Though I Walk Through the Valley of Death

Fanfiction
Title:	Though I Walk Through the Valley of Death
Author(s):	Starzy
Date(s):
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):
Relationship(s):
External Links:	Though I Walk Through the Valley of Death
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Though I Walk Through the Valley of Death is a slash Sentinel story by Starzy.

Fan Comments

I happened to just read this one, and ended up finishing it despite... bad grammar, punctuation, etc.... the story is also--well--not greatly characterized. I *don't* believe that Blair, fraud or not, wouldn't conceive of his "modelling" experience as rape. In fact, I don't believe that said rape could actually happen like this. What this story is is a rape fantasy--we're given Blair Sandburg tied up and sexually attacked by something like seven different people [fantasy figures too, nothing real about them] while a crowd of others (implicitly including us) watch and drool and have spectacular orgasms.

Now it might be because I just posted a story which has no sex in it, (which, btw, I'm feeling oddly guilty about) but I sort of found myself enjoying this story in Chinese Food kind of way--which is to say, I'm already hungry again <g>, but it was like one of those mini-chocolate bars you get on Halloween. I mean, hey, Blair's cute, and rape fantasies can be sort of fun--but moreover, in an odd way, it reminded me of some old senslash stories, where characterization wasn't at all the point but it was just about penetrating the guys bodies in increasingly inventive ways. In my head, that was what people like Yvonne McCool and Pumpkin used to do--and the thing is, if you try to measure these stories against anything one might reasonably call "The Sentinel", you get brain-damage--these stories were clearly *not* the guys and that was not at *all* any sort of either canonical or real life universe. And yet... I mean, don't we sort of implicitly support each other's right to sexual fantasy? And isn't porn sort of fun?

I guess, if you haven't already figured it out, I'm of two minds about this. Sure, I'd probably agree that what I ideally want is a story that is *both* well-characterized *and* sexy (as well as being well-written.) I presume I'll get no argument from anyone on this list about that. But what if it's an either-or? I mean, in an odd way this week has *provided* an either-or--I just posted a story with no sex that I'm hoping people find reasonably well characterized (I understand if you disagree about the controversial Naomi) (and, btw, one of the reasons the story has no sex is that--following any sort of RL rules of behavior, the guys probably just *wouldn't* have sex in that situation) and then there's this story, which is essentially nothing but sex, and which despite the lack of characterization or writing skill, is still sort of, um, exciting.

Anyone miss the good/bad old days? Is the answer simply to get better authors to write more sex, or get sexy authors to write better, more realistic prose? Are there some sexy scenarios that will simply *never* be realistic cause they just--well--aren't? Is that a bad thing? (Then again, my mind tells me, I believed deeply in Sihiya's Lie Perdu...there's a story that blended porn fantasy and psychological reality very well...)