So, on the topic of professional m/m fic... I have found an honest-to-god piece of published Pride & Prejudice slash.
No, seriously, my hand to God. It's P&P slashfic -- explicit P&P slashfic, and I checked it out of my local library. Pride/Prejudice by Ann Herendeen.
In terms of serious treatment of the topic, well, it's more serious than Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, but IDK. On the one hand, it does a very good job of making the male characters' bisexuality fully realized and obvious (it's Darcy/Bingley, Bingley/Jane, Elizabeth/Darcy, and Elizabeth/Charlotte Lucas), with narrative attention paid both to Dacry and Bingley's relationship and to the slowly-building attraction between Darcy and Elizabeth, but on the other hand, I think the attitudes toward sodomy are a little too... casual? Elizabeth and Charlotte being able to have sex without having to worry too much about or cease being seen as marriagable virgins is, alas, probably pretty on the mark (British sodomy laws didn't address lesbians any more than the Bible does, because sex isn't sex unless there's a cock involved, and a woman isn't "ruined" unless a man's involved), so I buy them having relationship prior to their marriage without thinking much of it, just your classic 18/19th century particular friends who are a little closer than most. But sodomy is death-penalty-worthy illegal, so I think it would be more of a Big Deal than the book's thus far portrayed it as (I'm only on page 60 of 350 pages, mind you). And I think there's be less punishable-by-death penetrative sex and more intercrural, but that's just me nitpicking.
Also, could Elizabeth and Charlotte have sex onscreen, please? Darcy and Bingley have done so twice at this point, whereas with Lizzy and Charlotte we've just gotten one bit of cute flirting and a fade-to-black. I'd actually be happier with fade-to-blacks all around, because R-rated Pride & Prejudice just feels weird to me (people don't have onscreen sex in Jane Austen novels -- they just go get compromised/married/pregnant offscreen and we witness the results afterward), but if the guys get sex scenes, I think the girls should as well. I think the male bisexuality is better realized than the female varient thus far (Elizabeth getting aroused by witnessing Darcy and Bingley making out should not be all "oh, what is happening to my body" like your classic historical romance virgin ingenue if she's been having sex with Charlotte. Or even making out with Charlotte, since I don't know how intimate things got during that fade-to-black).
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adding in comment, because I don't feel like editing the post itself
Date: 2010-02-12 05:51 pm (UTC)No, seriously, my hand to God. It's P&P slashfic -- explicit P&P slashfic, and I checked it out of my local library. Pride/Prejudice by Ann Herendeen.
In terms of serious treatment of the topic, well, it's more serious than Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, but IDK. On the one hand, it does a very good job of making the male characters' bisexuality fully realized and obvious (it's Darcy/Bingley, Bingley/Jane, Elizabeth/Darcy, and Elizabeth/Charlotte Lucas), with narrative attention paid both to Dacry and Bingley's relationship and to the slowly-building attraction between Darcy and Elizabeth, but on the other hand, I think the attitudes toward sodomy are a little too... casual? Elizabeth and Charlotte being able to have sex without having to worry too much about or cease being seen as marriagable virgins is, alas, probably pretty on the mark (British sodomy laws didn't address lesbians any more than the Bible does, because sex isn't sex unless there's a cock involved, and a woman isn't "ruined" unless a man's involved), so I buy them having relationship prior to their marriage without thinking much of it, just your classic 18/19th century particular friends who are a little closer than most. But sodomy is death-penalty-worthy illegal, so I think it would be more of a Big Deal than the book's thus far portrayed it as (I'm only on page 60 of 350 pages, mind you). And I think there's be less punishable-by-death penetrative sex and more intercrural, but that's just me nitpicking.
Also, could Elizabeth and Charlotte have sex onscreen, please? Darcy and Bingley have done so twice at this point, whereas with Lizzy and Charlotte we've just gotten one bit of cute flirting and a fade-to-black. I'd actually be happier with fade-to-blacks all around, because R-rated Pride & Prejudice just feels weird to me (people don't have onscreen sex in Jane Austen novels -- they just go get compromised/married/pregnant offscreen and we witness the results afterward), but if the guys get sex scenes, I think the girls should as well. I think the male bisexuality is better realized than the female varient thus far (Elizabeth getting aroused by witnessing Darcy and Bingley making out should not be all "oh, what is happening to my body" like your classic historical romance virgin ingenue if she's been having sex with Charlotte. Or even making out with Charlotte, since I don't know how intimate things got during that fade-to-black).