually involved she said "They've been partners for over six months!"

These are the 'slash' stories that drive me crazy.

X-Files. Damn, but this show just gets better and better!

[...]

A really good story is being released called OKLAHOMA by two really talented writers. It is up to part 10 out of 41 and is already 58 single spaced pages long.

How I spent my Christmas vacation? I read zines. Piles of zines. Maybe read is an exaggeration; I scanned piles of zines, K/S zines to be specific. I read a story in a zine called (I believe) NO GREATER LOVE by J.S. Cavalcante called Meat Dreams. This story was so good I found myself wondering what else I had missed. Short answer: Not a lot. I skimmed multiple issues of Charisma, First Time, Naked Times yadda yadda yadda and was completely bored. There might have been one or two slightly above mediocre stories interspersed amidst all that paper, but like Spock in Operation: Annihilate, I must have an inner eyelid that activates to protect my vision from dangerous combinations of words. I also read Kolya's Son and Summer of '65, both UNCLE zines, one a novel the other a collection of long short stories, both straight. I'm not even a really big UNCLE fan, but these were damned good reads. They definitely light the emotional buttons usually associated by my admittedly weird psyche with slash — emotional commitment, physical intimacy (though not sex) between men, father and son relationships, and strong doses of hurt/comfort. What really set the UNCLE stuff apart from the slash was the depth of the stories. I'm not talking relevancy or intellectual depth, but more the completeness of the story.

Some Topics Discussed in "Two Heads Are Better Than One"(NB)

Excerpts from "Two Heads Are Better Than One" (NB)

I loved your Mulder/Krychek photos. Would you please go ahead and computer generate the video of the whole scene now.

A lot of my fascination [with Highlander ] rests on pure, simple lust for the character. Talk about having the right actor for the role! That magnificent body has been shown off so expertly throughout the seasons and then this year, not only do we get a full frontal underwear shot [jockeys], but there is also the completely naked backside standing up from the bath view. And in frame by frame there is the briefest glimpse of dangly bits. But lust aside, I think a lot of the eps [ignoring the obvious immortal-of-the-week-to-be-killed plots] have gotten into some interesting issues that would be faced by a true immortal: how do you deal with the constant loss of friends — not to mention family and lovers — as you outlive them? What about watching your culture, your world change beyond recognition as the centuries pass? How do you justify your life and what do you contribute to human society? I guess I find HL a very thoughtful action/ adventure/drama and therefore intriguing. In terms of slashing Duncan, though, it takes more work. The obvious pairing with Richie doesn't appeal to me and I haven't seen any well-written stories do it. Conner is an obvious choice as would be Darius and Methos. Some of the guest villain immortals could also be done, but it would take a lot more effort [and a gifted writer] to make such a pairing sing. I suppose, at the moment, I'd like to see Methos/Duncan and Darius/Duncan.

reyrct Bab 5, Sheridan's suddenly becoming "sexual", and your innuendos on RASTB5. Oh yes! It was delightful to read your plethora of posts, but for me Sheridan was always both sexual and sexy. He's a blond, more or less, and that pushes my buttons. Funny thing, though, with the Sheridan/Delenn relationship so obvious onscreen, what I've decided I want is hot het stories about them in addition to some good slash with Sinclair and Garibaldi.

I hadn't really expected this to happen. In fact, I was fairly certain it never would. Somehow, throughout the last three or four years I have been totally oblivious to the delights of Forever Knight and Highlander. How could a vampire show hold any appeal to me who is [and remains] utterly bored by and indifferent to vampirism? I do not like Anne Rice's vampire books and I have never been to see the movie Interview With the Vampire. So what was there to recommend a T.V. vampire? Well, persistence in the form of a sister finally got me watching third season episodes (that and the tale of the Z Con group watching of the infamous Vampire Dog ep). I found much of what I saw to be run-of-the-mill television with scripts full of plot holes beyond what one would accept as the rules of the series' universe. I found plenty of annoying characters I would rather not have to listen to. But what seems to be holding my interest is the lead actor's physical appearance (I am a sucker for blonds) and the character's ongoing struggle with his dark side. Give me slash that shows that struggle and I'm yours. I suppose all you longtime FK fans have already hashed all this through (that's what I get for coming into a fandom relatively late), but what I find particularly fascinating about Nick is the evil that exists within him. It's lovely to see his struggle to change, to begin to atone for his past sins, but the fact is that his dark side is truly there. He is a killer who has caused tremendous pain and loss to people throughout the centuries. And if he were truly repulsed by his actions, truly repelled and horrified by what he had done, then he would have committed suicide centuries ago. But he hasn't — and that's the key. His dark side is too strong within himself. And so he goes on existing, fleeing LaCroix yet always being found, loving mortals but killing them (his long dead wife from the recent 3rd season ep.), attempting to find a cure through herbs or medicine yet resisting at the same time. And I find him a perfect match for LaCroix, that being who glories in his killer's nature and in his darkness. I adore LaCroix' constant hounding and pursuit of Nick, of his demanding possessiveness which flares again and again through time. How delicious and sick and twisted his, "You are mine." A scrumptious, dark slash couple if ever there were one. All it would take is a talented writer to elevate this pairing to the heights of Avon and Blake.

Some Topics Discussed in "Two Heads Are Better Than One" (M F G)

Excerpts from "Two Heads Are Better Than One" (M F G)

Well, I've watched it. Well, I like Benny. As for Ray Vecchio... He kills any interest in Due South slash dead. Can't stand him. Now, I know this may get me ignominiously thrown out of the Grand Order of Slash Sluts, but for slash to work for me, I have to fancy both characters. Or at least, not feel this rather disturbing wave of nausea wash over me at the thought. Which is really, really unfortunate, because this programme definitely hands us our slash on a silver platter. And all you lot will have tons of goodies to enjoy and I'll be left with my nose pressed against the window, sighing, 'oh, if only I could like Ray!" And if I did, would that make me Cowley???

I'm one of those slash fans who isn't really interested in reading about female characters, but it's not because the women aren't good enough etc. Most heroes are seriously stupid. A monster lurks in a darkened house. Do they call the National Guard? No, they get a sharp stick and go in there alone to do or die. Now, I really don't mind when men do that in books, but I really, really hate it when female characters are gratuitously stupid. Another thing I hate is the recent crop of sf/fantasy books with a (frequently teenaged) heroine: not only do some of these read like bad Mary Sues, but a lot of them read like men's fantasies: sort of like coming across the requisite 'lesbian' scene in male focused porn. Nothing to do with real women, everything to do with an objectifying fantasy. I don't begrudge this fantasy, but I don't want to read it.

About V'ger spawning fan fic: I think a lot of it has to do with the bad writing and fans wanting to do it right. There was so much potential in so many of the characters but it was all sacrificed on the altar of worshiping Kes. Blech.

What's really interesting to me is what Garak and Bashir are doing under the noses of the Powers That Be. Example: in the episode (can't remember the title: Garak breaks into Bashir's holosuite program. "Bashir, Julian Bashir". There was an official plot line, but we're fans —we know how to do a proper precis!), there's a buxom brunette to whom the lines should be delivered. Instead, Garak delivers them to Bashir, Bashir delivers them to Garak, and they gaze into each other's eyes the entire time. Of such small molehills are slash mountains made.

If you haven't read the fourth Bab 5 book yet and hate the least little tiniest spoilers, escape now!

On P. 31, we have: "...Ivanova felt her thoughts stray inevitably to Talia. Felt again her light touch, heard her whispered words. And something else; something more than the touch of bodies. The touch of minds —"

So, it's less than fanfic will give us, but I can't make up my mind if it's more or less than we were given in Roddenberry's novelisation of the first Trek film. Still, it's certainly interpretable in a particular light, which is something. Not much, but something.

Some Topics Discussed in "Yamibutoh"

  • Babylon 5 slash
  • vampire characters having sex

Excerpts from "Yamibutoh"

The slash B5 sounds interesting, but, sorry, I just don't like Sheridan with anyone that "little boy cute" he does just bothers me on a so-called adult.

H/C and Dorian and Klaus, we are still trying to figure out why it is Klaus that is the sexual magnet. I suspect it is simply that Dorian is too "hen" (weird). There is a definite preference in Japanese fandom and especially in slash to eschew (good word) the obvious gay characters in a sexual relationship in favor of "doing it" to the rather straight appearing ones. How much this relates to western slash's preference for the "straight men who only love each other scenario", we have not yet determined, but it means that Dorian just does not interest the fans too much. Maybe he is
a. too weird
b. too foreign
c. too easy (to break, that is; he is no challenge)
d. other

Some Topics Discussed in "Ghost Speaker"

  • descriptions of the two slash panels she was on at the recent Worldcon in Glasgow
    • Pornography, for Women, by Women, With Love
    • Community for Perverts, by Perverts, with Perverts
  • Due South, Forever Knight
  • f/f stories
  • the term "queer"
  • much about the Star Trek: TNG episode, "Chain of Command"
  • writing one's own sex scenes: work? or a turn-on?
  • a long essay on her fannishness about The Incredible Hulk
  • Bible Slash

Excerpts from "Ghost Speaker"

Jean Lorrah was a walk-on guest on the Queer Vampires panel. I suppose Simes are just vampires with tentacles instead of fangs, allergic to strawberries instead of garlic, (And they'e sorted the daylight and immortality problem. But that was just a matter of time, and vampires have plenty of that.)

f/f slash; a strong part of the charge of any slash relationship for me is the feeling that the two of them are breaking barriers with every touch. I think this is why f/f relationships tend to appear by reference in my slash stories; I know Soolin and Dayna are lovers, and I think Jenna and Cally were lovers, and of course Uhura and Chapel and Flynn (in my Mirror series) have an ongoing open-ended three-way relationship, and quite possibly Cagney and Lacey, but somehow it doesn't thrill me to write about them. Do I need to be kidnapped away to have my consciousness forcibly raised by lots of lesbian terrorists in clinging black uniforms? Yes please.

... I still don't know anyone who care about The Incredible Hulk or who would care that David Banner died. I want someone to hold my hand and sniffle with me and reminisce about what we loved about the series and what we thought was really stupid, and there isn't anybody. So I'm making do with you.

Some Topics Discussed in "Desert Blooms"

Excerpts from "Desert Blooms"

Definitions of Mary Sues. Your first definition about the fan persona while you find these "self-conscious" stories enjoyable, I find them incredibly embarrassing and unreadable.

Well, slash has certainly enriched my life. It has opened me up creatively, giving me an outlet for my writing. It has given me a sense of community outside the ones we are automatically assigned, ie: family, work, friends - a community that continually surprises me and opens me up to new ideas and thoughts. I wouldn't say that slash has changed me sexually but it certainly has broadened my knowledge and ideas about sexuality. I believe I'm more aware and accepting of differences in people now, but how much of that is exposure to slash and how much is just maturity and life experiences, I couldn't say.

Re comments about your very interesting musings on Vampires, Sex and Forever Knight I have to admit that I am not much of a vampire fan (I've read various vampire books/stories out of curiosity but it's not an area of fiction that really grabs me) but I have enjoyed Forever Knight quite a bit, both the tv show and some of the fiction. In fact, it is the only fandom where I've actually read a lot of gen stuff. I haven't found very much slash so far (although I haven't made a serious quest for it) and what I've found hasn't really been all that great. That current vampire literature today is strongly homosexual. Do you think that's because there's so many women interested in the genre? Not that I've done any kind of scientific research on this, but I seem to find more women involved in reading and discussing vampires. At work, about a year ago, Anne Rice-mania swept through a lot of the women in the department who swapped books and spent a lot of time discussing the stories in great depth.

Yes, it was those self-same Phoenix books, along with Mind Sifter by Shirley S. Maiewski from ST: The New Voyages, that made me realize that what I truly wanted to read more than anything else was slash (only it didn't have a name then).

Re minorities and fandom. You may have something there about voluntarily taking on something that's considered so out there by most people (fandom is weird, no two ways about it). And I also agree that what we write and discuss would be very interesting to many people if they could do it outside of fandom, in a safe, non-public environment. I have an hispanic friend that I've introduced to fanfic who absolutely adores what she's read so far. But coming into fandom is not something that could be easily understood by her family (they don't understand why she went to college), her boyfriend (who can't understand why she reads so much) or by the non-hispanic community in which she works. But there is some universal draw in the writings that transcends all of that and gives her something that mundane reading doesn't. In fact, I've never seen anyone take to fanfic and slash writing with such enthusiasm. I've had so much fun handing her new zines and listening to her talk about how the stories affected her. She told me recently that all her life people of influence have always told her what direction she should take, what books she should read to better herself, and that now, having discovered fanfic, Anne Rice and erotica, she has finally found something that speaks to her.

About slash scratching an emotional itch rather than a sexual one! So true! I hadn't really thought about it lately (because there's so much writing out there that misses the emotional punch) but that's exactly what I find the most satisfying about good slash. The sexual punch is very important but it's the connection of the characters that makes or breaks a story.

I was shuffling around some books recently, trying to find space for more cds, books and video tapes (space...the holy grail for fans), when I started thumbing through my Nero Wolfe mysteries. Has anyone ever discussed just how perfect, with one rather noticeable exception, this universe would be for slashing? You have a household of men living and working together. Misogynist Wolfe, his handsome, charming, irascible assistant Archie Goodwin, Fritz the live-in chef whose sublime creations get as much ink as many of our sex scenes, and Theodore, the overseer of 10,000 orchid plants upstairs. There are mysteries to solve and dangers to face.

Now, Theodore and Archie don't get along well. There seems to be a fair amount of jealousy over the time each spends with Wolfe and they both vie for his attention. Wolfe carves his time precisely between them, spending the same hours everyday upstairs with the orchids & Theodore and then downstairs in his office either reading, working or verbally sparring with Archie. The hatred and jealousy portrayed is quite palpable and would make for some interesting tension. On the other hand, Fritz, who reigns supreme in the kitchen, is courted and adored by both Archie and Wolfe.

And the one drawback to this universe? Wolfe is a singularly unattractive person. And let's face it, we like to slash cute boys. Or at least appealing boys. And Wolfe is neither. Instead, he is a large, sedentary lump with a foul temper and specially made chair built to hold his seventh of a ton. Of course, grumpiness can be excused, in fact even encouraged into an enticing character trait (Cowley, Avon, McCoy). But dealing with sex and Wolfe's, um, largesse, could be a tad trickier. The man barely moves more than he absolutely has to and the idea of hot, sweaty sex is rather, er, more than a healthy mind can stand. Maybe the way around this is to have Archie under the desk giving ol'Nero a blow job. Or, Henry, perhaps this is where one of those all-relationship-no-actual-sex stories would work!

Some Topics Discussed in "With Friends Like These..."

Excerpts from "With Friends Like These..."

Strangely, I often prefer reading about women when I read profic. But not, generally, in fanfic. It's not that I think women are less important or less interesting. When I read fanfic, I'm reading to escape, and that includes escaping the bonds of my gender, which society views as inferior even if I do not.

Computer games slash!? Just when I thought I'd heard it all... Giggle.

[...]

A couple of women in the office showed interest in DOOM when I suggested scanning in a photo of our boss and patching it into the game, so they could blow him up instead of the demons from hell... : )

Count me as one of those who thinks that no one really had sex on Liberator or Scorpio. (Unless you count Rosie Palm and her five sisters.) They were all too paranoid and too busy trying to stay alive. Which doesn't stop me from enjoying B7 smut; I just think of it as an AU.

Some Topics Discussed in "Lavender Lilies"

  • comments about Bene Dictum #3, see that page
  • figure skating
  • observations about being a queer woman and looking at photos of women in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue which is a magazine aimed towards the straight male gaze
  • comments about what is slash, a mention her comments on this topic got her trouble in Terra Nostra Underground
  • are alien bodies attractive to humans in slash stories
  • being omnivorous in one's reading: "folks myself who are absolute sluts in that I don't care what sex or gender the people are, as long as they do it! ;-)"

Excerpts from "Lavender Lilies"

Does "slash" mean "homoerotica" or does it mean "men (of whatever stated orientation) bonking each other?" Another disclaimer: I doubt that we will ever reach a consensus on this, and I doubt that such a consensus would be desirable. I mention this because when I first heard of slash, way way back in the late '70's when Leslie Fish show me pages of NAKED TIMES, I truly believed that slash meant "homoerotica" and it would only be a mater of time when I would see Uhura and Rand doing it along with Kirk and Spock.

As a gay person who longed to see something other than the endlessly heterosexual relationships on TV (and in magazines, comics, the movies, etc) I thought, "ahhah! Our nice straight characters are actually Queer. Great!" That Kirk & Spock happened to be men was a peripheral issue to me; it was their gayness which was important. It was gayness in popular media characters presumed to be straight which defined "slash to me, right from the beginning. And which has continued to be the primary characteristic of what "slash" means to me.

So when I first saw definitions of "slash" which means "male" rather than "queer," I truly got confused. Just as I was when I saw some of the stories where the two same-(male) sex characters declared that they were "really straight" though they were bonking each other.

Okay, here is where I might have to put on the asbestos suit. Because now I read about how woman/woman homoerotic media stories "aren't really slash" and ought to be either lumped into "adult" or else given aname of their own. I don't know about other readers of women/women stories, but I don't want to give up the name "slash" for my female homoerotic media stories. Because homoerotica, whether male or female, was the first and primary meaning of "slash" when I was first introduced to it.

I've written and I've read other woman/woman stories and, other than the fact that the main characters are female and not male, I can't really tell the difference in style between them and male/male slash stories. Of course there aren't nearly as many female/female stories (for various reasons which we've discussed already at length). But there is a variety, as there are in male/male stories, and. yet the male/male stories are all "slash." So the to-m obvious question, from a queer woman - what is the difference in homoerotic media fan stories in whether the partners are male or female? Other than, of course, the also-obvious difference in various peoples' tastes, orientations, and preferences for one type of body/characters/ shows over another?

One of my perplexities in all this is that I am absolutely omni-sexual when it comes to reading erotic fantasies. My erotic reading tastes cross gender lines as though they don't exist. I just picked up a copy of one of Lonnie Berbach's women's erotica collections, and there are male/female stories and female/female stories. One of them was [Gayle F] piece which used to be a Kirk/Spock slave story where she changed the sex (the "Spock" character into a female alien [2]; the "Kirk" character is still a gorgeous human slave in a whore house. I found the heteroerotic version just as erotic as the male/male version I probably would have liked to see a female/female version of this as well And I would have liked to have seen some male/male pieces in this collection as well, and did wonder why they weren't there.

Okay, I am perfectly willing to disagree with the use of "slash" for heteroerotica. Because historically, the term has had a primary meaning of same-sex. And also, same-sex literatur has played a more divergent role in a society which holds heterosexual relationships as the norm and homosexual relationships to he "deviant." "Slash" to me means subversion of tl heterosexual norm, a rebellion of sorts against this norm. And thus, for me at any rate, a heteroerotic media fan story cannot possibly be "slash" Which also means that, for me, a homoerotic media fan story, whether it involves men or women, fits into the term "slash" as I have come to understand it.

Some Topics Discussed in "Wonderlust"

Excerpts from "Wonderlust"

Oh why weren't there organized REAL GHOSTBUSTERS fandom when I first discovered this show? I had this fantasy of how playboy Peter would drag virginal Egon 'round to all the Gay bars. Just so that he, Peter, could watch the clientele *drool* over Egon's physique. Egon, of course, wouldn't have a clue...)

When you watch the pilot you might notice that Delenn's voice is far lower in volume than the others. Here's why: In the pilot, according to Jim, Mira Furlan's voice was to have been dubbed with the voice of a male actor. Here was the plan: Delenn was an androgynous alien who changes into a woman, (Minbari go thru such changes) and falls for Sinclair in a big way. Our good Commander is left with the emotional dilemma of an ambassador who is in now love with him — and the Commander is used to thinking of Delenn as a pal — not a gal. That's the *original* idea behind Sinclair/Delenn. Time passed. The pilot was made but Warner requested changes, changes that were later incorporated into the series. Delenn gives up forever her chance to lead the Grey Council on Minbar, feeling that her place is in Babylon Station. During the first season, there are repeated reverences that Sinclair is to fulfill some great destiny with Delenn at his side.

By contrast, Delenn/Sheridan seems like an artificial construct. Worse, this makes Delenn look like the space slut of the galaxy. "What is this," a friend of mine said. "Delenn has to throw herself at every commander of the station?"

However, if J. Michael Straczynski were willing to take time out and draw more attention to the character, instead of being so relentlessly plot driven, the way the show is now, the credibility of a Delenn/Sheridan could be greatly increased.

BBSes, Big Brother & Censorship — The other day, I was on a local bulletin board, checking out a STAR TREK discussion group, and I ran across the following question from a BBSer to (apparently) the sysop:

SUBJECT:Gay discussions

Q: What's the deal? I am trying to find out people's reactions to the latest DS9 episode which very clearly has lesbian over and undertones. This has been a long neglected topic in such an advanced culture. I didn't see any of the previous posts except all the "This thread has been terminated." Who's deciding what and when?

A: I decide..and the topic is "off-topic" until further notice.

GAAA...Remember "Newspeak" and "Doublespeak" from George Orwell's "1984"? If a populace cannot *say* a thing, then they cannot *think* it. Brrr. I checked this board a few weeks later and apparently the sysop had changed his/her mind because now there were discussions about that particular DS9 episode

Some Topics Discussed in "When Correctly Viewed"

  • a plug for fans to send submissions to a pro publisher
  • Mary Sues
  • why so few AUs in non-white countries and history
  • literary fandoms and the visuals, lack of slash
  • Dorothy Dunnett, the letterzine Marzipan and Kisses, the Dunnett mailing list
  • Scully's clothes, feminists hassling women, feminists "stomping around in combat boots" haven't had as much professional success in jobs as women who wear "professional" clothing
  • Carol McCoy's music vids
  • Lois and Clark
  • what makes a show slashy?
  • Height Difference
  • books by Sherri Tepper
  • liked the photo manips in the last issue: "Very hot Krycek/Mulder pix! I like this new technique of yours a lot. As you know, I prefer a certain other pairing, but these are very nice too."

Excerpts from "When Correctly Viewed"

As for what makes a show slashy in general, I personally think it's partly the appeal of the particular male stars, and partly the nature of the show itself — is it adventurous and fantastic, showcasing the heroic nature of the characters as well as their relationship with each other? Also, I think that for a show to have a sizeable fan following, it has to strike just the right balance between presenting a universe detailed enough to be interesting, but with enough holes in it for fans to be able to enjoy filling them in. SF universes or stories about imaginary organizations (U.N.C.L.E., CI5) work especially well because the fan writer can use her imagination instead of doing a lot of research. IMO the reason why a realistic show like The Sandbaggers has only had a small fan following is because the writer who really wanted to do a proper Sandbaggers story would have to do lots of research on real-life intelligence organizations. A few dedicated individuals have done just that, but most fans, I think, would rather not have to cope with problems of that kind.

Reyrctme, my only experience with BBSes is GEnie, so I can’t say what’s done elsewhere. GEnie has adult topics in which sex can be discussed moderately explicitly. Elsewhere, you can mention it, just not in too much detail. And nobody cares what kind of sex it is! In fact, one of the first things I was told, by the guy who was setting it up for me, was how the medium tended to make some people very talky; his example (intended to be funny) was about someone coming out on line when he hadn't even told his parents yet. I believe there are some (non-adult) topics about things like gays in SF, though I haven't investigated them.

The one and only totally forbidden topic, which can supposedly get you thrown off GEnie for even mentioning it, is — are you ready? — the MediaWest hotel lottery policy!!! I suspect bthis is because the con organizers threatened to sue GEnie because so many people had been complaining about the policy on line. It's wimpy of GEnie, but not really their fault, I suppose. The only thing likely to change anything would be a boycott of the con itself, but that of course is unlikely, since for all its faults it's still the big event of the fannish year.

Actual media fan fiction excerpts [online] are another problem. First they said yes, then they said no, then they said use the characters' initials, then they said OK for B7 only. But it's OK to talk about fan stories without quoting them.

As I mentioned briefly last time, I do now have a mailing list that I like a lot, namely Space City (B7 smut). Anyone of legal age can join if they agree to obey certain rules, the main one of which is: No whining about the contents of other people's posts. It seems to work very well.

You mentioned (but discreetly didn't name) a particular writer who you wish would do gen instead of slash, since that's clearly where her strength is. I can't remember having thought that of a writer, but I did have that reaction once to a certain story, even though it was by a writer (or strictly speaking, a team of writers) whose slash I generally like. This one story, though, had a really interesting gen plot device that I thought should have been the central focus of the story; the slash relationship was extraneous and seemed to have been just thrown in as an extra. I think the story would have been better as gen.

I don't much like the use of "adult" to indicate heterosexual sex stories because I find it confusing. To me "adult" suggests something like a mixed zine with both slash and het stories (such as On the Edge or Southern Comfort), or a mailing list for which you must be over 18.

Ah — so true that the emotional content of a slash pairing is generally assumed to be present, even if all that the enthusiast mentions is the physical beauty of the pair. I must admit that for me, sometimes looks do come first; I originally liked the Avon/Tarrant pairing mainly because I though they were the two prettiest of the B7 males, but now, after several months cheering on the writer of a long and intense A/T, I can see all kinds of emotional resonance in the pairing that didn't occur to me before.

[...]

I think that you are right that one reason for the scarcity of f/f and f/m stories relative to m/m ones is a devaluing of women that is carried over from the mainstream culture. I think Joanna Russ in one of her essays on K/S wondered "Why men?” and concluded that the answer was the same as the traditional answer to the question of why the masculine pronoun is used for indefinite gender: "Because it is more noble." Even if one completely disagrees intellectually with the idea that males are inherently more "noble" and more interesting than females, still it has been assimilated emotionally on that same deep level that makes stories work properly, and so it's very hard to shake.

On the other hand, there's a much more innocuous reason for not writing about women: often it's good to have some distance between the characters and the writer or reader. Some women who have no problem with m/m slash find it embarrassing to write, or in some cases even to read, about sex involving women, because it seems to apply to them personally in a way that m/m clearly doesn't.

And there are things that work much better as slash than as het, especially if you like to see the characters brutalized, as I confess I do. In that long A/T story by a friend that I mentioned above, A and T are forced into bed together when they visit a planet on which all young males are sex slaves of older men. A het version of the story would have been something like "Avon and Soolin visit Gor," which would have been no fun at all I In fact there are a few female characters in the story, but they don't come into it until much later and only appear briefly.

I enjoyed your review of Carol McCoy's music videos. My favorites on that tape were completely different, though! My special favorites are the three A/Bs: "And So It Goes," "That's All I Know," and especially "Bless the Wings." That last one was my tiptop favorite music vid for a long time, though it's now got stiff competition from Nicole's "True Believer." I also really, really like the A/C to "The Rose" and the A/T to "Just Once.” I find it especially interesting that the maker of my favorite A/B and A/C vids doesn't much like those combinations herself! Maybe that gives her more of a perspective and enables her to put in a hint of irony and tragedy that is especially appropriate for the A/Bs. I also very much like the funny ones — "Nature Trail to Hell," "Vinnie Always Looking Good" (I see you mentioned that one too), "Camp Granada," and "If I Only Had a Brain"-- the lip synching in that last one is brilliant! And getting back to the serious ones, I think the song from Evita, "Where Am I Going To" is perfect for Soolin. Sometimes I think about an imaginary anthology of music vids, one for each B7 character, and that's definitely the one for Soolin.

One thing I do find disturbing — despite my personal tastes — about the Japanese attitude toward sex is the fact that SM-ish stuff is considered to be normal sex, nothing special or odd about it. What bothers me, I think, is that while bondage and dominance games are taken for granted, it's also taken for granted that it's the woman or the feminized male who's on the bottom, and that's what I don t like. I want to see it the other way around, with the bigger or more powerful partner tied down as a way of redressing the physical power imbalance.

If you're still interested in Lymond or rather Dunnett fandom, there's a letterzine, Marzipan and Kisses, still active. There's also an extremely active e-mail mailing list; I dropped it after about a month because I just couldn't keep up. Dunnett fans are more talkative than any other fans I've encountered, and that s saying a good dealt Perhaps it has to do with the wordy nature of the books themselves. Most of the talk these days is about the new series, though. Do you know if Dunnett has ever been translated into Japanese? I bet Aoike Yasuko would like her books.

As a byproduct of the WorldCon, I've been reading some wonderful stories by Kari D'Herblay (she sent them to my friend [C], who you will recall from the con, who passed them on to me). One of the stories, I note, is dedicated to you (as well as one to [J]). But I've only ever seen a few episodes of Pros, so now I'm dying to know: who is this hot dude Almada? Whoever he is, I like him a lot. And have Kari's stories been published in zines, and if so, which zines?

The fact that visuals seem to be an important criterion for the formation of a fandom, especially a slash fandom. Manga resemble TV shows and movies in presenting clearly what the characters look like (subject only to the problem of mentally transposing from manga style to photographic realism). Of course, there are also a handful of literary universes that have a fannish following; the works of Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, C.J. Cherryh, Dorothy Dunnett, etc. But they haven't generated a slash fandom, and although part of the reason certainly is the fact that the authors wouldn't like it, I don't think that's the only factor involved. Lack of visuals may be part of it too. I've noticed that most literary slash, with only a few exceptions, relates to things that have been dramatized in well-known versions that have given a clear idea of what the characters look like. And even so, it's a very small subgenre.

Something that came up in correspondence, rather than in the apa, but given the overlap I might as well respond here: as to why no AUs so far have used an Asian historical setting, when there are so many niches there that B7 (or other media) characters might fit nicely into everything from Blake as a Ming loyalist fighting a lost cause against the Manchus in 17th-century China, with a miscellaneous group of martial artists, to Avon as a grouchy feudal lord in medieval Japan, in a battle of wits with his clever servant Vila. I think the stumbling block is visual, that is, the obvious racial differences. Certainly when I think about such things, the big problem for me is that I'd have to recast the characters because they obviously can't look like British actors. Still, maybe it's doable in fiction. My favorite story in the last Southern Seven was a really wild (gen) AU by Jane Mailander, "Coyote and Wolf Play Bone-Toss," a retelling of "Gambit" in the form of a Lakota Sioux tale. Sometimes the characters were in animal form and sometimes in human, but whatever one imagined that they looked like, it wasn't British actors! It worked for me. Now I'm trying to figure out if I could make something similar work in an Asian setting. But I'm not terribly optimistic. I think probably Jane Mailander, always notable for her wild imagination as well as her writing skills, may be one of the few writers who could pull off something like this.

In a discussion on GEnie, Mimi Panitch came up with an interesting theory as to the real problem with Mary Sue characters. She theorized that much of the pleasure of reading media-based fiction comes from the fact that there is a kind of invisible hole in the story that allows the reader herself to participate in the action vicariously, and that a Mary Sue somehow blocks that hole. I thought that was a plausible notion but still haven't worked out all the ramifications of it.

...some anthologies of stories that may be of interest either as reading matter or as possible outlets for publication of your own work. He just finished compiling one called Switch Hitters, containing gay fiction by women about men and vice versa. There's another one coming up to be called Pomosexual, which will have stories about things like "queer" sex between men and women. Anyway, if any of you have stories that might be suitable for professional publication (either completely original, or alterable to appear so via the process that eluki bes shahar — who I think lifted the phrase from Robert Heinlein — calls "filing off the serial numbers").

Some Topics Discussed in "For the World is Hollow..."

Excerpts from "For the World is Hollow..."

I don't see what the First Amendment has to do with copyright law. The only part of the amendment that could possibly be relevant is the provision for a free press, and a free press has never been considered to outweigh copyright law (or pornography law, or slander law, or plenty of other things).

Tracy is a waste of space—unconvincing, as you say—but they could salvage her if they worked at it. Vachon is pretty and sympathetic and what is he doing as a vampire? A friend of mine didn't understand why I disliked them so much until I showed her first and second season and she understood who they were replacing. There's nothing really wrong with the characters — even Tracy isn't nearly as bad as some we've suffered through in other shows—it's just that the airtime could be used so much better, and previously was.

On B5 fanfic: what gives JMS the right to speak for the cast, to say that they don't want to see [fanfic]? Although god knows I'm not advocating sending any to them; it's got nothing to do with them, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks for the elaboration on video-game slash. No, I don't think there's any similar phenomena in the US, with the exception of some CD-ROM games, most notably Myst. A "Myst" novel just came out, but if the game has spawned anything that could be described as a fandom I haven't heard of it.

You made an interesting remark: that "since the official artist for the game [Romancing Saga] is a slash zine artist, most people seem to be respecting her rights to that series. Other games are 'fair game.'" (Sometimes it's the comments you make in passing that I find most interesting, that reveal the really crucial differences between cultures. Analyzing historical documents can go like that, too.) I've been interested for a while in the different sensibility Japan and Japanese fandoms seem to have toward copyright and intellectual property issues. Fanzines could never be sold over the counter in for-profit stores in the US, even leaving the sex aspect out, because of copyright laws. They would have to be approved and edited and under the control of the copyright owners and would end up looking like Star Trek: The New Voyages, not like the zines from which the stories in the New Voyages originally came. But from what you have said before I gather that fanzines are sold like that in Japan, completely above ground and with fans making a recognized profit without threat of lawsuit from the owners. Now you suggest that slash fans recognize a slash writer's intellectual property in her professional work, in the way that a US fan might refrain from writing a sequel to another writer's fan story without permission.

It was a great relief (and surprise, I admit) that DS9 didn't wimp out similarly. Part of me was still caviling that ultimately the relationship that Dax wanted to continue was a heterosexual one, it having originated as good old man and wife — but that doesn't change the fact that every character on the show understood Dax's yearning for her lover, and sympathized, that no one did a homophobic doubletake, that the relationship was presented as poignantly and honorably (in script, direction etc.) as any straight one has been on the show, with no sly "isn't this alien" or "...kinky" or "aren't we, so perfect and open minded in the future," and that the two currently-women sucked some major face.

Re B5 and Talia/Ivanova, it's really not up to JMS to say that "the implication was definitely that they also had sex." He wrote it (supervised it, whatever; I don't remember whose name was on the script of who directed, but I think we all agree that he has ultimate authority/responsibility), he doesn't get to say how viewers actually read it. I think it would be immensely easy to watch the ep and not have any idea that they had had sex. (Plenty of people watched Fried Green Tomatoes and not have any idea that the two women had sex, you know.

"Multimedia" in the US, as I see and use the term, means more than one fandom. This, isn't the same as "anything but K/S." Some editors of multimedia zines have a no-K/S policy, generally because they think there are plenty of other places for K/S to go but not so many for smaller fandoms; but this exclusion isn't part of the definition of "multimedia." A zine with a K/S story among other fandoms is still multimedia.

Forever Knight has been good to excellent the last few weeks. And as I write this, the show may actually still have some life let in it. The fan push to get the show un-canceled appears to be formidably organized and efficient. This past weekend (Jan. 19-21), six fans have been at the National Association of Television Program Executives convention distributing flyers and tote bags, and the campaign has been written up in the major trade publication. I still have my cynical doubts that it will work, but I'm impressed with the energy of those doing it, even while I'm far from considering the show (or any of these, or any of the ones I've ever been an active fan of) one of the best programs ever aired, as campaign literature would have it.

Then there's Space: Above and Beyond. [C] and another friend of mine have been watching and recommending it highly — [C] because the idea of Hawkes/McQueen makes her write, and my other friend, who isn't a slash fan but who understands the appeal, for reasons I'm not sure of but that have something to do with how the show deals with emotional extremes. I kept trying it out, and then getting disgusted at the incredible dumbness of the plots, and the wooden acting, and the simplistic military situation overlapped with X-Files-ish conspiracy piled upon conspiracy, and West's, well, everything. But then, while visiting California last week, I saw the show at its best. Namely, in a twelve-or-so-hour marathon, starting from the pilot, with [C] summarizing the dumb plots ("...so then they space the pancakes") as we fast-forwarded through every scene that didn't have Cooper Hawkes and/or McQueen in it, and then reran the scenes that did three times, ogling the juicy bits. Okay, I'm hooked

I must admit to having speed-read through all five issues of the Garak/Bashir Plain and Simple Zine and having been powerfully impressed. These are the zines that [B T] said last time had avowed haters of the show sneaking hours of reading at Z-Con, and that [N] also praised. All the good stories but one (which is to say, all the stories but three) are by DVS, and it's clear how involved she is with the characters; she gives both of them terrific backstory and fleshes them out, and basically makes Garak and the relationship fascinating to me, and makes Bashir more interesting than watching paint dry, which for me is the point at which he starts. Some of DVS's best work.

Some Topics Discussed in "To Be Announced by T H"

  • Due South
  • Starsky & Hutch
  • Babylon 5, meeting some actors, violating the fourth wall
  • "I know the JMS and the Teddy Bear story. That man has a serious allergy to cute."

Excerpts from "To Be Announced by T H"

I hereby admit that yes I have been playing on rastb5 (Babylon 5 newsgroup for those non-netters amongst us). I've had a lot of fun talking smut and innuendo to the world. It is amazing the things that slash teaches you. Some of those posts have got pretty hot and enticing without saying anything explicit at all.

I don't think there is anything wrong with being passionate about what you believe in or an opinion you hold. I just dislike those that are so passionate that they cannot see that not everyone has to agree with them. Not saying that you are one of those, just that sometimes passion crosses the border to obsession. When I started out in slash fandom I thought it was great. All these people who were so proud of being open-minded. They were so much better than the general run-of-the-mill Joe Public because they were tolerant of everything, especially sexual variation. I believed all this until I tried to take [D] to a slash con and was told that he couldn't come because he was a man! Exclamations of "What!" and "Excuse Me!" and "I don't believe this" abounded. Here they were, proudly proclaiming their tolerance in letterzines and zine editorials for the whole world to see yet they couldn't tolerate a slash con with a male present. (As far as I can make out it was two or three people only who objected but as these were the con organisers or very close friends of the organisers they outweighed the other congoers who say that they would not have objected.)

Has slash changed my life? Yes. That's the easy part, how is the difficult bit. Part of the benefit of slash is that it has given me confidence. I now recognise that I do have opinions on things, that some things matter to me and others I don't give a damn about. Growing up, it was always imprinted that you had to take care of what other people thought of you. You didn't want people to think you were impolite or unintelligent or rude or a slut or not nice did you. Well, now I don't really care. If they don't like me they can go talk to someone else. Another major benefit is that it has brought me into contact with some of the nicest people in the World. Slash seems to have fewer fan-fights or feuds than any other branch of fandom. Most slash fans seem so glad to have found someone else that thinks X and Y off that program could be lovers that they can cope with disagreements between them. They give each other the benefit of the doubt, mostly. Most of the changes are a side issue of slash but I wouldn't have met the people without finding slash first.

You remember last time that I said I had fallen in love with Due South? Well, that is something of an understatement. You remember that total involvement of first love, well that's where I am. I've even started writing! Me, I mean, writing was what other people did. My very first story turned out to be too long to fit into my friend's zine. She produces A5 format zines and my story with minimal margins and headers/footers was running to one hundred pages. You can only do eighty pages as a maximum for A5 format otherwise the cover won't close flat. So, my very first real story ends up in a zine all of my own. I then tried a PWP story. All I wanted was a pure and simple sex scene. Okay, downright filthy and very sexy scene. It ran to twelve pages. How do you write sex scenes that only take two sides of A4 paper. I have boxes full of Pros circuit stories that run to one or two pages. How do you do it?

You can tell that Due South has struck a nerve over here. We started writing in August/September and by Christmas had three zines published. That first story had me all excited and worried at the same time. What if I stopped. Could I watch anything else and still write. I haven't read anything else, no books no zines since I started writing in case it makes me stop. Sounds stupid I know but I'm having too much fun to stop. I've even got as far as writing two stories at once. I was convinced that I could only do one at a time because if I stopped writing one to start another I'd never to back to the first. I was persuaded otherwise. I've now got a long story going and a short sex piece that hopefully won't run to too many pages.

This is really fun!

In the run up to Christmas, the UK Babylon 5 group arranged for Michael O'Hare to come and attend one of our meetings. He was great. The whole event went really well. In person he is very animated and quite different to Sinclair. He is also very accomplished at side stepping embarrassing questions. Someone, well [M] actually, asked him what he thought of his status as a Sex God. He laughed and told us what his son thought of it all. Very neatly sidestepped. The following week Jason Carter made his first ever appearance before fans. Sad to say I missed this meeting, I was visiting a slash friend and talking smut with her. Apparently he was great as a guest. Very talkative and jolly. He should go down really well at future cons.

I do think that part of what makes a fan is the tendency to fill in holes or extrapolate to future events. Most non-fans I know might manage to notice a plot hole or work out who-dunnit before the end of the show but they don't have an ongoing interest in thinking about the show. B5 does give one countless opportunities to fill in the blanks, especially if you then compare what you guessed and what JMS has done.

References

  1. ^ This story is "Kah'zhai!" in Pæan to Priapus #1 (1990).
  2. ^ This is " "The House of the Twin Jewels" in the 1987 book "Erotic Interludes."
Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Strange_Bedfellows_(APA)/Issue_012&oldid=2591349"