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]

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.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Smarm confuses a lot of people, especially those who encounter it from the slash angle. I usually try to explain it as a special kink for platonic love, because otherwise people take it for castrated slash or fannish homophobia or other things it isn't (isn't always, anyway; in some cases, maybe...)

RGB - yes. The cartoon (based on the movies). And yes, there is...well. It depends how you define 'a lot' of fanfic. The fandom itself was fairly small.

However, at least one author in it wrote over 300 stories and counting. And I don't mean drabbles - I mean, 5,000-50,000 word stories. All smarm-oriented, about how close friends (but ONLY FRIENDS) the guys were.

...in other news, RGB is out on DVD? For reals?!