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

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

This has got to be Sentinel fic. You're reading old Sentinel, aren't you? *g*

That was never my corner of the fandom (or of fandom in general), so I can offer little explanation, but lo, I am amused.

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

I was just about to say, were it not for the eye colour, I would have thought that had to be Sentinel.

Is there completely non-sexual licking of someone from head to foot? By any chance?

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

Ah, the play of mental boxes, so endlessly fascinating. *bewildered with you*

:)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Let us boggle together, shall we?

*boggles*

[carta.livejournal.com]

what the hell fandom IS that? (I'd totally read it.)

Also, I love love LOVE this story: Visual Aid (http://grapefruithead.com/ourboys/va.txt) by Charlemagne. - Sports Night, Dan/Casey with the "I am straight! But I have a life-size picture of my best friend in my bedroom! I touch myself while I look at it! OMG!" angst. It's awesome. I dub it pre-LJ since the fandom was not primarily on LJ at the time, and the show has since been canceled (woe).

There is no gen in Sports Night - even the "gen" stories are slashy. Such is the way of the Sorkin.

[notpoetry.livejournal.com]

That is my 2nd favorite Sports Night story of all time. It has the best Dan/Casey kiss ever.

Oh my god I love it so much.

(Also, the entire Our Boys (http://grapefruithead.com/ourboys) archive is hours of fun.)

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

Do we get to guess the fandom?

Twenty bucks on The Sentinel. :-)

[nestra.livejournal.com]

I vote for Starsky and Hutch.

Though the changing eyes could totally be Doyle's, if she's reading Pros.

[notpoetry.livejournal.com]

One of the first slash stories I read was Trigger Fish's New York Rain (http://members.tripod.com/waywardslashwriters/NewYorkRain.txt). It's Law & Order (I know), Jack McCoy/Mike Logan (I know), and right now I'm repressing the urge to reread it for the trillionth time because I know it can't possibly be as good as I remember it. It's old-school slash fanfiction, with a lot of elements that were new then but have become cliche now, and some classic tropes that have entirely fallen out of style. The whole series is fascinating to read just from an "evolution of fandom" stand-point. I almost wish we'd had LJ, so I could go through and read the comments on the story and see what other people thought.

Just for reference: according to the collective page this site is hosted on, it was last updated in August of 1998. I ... won't share how old I was then, because then I'd have to go and cry.

(The whole series is up here (http://members.tripod.com/waywardslashwriters/Trig.html), and all of it is worth reading.)

(I know the internet is a very small place, so ... is there any possibility that TrigFish is, say, out and about on LJ anywhere?)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Law & Order? I'm guessing this is a cop fandom, but whoa, I know nothing about it. But I don't know anything about the fandom I spent my time reading last night, either. I shall read it. Thank you!

Just for reference: according to the collective page this site is hosted on, it was last updated in August of 1998.

Yeah. I was looking at a website the other day, and I was like, "Why does this site look like it's 1999? Is fandom just required to have hideous paneled background gifs and Comic Sans and unfortunately colored text?" And then I looked at the update notice, which was in fact September of 1999, and, well, that answered that.

[zoerayne]

Heh. I have to admit my first thought was Sentinel, but the eye colors are wrong. *g* I would guess Pros, but I don't think I've every read anything quite so OOT in Pros.

There's actually a genre name for those kinds of stories: smarm. I don't know if anyone uses the term anymore—I haven't heard it since Sentinel fandom's heyday—but it used to be very commonplace.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

I would guess Pros, but I don't think I've every read anything quite so OOT in Pros.

HAHAHAHA. Really?

Admittedly, I don't think I've ever read any Pros gen. But the slash is...a flashback to my days in Sentinel, turned up to 11.

[giandujakiss.livejournal.com]

Starsky & Hutch gen stories were like that too, I'm told. Some may still be. And of course, back in the day, gen fans were really at war with slashers; some threatened to report slashers to the copyright holders.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

And of course, back in the day, gen fans were really at war with slashers; some threatened to report slashers to the copyright holders.

Very true, and a good point. I suspect it's like the Ray Wars or whatever: no one who wasn't there can truly understand the depths of vitriol and anger involved.

My first thought upon reading that author's note was, "Oh, I bet that ended up on fandom_wank." And then I remembered they didn't have fandom_wank when this was written. It was all very disorienting.

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm gonna have to assume this is either in the Professionals or Starsky and Hutch zone. I'm leaning more toward S&H, though, because of the cuddle factor. (And you're totally not going to tell us, are you? *puppy eyes*)

As for pre-LJ fandoms: I'll let you know. I'm going through a Man from U.N.C.L.E. kick just now, and spent a sad few days last week unsuccessfully looking for the huge trove of The Wild Wild West slash that just had to be out here somewhere. If M.U.N.C.L.E. trips your fancy, I can keep track of what I liked.

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

Oh, have you got any Wild Wild West recs? I read a bunch of that last year, but, yeah, it's hard to find.

[rydra_wong]

and this isn't the right fandom for him to have been implanted with a Goa'uld

Stealth crossover!

Seriously, wouldn't that add so much to so many golden-eyed stories? At first, you think you're reading smarm, but in the next chapter - Goa'uld takeover of the planet!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Seriously, wouldn't that add so much to so many golden-eyed stories? At first, you think you're reading smarm, but in the next chapter - Goa'uld takeover of the planet!

Oh my god YES. That would be perfect. (And the truth is, I've been so trained by SG1 fandom that I was immediately pulled out of the story because, you know, OBVIOUSLY HE'S A GOA'ULD! RUN!)

[drlense.livejournal.com]

My fandom guess is "Magnificent 7". There's almost as much "heterosexual life partner" fic in there as there is in "The Sentinel".

[risha]

True, but I'm trying to figure out who the green-gold eyes person would be. Chris? Ezra?

I'm going to go with Chris/Vin. The life partners thing only appears in a small minority of Vin/Ezra.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Oh my god -- I would have guessed Sentinel too, but if it's not that, I'm dying to know what it is. Dying.

As for pre-LJ slash, have you read much Professionals (http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/)? You can't go wrong with classic stories by HG, O. Yardley, M. Fae Glasgow (the woman who did more than probably any other single person to put porn into slash!), Pamela Rose, Ellis Ward, Fanny Adams, Helen Raven . . .

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

M. Fae Glasgow (the woman who did more than probably any other single person to put porn into slash!)

And who was responsible for my early belief that slash had to have porn in it, which resulted in me crowbarring porn into stories that were all, "Do Not Want!" *g*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*hysterical giggles*

That's just beautiful. And I want to know the fandom, dammit.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Not telling! But it really is a thing of beauty. If slightly bewildering. I keep saying, "Oh, come ON. This could not be any slashier if you had an actual explicit blowjob! And some buttfucking! AND A COMMITMENT CEREMONY IN CANADA."

[melannen.livejournal.com]

...since you've already denied that it's TS, I'm gonna have to guess Highlander. Especially w/ the color-changing eyes. Although what I've read in that fandom is somewhat less likely to have the anti-slash caveats, other than that it ALL FITS.

(the older fandom I've been wallowing in of late is TS, so I'm afraid I can't much help you there. Oh! Also Eroica. There's at least a little old-school slashy gen there that's actually believable as gen, partly 'cause you don't get homophobes writing in Eroica. Let me go rummage around my del.icio.us account.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I am totally not saying what fandom it is. Because I am evil. Although I am deeply, deeply amused by the number of people who would've voted TS if I hadn't ruled that out. Hee!

Let me go rummage around my del.icio.us account.

Eee yay! *waits with great hopefulness*

[selfinduced.livejournal.com]

dammit woman, you can't tease us with a description like that and not share! (lock your comments?)

*cough*

also, hi, i don't know if i've ever commented before. excuse my familiarity. *bright eyes*

please share??

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

dammit woman, you can't tease us with a description like that and not share!

I can. I totally, totally can. Because I am evil.

*dons YAY EVIL t-shirt*

also, hi, i don't know if i've ever commented before.

Hi! Nice to meet you. May I taunt you with further descriptions of They Are So Straight, Seriously, This Is How All Straight Guys Act stories?

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I was a die-hard smarmer back in the day. (that day was Sentinel; I'm a young 'un as far as smarm-fen go. And then I went slasher. Traitor! Infidel! Except I still prefer gen in half my fandoms. I'm fictio-sexually confused...)

For more hardcore smarm I'd suggest the Real Ghostbusters: master-list here (http://members.aol.com/Venkie/rgb/rgb.htm), and especially the Bustin' zines (http://pweb.netcom.com/~nobleone/bustin1and2.htm), edited by Kitty Woldow of Sentinel smarm fame.

...wait, you wanted non-slashy gen. Oops?

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Hey, there is nothing wrong with liking slash and gen. (Or slash, gen, and het. Or slash, gen, het, and tentacles. Or just tenatcles. Whatever you want, is my point.) I fully support you in this endeavor.

I am just a slasher by nature, not nurture, so my discovery of smarm has been a bit bewildering. I am SO CONFUSED.

the Real Ghostbusters

The cartoon? There's a lot of FF for the cartoon? (And I'm really pretty sure it is a cartoon, because my Best Beloved is, like, a die hard fan of the show and owns the whole thing on DVD. Unless I got the title wrong. Which is possible.)

[elishavah.livejournal.com]

Um, yeah. Honestly, Due South is far back as I've ever discovered I'm comfortable reading. And even there, there comes a point when I'm making boggled anime eyes at the screen and I must stop.

'Twas a different time, which was so not my time.

Also, sign #427 that I've been around government longer than fandom: "NSA sex" meant something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT until I forced it to make a non-terrifying kind of sense.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

'Twas a different time, which was so not my time.

Really. Totally. I mean, a lot of this stuff I'd consider OOT in a slash story, never mind a supposedly gen one. (I am especially not keen on these guys engaging in heartfelt discussions of their feelings and trauma and angst and secrets and... I mean, seriously, I think they'd rather shoot themselves - or each other - than do that.)

Also, sign #427 that I've been around government longer than fandom: "NSA sex" meant something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT until I forced it to make a non-terrifying kind of sense.

NSA sex! It's, um, very cryptic sex!

[macey-muse.livejournal.com]

Can I pimp you a new (old) fandom? It's manga (I know you read those fandoms a little) so no need for the trauma of watching new things ^.^

From Eroica With Love (http://community.livejournal.com/crack_van/11157.html?style=mine), explained far more coherently than I could over at crack_van.

And here (http://www.belladonna.org/eroica.html) is a 'zine archive with pretty high-quality stuff (although, I read anything, so.).

OK yes, I know, not -that- old. But I'm only about, um, three years old, I think. Fandom-wise. So. Points for effort?

(I think I've commented before, but I might not've ~ I'm a horrible lurker. If I haven't, then, hi? *waves*)

[macey-muse.livejournal.com]

Btw, 'Iron Pokers (http://www.belladonna.org/ironpokers.html)' is my favorite, if you'd like just one to look at ^_^

[syredronning.livejournal.com]

Green? Hazel? Gold?

My bet is on K&S fiction by Gamin Davis.

(Never read her? Well, DON'T ;) You've been warned *G*)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I would like you to observe that I can, in fact, take a warning: I am NOT Googling "Gamin Davis" as we speak.

...I'm tempted, though.

(And, actually, I'm rather alarmed by the number of fandoms that are heavily into golden eyes. You would think this would be a condition limited to people suffering from possession of one kind or another - or jaundice - but apparently not.)

[penknife.livejournal.com]

I am guessing Original Series Star Trek, just for the green/hazel/gold eyes. But now I really want to see the story, in a masochistic sort of way.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I am saving you from yourself by not saying which story it is. It is very very long, and it's hard to stop reading it, even though you (by which I mean "I," of course) start to really want to after a while.

(Also, which one of the guys in ST:TOS had green/hazel/gold eyes? *curious*)

[risha]

Oh yeah, I forgot you wanted recs. As per my M7 comment above:

Katherine's Learning To Improvise series may be my very favorite (long) slash series of all time, across all fandoms, though individual chapters vary in length and quality. I find Chapter 3 in particular very affecting. Vin/Ezra.

Cobalt's (Committed) To Memory is all of the smarm plus all of the slash. And I always cry. Vin/Ezra.

And NotTasha writes incredible gen. I basically recommend everything she writes. But for reccing purposes I would probably start with the A Game of Chess" series (Nathan and Ezra), The Amazon Series (Ezra, Vin, and everyone), or the standalone story A Stone, Turned.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Ooo, thank you! *opens tabs*

And, um, is there any chance you know of a link to a handy primer for M7? Here's what I know: cowboys. Also, I have seen a really fantastic vid. Do I need to know more than that to fully appreciate the stories?

[korilian.livejournal.com]

What fandom are we talking here? When you said golden eyes I figured (hoped) it was SPN, or god, HP, because it would make sense! ...it's totally the Sentinal though, isn't it?

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

Can't be, in Sentinel the eyes (known as "orbs") are blue (known as "ice" and "sapphire", for Jim & Blair respectively). Also, neither of the guys has money.

My bet's on ST:TOS.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

Heh. That reaction reminds me of first reading some Sentinel that someone had linked me to. And some of it was smarm, some of which was physically and emotionally intense in ways that…I just…though I hadn’t been a slash reader until that point (I was monofannish in a fandom where I didn’t grok onto any of the slash pairings, so I thought slash just wasn’t my thing generally—ha! oh young me, you were so innocent), I kept going, "OMG! There has to be a payoff! HAVE SEX ALREADY!"

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

...oddly, in retrospect, that was pretty much exactly what watching The Sentinel TV show felt like as well XD

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

What I love most about this whole conversation is how it parallels smarm so exactly! It keeps leading up to sex (you answering the question) and then goes someplace unsatisfying to slashers and porn addicts (you not answering).

At least evil is a particularly sexy color on you.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

You know, you're right. AWESOME. I am now enjoying these comments EVEN MORE. Which I did not honestly think was possible.

Evil really does look good on me, doesn't it? *preens*

Also, I am now forcibly reminded that two of my Yuletide betas last year flat-out accused me of being a tease. I should send them written certificates of correctness, shouldn't I?

[brownbetty]

I read a fantastic, be which I mean um, "unbelievable," but not "quality," sentinal AU where… how did it go? I think Jim needed to "bond" with Blair for his mental stability or something, and bonding was best accomplished naked, so Jim kept on ripping his clothes off, and there was a bit about how Blair had to keep loose fitting clothes on at all times or risk carpet burn when Jim whisked his pants off. All non-sexual, of course. Sex is ew.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I. Um. I really have nothing to say about that.

Okay, one thing: if you rip my clothes off, you'd damn well better get me off. I'm not sacrificing a shirt I love to some lame-ass non-sexual "bonding," thanks. Poor Blair!

(...And now we're about to go down the heavily-trodden path marked Abused Guide Angst 'n' Woe. I think this is where I make a hasty exit.)

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I am kind of hoping it's The Persuaders, just because there should be so much more fic for them. (It is GAYER THAN THE SENTINEL. I didn't actually think that was POSSIBLE.)

Also, Dan and Casey join me in saying 'hee!'

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It is GAYER THAN THE SENTINEL. I didn't actually think that was POSSIBLE.

You know, here's the thing. I saw this fabulous and incredibly gay Persuaders vid. And I was like, "Wow. That is very gay." And then I rec'd it, saying in my rec that it was the gayest thing ever.

And people said, "No, actually. The show itself was much gayer."

At which point my brain suffered a fatal exception error. Apparently that show managed to contain more gay than is in the whole universe. It's a paradox of the space/time/homosexuality continuum!

Also, Dan and Casey join me in saying 'hee!'

Oh, Dan and Casey. <3!