Ewww!

[andrewducker]

Schindler's List Fanfic.

No, actually, worse than that.

Schindler's List _Slash_ Fanfic.

here

"Thanks" to spidermonster

Comments

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

there's also Narnian slash, and Biblical.

Everything's possible, you know.

[andrewducker]

Actually, I find Narnian or Biblical Slash fairly palatable by comparison.

But porn set amongst the Holocaust?

Slightly tasteless, even for me.

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

People had sex during World War II.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Then you should definitely avoid Bent at all costs. Brilliant and powerful play (or film) but doubtless you would just dismiss it as "tasteless porn set amongst the Holocaust" because, after all, there are gay men in it. And they fall in love. And they have sex. Goodness me, how distasteful. /sarcasm off

[andrewducker]

I did rather like Kiss of the Spiderwoman...

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Oh for heavens sake J! there is a difference (and you know it) between slash fanfic and gay men having sex in a play about the Holocaust (it would be appalling if there WERE no such plays - given as you know extremely well gay men were as mucha target of the holocaust as jews..
I agree with Andy on the general feeling of squickness (for a change!)

And BTW I saw Bent in one of its early theatrical performamces before it weas so widely known.

[weetanya.livejournal.com]

so wait, there IS biblical slash?

[andrewducker]

I hear that God and Jesus were 'close'.

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

I've heard of it, but never found it myself and can't tell you anything. rollick told me about it.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Sure - I wrote a Jesus/Matthew short story once. (No sex, though, I have to say. Their eyes met passionately... and the Gospels are full of stories of men taking one look at Jesus and deciding that he is the one thing in the world that matters. Very slashy.)

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

There's slash for everything. There's slash for smurfs and Thundercats.

http://www.intimations.org/yuletide/cgi-bin/search.cgi

do a search for "bible."

There's other places, I'm sure, but this is the only one I know of off hand.

[weetanya.livejournal.com]

o good christ.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I think the thing that bothers me worst about this comment of yours, Andrew, is that you plainly didn't bother to read any of the stories which you casually condemn as "distasteful". You just decided, sight unseen, that if it was a story about a same-sex relationship set during the Holocaust it must be "distasteful". And that attitude is, itself, offensive to me - it's exactly the kind of thinking I was writing about in Unpopular Opinions (http://www.livejournal.com/users/yonmei/174017.html) - that somehow same-sex relationships are inferior and wrong - you don't say it would be wrong to write about a man and a woman having a relationship at the time of the Holocaust, you're just specifically condemning a same-sex relationship.

Care to revise your statement?

[andrewducker]

I didn't even consider the same-sex bit, actually.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Slash is about same-sex relationships by definition.

[andrewducker]

I know that. I just didn't remember at the time. Not being a slash-fan myself, I tend to think if 'sexual fanfic' as slash.

Not technically correct I know, and I'm sorry if I caused offence by my lack of memory, it certainly wasn't intentional.

Which reminds me - the idiot with his anti-fan-fic stuff is just ridiculous. Sigh.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Not technically correct I know, and I'm sorry if I caused offence by my lack of memory, it certainly wasn't intentional.

Well, the thing is, you wouldn't have made the mistake you made if you'd bothered to read the stories you condemned. What this comes down to, I guess, is that when you condemn anything sight unseen you risk making yourself look like a bigoted idiot who is working from false preconceptions.

(It's a general rule with book reviewers, if you have a book to review that you don't have time to read, you praise it mildly: you do not make any scathing comment unless you have time to read it.)

Which reminds me - the idiot with his anti-fan-fic stuff is just ridiculous. Sigh.

Indeed - and he has the same problem you have: he is condemning without first acquiring adequate information. Of course, he's making himself look like rather more of an idiot, because he's doing so at length whereas yours was just clearly a throw-away one-liner - but it's the same thing at root: condemning from a position of ignorance makes you look ridiculous.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

So do I have to read everything I suspect I don't like just to make sure? Even though that may not leave me with remotely enough time to read things I *do* like?

And am I barred from making any comment on *anything* till I have imbibed the entirety of Western culture - or just anything about same sex relationships?

How much of the stuff I love have you read do you think?

I'm sorry but this is absurd; and worse, it's something you would not like I suspect - it's censorship.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

The best example I can think of is 'Clerks', by Kevin Smith.

It might have a great script, it might have an ending that ties it altogether, but frankly, after watching thirty minutes of it I thought it was turgid crap with no plot, and turned it off. Ditto 'Hanging Up', though it could be argued that the crimes there were far greater, making several good actresses virtually unwatchable.

Taking that further (and sticking with film, as opposed to written works), I've never even seen 'The Horse-whisperer'. Frankly, the subject matter completely bores me, and I can merrily dismiss it as rancid without witnessing anything more than a couple of trailers.

That is, I guess, what opinion is all about.

The fic that Andy refers to may be fantastically written, full of intricate, touching dialogue and pathos about the people and the situation, but if the idea doesn't appeal, he's perfectly entitled to be turned off by it.

Personally I agree with Andy - I have nothing against slash-fic, but equally, I'm always on the side of 'just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done.' There are so many possibilities for the setting of slash-fic (including prison, encampments, and so-on), why choose something that marries thoughts of sex with thoughts of genocide? Frankly, to me, a mind that requires that sort of stimulation is a mind that needs a bit of looking after.

I haven't seen 'Bent' - I assume it's reason for existence is more than just to provide a setting for sex?

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. In fact to be honest, I can't recall if the gay characters in it do have sex at all (other thanj implicitly).

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Well, there you go then.

Unless I'm mistaken, the entire point of slash is the sex/relationship. Therefore rendering the setting, to a degree, incidental. Meaning that the holocaust isn't necessary as a setting.

In other news, it's snowing....

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Meaning that the holocaust isn't necessary as a setting.

You've never seen Bent either, have you? It's a play about a sexual relationship. It's also a play about the Holocaust. You cannot simply take one element away and leave the other.

[jsangspar.livejournal.com]

Can too, you'd have a different play, but you could. A play about a sexual relationship during the Holocaust is different, in that the sexual relationship requires the Holocaust in order to play out as written - I realize this is probably what you meant but I am kind of a bastard about semantics

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Oh, for heaven's sake.

Andrew said the idea of Schindler's List slash offended him. (If I'm misinterpreting your reaction, Andrew, please say.) Further down in comments, I discovered what offended him was the idea of erotica set during a movie about the Holocaust.

Yet when I read the handful of stories to which Andrew had linked, while about half of them were slash, not one of them qualified as erotica by anyone's standards - not even the most Puritanical. So Andrew was condemning stories which he hadn't read for being something which they weren't - which he would have discovered they weren't had he taken the time to read them. (He could then have condemned them for being trite and sentimental, which they were.)

Just for added effect, since Andrew was misusing the word "slash" to mean "any kind of erotica" when in fact it means "fanfiction about same-sex relationships" he was making himself look homophobic - he appeared to be arguing that it was wrong to write fiction about same-sex relationships set during the Holocaust.

Now, you're arguing (rather absurdly) that it's perfectly okay to criticise from a position of wilful ignorance: fine. Take the line that it would be perfectly okay for a movie critic to slam the Lord of the Rings trilogies for being hackneyed, annoying fantasy, when he hadn't been to see them. Take the line that it would be perfectly okay for someone who's never been an academic to complain that people who have academic jobs laze around all the time and plagiarise their student's essays. Take the line that it's just fine for a man to jeer that women complain too much about sexism because he's never experienced any sexism.

But meanwhile, I will continue to think that someone who criticises something from a position of wilful ignorance is making themselves look ridiculous. And you can call that censorship if you like!

[tisme.livejournal.com]

You're right about Andy mixing up his perception of slash as 'erotica' rather than 'same sex erotica'.

But

The bad thing about opinions is that they are just that. And if we say it's ok to have any opinion you want, we have to include the ones we don't like/don't agree with. So yes, actually, it is ok for someone to have an uninformed opinion, because it's an _opinion_. You can feel free to educate them, argue with them, try and point out the opposing view, but you can't just condemn their opinion as 'wrong' because it doesn't get with your view of the world.

People can always revise their opinions, which is the cool thing about them. Friends have been horrified in the past when I've said 'I think ....xyz' and rushed to 'correct' me. I told them repeatedly that I was working with the information I had, and if it was something that grew into a problem/affected my life/that I wanted to sort out in my head, I would do more to find out about it. And they, obviously, could feel free to try and educate and inform me, as long as they're not _uber_ pushy about it. I have, on many occasions, changed my opinion and am happy to do so, but an opinion, in it's base form, is just a starting point.

It is, however, true, that if people go around spouting off lots of these O's without any kind of back up, then people will stop taking them seriously or listening at all. That is your choice. But don't say that people's opinions, even if they are horrifically offensive to can't be used to criticise. Is where the person is coming from - of course it can be used. We can't all be Buddha/Steven Hawking/the greatest slash fiction writer in the world. We all have to start somewhere - just choose to keep the people in your life that are willing to learn and adapt and grow, try your best with the others, and let it go.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Well, having had several days to think about it, actually, you're right. People have uninformed opinions about books they haven't read all the time - I've made judgements about books based on the cover/the author/the section of the bookshop it's in, without ever even picking it up to check out the blurb and the first few pages. And I have a right to do that.

But I do think that at the point when I start sounding off about a book I haven't read, if someone who has read it says "But you're wrong, and furthermore you obviously haven't even read it!" at that point I would duck my head, admit "Well, no, I haven't - " and shut up until I had read it. (Or at least preface my comments with "But isn't it supposed to be ..." if I were operating on other people's critical judgements of the book which I had read.)

Livejournal is an odd place because it's difficult to draw the dividing line between "Is this person sounding off in public" - in which case anyone who hears has a right to join in - or "Is this person venting in private" in which case, well, joining-in should not happen.

I can vent about Crime and Punishment because I've read it and I think it's one of the most boring novels I've ever struggled through. Other people may find it interesting - fair enough. "Boring" is a subjective judgement. But I can't vent about the rest of Dostoevsky's work, because I've never read anything else by him: if I judge it by C&P it's all boring, but I may be wrong to do so - and I've been told by someone who disliked C&P but liked the other novels that the others are more interesting. Okay. I'll shut up until I read them. Maybe I'll find they're dull too.

I still think, however much right anyone has to their uninformed opinion, they have to admit it should always give way to an informed opinion... ;-)

[andrewducker]

I'd tend to agree.

Dammit.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair reason, how I love thee....

[jsangspar.livejournal.com]

first: I have not read any of the stories mentioned in this thread

second: I realize you have somewhat acquiesced, and I also hope you do not take this as an attack on yourself

but here is a defense of herr ducker's original post, as best as I can manage::

slash fiction is, as a rule, not simply homosexual-relationship fanfiction, but homoerotic fanfiction. This isn't always true, but for the purposes of the internet, it's generally safe to consider it so; therefore, the use of the term slash implies a story whose basis and main reason for existence is the sexual aspects it portrays.

I am unfamiliar with Schindler and Itzhak's relationship, having read nothing of either man and having not seen the film, but the concept of Schindler, say, looking up from plans to save jews, meeting Itzhak's eyes across the table, sweeping the plans from the smooth, mahogany desk, and having wild sex right then and there is, indeed, offensive; it would be as offensive if it were his attractive, Braun-esque secretary, say. It trivializes the Jew plight by putting sex as a more important motivation to the main characters.

Basically, if you have a fanfiction about a man who saves thousands of people, DON'T MAKE WHO HE BAGS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT HE DOES; fiction is powerful but simple, and most people don't realize that by ignoring the heroic deeds of a man in favor of his lust, they're doing justice a terrible disservice.