Hmm, no comments on the Neal Pollack thing? 'kay.

I'll have comments after 7 pm. Remind me.

Awww...

Phill's like, Old Skool! It's PHILL!!!

Braaaiiiiiiiiiins, Orb, some other stuff.

It's a tad absolute to say that every non-homophobic person presented with the finest the slash world has to offer will become a convert and immediately not uncomfortable.

Word. FWIW, slash doesn't squick me, it just doesn't interest me. (As erotica, I hasten to add. There's some well-written slash I've appreciated as fiction.) But in general, I want a woman in a PWP so there's someone I can identify with. I know this is, like, the opposite of every other mostly-straight girl on the plant, but you like what you like.

I know this is, like, the opposite of every other mostly-straight girl on the plant, but you like what you like.

Nah - I'm pretty sure you're in a majority.

Um.. good question.

I came online, I looked a Yahoo, I wondered what to search for, I thought, "Oh- that funny show I watched the other night. Buffy the Vampire Slayer or whatever." And I search, and I looked at sites, and I watched the show again, and I thought, "That Spike, he's good-looking," so I went in search of scripts, and pictures, and I found fanfic on the same sites.

So then I read things with Spike in- anything, everything. Spike/Buffy to start with (I remember hours spent at Obsidian Moonlight fondly), then Spike/Drusilla (when I started to catch up with season 2), then Spike/Harmony. I hated that, so I looked for something else. Spike/Xander presented, so I read that. Then I found Spike/Angel- especially Days of Our Unlives and I was hooked. From there, I watched the show, I read the stories, and started writing my own. It all seemed perfectly natural at the time. After all, I'd been more intrested in gay men than straight men for years- ever since I found out that Monty Python's Graham Chapman was gay, I think, or maybe before. I'd thought hard about Legolas/Gimli at quite a young age, too.

Goddess that's a long post.

Edit: and major x-post. I think straight women who identify with women probably are the majority; I'm a straight (or at least not mainly gay) woman who happens to identify better with gay men.

Girl/girl slash does absolutely nothing for me. Everything I've read so far reads like some slumber party gone bad. I like male slash because most males have to work harder to get to place where they'll admit deep feelings for someone else, especially someone who, for one reason or another, they don't think they're supposed to have those feelings for. I love seeing tough guys got all mushy.

The mushy thing is a large part of it, especially with men (Kirk, Luke, Legolas) who spend more time with other men than women. And with the others.

I'm not saying that very well.

Girl/girl only (first time I typed Giles/girl, which says a lot about my mind) does something for me in ceratin cases- women I can 'get inside'. Drusilla/anyone, yes; Willow/Tara, no.

I love seeing tough guys got all mushy.

hate seeing ANYONE get all mushy.

allergic to it, I think.

Nah - I'm pretty sure you're in a majority.

In the population at large, mebbe. In the fanfic community, I feel like I have two heads or something for not (normally) getting all that worked up by, as connie put it, "seeing tough guys get all mushy." The last time this came up in a discussion, someone said she liked het or girl/girl less as a straight woman, because it wasn't all about the delicious manflesh. (Paraphrasing here).

But I do agree that girl/girl, like any sort of erotica, depends on the girls. Drusilla/Darla or Faith/Willow, sure. Faith/Buffy, even, if the writer's good enough. But Buffy/Willow doesn't work.

For reasons that cannot and will not be investigated here, women write the majority of slash fiction.

Hmm. That's a very interesting statement. Very leading. I wonder why he bothers to mention that he cannot and will not investigate this, if he's not going to?

These writers obviously aren't professionals, but they have characters in their heads, and they want to tell stories. Who's to say they are any lesser, as storytellers, than this year's Booker Prize nominees? Most sane people, of course.

Ooh, ouch, Neal, I'm so mortally wounded.

All in all, what I found most surprising is that people wrote fan fiction about his anthology and then sent it to him.

hate seeing ANYONE get all mushy.

Um... you probably aren't enjoying that epic of mine, then. Humm.