Still yet more Yuletide (& misc)

[rachelmanija]

1. I am going to have to write up the outcome of the trial where I was foreperson later, as it's a long story and I'm trying not to type too much due to a strain. Sorry!

2. Anyone want to try to guess which Yuletide stories I wrote?

Hint # 1: I wrote one assigned story, one pinch-hit, and one stocking stuffer, but all three are full-length stories.

Hint # 2: I'm not sure I've ever discussed any of the fandoms in this LJ.

Hint # 3: One of them is my first-ever attempt at a porn graphic sexual content.

3. Everyone, go check out the remarkable "Duende," a Patrick O'Brian AU which really needs to be expanded into a novel so I can read more of it. http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/33/duende.html

Comments

[oyceter]

I have no idea yet! Well, I mean I obviously know the one I beta-ed, but beyond that... I'm still trying to read through everything.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Let me know if I can read any of the MI-5 stories. (Due to a Netflix delay, I'm only up to 3xo4, the one where we meet Adam's wife.)

[oyceter]

I think they're just up to 3x02 at the most, so they should be ok.

Also, I sicced 1x02 on Yoon yesterday!

[larryhammer]

2. I think you wrote the Menelaus/Paris slashfic -- the one that ends with Paris decamping with Helen while her husband sleeps it off, not the one where she joins in.

Well, you OUGHT to have.

---L.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'd been assuming you wrote one of the Samurai Champloo stories I've been avoiding for fear of spoilers, but I guess not. Hmm.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I recommend avoiding all those stories due to unmarked spoilers, as I don't recall which are unspoilery. ;)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I suspected from the first paragraph that you'd written "A Taste of Honey," but I put it aside to finish later, so wasn't going to put it down. I'd feel vindicated except it never occurred to me that you might have written "Blood and Ink," not even when I recommended it.

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

I checked out "Duende" on your recommendation...but dude, it would have been nice to have a slash warning first, which would have headed me off. I've discovered that I don't like slash for the same reason that I so vigorously objected to the X-Files fans who insisted that Mulder+Scully=Tru Luv. (Then, of course, the X-Files writing team managed to turn the show into its own slash, somersaulted over twelve sharks swimming nose-to-tail, and were swallowed up by TV hell.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Sorry for forcing you to go launder your brain. The stories are rated in the archive, but you can't see that if you directly click on the links.

The Young Wizards-verse story has non-explicit but canonical gayness, or at least I always assumed when reading the books that Tom and Carl were a couple. The "Jonathan Strange" story has the thistledown hair gentleman invading Stephen's personal space in a creepifying manner, though I don't think more than he does in the book.

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

Oh, heavens, I have no objection to gay sex, or explicit portrayals of it. Gracious. (I liked Project Blue Rose, didn't I? Thought it was hot.) Both your examples above sound like things that would have happened in an untold story from either of those canons.

They don't sound like slash, though. When two characters from an existing work who would never have sex with each other in the context of the existing work have sex with each other, that's slash, whether it's gay sex or het or something else. Lots of reasons to do it, lots of ways to make it happen in a story. But what I find I don't like is when, in order for it to happen, the characters have to be transformed into entirely different people with the same names. My objection to the slash I've seen has nothing to do with squick, and brain-laundering doesn't enter into it. It's about characterization.

I would have liked to see Jack and Stephen, still being Jack and Stephen, having to express this new, physical relationship they'd accepted in ways that were true to the characters, and that expressed those characters. Instead, there were Eyes! and a sudden switch to first names, and Gripping of Wrists! and a general swooniness that neither of them ever manifest in the original novels, though both are very emotional people.

I guess, for me, sex is always an aspect and outgrowth of character. A writer uses it to tell the reader who these people are. Patrick O'Brian told me one thing; the writer of "Duende" did an excellent job of telling me the same thing, in a fascinating alternate universe...until suddenly he or she switched gears, and characters, and did something else entirely.

Some readers wouldn't mind that. I find I do, very much, in the same way that I would mind if Duane's Young Wizards characters took to carrying AK-47s and shooting servants of the Dark Power.

There. Am I cleared of the suspicion of being a queasy homophobe?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Ack, sorry, I certainly didn't mean to imply that! It had just occurred to me that the other two stories might or might not take the relationships further in a sexual or romantic direction than the books did, depending on how one interprets the books; I think I totally misunderstood what you meant by the Mulder and Scully example.

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

Ah, got it.

See, for at least four years Chris Carter insisted that Mulder and Scully would never have a romantic relationship. Ever. That meant we could see the relationship that was there--which was an intense foxhole friendship between two law enforcement professionals who happened to be of different sexes. We could trust that we'd see the development of that relationship, rather than having it turn into something else entirely in mid-story. We'd see a woman in law enforcement who behaved like an intelligent, trained FBI agent, not a walking bag of hormones seeking an outlet. We'd see a man who was adult enough to treat his female partner as a partner first, a trusted ally, not as a less intelligent, less stable assistant with future boffing potential.

By my recollection, we'd never seen that before on network TV.

So when the show dissolved into Scully and Mulder threatening to go clutchy every other episode, it required that the writers ditch all the previous seasons' characterization to make it happen. Scully became an angst-ridden baby-box, and Mulder...well, when he wasn't being dead or something, became a self-obsessed, un-witty schlub.

Luckily, that whole just-because-we're-of-opposite-sexes-doesn't-mean-we're-destined-for-bed thing has been picked up by subsequent shows. Whew. The species may graduate from high school yet.