rotfl

[ratcreature]

There are some things that could only happen in TS fandom. Like a gen archive posting policies on "bonding fic":

"[...] In the future, CL will no longer archive or link to stories that contain bonding scenes which could be as viewed as homoerotic. This includes stories in which the characters remove key articles of clothing or physically "bond" in a manner that implies near-sexual content. Specific examples of this would include (but are not limited to) total nakedness of either/both characters, touching/physical contact over private areas of the body, sensations which could be construed as an orgasm, and mention of implied sexual attraction between characters of the same sex. [...]"

Comments

[thornsilver]

Are they suggesting there can be no gen stories with bound characters?

*Thinks about the "Dark Guide" series. Withdraws remark.*

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

I'm just picturing the onlist arguments now...

"Damn those slashers for making statements of love while holding each other in the nude homoerotic! It was never like that before their dirty, dirty minds!"

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

lol...yes, that's always been one of the odd things about smarm, hasn't it (yet again a concept only in ts, though tpm would have made a good playing ground for such fics as well...why didn't it???)...i know i've read entire pages long sex scenes that purported to be physical, intellectual, and emotional bonding yet not sex *g*

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Replying to cathexys
1. Blakes7 smarm does exist (I've even written some of it)--however, I don't know if any fandom except Xena has Ubers.
2. "Entire pages long sex scenes thatpurported to be physical, intellectual, and emotional bonding yet not sex"--WNGWJLEO Squared?

[ratcreature]

I'm not sure what the motivation is to post some of these stories as "gen" but I read quite a few of them as "kink" stories, because they really are like D/s stories and bondage fantasies. I mean, take the GDP series, by Susan Foster, there are quite intricate display positions, leashings, punishments and such, and whatever it is for the characters, I *read* it as kink.

But I totally get why a gen archive has problems with stories that have bonding scenes like the ones in Susan Foster's "Cry of the Panther" that are even structured exactly like a typical slash sex scene, and sentences like "Warmth flooded through them both curling up from their stomachs, like a crashing wave as the link came alive in a blaze of emotion." and they even worry that they are going to be stuck together when they don't clean up, so really whether the characters think they have sex or not (and can believe AU settings where the characters wouldn't classify whatever sexual things they do as "sex", I mean, after all there are also people who don't think oral sex is sex...) it's not the kind of interaction that you expect when following a link in a gen archive.

Re:

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Violence is often considered cleaner than sex, so remember: if one guy is whipping another one, it's gen if he doesn't like it and slash if he does.

The reason I don't like h/c is that it often seems to me that the author is punishing her puppets for her own ambivalence about the situations in which it is OK for her to "watch" men's bodies in close juxtaposition.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

*Snort*

*Snorfle*

Heeeeeee.

I'm so picturing the "What do you mean, sexual? DOn't you believe in True Friendship?" repsonse.

[ratcreature]

I get, at least sort of, why people insist the more "traditional" over the top heavy smarm is gen, because as unrealistic as it is (and it is not really my thing) with cuddling, and hugs and what not, those stories are still different from slash, with the degree of "smarm" being something that can vary in both gen and slash stories, just that it gets, IMO, increasingly ridiculous. What I've never really understood is, why in TS some authors, like Susan Foster, want to post their kinky bondage and D/s fantasies, that have scenes with the characters naked and sometimes even orgasms in them, as "gen." Most of the readers for whom those stories work would be just as likely to read them as slash, and the "bonding scenes" are structured like sex scenes, too.