Pausing to Laugh
Jun. 1st, 2011 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caitriSo my boss wandered innocently into my office a while ago. (Please keep in mind that my boss, while completely BAMF, is also the most perfect and proper British man and English professor you have ever SEEN.)
Boss: Ah, you've been quiet all day. What are you up to?
Me (blinking owlishly over book fort): Well I'm trying to figure out how to rewrite my paper for an article...
Boss: Oh! Excellent! And what's it on, then?
Me: Well, uh, it's the Star Trek paper I presented at PCA a couple months ago. The tropes in fanfiction...
Boss: Oh really? [He picks up nearby book on Boys' Love Manga, just picked up from the library yesterday.] Hemm.
Me: Yeah, I'm looking at the differences in Original Series versus Reboot fiction. I was rereading Joanna Russ's essay on slash--she published an informal version in Nome #8 and then an academic version in one of her volumes of essays.[Warming to my subject, I pull out another book from a stack and have it with the open zine on my desk.] You can definitely see how tropes have changed over time, but I've been wondering lately how much if any it's influenced by the translation and import of Japananese yaoi manga.
Boss: Which, are, uh?
Me: Gay romances.
Boss: ...What does that have to do with Star Trek?
Me (more enthusiastic than ever): Oh Star Trek has a HUGE history of fan-written gay romances going back to the 1970s! [Pulls some more zines.] It's really interesting because they are all--well, almost all written by women. And there's a huge following of this sort of material in Japan as well, almost concurrently, but it doesn't start getting imported into the US until later, so I'm not sure what's going on, but you definitely see a number of tropes crossing from yaoi into slash in the last decade or so. Like there's wing!fic and--
[Lyndsey stops outside my door and peers in.]
Lyndsey: Wing!fic?!
Me: Yeah, I was just telling Boss about my research. [Brief recap.]
Lyndsey: Oh yeah, good times. You should check out ... [Rattles citations.]
Me: Oooh!
Boss: ... [He looks back and forth between us.] I see I'm quite in over my head here!
Lyndsey looks at me suspiciously.
Me: [To Lyndsey] I kept it tame. [To Boss] It gets much, much weirder, I promise.
Lyndsey: It does. You don't want to know.
Boss: ... And on that note, I believe I shall take my leave. [He does.]
Lyndsey: No tentacles?
Me: Not yet, I'm still looking at the pon farr stuff.
Etc etc.
Yeah. *looks sheepish* Then I had to double-check a couple of citations for novels and decided to write to one of the official authors, and apparently Simon & Schuster only does snail mail, so I had to write to someone on paper. On the plus side, that meant it looked a bit more professional than "I liked your book, now was this one line a joke or actually subtext, and also, can I quote you in my next article?!" but STILL!
So. Uh. What are you guys up to?
Boss: Ah, you've been quiet all day. What are you up to?
Me (blinking owlishly over book fort): Well I'm trying to figure out how to rewrite my paper for an article...
Boss: Oh! Excellent! And what's it on, then?
Me: Well, uh, it's the Star Trek paper I presented at PCA a couple months ago. The tropes in fanfiction...
Boss: Oh really? [He picks up nearby book on Boys' Love Manga, just picked up from the library yesterday.] Hemm.
Me: Yeah, I'm looking at the differences in Original Series versus Reboot fiction. I was rereading Joanna Russ's essay on slash--she published an informal version in Nome #8 and then an academic version in one of her volumes of essays.[Warming to my subject, I pull out another book from a stack and have it with the open zine on my desk.] You can definitely see how tropes have changed over time, but I've been wondering lately how much if any it's influenced by the translation and import of Japananese yaoi manga.
Boss: Which, are, uh?
Me: Gay romances.
Boss: ...What does that have to do with Star Trek?
Me (more enthusiastic than ever): Oh Star Trek has a HUGE history of fan-written gay romances going back to the 1970s! [Pulls some more zines.] It's really interesting because they are all--well, almost all written by women. And there's a huge following of this sort of material in Japan as well, almost concurrently, but it doesn't start getting imported into the US until later, so I'm not sure what's going on, but you definitely see a number of tropes crossing from yaoi into slash in the last decade or so. Like there's wing!fic and--
[Lyndsey stops outside my door and peers in.]
Lyndsey: Wing!fic?!
Me: Yeah, I was just telling Boss about my research. [Brief recap.]
Lyndsey: Oh yeah, good times. You should check out ... [Rattles citations.]
Me: Oooh!
Boss: ... [He looks back and forth between us.] I see I'm quite in over my head here!
Lyndsey looks at me suspiciously.
Me: [To Lyndsey] I kept it tame. [To Boss] It gets much, much weirder, I promise.
Lyndsey: It does. You don't want to know.
Boss: ... And on that note, I believe I shall take my leave. [He does.]
Lyndsey: No tentacles?
Me: Not yet, I'm still looking at the pon farr stuff.
Etc etc.
Yeah. *looks sheepish* Then I had to double-check a couple of citations for novels and decided to write to one of the official authors, and apparently Simon & Schuster only does snail mail, so I had to write to someone on paper. On the plus side, that meant it looked a bit more professional than "I liked your book, now was this one line a joke or actually subtext, and also, can I quote you in my next article?!" but STILL!
So. Uh. What are you guys up to?
