[Drabble] Reassurance ("The Great Escape," Danny/Willie)

[valmora]

Title: Reassurance
Rating: PG
Fandom: The Great Escape, the movie
Pairing: Danny/Willie. Someday I need to be more original and write, I dunno, Hindley/Colin or Roger/Mac or Hilts/Ives, because EVERYBODY writes Danny/Willie.
Disclaimer: Not mine, except for the innuendo.
Notes: Remember that scene where there's a cave-in on Willie and Danny gets him out and they then declare that they need to shore up the tunnel? This is a little drabble from that.


Reassurance

Danny comes crawling up the step ladder to stand beside Willie’s bunk in the darkness.

“You are safe,” he says, reaching out to touch Willie and arresting the gesture in midair.

“Yes,” Willie says, eyes shadowed but voice warm. “I’m all right, Danny.”

“I worried, when you had been buried, that we would not get to you in time.” Willie can hear, now, the fading panic left from that afternoon’s cave-in.

“But you did,” Willie says, capturing Danny’s hand and resting it against his chest so Danny can feel his heartbeat.

“I know,” Danny says, and does not pull away.

Comments

[dastari.livejournal.com]

You have...actually written slash for...the Great Escape...

[valmora.livejournal.com]

Um, yes.

Am I going to get a whole story about how this is one of your favorite movies and now I have RUINED it for you forever? Because the prospect amuses me, though it probably shouldn't.

You do realize I don't actually BELIEVE what I'm writing for this fandom, right?

[dastari.livejournal.com]

Uh, no. First, it isn't one of my favorite movies and second I don't think that you can ruin anything by writing slash about it. If anything, I probably ruin things for Beth by talking about the slash fandom pairings for series while we're watching them. It amuses me on some level. It bothers he more than me.

The reason that I asked is because I can't believe that you're taking a movie from the 1960's and doing this. First, I'm surprised that you've even seen the movie. Second, I can't believe that you can get anything slashy out of any relationship by anyone in an old movie.

Of course, I'm about as anti-shipper as someone can get which is probably my problem. Most of the slashers do their best to be as uncanon as possible because they want it to be two ultra-masculine and obviously hetero guys going at it. I mind it far less when there is some indication for it. I feel the same way about het pairings. I will fillet anyone who suggests Lina/Zelgadiss as a Slayers het pairing. It is Lina/Gourry!

Sorry for the rant. Move on and go about what you're doing. There's nothing to see here...

[valmora.livejournal.com]

I love making snarky comments in the middle of movies. It amuses me, especially when my friend isn't necessarily a slash fan, so I grin over at her and she just rolls her eyes.

How long has it been since you've seen Great Escape? Seriously. Because the relationship between Danny and Willie could *easily* be [mis?]construed as romantic or sexual. Or maybe that's just my slasher-ness.

See, I don't think that most slashers try to rip canon to bits. I have to disagree with you. I mean, take - mm, I dunno. Hellsing. I would never write Alucard/Walter because there's just no canon support for it, and I've noticed that it's a very rare ship. However, I could see Alucard/Anderson because they're rivals - they'd never act on it, but maybe unrequited hate/lust? Yes. I could see that.

See, I can't in good conscience agree with you that "most slashers...want it to be two ultra-masculine guys going at it". Because a lot of the more inexperienced writers cannot write slash fic without feminizing one partner to the point where he might as well have grown a uterus. I don't call that ultra-masculine; do you?

[dastari.livejournal.com]

I probably haven't seen it since I was 8 or so. My dad likes it, but it certainly wasn't a movie that I have strong memories of. At best I consider it a "dad movie" and thus gets filed with the Westerns and other WW2 movies that dad likes.

Well giving an example of something doesn't mean that any other example isn't true. I mean heck, how about Seshoumaru/Inuyasha/Miroku. Miroku is the most heterosexual man around and beyond being brothers, there is just no indication at all for Seshoumaru/Inuyasha. They hate each other. Indeed you even talk about Alucard/Anderson, two men who hate each other. You can't get more shippy then that. You just turned enemies into lovers. Then you go on to try and talk about Alucard/Anderson after just saying that people don't write ultra-masculine guys as slash. Juxtapose that with Quatre from Gundam Wing. If anyone wrote slash fanfiction with Quatre then I'd buy it because there's a lot there to support it. Writing slash with Wu Fei is the exact opposite. There's no way in hell that he's gay. Yet, it's there and it's prevalent.

However, I do agree with you. The fun with slash seems to be in taking an ultra-masculine guy and so feminizing him to the point that he might have a uterus and that's what I find wonky. I think that in some respect it stems from a desire to emasculate men, but don't tell me something isn't there when I hear people talking about slash constantly and I know about lots of the fics and the pairings.

[valmora.livejournal.com]

I can't counter an Inuyasha example because I don't know the series.

I could only see Alucard/Anderson if it weren't acted upon or if it were in the past, because there's no allowance for an established relationship in canon. You see where I'm going with this? We can't get in the characters' heads, so we don't actually know if Alucard lusts after Anderson or not, and if it were in the past - well, we don't know why they hate each other now, besides Anderson's hatred of vampires, do we?

I think that you can't really argue with one person's view of whether one character is straight or not. If you choose to see Wufei as only straight, that's your right. I personally prefer to see him that way, but I can also see why people would see his interactions with other characters as having a possible homoerotic undertone. I mean, I wouldn't see some of the characters from Harry Potter as being slashy ('slashy' being different from 'gay' - 'gay' means actually in canon homosexual, whereas 'slashy' means the character has the potential for being slashed), but I do read other 'ships.

You've also misinterpreted what I said. I never claimed that these authors made the deliberate decision to effeminize characters, because frankly, I did use the word 'inexperienced,' which implies a degree of, shall we say, disdain.
Most readers/writers with standards have very little respect for writers who cannot write the character without effeminizing him.

However, I can't agree with the 'ultra-masculine' thing either. The reason the writers are writing slash for a pairing is because they see those two characters as having chemistry. You can speculate yourself to kingdom come about the Freudian motives behind who they see as having chemistry, but that is the honest reason most slashers - most reasonable slashers who honestly support the pairings they write and aren't just doing it to get a squick reaction out of people - will give you.

See, I don't think you have a very unbiased view of the slash world. Not that my view is unbiased either, but your assumptions are going to be colored by the slashers you interact with, rather than what you read, because you don't read slash. And I think you've been exposed to the more extreme, in-it-for-the-shock-value-rather-than-love-of-the-'ship, sort of slasher, which isn't the majority of the subculture at all.
So please don't judge all by the expressed opinions of a few.