I wanna know what love is; I want you to show me.

[thefourthvine]

Older fandoms, you confuse me so. The story I'm reading right now has piercing gazes, searing gazes, cuddling, comforting, lengthy descriptions of eyes that change color (Green! Hazel! Gold! No, I'm not kidding - really, gold, and this isn't the right fandom for him to have been implanted with a Goa'uld.), marriage proposals, men of action sharing their feelings in astonishing detail and with great (sometimes searing) honesty, a guy telling another guy how beautiful he is, holding hands, kissing, and two adult men (of action!) with extensive disposable incomes living together and sharing a bed.

And it's gen.*

I am patiently waiting for the mutual declarations of eternal love while hugging (or crying; I'd totally take crying) in the rain. Then, and only then, will I be able to stop reading.

So, does anyone have a story from an older fandom to recommend to me? You people have mostly been at this longer than me - surely you've got some nice gen or slash story favorite from a pre-LJ fandom that you could link me to. Gen or slash welcome - especially gen that I can read as gen. Seriously. Save me from myself. And this story. I am just bewildered, here.

-Footnote-

* Another gen story in the same fandom (but by a different person) features a noted canonical horndog turning down NSA sex with a beautiful woman because he's in love with someone else - that someone being, of course, the guy who is his Entirely Not Slashy Totally Hetero Life Partner. (It also had a paragraph about their great and abiding love, and the Totally Hetero Life Partner isn't even in the story. Nor is there any explanation of why the THLP would want his "friend" to turn down the sex - I mean, seriously, it was just presented as "this is what you do when you're in love with your THLP, forswear sex and cleave only unto him, but in a straight and manly way." I guess I am just not straight enough to understand that.) And the author's note contained a diatribe against slash. Oh, my people.

Comments

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Dear God, I think I've read this story. (Well, not that story. But the trope is familiar to me.) I don't get it either.

I have a wild 'n' crazy theory, but it's just, you know, wild 'n' crazy. I can't test it or anything. It's just, at dinner Best Beloved was saying, "But WHYYYYYYY?" as I described this story, and it was theorize or watch someone I loved go mad. So, you know: crazed theories on tap, here.

Although -- I do remember reading a Sports Night story where Dan was totally in love with Casey (not at all different from canon, right?) and horribly jealous when Casey found himself a boyfriend, and convinced himself that that meant that he should hook up with Casey and they'd live happily ever after -- except that this Dan really was straight, and it did not end well. It was a good story, well written. Sad. Anyway, unlike those gen/stealth!slash stories, this story actually went there. So it made a lot more sense to me.

Oh my god, I remember that one. It was by lowercasek, maybe? I don't remember the author or title either, because OMG trauma, but I could never forget the story. Brilliantly done, and I'm so glad she went there, and I'll never be able to rec it because I couldn't stand to re-read it (assuming I could remember the title and author, of course). It goes on the Brilliant Stories That Broke Me list for sure.

Here are two from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both are by Yahtzee.

GLEE. I love Yahtzee, and gen is my favorite thing to read in the Jossverse, so YAY. Thank you!

I also have a bunch of slash recs for Quantum Leap, if you want them.

*blinks*

I think Best Beloved has told me about this show. Isn't it about a guy who travels alone through space and time, going from body to body? Because I am deeply curious about how you would get slash there, given that he's, um, alone. In other words: yes, definitely, pass them along, please.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Ooo, cool. Now I want pictures. And you can be your own Mary Sue! That is awesome. Do you have long flowing raven locks that you frequently toss over your shoulder?

[ifreet.livejournal.com]

No strings attached.

[adannu.livejournal.com]

ahahah, I remember that! And oh man. It's been the better part of a decade since I read that for the first time as a wee baby slasher, and wow, have styles changed since then.

[adannu.livejournal.com]

After stillane said the holy crap, I squinted at your icon for a minute before going, "OH MY GOD!"

Count me in as one more person all asquee over recognizing that! :D

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

(I think I tell you this every time I see it, but your icon makes me SO HAPPY. I could quite honestly just sit here and stare at it all day.)


And every time you tell me so, I do the little chair dance of joy.

Any character with blue eyes will, sadly, not have so much color-changing and goldeness, but will have many special words - Cerulean! Sapphire! Orbs! - used to describe them.

Oh God! Please, never use the word Orb at me, unless you are talking about big, shiny glass balls, possibly with magical capabilities. When used to describe eyes, I have to think of disembodied eyeballs with bits of optical nerve still dangling from the back. EUCH!

[adannu.livejournal.com]

Wait, evan_nicholas? I recognize that name from when I was a semi-wee slasher paddling around in some old school fandoms but... huh. Same person?

[adannu.livejournal.com]

EEEE I have found it again, thanks to you! *perfect nostalgia-fueled tear* Some of those stories were seriously awesome.

[vass]

I'm guessing this is a cop fandom, but whoa, I know nothing about it.

It's not just one cop fandom. There is:

Law & Order
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Law & Order: Trial By Jury
Law & Order: Crime and Punishment
Law & Order: the computer games
Law & Order: The Musical
Law & Order: Pastry Division
Law & Order: Cat Up A Tree
Law & Order: Pastry Division
Law & Order: Life on Mars
Law & Order: The Search for Spock

I only lied about half of these.

[adannu.livejournal.com]

M7 = <3333

Since the discussion is about M7, I'll toss in Eleanor Tremayne and Jean Graham, who you can find here (http://www.m7bedlam.com/home.htm) and here (http://www.magnifiction.com/). (Hmm. Jean's site has the stories as pdfs)

Pretty much gen, but I rather like their stuff. Especially the Fortress AU (M7 as a WWII bomber crew) and the way that Eleanor portrays Ezra in her stories, especially in the Mongoose series.

I have tons of M7 on my HD - the balance in that fandom for me seems to lean toward gen and smarm as opposed to slash.

[adannu.livejournal.com]

ICON LOVE. <333 Where did you get it?

[vass]

I remember what happened (yes, this was 1999) when jacquez read a little bit too much smarm one time. This happened, as I recall.

For me (this was earlier on, before I'd met up with better writers - or delurked, for that matter) smarm was the impetus for moving on to slash. The writers - the ones who weren't writing complete and utter fluff, I mean, and that means the H/C ones - kept on upping the angst quotient each story, because the same hit wasn't doing its job. And I was reading the one where Kirk goes blind and can't be captain any more, and Spock and McCoy are passionately and nonsexually assuring him that he's still their BFF, and I decided that really, in the scheme of things, gay sex would be both less out of character and less traumatic.

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

*blinks* Wow, thank you, for the rec! It's actually the first real slash I ever wrote so I'm always tickled when people say it's the first slash they ever read.

thefourthvine be warned, I'd been writing seriously for less than a year when I wrote it and it's kind of rough in places and a lot of the story gets rushed so I could get to the fun parts. *grins*

[vass]

see, and smarm was never a problem for me

...and I read this just after linking TFV to one of your Einstein's Folly crossovers - the one where Blair's saying "I have lost my cock, and I am in mourning." I think I remember the story that prompted it, too - it was this long, long, tortured thing with shower scenes and flowery descriptive passages and the narrative tension was like late Wagner: it stretched until it broke, but did not resolve.

[adannu.livejournal.com]

*blinkblink*

...I think I have to add that to my netflix list. This I have to see.

[adannu.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHAH. I read a bit in Pros and that. AHAHAHAHA.

Oh man. *wipes tears* Comedy GOLD.

[vass]

They got higher sales if Wolverine was on the cover, I think.

The ultimate highest-selling comic book cover would probably have had a Wolverine weeping into some female character's bosom, next to a gorilla, on a purple background. (cite)

[vass]

OMG, I remember that name. I remember that name in a huge Usenet flamewar.

[vass]

Can't be, in Sentinel the eyes (known as "orbs") are blue (known as "ice" and "sapphire", for Jim & Blair respectively).

My memory differs. I'll agree that Jim's eyes are known as "ice", but Blair's eyes were always, horrifically, "cerulean".

[vass]

...link plz?

[vass]

And if you haven't yet, then read his Jeu-Parti too. It is awesome.

[syredronning.livejournal.com]

Hehe, no surprise *G*

[syredronning.livejournal.com]

LOL!

[vass]

So, does anyone have a story from an older fandom to recommend to me?

Most of my pre-LJ experience was on lists, with a bit of usenet before that.

Trekiverse is the alt.startrek.creative.* archive. (There was asc, .erotica, .erotica.moderated, and also .all-ages *spit* which allowed het but not slash, and there was a big flame war over this.) Here's an incomplete list of authors I can remember who were good: Killashandra (killabeez now), Ruth Gifford (telesilla), Judy Gran, Greywolf the Wanderer (who was Furry before I for one had ever heard of Furries), Macedon... at this point I'm flipping through the archive and realise that in its current incarnation there's apparently no way to search by author. Argh.

Wait, you said "a story", singular.

Macedon's DS9 trilogy "Jeu-Parti" is archived here, along with his Voyager works. It's Jake Sisko/OMC.

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Oh man, yes, I remember the name, the Usenet flamewar, and the absolutely dire TOS zines she published - which were among the first zines I ever bought, because I didn't know better at the time.

*has PTSD flashbacks*