From: "Dana Shilling" dshilling@worldnet.att.net

Shane said:

...

But the original show was about politics, not sex, after all,

The original show wasn't really very much about politics--

Dunno about that-- have you read Jim Smith's episode reviews in Zenith and in Horizon 39, on "Trial" and "Gambit"? Quite a bit of the series seems to be about politics of a very Byzantine level of complexity and intrigue.

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...

We don't even know what sort of governmental system the fictional country of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" had, but that doesn't make it any less a political story.

The original show was in large part about blowing things up, which may have had an element of sublimation for the characters.

I'd say it had less to do with sublimation and more to do with terrorism.

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).

Just to play devil's advocate here, some people might ask why the sex is necessary at all. Some think it gets in the way of a good story.

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.

Well, I've read (and enjoyed) some of your stories, and I agree from those that it is quite possible to do slash with interesting premises and messages. But I think it's the awful ones that people object to more than the interesting ones. If I want to read sex for sex's sake, frankly, I'll buy a porn mag.

Fiona

The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net

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