So I was reading an interview the other day with the creative forces behind a certain Broadway show (*coughWickedcough*), and the central theme of said show was repeatedly described by different people as "a love story between two [female] friends"--and I'm sure that this was meant in a purely emotional sense, and not physical (since the show was a family-friendly musical). Now, I know that we (i.e., myself and other folks who would be reading this on LJ) love the HoYay subtext wherever we can find it, hence all the great slashy fanfic/femslash, but it got me to thinking about that famous line from "When Harry Met Sally": "Men and women can't be friends, because the sex part always gets in the way."

Now, that movie was interesting, because I always thought that part of it did try to assert that men and women could be friends, but "the sex part" inevitably came into the picture because it's a romance, and so of course Harry and Sally wind up together at the end. To use a same-sex example, I think of Xena in the early days, when it was repeatedly asserted that Xena and Gabrielle were "just" friends with a very deep emotional connection, and the actresses stated that they had always played it "straight", so to speak, going off the emotional intent of the scenes rather than playing to physical stuff. Until the end of the series, at which point Lucy Lawless declared that Xena had effectively been "outed" in the finale and she was thus sure, in retrospect, that the characters did have a romantic relationship.

So my question to y'all is, do you think it is possible to have a "love story" between two people, gay or straight or in combination, which remains in the realm of platonic love? (Let's not even get into the "what if your soulmate is a friend rather than romantic partner" thing, since the whole "soulmate" {ewwewweww, how I've come to hate that word} thing is a controversial concept/term for many folks.) If so, how exactly does that (a platonic love story) work? Discuss.

BTW, if anyone wants to widen this discussion by cutting/posting/pasting to their own LJ or in some other community, I'd love that (I'm mostly a "monitor-this-community" kind of LJ-er, so my flist and subsequent number of people who might actually read this post is rather limited). I'm really curious as to what people think about this. :)

Some very cool journal titles out there...I took mine from vintage_wreck, whose LJ title and subtitle are "even if it's just the night in my veins" and "what's the upside of this place" respectively. Cheers, mate.

SVU, Alex, OTP
PG
a touch over at 126 words

( even if )


100 words is...hard, actually! Hope the ending makes some sort of sense...
Cross-posted to lawandorder100

All right, here's my final offer, whittled down as much as possible but still longish.

Title: Thursdays
Fandom: SVU
Characters/Pairing: Cragen/Alex friendship, implied Alex/Olivia
Spoilers: Loss
Rating: PG
Summary: Written for the thursday100plus "Thursday" challenge and remaindered.

( Don Cragen never could get the hang of Thursdays. )

just a test posting, nothing to see here, move along...