♥ blondetate wrote la petite mort 2/2 for sothereyougo

[jandjsalmon]

Title: la petite mort 2/2
Author: blondetate
Summary: Boston, where the leaves change and the seasons are different. The city seems like heaven to him. And every heaven has angels, don't they?
Spoilers/Warning/Triggers: Language, brief mentions of murder and death, sexual situations (between a minor and an adult)
Author Notes: AU. The title

Comments

Part one of two.

[sothereyougo]

Oh, mystery author! You are so very awesome to be giving me exactly what I asked for! The framework you set up with Violet being Hugo's fiancé and then wife is perfection: it raises the stakes on the “forbidden” aspect of the relationship to an incredible level, and it sets up your shocking twist that leads to their parting so painfully-perfectly. I’ll get to more on that later.

I love the choice of first person narrative from Tate’s point of view. As a tool of “technique” it works great for getting across the voyeur / stalker phase when he is trying to get her to absorb him into her world by osmosis or something. I loved that.

Then, as the story continues it is very effective for creating that sense of waiting and wanting and planning and hoping and, especially, lusting. It makes the reader identify with Tate’s perspective on all of that, and since he is the one pursuing Violet, that moves it from “technique” to sync in with the emotional and tension-building aspect that the reader feels.

The point of view also lets Tate just mention a couple in times in passing that he is responsible for his mother’s death but without elaborating. It’s so interesting how his first mention of it is like that: that he’s “responsible”, but the way he phrases it is still sort of passive and feels euphemistic. Later, he straight up says he killed her, but I think that’s after he’s so into Violet and is coming to the realization that his darkness and propensity for being a bit of a human volcano doesn’t put her off him, that it is maybe a part of what attracts her to him. Either way, it feels psychologically accurately-observed.

One of my favorite things in fic that you do here is have Tate be smart in a sort of predatory way that doesn’t detract from the fact that he is also generally intelligent but not amenable to the structured learning environment of school, that he is more a natural autodidact.

A favorite example of that here, one of my favorites anywhere, is how smart he is to have Violet make the first move, so she can’t say he used any undue force or aggression. Smart, hot Tate is smart and hot. *swoon* I so love that he makes her be the one to kiss him first. That way, it’s proof that she wants him, and no matter how sure he feels that it’s true anyway, that proof means a lot to him all the same. A recurring thing I also really enjoyed from their sexual relationship is that when he tries to carry through on their power struggle games, another something straight from my fic request prompt for which I thank you so much, is that when he wants to be a tease towards her sexually, he almost always can’t do it, definitely not as consistently as she can.

Now, I’m going to be impressionistic and just mention stuff that jumped out at me that I loved, but I can’t include them all, or this would get crazy-long.