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discoveredinaljAnother in my big batch of second-hand multi-media zines from the states: Dark Fantasies 2. Published by Maverick Press in 1994, with 261 pages and seven stories. There is one Pros crossover and one Pros AU story.
This is a big thick zine, absolutely crammed into the binding. I have to take more care turning the pages than with the others with fewer pages and the same sized binding because of that. The text is a much smaller size than the Concupiscence zines I bought at the same time and it's a modern-looking (well, it was then) sans serif font. Really appropriate for the Blakes 7 stuff, but it was a bit jarring for the Restoration era Pros AU. There are no internal illustrations, but the front cover is a shiny piece of card with a black and white Suzan Lovett illustration on it. There are scans of this illustration online. It's nice to have an actual hard copy of a picture for once, but the contrast is actually better on the versions on the web! The back cover has a sort of cartoon parody of the front illustration.
The stories in Dark Fantasies 2 are three Blakes 7 stories, two Man from UNCLE stories, one crossover between Pros (yay), Starsky and Hutch, and something I hadn't heard of called Forever Knight, and the sole Pros one. They're all fairly long.
I would not suggest buying this zine if all you want is zine-only Pros fic. The Pros stores are both on the web.
So Pros content first:
The Alchemist's Measure, by Kitty Fisher. 39pp long, AU (Restoration times) and lots of BDSM. Online: The Alchemist's Measure by Kitty Fisher I reviewed it in the Reading Room recently, and you will gather from the discussion that I am not remotely impartial: Reading Room discussion of the Alchemist's Measure, complete with that picture. I love this story and jumped at the chance to get the zine it was published in. There is a lushness about Kitty Fisher's writing and the descriptions of everything from the furnishings of the room to the physical sensation are lovely: domination, submission, bondage, pain, lust, languor...
Kitty Fisher is British (as far as I know!) and although this zine is American, the language and spelling in The Alchemist's Measure remains British. I didn't realise how much that mattered to me until the other Pros-ish story...
Semi-Pros content:
Metamorphosis, by tasha, 54pp, is the final story, and was listed as 'Starsky and Hutch, Professionals, Forever Knight'. When I sat down to read this, I had entirely forgotten the webpage I had read somewhere (oh, fanlore.org wiki!), which had told me plainly: Hutch is a vampire. That must be the Forever Knight bit. For all I know, Forever Knight is set in the forties, too, because this thing is set in occupied France in WWII (and then in London). I don't like vampire stories as a rule (okay, I like Dracula!), I don't like WWII films, I never watched Starsky and Hutch, and the S&H fics I have so far read have them snuggling a lot, and blessed with great insight and articulation when it comes to their emotions, which is not my thing. So I was not pre-disposed to like this.
I didn't, much :) Although it's billed as a crossover, I think the Pros characters (Bodie, Doyle and Cowley) are very much walk-on characters, even if Doyle appears fairly early on in the story. Bodie gets bugger all to do beyond moping. The dialogue and spelling are all very American (apparently London has sidewalks, and Doyle tells someone to 'quit stalling'). I want to pick holes, but I fear it is my dislike of the vampire aspect and my disinterest in the non-Pros aspect that is driving that. I suspect it works much better if you're a S&H fan. Particularly if you like vampires. If you do: Metamorphosis, by tasha.
Non-Pros content is three Blakes 7 and two Man From UNCLE. I do know something about B7; all I know about MUNCLE is the character names and that the Scot plays the Russian.
Scars, by Ross Allister and Nevin Patryck, Blakes 7. 63 pp. Blake/Tarrant, Avon/Vila. Post Gauda Prime, I presume. Blake's an alcoholic pimping a drug-addicted Tarrant and telling himself the money is for when the real revolution comes. Avon and Vila are trying to stay alive whilst Avon hunts for Orac (and, Vila fears, Blake). Vila is coping poorly with the fact that Avon wants Vila to be extremely rough during sex. All four end up in the same place at the same time - well, the same planet, at least. Treachery and betrayal all round (which strikes me as very canon), and torture and rape at the hands of external characters (ditto). Ending vaguely positive, despite all that. But I did find a lot of the discussion about stopping drinking/drugs very 20th century, full of ideas I associate with AA, which struck me as odd. You'd think so far in the future they'd be using a different system.
Blood and Shadows, by Salomé, Blakes 7. 43 pp. Avon/Tarrant Available online: Blood and Shadows, by Salomé. Servalan plays nasty games with a captured Tarrant and Avon, inducing a drugged Tarrant to rape Avon, which causes inevitable complications on the Liberator after each is (separately) rescued. I liked this apart from the (and I am sorry to be tedious, but it's a British show) Americanisms, but I have no objection to reading rape fic.
The Beginning of the Bargain, by Lynne Franklin, Blakes 7, 11 pp. Avon/Blake. Sequel to something in the first Dark Fantasies, but you don't need to have read it to follow this one. I hadn't. Blake wants to be dominated and abused. Avon doesn't want to do it. I quite liked this, but they didn't seem to speak in a way that I recognise.
The Darkness Affair, by Mary Millard, Man from UNCLE, 26 pp. Illya is blind, and vulnerable, and prone to shedding tears, and in need of Napoleon, and much smaller than him, and he's all soft and beautiful, with a "tousled golden mass" (of hair, thank you, stop that at the back there - actually, there's a lot of description of his hair, some of it very detailed), and, well, I didn't finish this. None of these are my thing. I think perhaps it helps to know the show.
The Price of Love Affair, by Susan Devereaux, Man from UNCLE, 22 pp. Napoleon and Illya are captured by a female villain (presumably from the show, dunno) and held in separate rooms with live video equipment so they can see each other being tortured and raped (Illya, at least), and there is much h/c, and really, I am starting to think that there are definite, um, roles in this fandom.
So that's it. This is not a zine to get if all you want is Pros - not if you have to pay trans-Atlantic postage on top of the price, at least! Both stories are online. Nor is it a zine to get if you don't like fairly grim plotlines. I wanted to see the Blakes 7 stuff as well, so there was quite a bit in there for me, and even so, I winced at the cost of postage.
This is a big thick zine, absolutely crammed into the binding. I have to take more care turning the pages than with the others with fewer pages and the same sized binding because of that. The text is a much smaller size than the Concupiscence zines I bought at the same time and it's a modern-looking (well, it was then) sans serif font. Really appropriate for the Blakes 7 stuff, but it was a bit jarring for the Restoration era Pros AU. There are no internal illustrations, but the front cover is a shiny piece of card with a black and white Suzan Lovett illustration on it. There are scans of this illustration online. It's nice to have an actual hard copy of a picture for once, but the contrast is actually better on the versions on the web! The back cover has a sort of cartoon parody of the front illustration.
The stories in Dark Fantasies 2 are three Blakes 7 stories, two Man from UNCLE stories, one crossover between Pros (yay), Starsky and Hutch, and something I hadn't heard of called Forever Knight, and the sole Pros one. They're all fairly long.
I would not suggest buying this zine if all you want is zine-only Pros fic. The Pros stores are both on the web.
So Pros content first:
The Alchemist's Measure, by Kitty Fisher. 39pp long, AU (Restoration times) and lots of BDSM. Online: The Alchemist's Measure by Kitty Fisher I reviewed it in the Reading Room recently, and you will gather from the discussion that I am not remotely impartial: Reading Room discussion of the Alchemist's Measure, complete with that picture. I love this story and jumped at the chance to get the zine it was published in. There is a lushness about Kitty Fisher's writing and the descriptions of everything from the furnishings of the room to the physical sensation are lovely: domination, submission, bondage, pain, lust, languor...
Kitty Fisher is British (as far as I know!) and although this zine is American, the language and spelling in The Alchemist's Measure remains British. I didn't realise how much that mattered to me until the other Pros-ish story...
Semi-Pros content:
Metamorphosis, by tasha, 54pp, is the final story, and was listed as 'Starsky and Hutch, Professionals, Forever Knight'. When I sat down to read this, I had entirely forgotten the webpage I had read somewhere (oh, fanlore.org wiki!), which had told me plainly: Hutch is a vampire. That must be the Forever Knight bit. For all I know, Forever Knight is set in the forties, too, because this thing is set in occupied France in WWII (and then in London). I don't like vampire stories as a rule (okay, I like Dracula!), I don't like WWII films, I never watched Starsky and Hutch, and the S&H fics I have so far read have them snuggling a lot, and blessed with great insight and articulation when it comes to their emotions, which is not my thing. So I was not pre-disposed to like this.
I didn't, much :) Although it's billed as a crossover, I think the Pros characters (Bodie, Doyle and Cowley) are very much walk-on characters, even if Doyle appears fairly early on in the story. Bodie gets bugger all to do beyond moping. The dialogue and spelling are all very American (apparently London has sidewalks, and Doyle tells someone to 'quit stalling'). I want to pick holes, but I fear it is my dislike of the vampire aspect and my disinterest in the non-Pros aspect that is driving that. I suspect it works much better if you're a S&H fan. Particularly if you like vampires. If you do: Metamorphosis, by tasha.
Non-Pros content is three Blakes 7 and two Man From UNCLE. I do know something about B7; all I know about MUNCLE is the character names and that the Scot plays the Russian.
Scars, by Ross Allister and Nevin Patryck, Blakes 7. 63 pp. Blake/Tarrant, Avon/Vila. Post Gauda Prime, I presume. Blake's an alcoholic pimping a drug-addicted Tarrant and telling himself the money is for when the real revolution comes. Avon and Vila are trying to stay alive whilst Avon hunts for Orac (and, Vila fears, Blake). Vila is coping poorly with the fact that Avon wants Vila to be extremely rough during sex. All four end up in the same place at the same time - well, the same planet, at least. Treachery and betrayal all round (which strikes me as very canon), and torture and rape at the hands of external characters (ditto). Ending vaguely positive, despite all that. But I did find a lot of the discussion about stopping drinking/drugs very 20th century, full of ideas I associate with AA, which struck me as odd. You'd think so far in the future they'd be using a different system.
Blood and Shadows, by Salomé, Blakes 7. 43 pp. Avon/Tarrant Available online: Blood and Shadows, by Salomé. Servalan plays nasty games with a captured Tarrant and Avon, inducing a drugged Tarrant to rape Avon, which causes inevitable complications on the Liberator after each is (separately) rescued. I liked this apart from the (and I am sorry to be tedious, but it's a British show) Americanisms, but I have no objection to reading rape fic.
The Beginning of the Bargain, by Lynne Franklin, Blakes 7, 11 pp. Avon/Blake. Sequel to something in the first Dark Fantasies, but you don't need to have read it to follow this one. I hadn't. Blake wants to be dominated and abused. Avon doesn't want to do it. I quite liked this, but they didn't seem to speak in a way that I recognise.
The Darkness Affair, by Mary Millard, Man from UNCLE, 26 pp. Illya is blind, and vulnerable, and prone to shedding tears, and in need of Napoleon, and much smaller than him, and he's all soft and beautiful, with a "tousled golden mass" (of hair, thank you, stop that at the back there - actually, there's a lot of description of his hair, some of it very detailed), and, well, I didn't finish this. None of these are my thing. I think perhaps it helps to know the show.
The Price of Love Affair, by Susan Devereaux, Man from UNCLE, 22 pp. Napoleon and Illya are captured by a female villain (presumably from the show, dunno) and held in separate rooms with live video equipment so they can see each other being tortured and raped (Illya, at least), and there is much h/c, and really, I am starting to think that there are definite, um, roles in this fandom.
So that's it. This is not a zine to get if all you want is Pros - not if you have to pay trans-Atlantic postage on top of the price, at least! Both stories are online. Nor is it a zine to get if you don't like fairly grim plotlines. I wanted to see the Blakes 7 stuff as well, so there was quite a bit in there for me, and even so, I winced at the cost of postage.
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Date: 2011-12-07 10:58 pm (UTC)But yes, I was definitely getting the idea that Napoleon does the rescuing/comforting here.
I think you're right that Doyle is often the victim in fic, and it surprises me. My perception of him is not far off Martin Shaw's reputed complaints: a violent puppet. With some impressive blind spots at times. But I suppose, if you want to write hurt/comfort, you need one person for each pole.
(Having said which, I just bought a modern in-print Pros zine recently which I think shoots that down. I shall go and curl up wi--erm, I mean, research this further.)