marycrawford | Wherein much innuendo is heard

Had tremendous fun yesterday watching a couple of H:tLJ episodes with my friend F. You may remember that I asked for pimping help a while ago - I couldn't decide which eps to show her. Eventually I decided to show her Sword of Veracity, one of my own favorites, and then at her request 'one of the episodes with commentaries'. I picked Warrior Princess.

God, I wish every fan who can't entertain the idea of Hercules & Iolaus as more-than-best-friends without frothing at the mouth would listen to Michael Hurst's commentary on this episode. It's a sustained comedy routine building from the homoeroticism of the half-naked forge scene to the phallic symbolism of the knife to the final 'I let Xena get away scot-free because you're more important' scene, which Hurst caps with "I love you Hercules, will you sleep on top tonight?"

Friend F. loved it and says she now knows why I bought the DVDs. *g*

Oh, and I have a new favorite quote, from the Hurst interview elsewhere in the set:

"It's not the lines. It's what goes on in the lines and between the lines that's important."

Incidentally, did anyone else notice that during the fight between Hercules and Xena's baldheaded second-in-command (the fight that ends when Xena slits thehenchman's throat with her chakram), there's a soap bubble floating across the set? I can't figure out how it got there - kids on the set? A bored crew member?

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which Hurst caps with "I love you Hercules, will you sleep on top tonight?"

ROTFLMFAO!! *sigh* I :heart: Michael Hurst. I've got the DVD's, but I haven't got around to watching them yet. That has now been bumped to the top of my to-do list.

Oh, and there are people who don't see the Herc/Iolaus? *boggles*

Excuse me while I moon over your icon for a while...

...

Right, I'm back.

I've got the DVD's, but I haven't got around to watching them yet. That has now been bumped to the top of my to-do list.

Well, good! *g* Besides Hurst's fabulous Warrior Princess commentary, I also recommend the Hurst-Sorbo double act commentaries on Pride Comes Before a Brawl and Gladiator. They're a riot. Hurst is effervescent and Sorbo is deadpan, a great combination.

Oh, and there are people who don't see the Herc/Iolaus? *boggles*

I know, I know. :weeps:
I find it hard to credit too, but there are quite a few Iolaus fans who are aghast at the mere idea of slash. (And there are others who can take it or leave it, or who can at least bear the idea of its existence with good humor. I don't mean to tar everyone with the same brush.)
I think this corner of fandom is highly unusual in that it has more gen than slash fans, and also in that it has a higher volume of well-written gen stories than slash stories.

When I first got into the fandom several years ago, I couldn't find any slash stories that weren't horrifyingly bad. I think the gen fans who are against any slash probably got prejudiced by that, and just haven't gotten over it. (It took me a while to get over it -- it was quite a shock. *g*) The perception at that time was that slash = explicit scenes of Iolaus as helpless little whiny girl and Big Daddy abusive spouse Hercules, and nothing else. Many people didn't seem to realize there was no rule that said slash couldn't be in character, couldn't include an adventure story or be funny or that there couldn't be PG or R rated slash for the people who don't like explicit scenes. And the Hercules slash list I was briefly on at the time really seemed to me to encourage the idea that helpless!girly!Iolaus/jerk!idiot!Hercules was the only acceptable way to write, and anybody who posted anything else was just not doing it right. I think as good writers have found the fandom, it's gotten a lot less divisive.

Though I still find it annoying when I see someone has linked to Less Than Legendary on their site with all these huge "adult content" and "slash" warnings, when the gen stories outnumber the adult ones on the site 3 to 1, and our adult stuff is just not all that adult anyway. But I think those people are in the minority now.

I'm convinced of the correlation between bad slash and slashphobic fans, but I've also had a couple of strange exchanges with fans who were horrified at the idea itself. One of them went so far as to explain that it was nonsense to infer anything from the series because H & I both had girlfriends and wives (yes, and?) and that we couldn't draw on the historical relations between men in Ancient Greece either, because those were anomalies and only contributed to the downfall of Greek civilization. Um, yeah. I decided to step away quietly at that point.

Though I still find it annoying when I see someone has linked to Less Than Legendary on their site with all these huge "adult content" and "slash" warnings

I'd be annoyed too. I rather dislike the idea of warning for slash in the first place. I'm willing, barely, to warn for sexual situations or violence, but I can't stand the idea of writing a G- or R-rated story and then having to issue warnings for it just because it's got slashy underpinnings rather than Priestess Mary Sue ones. And then there's all those other unnecessary warnings - death, angst, AU, bdsm, and on and on. I think my favorite is the hankie warning ("You'll need a hankie for this story, or two or three!!1!") which is a great 'Do not read this story or you will regret it' indicator for me.

Mary, in the mood for a good rant

I'm convinced of the correlation between bad slash and slashphobic fans, but I've also had a couple of strange exchanges with fans who were horrified at the idea itself.

Yeah, you just can't do anything with those people.

And yeah, all the twee little warnings get very annoying. I'm getting rid of my Star Wars fanzines and people keep asking me what pairing they are and if they are Han/Leia fanzines, and I have to tell them that they were all done before pairings, where if you picked up a story and decided to read it, you took responsibility for the fact that you might not like it, and your brain didn't melt at the idea that you might encounter a concept or a character or an opinion you didn't like.

Before pairings? *gasp* What a concept! :-)

I'm not sure if it applies to Herc as much, but I wonder how much of that is just lack of exposure to fandom? The first time I found an online Xena group, I wasted a lunch hour reading all the archives. One guy was writing this horribly craptastic story, and it was like nobody had ever seen fic before, and he was doing this incredibly wonderful thing. Then I saw a post where somebody had this brilliant idea ... Gee, what if Xena got hurt, and Gabrielle had to take care of her?! Followed by a round of "oh mi god, how cool is that!" comments. It was like they just singlehandedly invented hurt/comfort.

At that point, I decided I'd better close the browser before my brain exploded. :->

It was like they just singlehandedly invented hurt/comfort.

LOL! Yeah, I do think it has a lot to do with how much of fandom people have seen.

I think this corner of fandom is highly unusual in that it has more gen than slash fans, and also in that it has a higher volume of well-written gen stories than slash stories.

Aha! I thought I noticed that in other fandoms percentage of good slash and gen stories is uneven but put it to seeing things.

You mean that in those other fandoms, you've found more good slash than gen fiction, right?

I've certainly found that to be the case in, oh, the Sentinel for example. (Which isn't to say that there aren't some stellar gen stories in that fandom.)

Wherein much innuendo is heard

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