[LMB] Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta OT: (again)

[paal at gis.net]

----- Original Message Follows -----
> Marna:
> "Lots of tease and titillation, lots of consumerism 
> and materialism, but speaking as a sex educator and 
> activist, what we mostly have is pleasure in service 
> to something else, usually selling things, not 
> pleasure for the sake of pleasure."
> 
> You've nailed that one to wall. 
> 
> By the by, I want your advice rather badly: The original
> Bill W. comment was that what little he saw of slash
> he disliked *because it reminded him of the modern
> trope that everything and it's brother (not to mention
> the dog) had to be about Teh Sex*
> 
> You, everyone (even me!) have agreed that, as you say,
> "because slash is a subgenre of erotic/romantic fiction. 
> [...so...] in this genre, the odds are right up there 
> with the odds that the handsome plumber is just going 

"handsome?"  I think that you are granting WAY too much taste and
elegance to that industry of filmmaking, the criteria were willingness
and ability to perform in front of AV recording devices, NOT to be
handsome or be able to act....

> to fix the sink and leave."
> 
> What I had been trying to comment on, almost from the
> get go, is the side issue, that is, that Bill W. dislikes
> said modern trope (of which, slash is, IMHO, a rotten
> example). Hence the correction for our age, Apollo vs.
> the Wine-God, etc. etc. etc. Call it the "finding the
> sexual subtext in fargin' EVERYTHING phenomenon if you

Or, to create a linkage and impose it--but I wouldn't call that sex
necessarily--it's gratutious sexualization, it's a reduction to
crassness and degradation and coarseness, a lack of elegance, a lack of
couth, a lack of courtesy, a lack of respect, and a "grab'em by their
male gonads!" attitude on the part of so much advertising... it's tacky,
it's tawdry, it's demeaning, insulting, and offensive.  If the product
were trashy porn I wouldn't be bothered by it, but it's not crude porn
that the advertising is pitched for -selling-, as opposed to used as a
sales -technique-...

> like. It's as if everything had to be about PENGUINS.
> You wouldn't want to drag in the folks making treks to
> So. Polar regions into your complaints.
> 
> And then of course, I got side-tracked by the whole, 
> Hey! Maybe slash has to do with the whole escaping the
> un-romance of diapers and biology and whatnot.

> 
> Kirsten (posting after hours-in another 20 min. I turn
> back into a 'net pumpkin, alas)