Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 23:28:01 -0800 (PST)
From: yshu30
Subject: Re: New member!

> "neighbor" in VenicePlace (located, obviously, on Mars) is 
someone who
> wrote to me after seeing our fiction on the Archive!  We've 
been
having
> fun writing back and forth, so I thought she'd like to visit 
our
> playground!  I hope she'll introduce herself when she feels
comfortable.

Hi everyone, that would be me that Flamingo is referring to.

My name's Yolanda, and like she said, I found your web site 
first, and came wandering in. I've been a slash addict since I 
was a teenager watching S&H reruns (even my mom, watching over my 
shoulder,  asked me if they were gay!) and slashing them in my 
head. Not that I knew the term back then, of course.

I've been writing in Sentinel fandom for the last few months -- 
hey, the show's current, the guys are snags (sensitive new age 
guys, and cute,  too), and I haven't watched an S&H episode in 
over 15 years. Forgive  me for my infidelity ... but S&H were 
definitely there before B&J, and hopefully, now that I've found 
this group, they'll be back again.

I'm definitely happy to be here, and thanks for having me.

- Yolanda


Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:22:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: yshu30
Subject: Re: [VP] A Brand New Project

<cough> <cough> 
Uh, it's a pleasure to see you all in this torture chamber ...  
um  ... I'm supposed to call it the rec room, right? That's a 
real nice handcuff theme on the new wallpaper, and how *did* you 
get that stain out of the carpet?

I started writing this note as a slash coming-out story a month 
ago, but RL interfered, and it got lost in my to-be-sent box.  
But now I'm finished with my second job, and my life is as normal 
as it's ever been.  

How I discovered slash? Hmm ...  I think I fall under the heading 
of "been a slasher all my life." My first fandom was K/S.  I 
discovered Star Trek with a guy I'd grown up with -- whenever we 
saw each other, we'd talk about the episodes (we had a contest to 
name the episode based on the opening scene, or a PR still), the 
tech details, whatever we'd manage to obsess about.  (It still 
astonishes me how obsessive I was / can be) 

I remember writing down "Kirk kissed Spock" on a piece of paper. 
That's all.  And then he found it.  It remains one of the most 
mortifying and embarrassing moments of my life.  I didn't put 
anything else on paper for a few years, but I didn't give up 
slashing in my head.

Right about then (early 80s), S&H was rerunning on television.  
I'd race home from school every day (I must have been around 14) 
to watch it. My mom (puttering around the house, watching over my 
shoulder) finally asked me if they were gay.  I still didn't know 
what slash was, just that it was giving me this nifty feeling 
whenever they'd hug or that bit in the credits where the bomb 
goes off and they get thrown into each other's arms.  Still 
wasn't writing anything, just making up little scenarios in my 
head.  

Then RL set in after high school.  Went to university, had a lot 
of different jobs (weirdest and most fun was the comic shop), 
made a lot of life-long friends, and discovered SF fandom (I've 
been reading SF all my life; got shelves jam-crammed with books 
to show for it).  Worked on Westercon when it was here in 
Vancouver, and picked up more life-long friends.

And then, last fall, I found Killa's K/S stories on the net, and 
Karen Nicholas' list of slash fic on the net 
(http://members.aol.com/ksnicholas/fanfic/slash.html, before 
anyone e-mails me privately).  

Wow! I'd known that slash existed for a few years, but didn't 
know where to find it, who to ask about it.  Found and started 
writing Sentinel fic, then found the S/H web site a few months 
later, wrote to Flamingo about her fabulous novel-in-progress 
(and how's that going, mom?) and here I am.

Oh yeah, and telling my sweetie about my slash obsession? Well, 
Debbie Ramsey and I had been corresponding about my fic, and when 
she discovered that I'd never read a zine, she ever-so-kindly 
sent me a bunch, plus some music vids.  He never even noticed the 
zines (sweetly oblivious, is he), so finally I threw the vids 
into the vcr and explained to him what was happening.  The 
amusing thing is that he (the car fanatic) started dating the 
cars on the Pros vids by the licence plates (the letters at the 
beginning of the plate indicate the first year in which the car 
was registered) and didn't blink an eye at the content of the 
vids.  (Meanwhile, I was jumping up and down because it was the 
first glimpse of S&H I'd had in almost two decades!) 

It's nice having him around though, for a different perspective.  
When Blair (Sentinel) was found in the fountain, his first 
reaction was laughter.  He's been tossed in there too -- it's the 
initiation ritual for all the University of British Columbia 
engineering students.  (I was fine with that reaction, too -- 
knew that it was going to be the cliffhanger -- until the next 
day when the cancellation was announced.)

So it's been a short trip in fandom for me, nine months since I 
discovered it on the net.  But it's been a fun and absorbing 
journey, and I'm looking forward to many more years in it.  I've 
already met one person on this list (took Ruth and her roommates 
around Vancouver when they came for SentinelCon), and I'm looking 
forward to meeting more of you in person and on-line over the 
next few years.  It may have been a short trip so far, but it's a 
strange and very fun one, and this neighbourhood is the best one 
I've found!

Yolanda

(can I get a room near the Pros extension? I think we should 
install a transporter room, too, so that we can get to the 
Enterprise, Cascade and London a little more quickly.)


Subject: Re: [VP] and how did YOU get into slash?
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 23:32:58 -0800 (PST)
From: yshu30
To: veniceplace@jbx.com

Well, I've always been a slasher -- or at least since I watched 
Star Trek and S&H when I was a teenager and had little fantasies 
in my head about how the guys might finally get together. 

I was active in SF fandom for a few years but didn't run into any 
slash fen though I knew they were out there. (I guess I didn't 
know the secret passwords then <g>.)

I've also been on the net for about eight years and every six 
months or so, I'd do a search for "slash fiction" or "K/S." Well, 
about a year and a half ago, I hit the jackpot -- Killasdra's 
"Turning Point" K/S series. (That's about right, I guess -- the 
first few years were very much a "frontier mentality" on the net, 
where women were about five, then ten, then we celebrated when we 
hit twenty percent of the online population, until about a year 
or two ago, when we hit approximate equity)

Anyway, I digress. I started with the K/S stories on dejanews, 
followed people's sig lines to their web sites, went through all 
the TOS stuff, found the giant list of slash fic sites, found the 
S/H archive, and discovered this interesting series called the 
Sentinel, which seemed to have a ton of stories and was even 
filmed in my town.

So here was all this great fiction, which included all the stuff 
that I'd been imagining in my head, and occasionally scribbling 
down -- and then some. I was hooked. Surfed the net at work, read 
the pros disk library when the sweetie went to bed, and basically 
had a very unproductive few months even though I was working full 
time and teaching on the side!

So, Flamingo, there are some of us out here who see the slash 
first. However, I must confess, I did watch Miami Vice when it 
was on and tried to slash Crockett and Tubbs, but failed. They 
didn't do anything for me then, though after reading your 
stories, I'd love to re-watch the show! (From the same time 
period, Simon & Simon did work for me, and so did the Riptide 
guys, but the S/S incest thing now weirds me out, and I haven't 
seen any Riptide slash.) 

Oh, and I'm out to my fiance, but not to my friends. I figured 
I'd better tell him before he found the stories on our computer's 
hard drive, or the zines that were being lent to me, sitting in 
our den. But he figured they were course materials or something 
(are all guys that blind? These were Lynna Bright's S/H zines; my 
"connection" was starting me off with the best) and while he knew 
that I was writing, he'd promised not to look at my stuff on the 
computer. Of course, now he doesn't want to. <g>

The best part is that we argue about whether or not characters 
are slashable. He's appalled by my latest fandom -- he really 
likes the Sports Night guys, but doesn't want to see them 
slashed. Poor baby. He also figures that Jim and Blair aren't 
doing it, though he's not too sure about Starsky and Hutch. But 
he certainly appreciates the effect of slash on the female 
libido. <bg>

Yolanda
