No One: Found in the Void by Dr. Benway (R)

[brownbetty]

Fandom: DCU
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: d_benway
Author Website: None I know of, but much of his stuff is archived here, at LubaKmetyk's archive.
Why this must be read:

Gen sometimes gets a bad rap. I'm telling you right now, this is a romance that will rip your heart out and leave you with a bloody hole. And it's gen. I urge slashers not to give it a miss.

No One: Found in the Void

(d_benway is famous for his dark stories. This is one of the less dark ones in my opinion, but that's not saying much. Take warning.)

Comments

[clex_monkie89.livejournal.com]

Wow. You were right. That was like... that remimded me of how my friend described Graveyard of the Firefly's. You just end up staring at the wall trying to recover after that. Thank you for rec'ing it.

[brownbetty]

My pleasure. I aim to to rec a good mixture of gen and slash, and if I can cram it in, some het!

[clex_monkie89.livejournal.com]

I am very much looking forward to some more recs by you let me tell you that...

[kkglinka.livejournal.com]

Oh, pretty much everything by Doc Benway is good.

[brownbetty]

Very true! I chose this one because I think it's accesible with less canon knowledge than The One Ring, In the Blood, or Morning in America.

[d-benway.livejournal.com]

Wow! Somebody's read those, too! MiA sank like a brick when I first posted it.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

Did I really never feed you back for MiA...? I... could've sworn I had. Eeek. Um...

It made me uncomfortable and full of self-loathing in some deeply unsettling ways! Thank you!

[d-benway.livejournal.com]

You might have been one of The Few.

Re: Benway Fic

[kkglinka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he does tend to write multi-chapter mega-crossovers where you don't really know half the characters but it doesn't matter. *g* The one where everyone's a vampire and he dismembers Catwoman is one of my favorites. Also, Tag, but that's because I'm a Rogue fangirl (too).

[tarchannon.livejournal.com]

Very well done, but I would have liked some kind of warning since the rec mentions a kind of 'romance' but not... well, what we get. I usually avoid this kind of fic, no matter the quality... it's a downer.

[brownbetty]

I tried to balance warning for the content with leaving readers unspoiled and obviously I got it wrong. I'm sorry.

[tarchannon.livejournal.com]

I know it's a difficult thing - we ficcers have been chatting about it for years. There is always a war between spoiling and warning. I usually only offer general warnings, but I do try and mention the biggies (slash, character death, rape. or incest) since they push some people's buttons. I will read just about anything, but I can only handle those subjects in the right frame of mind. It was a bit of a surprise to expect a Butch and Sundance kind of friendship 'romance' and then it got very dark. Might I suggest a bit of an edit just to warn that it gets quite dark? That will preserve the plotline without leading people asray with their assumptions. :)

[d-benway.livejournal.com]

I used to post these on the OTL mailing list, with exactly the warnings provided in the story. I do tend to put in the occasional warning if there is content that might be disturbing to the small or the unstable, but generally loathe the idea of any warnings or classification systems for any media whatsoever, and have loathed them since the age of 10 or so. My feeling is that if you want to read fiction, you're inviting the reader to mess with your head and you should sit there and let it get messed with, or bail out. Caveat lector, and all that.

[d-benway.livejournal.com]

This is all rather intriguing, since I intended the story to have no romantic content whatsoever. They are friends, and love each other on that level. Some of what Tim rambles on about at the end indicates that he might have done something unusual with someone, but it's not at all clear who (even to me, and I wrote the thing). I always have the sense of Kon being a kid, almost presexual, trapped in an older boy's body.

Glad to be of service re: the story.

[brownbetty]

I wish I could say I didn't intend for readers to interpret "romance" in its narrowest sense, but I really did intend to trick entice slash readers into trying something different. I didn't mean to imply that this is a gen story that works if you squint at it and read it as slash, but rather that the definition of romance is too narrow. (It seemed quite sensible at four in the morning.)

I'm a terrible fangirl who's never sent you feedback, partly because when I first read your stories I was a wee lurker, and really had no idea what this fandom thing was. It's rather difficult to send feedback for a story that left me reeling, but please believe that I admire your talent very much!

[thete1.livejournal.com]

You know... I always did blame you -- and *this* story as much as not more than "Freedom" -- for the fact that I can't *help* but read Tim and Kon's relationship in a romantic light.

Which is to say -- I *know* you didn't mean it that way. You were just always extremely good at writing their relationship (and the relationships between all of the characters) in ways which both perfectly reflected and added depth to the ways those characters were portrayed in canon.

And... there's always been a *great deal* the average pervy-minded slasher could get from the canon about Tim and Kon's relationship.

In other words... um. You made me do it? Sorry? Thingy?