Seeking: Mentor/Protege
December 2, 2011 11:15 PM   Subscribe

Recommendations for stories about the mentor/protege dynamic that are sexy. Bonus points if both parties are female.

I have a HUGE thing for mentor/protege dynamics with sexual tension - the mentor is tops at their field and rather focused on it to the near-exclusion of everything else, the protege is being trained in the field and is often treated as an assistant of sorts, the protege goes from wanting to be like the mentor to wanting the mentor themselves (or vice versa) and there's some sexualisation that would usually throw IRL examples into depths of unprofessional conduct but in fiction is really really hot.

It's kinda similar to teacher/student in terms of power dynamics, but I see M/P as having a more exclusive, focused relationship - the mentor could be really busy being a rockstar or going to conferences or whatever, but the protege's always there with them as their gopher/right hand person/apprentice/etc.

Any recommendations for stories (or non-fiction if such a thing exists) with this type of dynamic and story structure? It doesn't have to be kinky or especially explicit; I do really like erotic suggestion. I greatly prefer F/F pairings, but I suppose that can be hard to find. Any type of occupation works - artist, scientist, sex worker, sportsperson, smithing, whatever would have such a dynamic to start with.
posted by divabat to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite

 
Xena.
posted by timsteil at 11:36 PM on December 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


Battlestar Galactica has a lot of this in the fanfic world. The military/martial backdrop lends itself very well to this, albeit often in a rather angsty way when the mentor is not necessarily a sympathetic character. You will want to have a look at pairings like Starbuck/Roslin, Kendra/Caine, Maya/Roslin, or for that matter Starbuck/Caine etc. There's also stuff where Starbuck would be in the mentor roll to say, Racetrack, Kat or some other nugget. For less power-struggely stuff you can probably search firstnames rather than callsigns, Kara and Helena have picnics, Starbuck and Cain wipe out Cylons.

I'll be in my bunk.
posted by Iteki at 2:48 AM on December 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


I think you might enjoy The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
posted by rongorongo at 3:25 AM on December 3, 2011


The film High Art
posted by jayder at 5:04 AM on December 3, 2011


It's perhaps more graphic than you are looking for, but The Story of O has multiple mentor/mentee dynamics at play.

And I think you'll find many stories with mentor/protege aspects involving artists. Certainly a few of Anais Nin's short stories had those themes, for example; there's something about the artist's gaze towards the model, and the apprenticeship model of learning, that lends itself well to eroticization in fiction and movies.
posted by Forktine at 6:41 AM on December 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


Would 'The Hunger' do? I think so.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:15 AM on December 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: graphic is fine!
posted by divabat at 1:05 AM on December 4, 2011


I recently read The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, which has a couple of chapters that involve same-sex mentor/mentee relationships (one of which involves S&M, if that's okay). I haven't read her fiction, but I got the impression it's a subject she writes about a lot.
posted by newrambler at 12:11 PM on December 4, 2011


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