I'll never be an expert writer, but I know what I like to read and I read a lot, so with that tenuous expertise I wanted to comment on the discussion about how the docs address each other. I think when House calls Wilson by his last name it can have, albeit strangely, an intimacy to it. I can't remember the fic, but someone had House think of Wilson as "My Wilson" and I just melted. Normally I don't like it when House calls Wilson "Jimmy" in fanfic as it seems OOC (and don't get me started on Greg or Gregg!). I've only seen it done right once or twice where it seemed IC. One moment in particular was in a lovely story by Miss Violet where (at a very HOT moment) House says something like, "Let go, Jimmy". That seemed perfect because it was as if House was allowing Wilson to be himself, Jimmy, and, of course, it was during a very intimate scene which made it perfect. I've become fascinated with the Aftershocks series lately and that has led me to the SickWilson site and HousePiglet's rec list of SickWilson fics. That has led me to wonder -- why is it so entertaining to read about poor Wilson getting sick, injured, tortured, etc??? For me I think it is because I love seeing House taking care of Wilson for a change. Anyone else? Or am I just a sick puppy :lol:

Babyeinstein I think you're right, it is a very large part of the draw to see House caring about and taking care of someone. Wilson is the only one of the other characters who House has that kind of concern about, therefore Wilson becomes the target for lots of bad things so the readers can see House's as something other than an ass. I've tried to read other stories where that side of House shows up with the other characters but at some level they really don't work, House comes across in them as really OOC. For me, Wilson has to be involved for that sort of story to work.

saara_zaara wrote: I don't get why there isn't more believable (as opposed to crack) mpreg in House fic - its a medically-based 'verse, so why not? deelaundry wrote saara_zaara, I'm really curious what you mean by believable mpreg. I like reading mpreg as a sci-fi/Twilight Zone type experience (in a different fandom, I found a threesome RPS mpreg quite entertaining), but that's with hearty suspension of disbelief. Since this was addressed to me (& it would be great if asynca would chip in since she's mentioned this is something she's writing right now) , I'm going to back track a few pages (lord, people, when do you sleep, or is it just the time difference thing? I wake up & there's 4 new detailed pages to read? LOL) Sure, sci-fi, lots of kid fic in other fandoms, lots of mpreg & its not necessarily crackfic, crazy alien technology, genderfuck (my fav for sheer creativity is the one where a male character is turned into a woman by the kindly matriarchal alien society to teach him a lesson, character as a woman has sex with a guy, gets turned back into a man without realizing female version of him got pregnant, male version carries to term. And yes, the kindly aliens knew he was pregnant but thought it was a good idea to leave it alone. Its silly & its fun & BTW, I also adore andrealyn's Chase genderbender "The Feminine Persuasion" which I've probably said about 50 times). So House - its a medical show, pushes the bounds of medical accuracy all the time, can be very extreme about what medicine that they show even when it is medically accurate so why not take that to the next step? Medically in RL there are theories on how mpreg could work - I'm inclined to think present House with a male patient who wants to go this route & wants PPTH's help would be a great premise for a fic which done well wouldn't necessarily be a re-tread of Fetal Position. To my mind there's also the opportunity to gloss over some of the medicine if the author wants to go that route & make it more about the philosophical/ethical/character issues (:points at the PLOT device: version 2.0 does mpreg). Cuddy badly because its yet another example of a man can have something she can't & therefore this time she won't support it because she's at breaking point? Or does she a la FP? Would Wilson's regrets over not having kids push him to consider the option for himself? What would House & Cuddy think of that? How do Chase & Foreman's religious backgrounds influence them & would either of them consider this route for themselves & what about how they treat the patient? Adding House or Wilson as the patient adds another layer of complexity - why would those characters make that choice? <& guys ":puts on modly hat: I know some folks aren't fond of mpreg, but could we tone down the expressions of disgust? There are folks who enjoy it when done well (me & I can't be the only one, there's too much being mpreg written) & folks who write it well too or may write it well in the future, so please reserve judgment on the fic and the medicine til you read it. The way RL medicine is advancing, give hem a few years, I've no doubt we'll see it - this is after all the culture that made Viagra a billion dollar drug>.

FWIW I think you all are, so far, VERY successful with the Aftershocks series in dealing with the issues presented in a well-thought out and meaningful way. I loves me some Hurt!Wilson and Comfort!House, but this series is so much more. Really top notch! p.s. post more soon, I'm begging here!

Mare I think you folks involved in Aftershocks are doing an excellent job of avoiding making a catastrophic event the setup for "Teh Healing Sexxx". I really like that and the exploration you spoke of. It's why I've read them all so far and will continue to do so. As for The Contract and the other stories in that verse I've read quite a few of them, and will continue to do so, again because of the exploration of the House Wilson dynamic and seeing how that dynamic evolves in the recovery from a catastrophic event in House's life. I have read parts of them cringing while doing so because of the descriptions but it's the other issues that continue to pull me in. I do read some of the porn stories but the ones I appreciate the most are not the PWP stories but those that use porn as a vehicle to explore the dynamic between House and Wilson and how that evolves in different situations. I know that I'm kind of a one-note person here but what drew me initially to the show was that relationship and I'm still stuck on it.

Good points, all, about the whole torture!fic thing. I guess I don't really have a different definition of the word 'erotic', and I should have just used 'fetish' to describe the way the torture seems to be depicted. Not that there's anything wrong with that or that people can't enjoy reading or writing it. I see the Contractverse as a bit fetishistic because the 'verse provides its own fairly unbelievable (to me, personal opinion only) set-up to initiate the torture - a sort of 'torture ex machina' - rather than following from some event in canon. So, the torture, itself, (and the angst generated from it) is the point. The Aftershocks 'verse is a little different, because while the original fic required the jump, the stories following it don't really need to take the same leaps to make a coherent story. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Blue, I completely agree with you, and I think 'erotic' and 'fetishistic' are words that aren't far off the mark at all. Fanfic writers have often been accused of using sexuality to "force" the emotional reactions out of the characters that they'd like to see. We want to know that House cares for Wilson, so we have him show it by seducing him: that must mean that he cares, right? (Not necessarily, but go with me on this one). Hurt/comfort is another aspect of the same thing. We want the emotional reactions, the proof of caring, and so we set up these extraordinary, unbelievable situations where even House can't stand gruffly and idly by. He must care, and show that he cares, and that's what most folk want to see. So in much the same way that fanfic writers use sex to prove caring, they also use torture and subsequent recovery to prove caring; and the torture and the sex can, of course, be conflated until 'erotic' and 'fetishistic' are the words we're left with, even if they're not what the author intended. (Author intention gets seriously short shrift, guys, lemme tell you. A couple of semesters of Literary Theory taught me that.)

I avoid the torture series, because the violence tends to be upsetting to me. (CousinAlexei, you stop snickering right now.) However, I've been reading the Aftershocks bits here and there, and that's fine. Aftermath is easier than actuality, or something. But I think I also like these because they are, in some ways, peeks into that intellectual, solo thinky thing House does, and where we can't really get in, as television viewers. I don't mind hurt/comfort in general, though. The odd thing, I guess, is that I find it more satisfying in a fandom setting where the cuddling of ouchies is already built into the canon. In House, though, comfort is almost a foreign concept - just look at how House takes care of Wilson after his divorce. Hunting, in a strange way, involves Cameron getting hurt and demanding comfort from people who aren't providing what she needs. So it takes a really skilled writer to make that general structure work, or put a nifty twist on it. I must make a sad confession...House/Wilson really doesn't do much for me anymore. :oops: I don't remember the last time I read a House/Wilson story. Perhaps it's a matter of saturation or burnout or some such. I read things by authors whose work I tend to enjoy, but I don't feel the need to branch out anymore. In a bizarre way, I think it's become the slash equivalent of House/Cameron to me - predictable, obvious, and therefore kinda boring, with an annoying dose of having to shift through a pile of fics where everybody's a 14 year-old girl to get to the good stuff. (Although for House/Wilson/Cuddy in any incarnation I'll sit at work twitching because I can't wait to get home and click, so clearly, I'm not totally immune...)

Normally I don't like it when House calls Wilson "Jimmy" in fanfic as it seems OOC (and don't get me started on Greg or Gregg!). I've only seen it done right once or twice where it seemed IC. One moment in particular was in a lovely story by Miss Violet where (at a very HOT moment) House says something like, "Let go, Jimmy". That seemed perfect because it was as if House was allowing Wilson to be himself, Jimmy, and, of course, it was during a very intimate scene which made it perfect. Shucks, thank you! I actually wrote, "Give it up, Jimmy." But, I have to admit, I don't think my House and Wilson are necessarily in character. If they were in character, they wouldn't be always ripping each others' clothes off and engaging in long drawn-out teasing sex and its fluffy aftermath, because there's nothing in canon about that! I think the erotic slash usually contains elements of the writers' own fantasies - thus the House/Wilson spanking fics, the dom/sub themes, the gender-bending and cross-dressing, or even the fluff are reflections of the writer's taste. Those who don't talk to RL friends about your fic reading and writing, because so much of it is sexual fantasy, how does that square with sharing those same fantasies with people on the internet? Obviously it's different...but what makes it different? It's quite simple. I don't know the people on the Internet and they do not know me. Nothing in my LJ is personal, except the occassional note that I'm going out of town or busy with school and won't be reading my journal for awhile. If I wanted to sever all connections with my LJ friends, I could do so easily. I am sure that my LJ friends are lovely people, but they are Internet acquaintances, not real-life friends. Additionally, I am sure that my LJ friends also enjoy House/Wilson porn, or else they wouldn't have discovered my LJ. So I can be assured that, unlike my real-life friends, family, and acquaintainces, the LJ community, people on this and other House/Wilson threads, and other slash destinations, have the same appreciation for slash that I do. Or at least, they're not disgusted by it. But even if they were to be horrified by my explicit pornography, that won't affect my life. Whereas if my real-life friends, family, and acquaintances were to become privy to my innermost sexual fantasies, and were to find them shockingly repellent, it'd be hard for me to handle that. Not everyone would have difficulty with this but I'm a reserved person. I don't understand mpreg unless it's written as a strictly sci-fi or fantasy story like all those House/zombies/vampires fics. Maybe because I understand wanting to have children, just not why a man would be so gung-ho to 'bear' children, if you can call surgically implanting a fertilized egg and medically ensuring that it survives to term in an environment that was never biologically suited to sustain it 'bearing' a child. Surely it would be easier to hire a surrogate if a man wants to have children? I can't imagine the House team involved with trying to help a man guy carry a fetus to term; they deal with life-threatening illnesses and last-resort cases, not optional procedures. But, I am biased. I will never read mpreg fics. I don't even like fpreg fics. Mpreg is just one of those things that I don't understand, kinda like the woman who had plastic surgery to make herself look like a cat or some guy in New Orleans who had horns surgically implanted in his forehead. To those people, their procedures were necessary to their happiness but to me, it's nuts. But to each their own, I guess. I like the House/Wilson relationship on its own. But I want to add that there's lots of great fics out there that I have never read simply because it's not my cup of tea and I don't have unlimited time for fan-ficcing, sadly. No judgement on other people's fondness of mpreg, just my own POV.

Vita, I am snickering. I can't help it. I think I'm gonna tell The Minx that you said that. Blue, I see what you're saying. I've been trying to figure out why the violence in the fic I'm MSTing (Chase is raped by his long-lost brothers, and the rape includes non-consensual bloodplay, and Cameron watches a tape of this happening when he was 15) makes me fear for the author's mental health, whereas I consider the Dog and the Sheep perfectly sane, even though their stories are more violent. One aspect, of course, is that the writing in the MST stories is terrible, but more than that, there's an impression that Chase's suffering is meant to be enjoyed. So I can see why, if you get that vibe from even the better-written torture stories, you wouldn't want to read them.

I think there can be a sense...and I'm just working this out now, so please to be excusing me if I make no sense...but. Let me start over. Sometimes the author's presence in the story is obvious. Mary Sues and self-inserts, for instance. A lot of the time, we try to make our presence in the stories much more subtle, and hopefully invisible (although we will probably never achieve that). I think, in the more over-the-top torture stories, in a lot of the more saccharine kidfic, in the character-bashing--the author becomes more obvious. We are, of course, always reading the author's fantasies--that is, for the most part, what fanfic is. And when I can sense the author through the writing, that's when I get this vague sense of disquiet, as if I'm getting too close to the author's fantasizing mind. Too personal, maybe? Or perhaps it's too clear that the characters are marionettes and the author is making their joints go in directions they oughtn't. Add to this the standard caveat that your mileage may vary, every reader will react differently, and maybe it's just me. But I think the most successful writer is the invisible writer: which is why characterization is my first-and-foremost criteria for a strong story.