![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(originally posted on Diaryland, 2003-08-23 - 1:10 a.m.)
SETTING: The heatwave broke a couple of days ago, as mentioned... the G4 is now working again, but only on one partition, grrrr... time to reformat!
And now to get around to three topics I promised to deal with several days ago: Thoughts on "One Degree", Roleplaying (specifically the online “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” RP), and Wicca. I’ll deal with them each in a separate entry. First up:
"ONE DEGREE OF SEPARATION": In spite of the recent cooler temperatures, all it takes to raise my thermostat is thinking about Professor Hobby and Gigolo Joe. *sigh* Oh, well, if you can't beat em... write about em. A recent positive review brought this story back to my attention, and it IS my diary, no? So writing about what’s on my mind is certainly allowed.
"One Degree Of Separation" is fan fiction. It is rated NC-17, and is a slashfic involving Professor Allen Hobby and the lover-robot Gigolo Joe from the “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” movie universe. It is also, by far, the single piece of fan fiction that has brought me the most praise in my seven years of posting fan fiction to the internet. In fact, the reviews have sometimes been glowing to the point of “Oh, my God, did I really write that?” (peers a story again) “Well, shucks... I guess I did.”
If you haven't read ""One Degree Of Separation" yet, I sugget you do -- it will certainly give you a much better idea of what this rambling is about. If not, hey, you can always skip on to the next entry. ;-) Scroll on down, and enjoy.
Still with me? Okay, then, here we go.
Whole essays have been written about why "slash" (fan fiction featuring sexual or romantic contact between two same-sex characters, ie: Kirk/Spock, Danger Mouse/Penfold, Batman/Superman, and so on) is so popular, and why so many women as opposed to men indulge in it.
There are several excellent articles linked from this site.
One writer’s POV on the subject, which includes sections on What is Slash?, Gender and Slash, and Characterization and Canon, can be found here .
A tongue-in-cheek version by my friend elfin can be found over here.
And (coming back on topic), from "The Things You Learn From Slash" page, one item in particular leaps out for me when considering the Hobby/Joe pairing:
“Men who are obviously straight---so straight they would NEVER look at their partner/best friend/worst enemy/boss/Canadian Mountie/commander twice---are definitely gay.”
This is one of the thrills unique to this sort of slashfic: the shock of running off the rails, of deviating from an entire lifetime of sexual behavior -- but what a delicious shock it is! Parts of the libido the character never knew existed suddenly spring to full-blown (pun intended) and urgent life. Most fan fiction writers enjoy putting their favorite characters through the wringer, and what could involve more tension than realizing that perhaps you aren’t what you always thought you are, or that another person -- of the same sex -- has such power over you? At the core of such stories lies a profound dislocation from the self, and at the same time both discovering and embracing of the new self that emerges.
And that, frankly, is exactly what happens to the rather staid Professor Hobby when Gigolo Joe walks into his life. His world, sexual and otherwise, ends up getting turned upside down by this gorgeous, enticing, seductive, graceful, and entirely mouthwatering lover-Mecha -- and does he complain? Far from it! Perhaps this is one of the most “reality-impaired” aspects of slashfic, lol -- the character getting slashed almost NEVER reacts to it with the absolute shock that such an act might be expected to cause in the Real World. (This is not to say that slashfic characters don’t agonize about their actions. They often do, soul-searching and wallowing in angst and struggling against their own impulses... however, such efforts almost always end up in another bout of slashy sex, which they end up enjoying, if possible, even more than the first time! ;-) Slash writers seldom let common sense get in the way of writing a good sex scene, but if they’re good, it DOES seem to make sense to the reader.)
I’ve slashed several pairings -- Peter/Egon (Real Ghostbusters), Bob/Megabyte (Reboot), Michael/KITT (Knight Rider, yes, it CAN be done!), and a few others -- but I must admit, I’ve enjoyed Hobby/Joe in a way that is uniquely their own. Possibly because the more reserved the character, the greater the release of energy when they “snap”, and Hobby is a very reserved man: grave, intelligent, a lion in winter, conservative in the extreme. The whiplash effect of “One Degree of Separation” is probably the most powerful I’ve ever written.
And also, let’s face it -- I find William Hurt dead sexy. (blush!) I always have, and I’m not alone. “Thank you for writing the only piece of William Hurt slash I’ve ever seen!” one reviewer noted, and it’s true. If anyone knows of more somewhere, please let me know! Pretty, pretty please. With sugar on top.
Jude Law, too. (Howls, runs in circles... aaaooowwwooooooh!) You can find pictures of The Boys at "The One Degree of Separation Universe Visual Reference” page at "Clear and Haunting Visions". See if you don’t agree with me. And if you don’t, hey, different strokes for different folks. If anyone holds that point of view, it should certainly be slash fiction writers... God bless us, every one. ;-)
NEXT UP: “The A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Roleplaying Game”
SETTING: The heatwave broke a couple of days ago, as mentioned... the G4 is now working again, but only on one partition, grrrr... time to reformat!
And now to get around to three topics I promised to deal with several days ago: Thoughts on "One Degree", Roleplaying (specifically the online “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” RP), and Wicca. I’ll deal with them each in a separate entry. First up:
"ONE DEGREE OF SEPARATION": In spite of the recent cooler temperatures, all it takes to raise my thermostat is thinking about Professor Hobby and Gigolo Joe. *sigh* Oh, well, if you can't beat em... write about em. A recent positive review brought this story back to my attention, and it IS my diary, no? So writing about what’s on my mind is certainly allowed.
"One Degree Of Separation" is fan fiction. It is rated NC-17, and is a slashfic involving Professor Allen Hobby and the lover-robot Gigolo Joe from the “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” movie universe. It is also, by far, the single piece of fan fiction that has brought me the most praise in my seven years of posting fan fiction to the internet. In fact, the reviews have sometimes been glowing to the point of “Oh, my God, did I really write that?” (peers a story again) “Well, shucks... I guess I did.”
If you haven't read ""One Degree Of Separation" yet, I sugget you do -- it will certainly give you a much better idea of what this rambling is about. If not, hey, you can always skip on to the next entry. ;-) Scroll on down, and enjoy.
Still with me? Okay, then, here we go.
Whole essays have been written about why "slash" (fan fiction featuring sexual or romantic contact between two same-sex characters, ie: Kirk/Spock, Danger Mouse/Penfold, Batman/Superman, and so on) is so popular, and why so many women as opposed to men indulge in it.
There are several excellent articles linked from this site.
One writer’s POV on the subject, which includes sections on What is Slash?, Gender and Slash, and Characterization and Canon, can be found here .
A tongue-in-cheek version by my friend elfin can be found over here.
And (coming back on topic), from "The Things You Learn From Slash" page, one item in particular leaps out for me when considering the Hobby/Joe pairing:
“Men who are obviously straight---so straight they would NEVER look at their partner/best friend/worst enemy/boss/Canadian Mountie/commander twice---are definitely gay.”
This is one of the thrills unique to this sort of slashfic: the shock of running off the rails, of deviating from an entire lifetime of sexual behavior -- but what a delicious shock it is! Parts of the libido the character never knew existed suddenly spring to full-blown (pun intended) and urgent life. Most fan fiction writers enjoy putting their favorite characters through the wringer, and what could involve more tension than realizing that perhaps you aren’t what you always thought you are, or that another person -- of the same sex -- has such power over you? At the core of such stories lies a profound dislocation from the self, and at the same time both discovering and embracing of the new self that emerges.
And that, frankly, is exactly what happens to the rather staid Professor Hobby when Gigolo Joe walks into his life. His world, sexual and otherwise, ends up getting turned upside down by this gorgeous, enticing, seductive, graceful, and entirely mouthwatering lover-Mecha -- and does he complain? Far from it! Perhaps this is one of the most “reality-impaired” aspects of slashfic, lol -- the character getting slashed almost NEVER reacts to it with the absolute shock that such an act might be expected to cause in the Real World. (This is not to say that slashfic characters don’t agonize about their actions. They often do, soul-searching and wallowing in angst and struggling against their own impulses... however, such efforts almost always end up in another bout of slashy sex, which they end up enjoying, if possible, even more than the first time! ;-) Slash writers seldom let common sense get in the way of writing a good sex scene, but if they’re good, it DOES seem to make sense to the reader.)
I’ve slashed several pairings -- Peter/Egon (Real Ghostbusters), Bob/Megabyte (Reboot), Michael/KITT (Knight Rider, yes, it CAN be done!), and a few others -- but I must admit, I’ve enjoyed Hobby/Joe in a way that is uniquely their own. Possibly because the more reserved the character, the greater the release of energy when they “snap”, and Hobby is a very reserved man: grave, intelligent, a lion in winter, conservative in the extreme. The whiplash effect of “One Degree of Separation” is probably the most powerful I’ve ever written.
And also, let’s face it -- I find William Hurt dead sexy. (blush!) I always have, and I’m not alone. “Thank you for writing the only piece of William Hurt slash I’ve ever seen!” one reviewer noted, and it’s true. If anyone knows of more somewhere, please let me know! Pretty, pretty please. With sugar on top.
Jude Law, too. (Howls, runs in circles... aaaooowwwooooooh!) You can find pictures of The Boys at "The One Degree of Separation Universe Visual Reference” page at "Clear and Haunting Visions". See if you don’t agree with me. And if you don’t, hey, different strokes for different folks. If anyone holds that point of view, it should certainly be slash fiction writers... God bless us, every one. ;-)
NEXT UP: “The A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Roleplaying Game”
