Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 23:01:03 -0500 (EST)
From: SRandant 
Subject: VP:My intro(drum roll, if you please)

Gosh, I hate doing these things.  Okay, here goes.

How does one begin... Do I start by telling you I am scheduled to 
hit(with a resounding thud, no doubt) forty later on this year?  
Or that I live alone except for two very spoiled catpersons?  Or 
that I found fandom(or rather, it found me) in the fall of 1980 
and I have been running around in it willy-nilly ever since?  No, 
I think I will start by telling you how I fell in love with S&H 
and go from there, okay?

S&H came on the air the fall after I graduated high school.  I 
was a teenager so there was always something going on to prevent 
sitting down and actually viewing an episode, so it was well into 
the first season when I finally sat down to watch one.  As it 
happened, I was alone, my mother and sister were out someplace.  
The episode turned out to be 'The Fix'.  Yup, that did it.  When 
my sister walked in the house I grabbed her and started blabbing, 
"You got to watch this show!  There's these two guys...and there 
was a bed and sweating and writhing and holding and groping....it 
was great!"  

Well, needless to say, I was addicted.  Never missed another 
episode.  But, you know, as much as I enjoyed the writhing and 
the holding, I think it was the last scene, when Hutch is up on 
the fence, that got me hooked.  There is so much love in the way 
Starsky is looking at him and even in his laugh, that I knew I 
would never get enough of watching it.  Does that make since to 
anybody?  

In any case, I attended MediaWest '81 and found that I wasn't the 
only one hooked on the boys in bluejeans.  I bought a suitcase 
full of zines and thus my odyssey began.  I attended some D'Cons 
and some D'Utter Cons, and through them got hooked on Pros and 
eventually Wiseguy, Beauty and the Beast(Eeek! How did a straight 
fandom get in there?!) Quantum Leap and XFiles.  And probably 
several more that I can't remember at the moment.  And as it 
happens, I was surfing around a few weeks ago and ran across the 
archives, fell in love with Flamingo's novel(and S/H all over 
again) and well, here I am.  Back in the saddle again.  I'm 
rereading all my old zines, limbering up my checkbook for some 
new ones and looking at my old 'Brass Bed' poster with renewed 
interest.(I'd like to think he's looking at me, but I know he's 
looking at Hutch.  *sigh*  Hutch is such a lucky guy.)  

Okay, I think that's enough for now.(I know, *more* than enough.)  
Sorry about the bandwith, folks.  You will come to know that 
knowing when to shut up is not one of my talents.  Alright. I'm 
going, I'm going, 

SandyR


Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 16:37:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: SRandant 
Subject: [VP] Ponderings, Coming out, the whole deal...

Boy, what you folks get up to when I'm not around. I have one 
night out(an extremely infrequent event), and all the while, this 
wonderful discussion is going on.

There are so many topics that have come up, that I want to 
address, I can't possible quote them all, so I'm not going to 
bother. I will just try to get to most of them in my usual 
rambling, haphazard way.

First, Slash Coming Out. I've already told my coming out story a 
couple of months ago, so I won't bore you with it again. For 
those new listers, suffice it to say, I was twenty-one, very 
naive(I'm from the midwest, you know) and had been in fandom 
approx.  two weeks at the time. What's more important than how it 
happened, is what took place inside of me at the time. I had 
always been attracted to same sex(platonic) relationships. Star 
Trek, Wild, Wild West, Holmes and Watson, heck, even Samwise and 
Frodo.  Mostly men, because most of the strong characters in 
fiction were men. I read and watched what was offered.  While I 
was reading that very first slash story(K/S), somewhere inside me 
there was an almost audible 'click'.  Something like "Oh, *this* 
is what you've been looking for." (This had nothing to do with my 
outside reaction,  which was to turn very red and not even being 
able to respond to the questions of why I looked like I was about 
to have a stroke.<g> As I have said, I was very naive and only 
had the vaguest idea that two men could do this sort of thing and 
*no* idea of the mechanics of it.  Clueless is the word.:-)  

The next year, at MW '81, I discovered that I wasn't the only one 
who had watched and loved S&H. So I went searching for the 
fandom, thinking(naively) that at least there I wouldn't have to 
put up with the 'Do they or don't they?' controversy that raged 
in Star Trek. I thought to myself, "Heck, they practically do it 
on screen."  Of course, I was to find that it raged even hotter 
in the S&H world at the time. Although I stuck with it a number 
of years, the 'Knock three times and ask for Joe' attitude that 
prevailed in S/H wore me down and when Pros came along, I fought 
it for a while but I think part of me was glad to be sucked in 
because the attitudes were so different and open. (At the time, 
Pros was entirely slash. The one and only fandom that I know of 
that started slash and eventually a gen fandom grew up around 
it.)  Closets are fine and sometimes necessary places, but it is 
hard to live in one not of your own making.

On to another subject: Women in fanfiction.

I hate MarySue stories. Having said that, I can tell you some of 
my favorite fanfiction stories in the whole world are exactly 
that. Some of you trekkers may remember "Displaced" and "Tales of 
Feldman" and others I could name. I am guilty of picking up a 
zine at a con and paging though it, finding a woman's name on a 
page more than three times and immediately putting it back down. 
There are several reasons why I have this reaction. First, when 
fanfiction was new to me, I read everything. Literally, anything 
that came into my hands. I read so many poorly done MarySues  
that I developed I kind of phobia against them. New writers and 
poor writers often forget that you must make the reader *care* 
about your characters(even the ones we are familiar with). Still, 
if a story is done well, I will and have read everything. Give me 
a strong character, male or female and make me *care* about them, 
and I will follow an author anywhere. 

So, Mommabird, I will answer your question, with a question. How 
could you even ask whether we still love you?  I know I do. And 
what's more, you write it, I'll read it. And I await it with the 
same white-hot anticipation I have for all of your work. And 
that's all there is to say about that.

Marcia, what a lovely intro!  Welcome and don't stay back stage 
too long. Come on out and join the chorus line.

There are many more posts that I would like to get to but this 
thing is already *way* too long and what's more, I have new 
zines, that I borrowed(ie:stole, slunk away with) from Mel, 
sitting in the other room. Calling to me. In Starsky's sultry 
voice. You know the one he uses in "The Game". The car scene, 
after they leave Huggy's. "My natural superiority." Yeah, that 
one. *sigh* So, I *really* gotta go. 

SandyR


Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:44:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: SRandant 
Subject: [VP] Darn it, Mel!(My re-intro)

Mel, why did you have to go and reintroduce yourself? Sure, 
you're a wonderful person and everyone should know you but we've 
been on the list just about the same amount of time.  So if you 
do it, that means I have to!  But I had myself convinced I didn't 
have to because we've only been on a few months...but, er, 
uhm,...*poop*.  (I can just hear Mel now "You want a little 
cheese with that whine?":-)  Okay, fine, I'll do it.   

Here goes, I'm 39, single, no children but I do have two every 
spoiled cats. I lived alone until very recently and I now share 
an apartment with my newly single twin sister.  I found Star Trek 
fandom, or more accurately, fandom found me in late 1980.   I 
stumbled across S&H fandom at MW '81 and have been happily 
darting in and out of it ever since.  I've dabbled in more 
fandoms than the Queen has hats.  I have zines(from one fandom or 
another) stacked on every horizontal surface in my house and over 
five hundred video tapes.  (I once commented at work that I had 
to stop and buy blank video tapes on the way home and a new 
employee asked me what I was taping.  Three of my co-workers 
turned around and shouted, "Everything!":-)

There, I think that about covers it.  You happy now, Mel?  Go 
ahead and laugh, scooter-girl.  Remember, I know where you 
live.<g>  Oh, Mel, you know I love ya, even when you guilt me 
into doing my list-homework.

BTW, Mommabird, do I get extra-credit for this?  (Now there's a 
question I have never asked in my life.)

SandyR


Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 19:24:43 -0500 (EST)
From: SRandant 
Subject: Re: [VP] Being able to see slash

Mamabird, you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?  How am I to 
carry on an illicit affair with another fandom when you keep 
bringing up subjects that I can't resist?!  


> AprilValen wrote:
>  
> S/H was the first slash I really *saw*, really believed....
> For me, when you suddenly can see slash -- you see it.  You 
can't help it, 
> you can't be talked out of it, it just *works* for you.  

In a message dated 1/17/99 0:35:10 AM EST, 
flamingoslim@delphi.com writes:
>  
>  I loved your post, Martha.  You put this so succinctly, so 
well.  I've
>  never *found* that moment when I could suddenly "see" slash, 
but I keep
>  thinking sooner or later it'll happen.  Just not yet.

I find this subject really fascinating.  How some "see" slash in 
some relationships and others don't.  When I first discovered 
slash(K/S) many years ago it took me sometime to come to terms 
with it.  Actually, only about forty- eight hours but still, it 
wasn't instant.  I had to take a look at the characters and truly 
give some thought to whether I could believe the concept. Turns 
out I could.<g>  Soon after I discover K/S I found S&H fandom and 
started looking for slash.  I found that once my mind was open to 
slash relationships, I couldn't see S&H any other way.  My 
attitude was(and still is) "If they don't, they should!".  But 
this doesn't mean I can see slash in all the relationships that I 
have been introduced to over the years.  I have had very dear 
fannish friends sit me down and show me episodes of shows that 
they were utterly convinced of the slashability of the main 
characters and no matter how hard I squinted, I just couldn't see 
it.  Many pairings simply leave me cold.  And many more just make 
me laugh.  

I've given a lot of thought over the years as to why this is true 
and I believe it comes down to two things, at least where I am 
concerned.  First, I have to be sexually attracted to at least 
one of the characters in order to enjoy slashing them.  If I 
don't have the hots for one of them, frankly I don't care *who* 
they sleep with.<g>  Secondly, for want of a better word, is 
chemistry.  I have to be able to see the spark between the 
characters, read it in their body language.  The way they look at 
each other, the way they move around each other, this to me is 
even more important than what they say or do. Chemistry, I don't 
know how else to put it.  And as far as I'm concerned, if S&H had 
anymore chemistry, they would have to carry a warning like, "Do 
not use near open flame!".:-)

Well, that's my two cents, anyway.
SandyR


