Shane said:
But the original show was about politics, not sex, after all,
The original show wasn't really very much about politics-- we don't even know the name of the last President before Servalan, for instance, or what Sleer was Commissioner of, or how the Federation was structured and administered, or how the caste system worked...The original show was in large part about blowing things up, which may have had an element of sublimation for the characters. and we shouldn't let the politics of it be overwhelmed by
the sex. I'm sure there's very political slash out there but most of it
does
seem to be just PWP.
There are several different issues here. Actually I'd say by now most slash stories are NOT PWPs, the sex occurs in the context of a plot (although it might be a romantic rather than an action plot). A story might concentrate on science, or anthropology, or fashion, with a greater or lesser degree of explicit depiction of sexual activity between some pairing(s). (If I'm in a good mood, I tend to write stories where all the characters get involved with someone--either that or I just like making life difficult for cataloguers.)
It's very much a question of the author's intention, what s/he thinks writers are interested in (or will stand for) and also how well the author can handle the political element--I did a fairly long story about the crew's encounter with a kind of Taliban Planet (and Cally's rather alarming original-character girlfriend). It is universally acclaimed as the worst story I ever wrote, not because there's anything wrong with political B7 but because I couldn't integrate the political material into a story with any degree of subtlety.
I certainly wouldn't say that all slash stories are terrific--some of them are perfectly awful--or even that they necessarily involve any psychological subtlety--just that a slash story doesn't rule out the possibility of being good science fiction, sociology, psychology, action/adventure, etc., merely by adding the potential for being effective smut.
-(Y)