Midnight Slash

In which our fox reflects on the path that led him to this place, is amused at someone else’s discomfiture, experiences the same discomfiture himself, battles his six-year-ago self, and ultimately emerges, if not triumphant, at least alive.

Lyda Morehouse was one of the other GOHs and is a really fun person. We met her at WorldCon when we went to one of her readings (an in-progress superhero book which is so entertaining that everyone I tell about it immediately wants to buy it) and then talked with her and Naomi Kritzer, another engaging writer (she has a story in FurPlanet’s Ursa Major Award collection, a story that she didn’t find out had been nominated for an award until they asked her for permission to reprint it in the collection) for like two hours even though it was already past eleven.

In the course of that conversation, Lyda talked about writing slash fanfiction. She had once done a reading where she had to point to people in the audience to say certain words for her because she was too embarrassed to say them herself, which we thought was adorable and awesome. The conversation came around to her saying, “What I would love to do is a midnight reading of slash at Gaylaxicon.” I said (without thinking) that I would happily do that with her, and she said, “All right, done!” So we set it up and were both kind of happily looking forward to it as a fun thing we’d do, and we’d laugh about it, you know.

Only I had started thinking after I agreed to do it that I don’t really write that much fan fiction, and what did I have that really qualified as slash? There was only one story, or set of stories, and those were the six-year-old Loonatics Unleashed fan fiction stories I wrote (you can find them over on SoFurry if you really want but I am not going to link them ). The first one is just a “what if these characters hooked up” story; the third one got very plot-heavy because I was so frustrated that the writers of the show were not putting these characters in more interesting situations. But the second story was about 4,500 words, had good character moments as well as sex, and seemed just right.

Meanwhile, Lyda was getting more nervous. She asked me if she should read something more erotic or less erotic, and I said my story was pretty detailed erotica, and she ended up bringing both of hers. She writes fan fiction for Bleach, shipping Renji and Byakuya (Google says those are the correct names), and she said one of her stories was more funny and the other was more sweet. So once it was midnight and we got to the panel and started, you know, doing this thing, we decided that since she had two and I had one—my wordcount was a little shorter than her two combined—she would start, then I would read mine, then she would read her second one.

And then she stared at the paper and kept saying, “I can’t believe I agreed to do this. Whose idea was this?” I tried to encourage her (perhaps a little too much) and eventually she got up the nerve to go ahead and start. And it was a very sweet story, and it was erotic but not at all explicit.

So when she was done, I said, “I hope that was your less erotic one,” and she said, “Um, no.” And I thought about my story, which has two pretty detailed blowjobs in it, but you know, I was up there on stage already and there were a good thirty people in the panel (it was the best-attended panel I think either of us had the whole con). So I went into my spiel, where I had to introduce not only the concept of the Loonatics show and the characters of Tech and Rev (I printed out pictures), but also for the non-furries had to explain what a “sheath” is (and why a bunch of us had giggled at Lyda’s reading when Renji, in taking off his sword, had “held on to the sheath a little longer than necessary”). There were no knots in the story, but of course that came up as well.

And then I found myself just as embarrassed as Lyda had been, because here I am reading this story from a terrible show about a bunch of characters close enough to the familiar Looney Tunes that people have context for them. And as with Lyda, I think the embarrassment comes from the use of the characters. Of course, in my case, I also had to read lines like “found the roadrunner’s hardness” and so, yeah.

The saving grace of that story is that it is funny. I mean, as the author, I meant it to be funny, and the people laughed at all the right times. Also at some of the times that are funny just because sex is funny. And by the time the sweet ending happened, I got a big “Aww,” from people, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

The most amusing part was that after about a page, Lyda started reading over my shoulder, and would often react to things I was about to read, and several times the audience laughed at that. I did not get to see most of her reactions because I knew if I looked, I would just start laughing myself. Fortunately (maybe), Kit was recording the whole thing, and he has promised to post it online somewhere.

Then Lyda read her second story, which was indeed funny, and also sweet, and also not explicit at all. She mumbled something about the explicit parts being online if people wanted to look for them. But Julia Rios, of the Outer Alliance (sitting in the front row and smiling up at us the whole time) said that the sequence actually worked well, because Lyda’s first story was really a lot of foreplay, and then mine was sex, and then her second one was post-sex relationship issues.

After that we hung around on the panel and gave away her printouts of her stories and the three pictures I’d brought to people who told us their favorite/weirdest slash pairings. The first winner was an “Atlas Shrugged” pairing; someone else said “Swamp Thing/Silver Surfer”; one of the furries in attendance said “Scar and Beast,” which led to a little discussion about Disney slash, Mickey Mouse bondage, and Harlan Ellison. And overall it was a lot of fun, and I’m glad to have done it. It seemed like everyone had a good time.

Then it was about two in the morning and we had to go to bed, so naturally we stayed up chatting with Lyda and Julia for another hour.

(I’d met Julia in Boston this spring, and then completely missed her at WorldCon. But she was at the Thursday dinner and we had a very enjoyable extended talk on Friday, with lunch. She is very active in the writing community and knows a lot about everything and everyone.)