(no subject)
So I was away last week, at the beach in NC - no, wait, actually it was the week before last, but when I started drafting this post it was "last week" *g*. Ah, well, better late than never, or at least I hope so!
Anyway, generally when I go down to NC I spend tons and tons of time online chatting, staying up until the wee hours, etc. For some reason, though, I didn't feel like doing that so much this time.
I was feeling a bit ... detached, maybe, from fandom. Maybe not just from fandom, actually. I have to be careful when I start feeling detached - I have a tendency to cut myself off, isolate myself to avoid the ... I don't know, the difficulty, the emotional involvement, of human interaction, particularly when, like now, there's a difficult or depressing personal issue (in this case involving my parents) that I don't want to deal with. I'm disturbingly good at avoiding and suppressing, at ring-fencing the unpleasant feelings and cutting myself off from them - so good that I end up cutting myself off from everything (and everyone) else as well. Which is like cutting off my nose to spite my face, really, because finally I truly understand that those human contacts, that interaction, make my problems easier to deal with, keep me stable and happy and make life so much more rewarding. The hard part is distinguishing a depressed kind of withdrawal from a perfectly normal desire to have an occasional break. This was probably a combination of the two.
Anyway, I didn't chat much, or comment in LJs as much as I usually do, on this trip. But still, I checked LJ and email multiple times each day, wrote up and posted my Vividcon reports (I never did get around to posting a "general" con report, though I still might, but I had fun "reviewing" - HA! - vids), and spent many, many hours working on the Pros archive (about which more in another post). So though I wasn't actually "connecting," I did still feel connected - and I love fandom, after all.
I also read a lot this trip. Lots of fanfic, mostly but not exclusively Pros. But for the first time in a long while, almost since I discovered fandom, I spent some significant time reading - gasp! - original fic. I always read things and think, hmmm, I should write down my thoughts about that while it's still fresh. I seldom actually do it, but this time I figured I'd give it a shot, both for my benefit so I can look back later and remember, and to share. These aren't really reviews, just my somewhat rambling thoughts.
I think I'll start with the fanfic. I read two nice long Pros zines, both of which I really enjoyed:
Czardas, by Jane of Australia: This is actually crossover with Ladder of Swords, a 1989 movie in which Martin Shaw played a circus performer, Don DeMarco. The pairing is Bodie/Don. The story (very roughly): Cowley realizes that Bodie's burned out on CI5 (Doyle left a few years before) and in an effort to keep his interest and give him a challenge, assigns him to a case in which circumstances have forced CI5, M9 (a British counterintelligence agency, maybe?), and the KGB to work together to find an East German agent. This requires Bodie and the M9 agent to travel to Hungary and Romania to track down DeMarco, who's supposedly traveling with a circus in that area and is the last person known to have had contact with the agent.
I wasn't sure what to expect of this one when I picked it up. I'm really still a newbie in Pros, at least in terms of the relative length of time I've been involved with the fandom, but I've crammed as much as possible into that time and I've seen enough to discover that Jane of Australia is a somewhat ... controversial figure. I think maybe it's really that she's become the lodestone for a purported division in the fandom - there are people who like "Jane-type" fic and people who don't, and the people who don't tend to heap scorn upon her relentlessly. It's hard for me to better define the schism - sometimes it seems like it's sappy vs. gritty, other times it seems like it's the quality of writing that's the issue rather than the content or tone. But for whatever reason, there's an element of Pros fandom that likes to hold Jane up as some sort of poster child for Bad Writing, or Bad Fanfic.
I've got to admit I have little patience with this. Sure her writing's not perfect, and I have no problem with the fact that some people simply dislike her style. I think it's the pretentiousness (and occasional hypocrisy) of some of those who do, the way they almost demonize her, that so puts me off. The categorical, overwrought proclamations that her stories are "bad" by "objective" standards of writing generally make me want to laugh, or throw up, as do the dolorous expressions of regret about the "waste" of talent ... how sad it is, ::big sigh, crocodile tears::, that she doesn't take more time, find a better editor; she could be so good if only she took more care, proofread more, whatever .... I mean, get over it already! Sure, her writing has flaws, but then again, so does most fanfic; Jane's is far, far, far from the worst. Maybe it's a personal issue with Jane rather than truly a writing issue - I don't know Jane from Adam, so I have no idea - but I just don't see what it is about her fic that should evoke such an extreme reaction - though longer-term Pros fan friends have suggested that it might be jealousy over her prolific-ness, popularity, and amazing imagination (I have no opinion either way about this; just don't have enough context). Also, I think the "schism" is something of a red herring; sure there are people who just don't like Jane's fic, don't like her style under any circumstances, but it is certainly possible for a fan (read: me!) to enjoy both Jane and, say, Sebastian or M. Fae Glasgow, even if in different ways, and to appreciate the different things each has to offer.
Whew. Rant over for now! Clearly this has been bugging me. *g*
Anyway, all this being said, I do admit that I have mixed feelings about Jane's writing. On the one hand I think she's an absolutely wonderful storyteller. Her imagination and creativity are just amazing, and I love many of her AUs, particularly the Flesh and Steel trilogy and also the first book of The Hunting. These tend to remind me of the fantasy novels I read in my youth, with the two male characters joined by mythic bonds stronger than brotherhood etc. etc. - only with sex! I always wanted more, more, more "relationship" when I read those books - the pages on which, for example, Hal and Alan declared their love for each other in Nancy Springer's Silver Sun were dogeared and memorized (and I cringe to admit that the only piece of "fanfic" I've ever written - and as an adult, no less! - was an unbearably sappy epilogue to The Sable Moon, reuniting Hal and Alan in Elwestrand) - and more is exactly what Jane gives me. I get the fantasy plus lots of relationship plus - yay! - sex! I love that, and it's no difficulty at all for me to overlook the undeniable fact that many of her stories really could benefit from a bit of tightening up and a freer use of the red pen. I don't love all the ones I've read (and I haven't read them all) - for example, I've never been able to make it through the entire Hunting; I lose interest rapidly after the first book - but I find a number of her AUs are wonderful, the characters are often interesting and engaging, I love the relationship focus, and her writing is basically solid. It seems churlish of me to demand more from my fanfic, or at least from all my fanfic.
Those are the AUs - it's Jane's CI5-universe fic that I more often have real issues with, specifically her characterizations of Bodie and Doyle. I haven't read nearly all her CI5 fics, but in many of those I have read Bodie and Doyle strike me as too ... talky or something, too in touch with themselves and their feelings, too reasonable about it all. There's not quite enough of the communication issues, the ... well, dysfunctionality, I guess, that you expect of men in general, particularly hard men, fighting men, like these two. Not quite enough "passion" - and by this I don't mean sexual passion, I mean anger and confusion and intensity. And often it's a bit too sappy and happily domestic for me. There's more to it than this; I haven't quite managed to put my finger on why, but though I don't really dislike her Bodie/Doyle fic, it never quite "does it" for me, either. It's one thing for characterization to be "off" in an AU - if the story is good I can enjoy it anyway, the fact that it's not "really" Bodie and Doyle doesn't get in the way so much. But characterization that feels "wrong" is far more difficult for me to ignore in canon-based fic, no matter how exciting or interesting the story is. I can live with loose editing more easily than I can live with bad characterization, at least in CI5-universe fic.
So I felt a little trepidation when I began Czardas, which is a CI5-universe fic, though it's also a crossover. Perhaps somewhat to my surprise, though, I really loved it, enough to re-read and to want to buy the zine for myself! It was a long meaty story, interesting and engaging with a plot that I actually found quite engrossing, yet still primarily a relationship development story, which is key for me. The Bodie/Doyle characterization issues that often bother me in Jane's fic either weren't there or, for whatever reason, I wasn't bothered by them in this context.
The story is mostly about Bodie, and I found him incredibly appealing and well-drawn here - I liked this Bodie, I felt for him, I liked his toughness and loneliness and thankfully well-hidden vulnerability (I simply can't stomach stories in which Bodie or Doyle let it all hang out for the world to see) and his sexual experience with men (in Pros in particular it's hard for me to buy a Bodie who's never had sex with men before, unless it's a coming-to-terms-with-gayness fic - Bodie just strikes me as so gay, and so sexual); I liked the way he thought and acted and talked. It's a Bodie/Don story, but Ray appears for a little while too, and I found Jane's portrayal of him solid and realistic as well. The way she deals with the issue of why Bodie's not with Ray made me choke up repeatedly - very rare for me! It hurt, and like Bodie I wanted it to be different, but that just shows how effective it was and how well done - it was supposed to hurt, damn her eyes! *g* I've never seen Ladder of Swords, but I liked Don deMarco, too, and I desperately wanted their relationship to work.
The story's not perfect, of course. It suffers from a bit of wordiness and repetitiveness, which as I said before, I think Jane's fics often do - it could have benefited from a good edit so, for example, there weren't three separate paragraphs scattered throughout the story in which Don tells Bodie in almost identical terms the trading value of condoms in the Soviet bloc countries. And I felt at times like the author was on an anti-violence soapbox; the occasional feeling of being lectured got a little tiresome. But overall I found this a great, solid read. There was angst, but not overwhelming angst - I wasn't paralyzed with anxiety. There was hot sex - Jane always has lots of explicit smut, which I love, but sometimes it doesn't read to me as "sexy"; as a rule it did in this fic (I especially loved Don's response the first time Bodie fucked him - "Oh ... that was fine, that was" - I could just hear the Irish accent). There was good relationship development, with some uncertainty and miscommunication (though I wouldn't have minded even a bit more of this) and real tenderness. There were hot guys in spandex (it is the circus, after all!). There were interesting characters (I'd say original characters, but I have no idea if they are, having never seen Ladder of Swords) and an interesting storyline. There was a wonderfully satisfying conclusion, poignant but happy. The story just made me feel good, and I as soon as I finished I wanted to start over - the sign of a definite keeper!
Rainbow Chasers, by HG: This is a Pros AU, with Ray as a rent boy who makes good. In his misspent youth he meets and falls in love with young Bodie but circumstances conspire to tear them apart; a decade later they meet again when Ray is inadvertantly caught in a CI5 raid led by Bodie. A not insignificant portion of the zine is devoted to young Ray and to his life and occupation as he grows; I minded this less than I expected, and I even liked the image of Ray Doyle, financial whiz-kid (or Zurich gnome, depending on your POV *g*).
I find HG to be a nice writer - she has some mannerisms that bug me, like a tendency to dangle her participles and an unfortunate penchant for using (though only rarely, thank god) purple phrases like "male animal" and "sweet man flesh" that make me cringe, but I like her style generally. She writes good relationship-driven fic. I find her Bodie/Doyle banter sharp and spot-on and never sappy. In fact, she does a great job of writing the guys as guys - they never start making lengthy proclamations of love and talking deeply about their feelings, yet you can always see the depth of their feelings beneath the surface, and they say enough to each other, and in the right ways, to satisfy me. I also like her smut quite a bit, and she has plenty of it, though she occasionally fades to black when I wish she wouldn't. Then again, I understand that in a long novel-length relationship-focused novel like this, writing out every sex scene is unnecessary and might start to feel repetitive; they're not all of equal importance in terms of telling us more about the relationship or the characters. (Although unnecessary doesn't mean unwelcome!)
(It was a source of great sadness to me that the zine I was reading was missing a page, front and back, that included some of the key smut and togetherness passages and acknowledgment of feelings (or at least I think they did) ... now of course I'm chafing at the bit to get my hands on those. Anyone have a copy and willing to scan two pages for me? *g*)
Yet though I liked Rainbow Chasers very much, it didn't move me tremendously, and I'm not certain why. I think part of it is that HG's style and her use of omniscient POV (common I find in many older zines - is the obsession with limited POV in slash a recent one?) causes it to feel slightly remote and distanced to me, not so sensual and immediate. (I have a similar reaction, though on a different scale and in a different context, to Tolkein's writing (also omniscient), which has always left me entirely unmoved - the story he's telling might be moving in the abstract, but the way it's written isn't, too me; I feel very little while I read.) There's something a bit ... distanced, maybe, about it, which keeps me from really feeling the story. I'm not quite sure how to explain it, and it's not like I didn't have any emotional reaction to it - just not an intense one.
I also got a bit tired of Ray's stroppiness, which I thought was excessive at times, particularly toward Bodie. In particular his reaction when he makes a key discovery about Bodie midway through the story struck me as way over the top, as did Bodie's response. But in the end, though she skirts the line at times, the author just manages to avoid that (for me) fatal error of contriving one stupid and gratuitous misunderstanding after another until you want to throw the zine at them and scream grow up! She never quite crosses that line; at times I was a bit frustrated with Ray's behavior in particular, but it was never excessive enough or lasted long enough to put me off, and there was plenty of real relationship and togetherness, not just endless miscommunication.
(As an aside: thinking about that got me pondering how to write a long relationship-driven fic, and the role of angst/misunderstandings/miscommunications in that kind of fic, but I decided to save those musings for another post!).
So overall, if not among my favorites of all time, this was another solid, thoroughly enjoyable story, with many great points and a great satisfying ending, one that I'd definitely re-read (in fact, I have!).
*****
N.B. In thinking over why I so enjoyed both these zines, it's worth noting (to me, at least ;-) that one thing they have in common is that in both, the two guys in the pairing have had sex with men before - both are indisputably bisexual, or perhaps in Bodie's case (particularly in RC) closer to gay. For me this is a good thing. Pros is full of we're-not-gay-we-just-love-each-other fic - O'Yardley and Ellis Ward come to mind as authors who use this model regularly. I can't think offhand of any story by either of them in which Bodie or Doyle has had experience with men before (though I could definitely be overlooking some of O'Yardley's fic; she wrote so many, and I haven't read them all). And it's not just that they haven't had such experiences - it's that once they come together, a big deal is made of the fact that they couldn't imagine sleeping with any other man ever. O'Yardley's Injured Innocents comes to mind here, as does Ellis Ward's Trial Run (and I'm just using these two authors as examples - there are many more).
Clearly there are many fans who really enjoy this paradigm, which is great - I love the fact that in fandom there is something for everyone. And it is possible for me to enjoy stories that employ it, if it's subtle - that is, if the fact that neither has been attracted to a man before isn't emphasized. I'm very, very fond of Ellis Ward's Harlequin Airs (though none of her other stories do much for me, I have to admit), and there are many of O'Yardley fics that I love (one that comes immediately to mind is Bealach Na Ba, in Unprofessional Conduct 1). But in general - and particularly when a big deal is made of the we're-not-gay aspect, when there are repeated pronouncements by one or the other to each other or the world at large that he couldn't imagine doing this with any other man, that he only loves the other - I find myself more and more turned off by the WNGWJLEO model. The "we're not gay" doesn't comport with my own view of the Pros characters - but more than that, the model generally just doesn't work for me, partly because I find it so wildly unrealistic that I simply can't overcome my skepticism - it strikes me as silly rather than romantic - and partly because it's just not the model I personally prefer. It's a bit too sappy for me, too romance-novel-y, comes across to me as too sanctimonious.
The bottom line is, I like the idea that these are men who like fucking men (and who love each other, of course!). This means I generally prefer fic in which they've had experience with men before - one of the reasons that Injured Innocents is lower on my list of favorites than Rainbow Chasers. It also means that if one of them hasn't had sex with men before, discovering that he wants the other requires coming to terms with the fact that he has homosexual inclinations - and I prefer stories that at least acknowledge that, even if it's not a focal point. miriam_heddy's Joy of Camping (in Motet 4) is a great example - Ray discovers, much to his surprise, that he wants Bodie, loves him, but he dismisses out of hand the idea that this was "a sacrifice born of love," that he'd "waited thirty-five years to want one man and not others" - though he's not going to do anything about the others, of course :-). And one of the many, many things I love about the_shoshanna's Never Let Me Down (I adore that story, and one of these days I'll write a better review of it here) is how well she portrays Bodie's difficulty coming to terms with his attraction to men.
*****
And finally, to conclude, a short (for me!) comment about the sole HP fic I read on this trip:
Screaming Virgin, by Predatrix: I still read HP, though much more sporadically and generally only fics that come highly rec'ed (or that are still on my old rec list). Screaming Virgin is a Snape/Hagrid fic. Predatrix's Size Queen is one of my all-time favorite HP fics, and the one that taught me to "never say never" when it comes to slash. Snape/Hagrid? Ewwwww, I said the first time someone mentioned it to me, I'm never going there, no way, no how. Well, I ate crow. True, the first time I read Size Queen I cringed and squirmed - but I read it again, and again, and again, and grew to love it. I still think it's the best Snape/Hagrid fic of all.
Unfortunately, Screaming Virgin (and the short follow-up story, Educational) is no Size Queen. Predatrix has a very unique style and way of dealing with sex; it's highly explicit and almost clinical sometimes, not particularly emotional or passionate or sensual - sometimes this works well for me (as in Size Queen and Photo Perfect, a wonderful and surprisingly touching Snape/Gilderoy Lockhart story; I recommend it highly), and sometimes it doesn't. Here it really didn't. In particular, the Snape in this fic was totally off for me - the characterization felt all wrong. I'm not a big virgin!Snape fan anyway, but that's something I can overlook in the right story; in this fic, however, Snape said and did things, particularly in public, that struck me as so wildly out of character that I was thrown right out of the story. I couldn't in my wildest imagination conceive of Snape acting that way - and more, I wouldn't want to.
So this one was a disappointment. That's okay, though - can't win 'em all, and like I said, others of Predatrix's stories are among my favorite HP fics, so it all balances out in the end.
I will leave the original fic (which included Guy Gavriel Kay, Judith Tarr, and Tanya Huff) for another post, along with my musings about relationship fic and angst....
And one final note: thanks and hugs to queenbamfie for the icon. Oh how I adore that particular shot of Ray ....
Anyway, generally when I go down to NC I spend tons and tons of time online chatting, staying up until the wee hours, etc. For some reason, though, I didn't feel like doing that so much this time.
I was feeling a bit ... detached, maybe, from fandom. Maybe not just from fandom, actually. I have to be careful when I start feeling detached - I have a tendency to cut myself off, isolate myself to avoid the ... I don't know, the difficulty, the emotional involvement, of human interaction, particularly when, like now, there's a difficult or depressing personal issue (in this case involving my parents) that I don't want to deal with. I'm disturbingly good at avoiding and suppressing, at ring-fencing the unpleasant feelings and cutting myself off from them - so good that I end up cutting myself off from everything (and everyone) else as well. Which is like cutting off my nose to spite my face, really, because finally I truly understand that those human contacts, that interaction, make my problems easier to deal with, keep me stable and happy and make life so much more rewarding. The hard part is distinguishing a depressed kind of withdrawal from a perfectly normal desire to have an occasional break. This was probably a combination of the two.
Anyway, I didn't chat much, or comment in LJs as much as I usually do, on this trip. But still, I checked LJ and email multiple times each day, wrote up and posted my Vividcon reports (I never did get around to posting a "general" con report, though I still might, but I had fun "reviewing" - HA! - vids), and spent many, many hours working on the Pros archive (about which more in another post). So though I wasn't actually "connecting," I did still feel connected - and I love fandom, after all.
I also read a lot this trip. Lots of fanfic, mostly but not exclusively Pros. But for the first time in a long while, almost since I discovered fandom, I spent some significant time reading - gasp! - original fic. I always read things and think, hmmm, I should write down my thoughts about that while it's still fresh. I seldom actually do it, but this time I figured I'd give it a shot, both for my benefit so I can look back later and remember, and to share. These aren't really reviews, just my somewhat rambling thoughts.
I think I'll start with the fanfic. I read two nice long Pros zines, both of which I really enjoyed:
Czardas, by Jane of Australia: This is actually crossover with Ladder of Swords, a 1989 movie in which Martin Shaw played a circus performer, Don DeMarco. The pairing is Bodie/Don. The story (very roughly): Cowley realizes that Bodie's burned out on CI5 (Doyle left a few years before) and in an effort to keep his interest and give him a challenge, assigns him to a case in which circumstances have forced CI5, M9 (a British counterintelligence agency, maybe?), and the KGB to work together to find an East German agent. This requires Bodie and the M9 agent to travel to Hungary and Romania to track down DeMarco, who's supposedly traveling with a circus in that area and is the last person known to have had contact with the agent.
I wasn't sure what to expect of this one when I picked it up. I'm really still a newbie in Pros, at least in terms of the relative length of time I've been involved with the fandom, but I've crammed as much as possible into that time and I've seen enough to discover that Jane of Australia is a somewhat ... controversial figure. I think maybe it's really that she's become the lodestone for a purported division in the fandom - there are people who like "Jane-type" fic and people who don't, and the people who don't tend to heap scorn upon her relentlessly. It's hard for me to better define the schism - sometimes it seems like it's sappy vs. gritty, other times it seems like it's the quality of writing that's the issue rather than the content or tone. But for whatever reason, there's an element of Pros fandom that likes to hold Jane up as some sort of poster child for Bad Writing, or Bad Fanfic.
I've got to admit I have little patience with this. Sure her writing's not perfect, and I have no problem with the fact that some people simply dislike her style. I think it's the pretentiousness (and occasional hypocrisy) of some of those who do, the way they almost demonize her, that so puts me off. The categorical, overwrought proclamations that her stories are "bad" by "objective" standards of writing generally make me want to laugh, or throw up, as do the dolorous expressions of regret about the "waste" of talent ... how sad it is, ::big sigh, crocodile tears::, that she doesn't take more time, find a better editor; she could be so good if only she took more care, proofread more, whatever .... I mean, get over it already! Sure, her writing has flaws, but then again, so does most fanfic; Jane's is far, far, far from the worst. Maybe it's a personal issue with Jane rather than truly a writing issue - I don't know Jane from Adam, so I have no idea - but I just don't see what it is about her fic that should evoke such an extreme reaction - though longer-term Pros fan friends have suggested that it might be jealousy over her prolific-ness, popularity, and amazing imagination (I have no opinion either way about this; just don't have enough context). Also, I think the "schism" is something of a red herring; sure there are people who just don't like Jane's fic, don't like her style under any circumstances, but it is certainly possible for a fan (read: me!) to enjoy both Jane and, say, Sebastian or M. Fae Glasgow, even if in different ways, and to appreciate the different things each has to offer.
Whew. Rant over for now! Clearly this has been bugging me. *g*
Anyway, all this being said, I do admit that I have mixed feelings about Jane's writing. On the one hand I think she's an absolutely wonderful storyteller. Her imagination and creativity are just amazing, and I love many of her AUs, particularly the Flesh and Steel trilogy and also the first book of The Hunting. These tend to remind me of the fantasy novels I read in my youth, with the two male characters joined by mythic bonds stronger than brotherhood etc. etc. - only with sex! I always wanted more, more, more "relationship" when I read those books - the pages on which, for example, Hal and Alan declared their love for each other in Nancy Springer's Silver Sun were dogeared and memorized (and I cringe to admit that the only piece of "fanfic" I've ever written - and as an adult, no less! - was an unbearably sappy epilogue to The Sable Moon, reuniting Hal and Alan in Elwestrand) - and more is exactly what Jane gives me. I get the fantasy plus lots of relationship plus - yay! - sex! I love that, and it's no difficulty at all for me to overlook the undeniable fact that many of her stories really could benefit from a bit of tightening up and a freer use of the red pen. I don't love all the ones I've read (and I haven't read them all) - for example, I've never been able to make it through the entire Hunting; I lose interest rapidly after the first book - but I find a number of her AUs are wonderful, the characters are often interesting and engaging, I love the relationship focus, and her writing is basically solid. It seems churlish of me to demand more from my fanfic, or at least from all my fanfic.
Those are the AUs - it's Jane's CI5-universe fic that I more often have real issues with, specifically her characterizations of Bodie and Doyle. I haven't read nearly all her CI5 fics, but in many of those I have read Bodie and Doyle strike me as too ... talky or something, too in touch with themselves and their feelings, too reasonable about it all. There's not quite enough of the communication issues, the ... well, dysfunctionality, I guess, that you expect of men in general, particularly hard men, fighting men, like these two. Not quite enough "passion" - and by this I don't mean sexual passion, I mean anger and confusion and intensity. And often it's a bit too sappy and happily domestic for me. There's more to it than this; I haven't quite managed to put my finger on why, but though I don't really dislike her Bodie/Doyle fic, it never quite "does it" for me, either. It's one thing for characterization to be "off" in an AU - if the story is good I can enjoy it anyway, the fact that it's not "really" Bodie and Doyle doesn't get in the way so much. But characterization that feels "wrong" is far more difficult for me to ignore in canon-based fic, no matter how exciting or interesting the story is. I can live with loose editing more easily than I can live with bad characterization, at least in CI5-universe fic.
So I felt a little trepidation when I began Czardas, which is a CI5-universe fic, though it's also a crossover. Perhaps somewhat to my surprise, though, I really loved it, enough to re-read and to want to buy the zine for myself! It was a long meaty story, interesting and engaging with a plot that I actually found quite engrossing, yet still primarily a relationship development story, which is key for me. The Bodie/Doyle characterization issues that often bother me in Jane's fic either weren't there or, for whatever reason, I wasn't bothered by them in this context.
The story is mostly about Bodie, and I found him incredibly appealing and well-drawn here - I liked this Bodie, I felt for him, I liked his toughness and loneliness and thankfully well-hidden vulnerability (I simply can't stomach stories in which Bodie or Doyle let it all hang out for the world to see) and his sexual experience with men (in Pros in particular it's hard for me to buy a Bodie who's never had sex with men before, unless it's a coming-to-terms-with-gayness fic - Bodie just strikes me as so gay, and so sexual); I liked the way he thought and acted and talked. It's a Bodie/Don story, but Ray appears for a little while too, and I found Jane's portrayal of him solid and realistic as well. The way she deals with the issue of why Bodie's not with Ray made me choke up repeatedly - very rare for me! It hurt, and like Bodie I wanted it to be different, but that just shows how effective it was and how well done - it was supposed to hurt, damn her eyes! *g* I've never seen Ladder of Swords, but I liked Don deMarco, too, and I desperately wanted their relationship to work.
The story's not perfect, of course. It suffers from a bit of wordiness and repetitiveness, which as I said before, I think Jane's fics often do - it could have benefited from a good edit so, for example, there weren't three separate paragraphs scattered throughout the story in which Don tells Bodie in almost identical terms the trading value of condoms in the Soviet bloc countries. And I felt at times like the author was on an anti-violence soapbox; the occasional feeling of being lectured got a little tiresome. But overall I found this a great, solid read. There was angst, but not overwhelming angst - I wasn't paralyzed with anxiety. There was hot sex - Jane always has lots of explicit smut, which I love, but sometimes it doesn't read to me as "sexy"; as a rule it did in this fic (I especially loved Don's response the first time Bodie fucked him - "Oh ... that was fine, that was" - I could just hear the Irish accent). There was good relationship development, with some uncertainty and miscommunication (though I wouldn't have minded even a bit more of this) and real tenderness. There were hot guys in spandex (it is the circus, after all!). There were interesting characters (I'd say original characters, but I have no idea if they are, having never seen Ladder of Swords) and an interesting storyline. There was a wonderfully satisfying conclusion, poignant but happy. The story just made me feel good, and I as soon as I finished I wanted to start over - the sign of a definite keeper!
Rainbow Chasers, by HG: This is a Pros AU, with Ray as a rent boy who makes good. In his misspent youth he meets and falls in love with young Bodie but circumstances conspire to tear them apart; a decade later they meet again when Ray is inadvertantly caught in a CI5 raid led by Bodie. A not insignificant portion of the zine is devoted to young Ray and to his life and occupation as he grows; I minded this less than I expected, and I even liked the image of Ray Doyle, financial whiz-kid (or Zurich gnome, depending on your POV *g*).
I find HG to be a nice writer - she has some mannerisms that bug me, like a tendency to dangle her participles and an unfortunate penchant for using (though only rarely, thank god) purple phrases like "male animal" and "sweet man flesh" that make me cringe, but I like her style generally. She writes good relationship-driven fic. I find her Bodie/Doyle banter sharp and spot-on and never sappy. In fact, she does a great job of writing the guys as guys - they never start making lengthy proclamations of love and talking deeply about their feelings, yet you can always see the depth of their feelings beneath the surface, and they say enough to each other, and in the right ways, to satisfy me. I also like her smut quite a bit, and she has plenty of it, though she occasionally fades to black when I wish she wouldn't. Then again, I understand that in a long novel-length relationship-focused novel like this, writing out every sex scene is unnecessary and might start to feel repetitive; they're not all of equal importance in terms of telling us more about the relationship or the characters. (Although unnecessary doesn't mean unwelcome!)
(It was a source of great sadness to me that the zine I was reading was missing a page, front and back, that included some of the key smut and togetherness passages and acknowledgment of feelings (or at least I think they did) ... now of course I'm chafing at the bit to get my hands on those. Anyone have a copy and willing to scan two pages for me? *g*)
Yet though I liked Rainbow Chasers very much, it didn't move me tremendously, and I'm not certain why. I think part of it is that HG's style and her use of omniscient POV (common I find in many older zines - is the obsession with limited POV in slash a recent one?) causes it to feel slightly remote and distanced to me, not so sensual and immediate. (I have a similar reaction, though on a different scale and in a different context, to Tolkein's writing (also omniscient), which has always left me entirely unmoved - the story he's telling might be moving in the abstract, but the way it's written isn't, too me; I feel very little while I read.) There's something a bit ... distanced, maybe, about it, which keeps me from really feeling the story. I'm not quite sure how to explain it, and it's not like I didn't have any emotional reaction to it - just not an intense one.
I also got a bit tired of Ray's stroppiness, which I thought was excessive at times, particularly toward Bodie. In particular his reaction when he makes a key discovery about Bodie midway through the story struck me as way over the top, as did Bodie's response. But in the end, though she skirts the line at times, the author just manages to avoid that (for me) fatal error of contriving one stupid and gratuitous misunderstanding after another until you want to throw the zine at them and scream grow up! She never quite crosses that line; at times I was a bit frustrated with Ray's behavior in particular, but it was never excessive enough or lasted long enough to put me off, and there was plenty of real relationship and togetherness, not just endless miscommunication.
(As an aside: thinking about that got me pondering how to write a long relationship-driven fic, and the role of angst/misunderstandings/miscommunications in that kind of fic, but I decided to save those musings for another post!).
So overall, if not among my favorites of all time, this was another solid, thoroughly enjoyable story, with many great points and a great satisfying ending, one that I'd definitely re-read (in fact, I have!).
*****
N.B. In thinking over why I so enjoyed both these zines, it's worth noting (to me, at least ;-) that one thing they have in common is that in both, the two guys in the pairing have had sex with men before - both are indisputably bisexual, or perhaps in Bodie's case (particularly in RC) closer to gay. For me this is a good thing. Pros is full of we're-not-gay-we-just-love-each-other fic - O'Yardley and Ellis Ward come to mind as authors who use this model regularly. I can't think offhand of any story by either of them in which Bodie or Doyle has had experience with men before (though I could definitely be overlooking some of O'Yardley's fic; she wrote so many, and I haven't read them all). And it's not just that they haven't had such experiences - it's that once they come together, a big deal is made of the fact that they couldn't imagine sleeping with any other man ever. O'Yardley's Injured Innocents comes to mind here, as does Ellis Ward's Trial Run (and I'm just using these two authors as examples - there are many more).
Clearly there are many fans who really enjoy this paradigm, which is great - I love the fact that in fandom there is something for everyone. And it is possible for me to enjoy stories that employ it, if it's subtle - that is, if the fact that neither has been attracted to a man before isn't emphasized. I'm very, very fond of Ellis Ward's Harlequin Airs (though none of her other stories do much for me, I have to admit), and there are many of O'Yardley fics that I love (one that comes immediately to mind is Bealach Na Ba, in Unprofessional Conduct 1). But in general - and particularly when a big deal is made of the we're-not-gay aspect, when there are repeated pronouncements by one or the other to each other or the world at large that he couldn't imagine doing this with any other man, that he only loves the other - I find myself more and more turned off by the WNGWJLEO model. The "we're not gay" doesn't comport with my own view of the Pros characters - but more than that, the model generally just doesn't work for me, partly because I find it so wildly unrealistic that I simply can't overcome my skepticism - it strikes me as silly rather than romantic - and partly because it's just not the model I personally prefer. It's a bit too sappy for me, too romance-novel-y, comes across to me as too sanctimonious.
The bottom line is, I like the idea that these are men who like fucking men (and who love each other, of course!). This means I generally prefer fic in which they've had experience with men before - one of the reasons that Injured Innocents is lower on my list of favorites than Rainbow Chasers. It also means that if one of them hasn't had sex with men before, discovering that he wants the other requires coming to terms with the fact that he has homosexual inclinations - and I prefer stories that at least acknowledge that, even if it's not a focal point. miriam_heddy's Joy of Camping (in Motet 4) is a great example - Ray discovers, much to his surprise, that he wants Bodie, loves him, but he dismisses out of hand the idea that this was "a sacrifice born of love," that he'd "waited thirty-five years to want one man and not others" - though he's not going to do anything about the others, of course :-). And one of the many, many things I love about the_shoshanna's Never Let Me Down (I adore that story, and one of these days I'll write a better review of it here) is how well she portrays Bodie's difficulty coming to terms with his attraction to men.
*****
And finally, to conclude, a short (for me!) comment about the sole HP fic I read on this trip:
Screaming Virgin, by Predatrix: I still read HP, though much more sporadically and generally only fics that come highly rec'ed (or that are still on my old rec list). Screaming Virgin is a Snape/Hagrid fic. Predatrix's Size Queen is one of my all-time favorite HP fics, and the one that taught me to "never say never" when it comes to slash. Snape/Hagrid? Ewwwww, I said the first time someone mentioned it to me, I'm never going there, no way, no how. Well, I ate crow. True, the first time I read Size Queen I cringed and squirmed - but I read it again, and again, and again, and grew to love it. I still think it's the best Snape/Hagrid fic of all.
Unfortunately, Screaming Virgin (and the short follow-up story, Educational) is no Size Queen. Predatrix has a very unique style and way of dealing with sex; it's highly explicit and almost clinical sometimes, not particularly emotional or passionate or sensual - sometimes this works well for me (as in Size Queen and Photo Perfect, a wonderful and surprisingly touching Snape/Gilderoy Lockhart story; I recommend it highly), and sometimes it doesn't. Here it really didn't. In particular, the Snape in this fic was totally off for me - the characterization felt all wrong. I'm not a big virgin!Snape fan anyway, but that's something I can overlook in the right story; in this fic, however, Snape said and did things, particularly in public, that struck me as so wildly out of character that I was thrown right out of the story. I couldn't in my wildest imagination conceive of Snape acting that way - and more, I wouldn't want to.
So this one was a disappointment. That's okay, though - can't win 'em all, and like I said, others of Predatrix's stories are among my favorite HP fics, so it all balances out in the end.
I will leave the original fic (which included Guy Gavriel Kay, Judith Tarr, and Tanya Huff) for another post, along with my musings about relationship fic and angst....
And one final note: thanks and hugs to queenbamfie for the icon. Oh how I adore that particular shot of Ray ....