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

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.

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I am NOT Googling "Gamin Davis" as we speak.

I can help you with that. (http://spocktreks.bravehost.com/)

(This is particularly interesting. (http://spocktreks.bravehost.com/essay.html))

You are a wicked, wicked temptress.

OMG. It's the perfect summary of every anti-slash argument ever! Plus a bonus ep-by-ep list of all the points slashers would find slashy, with the querulous remark that, really, there's no ACTUAL SEX in here, so why would people imagine that there IS? Or even want to imagine that there is? Pervs.

LOL! You *were* warned...!

You are a wicked, wicked temptress.

I YAM, yamn't I. But how can you not, when it's just so...so...so luridly irresistible?

(God. Sometimes I wonder how people manage to actually ever sit down, given the size of the sticks up their asses.)

Have you read this one (http://pw1.netcom.com/~nobleone/smarmdef.htm)? (Link provided to me by

catalenamara.) I mean, if you want to talk about sticks...seriously, it's worth a read.

And if you read it, we can discuss it. I really want to discuss that essay with someone.

*hopeful look*

While I never intended to name a genre (nor did I ever claim I invented it, all I contributed was the name), it remains that I have made an impact on how fandom organizes itself internally, and therefore I feel some authority in explaining what the precise meaning of smarm really is.

Three sentences in, and I'm already annoyed. Yeesh. Full of self much?

I've got it open in a tab and will read over what we laughingly refer to around here as "lunch", unless offline life interferes. Will I be missing anything significant if I remain ignorant of the writer's obviously significant place in the history of fandom (I snark, but this may actually be empirically true) until after I've read it?

*smeeches you on principle*

Three sentences in, and I'm already annoyed. Yeesh. Full of self much?

I KNOW. OMG, I KNOW. (And I love you so much for reading this just because I whined at you to.)

Will I be missing anything significant if I remain ignorant of the writer's obviously significant place in the history of fandom (I snark, but this may actually be empirically true) until after I've read it?

Well. Let's put it this way: if you're missing something, so am I, as she and I do not move in the same circles. (Although she does a pretty good job of telling you what her fannish significance is in the essay.) You may, however, wish to examine her fiction website (http://pw1.netcom.com/~nobleone/), where she states:

"The following stories are deep and powerful (unlike the author) and are written for those who seek the Grail of truly great friendship. If you enjoy h/c and smarm, read on. If the idea of a man being willing to die for a friend upsets or sickens you, go no further into the Temple."

The following stories are deep and powerful (unlike the author) and are written for those who seek the Grail of truly great friendship.

O.o

>.<

O.O

...uh-HUH.

It's not my fault that I read that in a Monty Python voice, right?

("What is your name?"

"I am Arthur, King of the Britons."

"What is your quest?"

"I seek the Grail of truly great friendship. You know, like Achilles and Patroclus. Or Alexander and Hephaistion. That's what I seek. With Lancelot."

"...Bet you're gay.")

BWAHAHA. (Which, because I didn't get my fingers on the home keys the first time around because I was still giggling, originally came out NESHSH. Odd, really.)

It is definitely your fault, and I love you for it.

Right: I have now read this, and am posed to discuss as ~~ordered~~ requested. (In bits for the moment, unfortunately, as it is already 1:14 pm over here in Workville and I have approximately a metric buttload still to do.)

First proposition: the stick in this particular ass has splinters, yo. Discuss or refute.

the stick in this particular ass has splinters, yo. Discuss or refute.

I reluctantly refute, on the grounds that surely splinters alone could not cause a problem of this magnitude. I mean, I'm trying not to be hypercritical here, but - oh my god. There are - no pun intended - deeper problems here than sticks. To recapitulate some of my earlier comments, which this essay really helped gel:

She says that slash includes sex (although I would point out here that I have read smarm with a mutual exchange of sexual pleasure, which to my limited, lesbian-sex-addled brain, is sex, and therefore slash when it occurs between two characters of the same sex), and therefore lust, and lust is a desire for personal gratification, and therefore slash is selfish.

Ignoring the logical flaws here just for the moment, because frankly I want to jump all over them but I am resisting, I have to assume the author has never had the kind of sex that is entirely about your partner's pleasure, and yet that is, at least to my mind, one of the biggest joys of a long-term relationship: you can have sex that is all about your partner. (And, as I said to

catalenamara, I'm sad that she thinks that sex diminishes a relationship. I thought that, too. When I was 16. It took some wonderful and talented people to convince me I was wrong, and I just - I am very depressed by the idea that someone could be stuck forever in that place.)

And then there's the fact that none of this explains why it's important that smarm stories include so many of the trappings typically associated with a sexual and romantic relationship in a modern Western setting. (She says it doesn't matter if they do, but in fact that's one of the cornerstones of the genre, from what I can tell.) I mean, yes, smarm was never going to be for me, since it seems to rely on explicit statements of feeling, and I vastly prefer for feelings to be revealed solely through action. (I have the best ever side-by-side example of this, by the way.) But without the sexual elements, smarm would just be a genre that's too warm and fuzzy for cold, prickly me. With them, I am left suspecting that smarm writers either a) want to subtract sex from romance or b) want to subtract homosexuality from a sexual relationship between men. And a) is fine, if that's what you need, but b) raises some questions for me, you know?

...Um. I had much more to say - that was just the groundwork! - but I think I've probably burned through all your recreational time for the rest of the day with this comment alone. Sorry! (See icon.)

LOL!

I can't help thinking, though, that contemporary Vulcan society would take steps to insure against homosexuality

=

I like imagining a world where those dirty homos are locked up and punished for their sins.

Or is it just me who read it as that?

Or is it just me who read it as that?

Somehow I doubt it.

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

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