And now I'm dying to read it
Apr. 4th, 2012 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantY'all, I had the most perfectly, hilariously fannish dream, and I was so disappointed to wake up and discover it wasn't real!
See, there were these books.
The first one was a WWII love story between two soldiers. (Somewhat similar to BJ and Hawkeye from "M.A.S.H." Somewhat similar to Steve and Bucky. No superpowers, though.) It was what we used to call by the inelegant name "fuckfest," meaning there were lots of sex scenes, and each one broke another barrier and made them closer and closer, while they evaded discovery and all that it would have entailed, until at last the Bucky figure was discharged first and went home, at which point (you see this coming) the Steve figure was reported killed.
The second one picked up some years later. The Bucky character had returned to the U.S. He owned a restaurant, and he was married; the marriage had originally been a beard for him and something equally depressing for his wife, but by the time the book began, it was neither loveless nor sexless.
Then (you see this coming), the Steve character reappeared. And he fell in love with the wife. And there was a long period of angst and the establishment of three separate couples, until she instituted a happy plural marriage and they all three lived happily ever after.
These were physical books, but they were slash stories, written by one of us. They weren't trying to transcend the genre or anything; they were just topshelf slash stories. The stories weren't available online for some reason, and the books were hard to find, but I had both of them and was very happy about it.
And then! I was in a used bookstore and I found a copy of a novella that fitted in between them, that told the story of the marriage from its beginnings in negotiated loneliness into its establishment as a peculiar sort of love match! I was so excited! I was just getting ready to come home and read it!
And, damn it, I woke up and it wasn't real!
See, there were these books.
The first one was a WWII love story between two soldiers. (Somewhat similar to BJ and Hawkeye from "M.A.S.H." Somewhat similar to Steve and Bucky. No superpowers, though.) It was what we used to call by the inelegant name "fuckfest," meaning there were lots of sex scenes, and each one broke another barrier and made them closer and closer, while they evaded discovery and all that it would have entailed, until at last the Bucky figure was discharged first and went home, at which point (you see this coming) the Steve figure was reported killed.
The second one picked up some years later. The Bucky character had returned to the U.S. He owned a restaurant, and he was married; the marriage had originally been a beard for him and something equally depressing for his wife, but by the time the book began, it was neither loveless nor sexless.
Then (you see this coming), the Steve character reappeared. And he fell in love with the wife. And there was a long period of angst and the establishment of three separate couples, until she instituted a happy plural marriage and they all three lived happily ever after.
These were physical books, but they were slash stories, written by one of us. They weren't trying to transcend the genre or anything; they were just topshelf slash stories. The stories weren't available online for some reason, and the books were hard to find, but I had both of them and was very happy about it.
And then! I was in a used bookstore and I found a copy of a novella that fitted in between them, that told the story of the marriage from its beginnings in negotiated loneliness into its establishment as a peculiar sort of love match! I was so excited! I was just getting ready to come home and read it!
And, damn it, I woke up and it wasn't real!
(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 08:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 08:38 pm (UTC)I still have moments of yearning for the nonexistent "space cop with alien sidekick she's falling in love with" book I started reading one night! :D
Like your "topshelf slash stories", this was basically me dreaming fruitlessly about finding the kind of book that doesn't exist outside the internet. Sigh.
Anyway, yeah: all my sympathies, they are yours.
(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 08:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 08:48 pm (UTC)Clearly you'll have to write it and publish it on Elora's Cave or something.
(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 09:14 pm (UTC)It's not quite this, but it's closer than you might expect from a mainstream literary novel. Plus comic books and Judaism. I wouldn't exactly call Michael Chabon one of us, but I wouldn't call him not one of us, either.
(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 09:15 pm (UTC)Now Res should dream Gentlemen of the Road.. ;>
(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 09:15 pm (UTC)(I know, totally not the same as finding the books already written. But damn, I do want to read these stories!)
(no subject)
Date: 4/4/12 10:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 12:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 01:17 pm (UTC)(I am someday going to write a book about the WWII Monuments Men, oh yes I am.)
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 05:38 pm (UTC)Because I really do not want to write it, for fear of Dreaded Research, but I so want to read it!
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 05:40 pm (UTC)*scribbles a note in to-do list to refer back to this when done*
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 05:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 05:49 pm (UTC)I think weirdly my favourite thing about the whole idea is that the Bucky-analogue owns a restaurant. I love working food into a story like that, it always kicks up the sensuality of it.
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 05:53 pm (UTC)I remember there was a hiding place behind a partial wall of panelling where a person could stand unseen and hear anything that was said in the dry-goods storage area; the Bucky figure said something unkind to his wife and she wedged herself into that spot so nobody would see her -- not that she would cry, because she never did, but because she was the sort of person who didn't want to be seen at anything less than full dignity.
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 05:55 pm (UTC)Ahaha, I could install that hiding place as part of an old Prohibition stash-room....
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:32 pm (UTC)"Hey, Bucky," Steve said, as his sergeant pushed a shoulder under his arm and began dragging him through debris. "You remember when we thought this was going to be great?"
"No, I don't remember ever thinking that," Bucky grunted, staggering as the captain managed to get his feet under him and walk on his own power for a few steps. "When was this?"
"Okay, do you remember when I thought it was going to be great?" Steve asked, coughing around the words. Bucky checked his lips for blood, didn't see any, and decided not to think about it.
"No. I remember when you made me steal a jeep, though."
"Commandeer. US Army officers don't steal from their own bases."
"Sure. We just forgot to fill out the paperwork."
"Now you're getting it," Steve answered, and then gasped and doubled over, pulling Bucky down with him momentarily.
"We are fucked," Bucky announced, continuing to haul Steve along.
"Thank you for that radio update, Sergeant Barnes," Steve groaned.
Names will be changed, eventually.
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:41 pm (UTC)Because Steve is an art history student who became a Monuments officer (hence his title of Captain, which he soooooo did not earn) and Bucky is his plucky bodyguard who pulls him out of the way of grenades that happen to land near him while he's busy ogling priceless art!
Which also probably puts them waaaay the fuck behind enemy lines, because of course Steve can't just run around saving art that's already safe, he has to like, ride into Occupied France and try and stop trains taking art to Germany oh my god I get to put a Rose Valland cameo in this.
Aaaagh no I have Roman porn I have to write!
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:52 pm (UTC)(The Monuments Men and Rose Valland are news to me, and amazingly cool.)
Bucky's wife is an artist, did I say? Swear to god that was in the dream and has nothing to do with this conversation. She's a tall, big-handed, long-faced, dark-haired woman in black leggings and a man's white shirt, cigarette on her lip and paintbrush in her hand, and scarred in exactly the way you'd be scarred if you looked the way she looks while coming of age in the postwar Doris Day culture.
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 06:54 pm (UTC)The Monuments Men were a gang of ragged academics in uniform who ran around Europe in the last quarter or so of the war, rescuing art and generally getting into trouble. They stole jeeps all the time. :D Rose Valland was a French double-agent who protected priceless art in occupied France and generally kicked all the ass.
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 07:19 pm (UTC)Because I'm cheating on you.
... I cheat on you all the time.
That's different.
Because I'm a queer?
Because you can't get pregnant!
...
...
... we thought you couldn't, either.
...
Jude? Are you?
...
Will you tell me who?
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 07:24 pm (UTC)The irony of it was, Bucky thought as he tended Steve's bloody arm, that it wasn't the Germans who'd damn near blown Steve to pieces. It wasn't even the Russians. It was the god damned US Army, shelling behind the German line.
"Oh sure," he muttered to Steve as he cleaned the wound. "What's the point of protecting priceless European treasures that are already in American hands? Bucky, where's the fun in that? You know where we should go, Bucky? France. Let's get behind enemy lines and see what we can do."
Steve, unconscious, didn't answer.
"I speak French, Bucky, we'll be fine!" Bucky continued wrathfully, binding up the arm with bandages scrounged from the blown-apart jeep.
(no subject)
Date: 4/5/12 08:18 pm (UTC)