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facetofcathySo, I got over my frothing indignation at the politics of The Eagle and got to the point where I could look at it mostly as a pretty love story. I went looking for fic. The fic largely ignores anything outside the central relationship and does not care one whit for the glory of Rome or its conquests. But, many authors are falling into a trope where the slavery depicted is much more like the later versions of American slavery and are also taking great pains to show that anyone who owns a slave is a bad, bad, evil person, and Marcus is pure as the driven snow.
Put these two together and you've got a reinforcement of the popular cultural apologia for American slavery as a thing evil individuals did rather than a system that affected every person on the continent and was one of the founding processes of creating the USA and its neighbours as nations. This is troubling, yet not unexpected. A lot of the stories simply treat the power imbalance in the relationship as one that exists only in public, which I can treat as a fantasy element as a reader and go along with. I didn't encounter any stories where Marcus actually acts like a bog standard Roman with a body slave--I expect they're on the kink meme, which I'll boggle over quietly, that more historically accurate depictions or ones that recognize the consent issues are considered kink fic.
My surprise comes at the variety of sexual and relationship dynamics to be found. This is a slash fandom where the bigger guy OWNS the smaller guy, who is blond, even, and it's less boringly predictable on the position/dynamics/roles front than J2 fic.
Most of the fic are romances, and a lot of it can be read as original fiction set in Roman Britain. I've made a note on the reviews if a story requires much canon knowledge or if it can be read as ofic. I've stuck to the longer stories, as that's what I'm into these days.
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nintheagle on delicious (the bookamrks have been migrated, so they'll be there after Friday) for more fic from the LJ comm. The delicious list is nicely tagged with several categories.
Put these two together and you've got a reinforcement of the popular cultural apologia for American slavery as a thing evil individuals did rather than a system that affected every person on the continent and was one of the founding processes of creating the USA and its neighbours as nations. This is troubling, yet not unexpected. A lot of the stories simply treat the power imbalance in the relationship as one that exists only in public, which I can treat as a fantasy element as a reader and go along with. I didn't encounter any stories where Marcus actually acts like a bog standard Roman with a body slave--I expect they're on the kink meme, which I'll boggle over quietly, that more historically accurate depictions or ones that recognize the consent issues are considered kink fic.
My surprise comes at the variety of sexual and relationship dynamics to be found. This is a slash fandom where the bigger guy OWNS the smaller guy, who is blond, even, and it's less boringly predictable on the position/dynamics/roles front than J2 fic.
Most of the fic are romances, and a lot of it can be read as original fiction set in Roman Britain. I've made a note on the reviews if a story requires much canon knowledge or if it can be read as ofic. I've stuck to the longer stories, as that's what I'm into these days.
( Read more... )
Check out
