CLICK FOR FULL PAGE


Just hope it's all right to mention that a keen Pros fan on lj, byslantedlight, has started trying to collate info on Pros fandom history (live journal entry) with a view to archiving the information for future generations :D . I must admit I like the idea of knowing more about how the fandom got started and what happened when,  and I thought that there might be some irreplaceable wisdom around these here parts ..... ????
It's always ok to mention other sites, Helio (unless they are paying you to in which case we want a cut! :lol )

The history thing sounds like a good plan to me. I hate to think of  information getting lost over the years. Suddenly you have the urge to ask a question and no one quite knows any more. Now we have the internet there's no excuse to lose things any more.
Sebastian and HG wrote fic in bunk beds


Actually, we did!   :D  My, that takes me back.  I'd forgotten that until I read it.  I was on top  ;)

I will give it some thought - thanks for the link Helio - most interesting!  :hug
That's wonderful, Merry! Everyone will be really pleased to hear all about everything that was going on! :D
Just want to say thank you to Helio for posting here about the Pros Fandom History mission  :) , and if you do have time and/or the inclination, Merry, it would be wonderful if you had anything you'd like to add!

I've made three separate posts updating it now, all at my livejournal, though I expect I'll post it somewhere else ultimately - http://byslantedlight.livejournal.com/

If you'd rather write about things here instead, and then I could link to them, that would fine as well..?

And finally... I'm so glad I got the bunk bed story right!  :)

(I used to be here as aurorallight, when I was in Alaska, but I seem to have lost the email address that password reminders are sent to, and... well, here I am as another "me" now... )
Welcome back, Slantedlight  :wave.


Glad you said about your other identity because I thought you were already a member, but I get muddled with names.

I'm in favour of getting more of the Sebastian history out of merry. I only hear bits and pieces.




Btw I had the system update the email on aurorallight to match this one just in in case you wanted your other identity back though I like the name Slantedlight myself.
Hello SlantedLight!   :wave  good to hear from you!

Do copy any or all of this if you like, what a lovely idea to bring together a Pros fandom history!

I first got hooked on the Pros in 1982, I can remember the very moment - I was watching Foxhole on the Roof the day after its first UK airing - recorded (on VHS, back in those not-so-good Olden Days) and doing the ironing - and something about it really grabbed me.

"What if,  I thought to myself, passing the iron absentmindedly back and forth over the shirts, what if that one fell in love with that one and -

It took me some time to work out for sure which was Bodie and which was Doyle, and even longer that it was not C-Fifteen but CI5, but you couldn't doubt the enthusiasm, the passion, the enormous thrill and deep emotional joy I got from considering these two men and their strange bleak world.

I had 'form' in the world of fictional gay love, having been into K/S for sometime, and through it I had met a very good friend, ET, who lived near me.  She had already noticed the boys and the slash potential, and she was a friend of O Yardley's, who very kindly invited us and about ten others to her house in London when we breathlessly confessed our new obsession.

By this time most of us had a B/D story on the go, or half on the go, which we passed around at this meeting - some of those stories got finished - some didn't.  As it happened some very good writers were among O Yardley's little group - HG for one, O Yardley herself obviously, ET, Rob, and others.  In fact I think every single one of those people came up with a good or great story in those early years, partly because O Yardley had the idea of each of us writing a Birthday Story for everyone in the group, ie 11 stories a year from each of us, and partly because we were all in it together - inspiring each other and keeping those flames fed on a cycle of passion and euphoria.

We were not the first group of Pros slash-writers in the UK, there existed another - with which we had a rather childish, tho not-very-serious rivalry - they had come first, and, rightly or wrongly, we felt we were seen as brash young upstarts  :lol  (Looking back on it, they probably thought no such thing).  For some reason they called slash-Pros stories 'Hatstands' (yes, they really did.) They also had some absolutely brilliant writers in their group - the Remember Angola author, for a start, who also came up with some other absolutely shattering and heartrendingly powerful classics, but we did not mix much, and kept to O Yardley's group by and large.

We managed several meetings a year, either at OY's house (generous, hospitable woman that she was to put up with 11 women sleeping in bags all over the house - or occasionally elsewhere.  The format of our weekends together was always the same - all 12 of us piled into one small living room - raucous, energetic and bawdy conversation - lots and lots of episodes running day and night on thrice-copied and sometimes double-imaged VHS, many pauses and rewinds to ogle merest glances between the boys or favourite bits of dialogue - I don't think any of us really ever understood the actual plots  :lol but we could quote all the slashy moments word for word.

When we weren't watching, or sitting round OY's dining table eating something hot and delicious from a large casserole dish that seemed to be on the go from dawn till dusk, we were writing - passing scraps and notes around for comment - sometimes people would be sitting there waiting with barely-concealed impatience for HG's pen to reach the foot of a page of Rediscovered in a Graveyard - in longhand! at which moment they would snatch it and scan it and sigh with joy and beg her to write quicker and pass it on to the next in line.

We didn't get much sleep at these weekends.  During one of them I was in the bunk on top of HG.  Trying not to wake the six others in the room we tossed ideas up and down between the bunks and came up with Two in a Bunk plus a story written all in letters, her taking the part of Bodie and me of Doyle, which we wrote back and forth by post once we were back at home. (What was it called now?  lord, I have forgotten.)

Email would have been handy! not to mention PCs - everything was written in longhand, then on typewriters, with three carbons.  I sometimes marvel that our stories ever flowed or shone at all, given that in these days of WORD  a first draft can be endlessly picked at it, changing a word here and there, polishing and editing and refining over and over - something just not possible in those days.  Once you had typed it, it was done, no more fiddling, unless you wanted to Tip-Ex out the odd word here and there.

I don't think those stories were any the worse for their crude manner of execution, and I'll always be glad I was there - right back nearly at the very beginning of Pros-slash - ah, those days, those glorious days....
Hello Pani!   :wave Thank you very much for updating my aurorallight email - my brain seems to be getting more and more sieve-like these days...  I think I probably will stay as Slantedlight - I can't remember why I used a different name when I first registered, but this is sort of me, so...  :)

And Merry, thank you very much for your post - that's brilliant!  I've copied it into the history, and linked as well so that everyone can see the primary source!  

Being terribly greedy for information  - I don't suppose you can remember what any of those stories from your first gathering were called, can you?  Which was the first story you ever wrote?  And did you ever know what was supposed to be the first ever Pros slash story written?  (There's lots of discussion/debate about it now!)

Was it "No Unicorns" that you and HG wrote in letters?   :) That's a fun story!

D'you know, I never thought of the differences that computers make to writing stories via corrections and polishing - how right you are!  I mean, I remember vividly using "white ink" on a typewriter, and being too impatient for it to dry and having to chip it off the keys...  And I remember being told how amazing white ink was, when my teachers only had the special rubbers!  And then that "tippex paper" that came in tiny sheets, and you typed the same letter onto it, and it whited it out perfectly - or so I thought at the time!  And then the bliss of electronic typewriters (though they'd only correct so far back, iirc!) and now...  And yet I don't think more recent stories do seem so much more polished than older ones, so...?  Hmmn!  

(Also, I've finally worked out how to follow entries by tracking them so that I get emails when someone posts - hurrah!)
I actually can't remember what my own first (finished)story was, let alone the others, though I would remember if I saw a list of archived stories - will have a look some time.  The one I was working on, the very first I began, was Adagio/Catharsis etc - I took bits and pieces of it along to that first meeting at OY's.

Oh yes, I had forgotten the Tip-Ex paper!  that seemed like a miracle, a marvel of modern technology in the way it very nearly worked :rofl

I remembered something else as I was sorting out enamelled frogs for the Halloween awards - in the beginning, once one had finished a 'Hatstand' and submitted it to the Head Hatstander of the Other Group and it was copied and put onto the Circuit, then one was awarded a prize - highly sought-after and very very pretty indeed - a little enamel frog which HH-er used to get from her local market.  They came in different colours, I believe mine was blue.  How I treasured it when it arrived in the post!

I believe a frog, specifically, because of some affectionate and reverent reference to Doyle as 'frog-like' in a story?
Perhaps this from Wild Justice (to Kate Ross) ?

DOYLE: I'll tell you what.  I'll bet you a fiver that if you took me home with you, tonight, put me on your pillow, when we woke up in the morning, I'd've turned back into a frog.
Next Page...



Hosted by Arvixe