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ci5hqTitle: Velvet Underground
Author: Sebastian
Links: Oblique Publications
Rec: I volunteered to rec this fic after someone had recced Kitty Fisher's Monopoly I think, because there was discussion about what was good bdsm, and whether it fit into B/D's lives and so on. It eventually occurred to me, after the discussion (of course!) that Velvet Underground brings bdsm into the lads lives in a way that is completely believable to me, not because the author explains that it fits in with their lives in this way, or that they need it because of that, but because she builds up the atmosphere of needing it so beautifully - or rather, the atmosphere of being tempted by it, of being dragged out of the mundanities of everyday life where pain is a very solid and unpleasant thing, and transforms that. She doesn't spend time examining the realities of it all (what would it feel like to be whipped, well surely it would hurt, so why would you want to?) - she assumes that we can work that bit out for ourselves. Sebastian does what every author I adore does - she takes us beyond what we can work out for ourselves.
She doesn't tell us, for example, that the bells trimming the cloak Doyle wears are very old, she tells us that "they could have been a long time buried in mud under flowing water", which is a completely different thing - it takes the concept of time and age, and the information about the cloak, and it adds something to it, so that we're right there with Sebastian's/Doyle's extra twist of thought, we're starting to feel what they feel - we're escaping our own world, being pulled along to somewhere... more interesting.
And then Sebastian shakes this strange magic from us - we're still in the CI5 world after all, after the op - Doyle was undercover, it's just a job, and when it's over he's wearing a lemon-yellow t-shirt, and Bodie is lazing back eating the toasted cheese sandwich presented to him by Doyle with what we just know is a bad French accent. It's almost a bit jarring, this separation of the two atmospheres, the first very dark a bit unsettling - just as Doyle said he was - and then back to the ordinary. But then - and this is one of my favourite lines in any fic ever - "The devil stepped into the room and stood looking, interested."
The next section is made disturbing in the way that the two worlds are brought together - there's no "magic" but there's not "ordinary" either - there are two men choosing to take their lives away from the norm, away from anything soft and romantic, just because... they're tempted. And we feel the way they've been tempted, the way that their usual teasing and challenging of each other is twisted into this direction, we're not given reason for it, we're given the way it feels instead. We're given Bodie rising to the challenge of something we're told he's horrified by, all of his shame and anger blazing like a torch, burning the last hope of salvation away. We're given Doyle who has already been tempted too far as we saw in the first scene, a terrible desperation, a mad dervish dancing wildly in his eyes., not knowing whether he wants to be stopped, or he wants to be taken all the way to the end.
And they both give in.
This is something else I've been thinking about (again, with the debate over warnings, and the furore over the last season of Torchwood etc) - when a writer gives us characters who aren't perfect, who are not just flawed in a way that makes us want to make it all better, but who are flawed in a way that makes us know we should dislike them, somehow, or threatens to take away our adoration because the flaw is... too real. In Velvet Underground, the lads choose something dark and almost sordid - and they don't choose it and then tell each other how much they love each other anyway, they are both discomfitted by it, they're disturbed and yet they're not strong enough to deny themselves either, to "do the right thing". They might be lying hand in hand at the end, and equals once more - a little bit of comfort for us - but the two worlds have become one, and while there's a touch of desire and dark magic still, the stormswept world of depravity where the Master now ruled, there's also a reminder that they have to live in both worlds as one now, And that was the end of innocence.
I'm really curious to know how other people read this story - I could talk about what I now find a slightly odd characterisation of Doyle by Sebastian too (which took me a long time to recognise, in fact) or about all sorts of other things to do with this fic, but mostly I think it's a fic about how things feel rather than what happens, and about the way feelings and reality have to come together in the end... Or is that me, trying to get too deep? *g*
What did anyone else think, before I witter on for eternity?
Author: Sebastian
Links: Oblique Publications
Rec: I volunteered to rec this fic after someone had recced Kitty Fisher's Monopoly I think, because there was discussion about what was good bdsm, and whether it fit into B/D's lives and so on. It eventually occurred to me, after the discussion (of course!) that Velvet Underground brings bdsm into the lads lives in a way that is completely believable to me, not because the author explains that it fits in with their lives in this way, or that they need it because of that, but because she builds up the atmosphere of needing it so beautifully - or rather, the atmosphere of being tempted by it, of being dragged out of the mundanities of everyday life where pain is a very solid and unpleasant thing, and transforms that. She doesn't spend time examining the realities of it all (what would it feel like to be whipped, well surely it would hurt, so why would you want to?) - she assumes that we can work that bit out for ourselves. Sebastian does what every author I adore does - she takes us beyond what we can work out for ourselves.
She doesn't tell us, for example, that the bells trimming the cloak Doyle wears are very old, she tells us that "they could have been a long time buried in mud under flowing water", which is a completely different thing - it takes the concept of time and age, and the information about the cloak, and it adds something to it, so that we're right there with Sebastian's/Doyle's extra twist of thought, we're starting to feel what they feel - we're escaping our own world, being pulled along to somewhere... more interesting.
And then Sebastian shakes this strange magic from us - we're still in the CI5 world after all, after the op - Doyle was undercover, it's just a job, and when it's over he's wearing a lemon-yellow t-shirt, and Bodie is lazing back eating the toasted cheese sandwich presented to him by Doyle with what we just know is a bad French accent. It's almost a bit jarring, this separation of the two atmospheres, the first very dark a bit unsettling - just as Doyle said he was - and then back to the ordinary. But then - and this is one of my favourite lines in any fic ever - "The devil stepped into the room and stood looking, interested."
The next section is made disturbing in the way that the two worlds are brought together - there's no "magic" but there's not "ordinary" either - there are two men choosing to take their lives away from the norm, away from anything soft and romantic, just because... they're tempted. And we feel the way they've been tempted, the way that their usual teasing and challenging of each other is twisted into this direction, we're not given reason for it, we're given the way it feels instead. We're given Bodie rising to the challenge of something we're told he's horrified by, all of his shame and anger blazing like a torch, burning the last hope of salvation away. We're given Doyle who has already been tempted too far as we saw in the first scene, a terrible desperation, a mad dervish dancing wildly in his eyes., not knowing whether he wants to be stopped, or he wants to be taken all the way to the end.
And they both give in.
This is something else I've been thinking about (again, with the debate over warnings, and the furore over the last season of Torchwood etc) - when a writer gives us characters who aren't perfect, who are not just flawed in a way that makes us want to make it all better, but who are flawed in a way that makes us know we should dislike them, somehow, or threatens to take away our adoration because the flaw is... too real. In Velvet Underground, the lads choose something dark and almost sordid - and they don't choose it and then tell each other how much they love each other anyway, they are both discomfitted by it, they're disturbed and yet they're not strong enough to deny themselves either, to "do the right thing". They might be lying hand in hand at the end, and equals once more - a little bit of comfort for us - but the two worlds have become one, and while there's a touch of desire and dark magic still, the stormswept world of depravity where the Master now ruled, there's also a reminder that they have to live in both worlds as one now, And that was the end of innocence.
I'm really curious to know how other people read this story - I could talk about what I now find a slightly odd characterisation of Doyle by Sebastian too (which took me a long time to recognise, in fact) or about all sorts of other things to do with this fic, but mostly I think it's a fic about how things feel rather than what happens, and about the way feelings and reality have to come together in the end... Or is that me, trying to get too deep? *g*
What did anyone else think, before I witter on for eternity?
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