New F/K Story: The Question of Ghosts (R)

[arrow00]

Title: The Question of Ghosts
Podfic read by 2corbies
Author: arrow00
Fandom: dS
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: R
Category: FT, h/c
Wordcount: 6,375
Warning: primary character death
Beta: the fantastic nos4a2no9, whose insight and suggestions proved invaluable.
Summary:  It didn't matter, Fraser thought, if sometimes the flicker of Ray's reflection graced the curve of his

Comments

[j_s_cavalcante]

Obviously, I can't tell you what other authors do, but I would literally cry right through the writing of something like this. I touch-type, which would be good, because I would not be able to see through the tears.

Now, I can write sad stuff in other fandoms, or sad original stuff. I usually feel sad while doing it, but it doesn't destroy me the way a tragedy involving Ray and Fraser will do.

So I don't usually read them. I sometimes make exceptions for death stories that have "happy" endings, like this one. Where they get to be together in the afterlife. But that doesn't mean I find the stories easy to read, and I don't often reread them because they still hurt. I looked at this one because of my great respect for Arrow as an author. I don't ignore anything she writes, not even for a good reason. So I looked. Carefully. Looked at the end first. Because, and this is the other thing, the better a writer is, the more she can hurt you with a tragic story.

DS is an exception for me in my fannish reading. There's something about it that just makes me need it to not be tragic. It's also the only fandom in which I care for kidfic and AUs and other crack. So...I got nothin'. I can write sad stuff, I just choose not to. And if I were to write it in DS, it would have negative effects on my psyche, I think. *sighs*

P.S. Thank you for gluing me. I needed it. Ray is necessary like air! Preach it, sister! :)

[snarkyducky]

I would literally cry right through the writing of something like this

you're still way stronger than i am. my brain simply cringes away from these concepts, and just goes "does not compute"..

i agree with you about the specialness of this fandom. i can read deathfics in other fandoms (i have about 5 of those) but i can't deal with that in dS. i still haven't read End of the Road no matter how many times people rec it.

i read this story also because i don't think Arrow would gut me and leave my bleeding on the floor.. she'd patch up my wounds at least :P

yeah, dS is my comfort fandom -- it's like a haven from the tragedy in RL and other fandoms.. (probably because the magic carries over from the canon) and so my brain automatically rejects thoughts of the boys in the same sentence as "deathfic"..

♥ :D

[arrow00]

Hey JS:

I'm glad you took a chance. I try not to leave my readers mortally wounded, although I am sometimes willing to read stories like that myself (or read them once, anyway. Such as End of the Road. Which is not a death story, Snarky. But it kilt me dead, anyway.)

I was sad as I wrote this because RAY, beautiful Ray, aiiii! At the same time I knew he was still there playing pranks and watching over Fraser and just itching to come through the veil. Probably threatening to kick Fraser in the head if he didn't wise up.

But, yeah, Ray is dead, and even just thinking that hurts.

We are lucky in this fandom to have afterlife in canon. I couldn't have written this story otherwise, since I don't subscribe to the paranormal normally. But this is dS.

He's a ghost to us, too. Not real. How is he not real?

He is so! He is! And we make him more realier with every story we write.

[j_s_cavalcante]

I'm glad you took a chance. I try not to leave my readers mortally wounded

I knew that about you. I knew that, and it gave me the courage to click the link. I'm glad I did, despite the tears.

although I am sometimes willing to read stories like that myself (or read them once, anyway. Such as End of the Road. Which is not a death story, Snarky. But it kilt me dead, anyway.)

It didn't kill me. It frustrated me. At the end I kept thinking, okay, where's the rest? Because it didn't ring true for me for the characters. As they kept making the worst possible choices, I started to feel they were veering more and more away from the characterizations I recognized. So I didn't find myself convinced by the scenario, and therefore, no tears.

I was sad as I wrote this because RAY, beautiful Ray, aiiii!

YES!!!!!

But, yeah, Ray is dead, and even just thinking that hurts.

*cries*

We are lucky in this fandom to have afterlife in canon. I couldn't have written this story otherwise, since I don't subscribe to the paranormal normally. But this is dS.

Interesting. Because I couldn't write something like this, and I do subscribe to the paranormal and have had some contact with "the afterlife."

He's a ghost to us, too. Not real. How is he not real?

He is so! He is! And we make him more realier with every story we write.

*loves you quite a lot* Yes. The velveteen detective? :)

Seriously, Plato's Heaven. I buy that, actually: that everything that is imagined, or even can be imagined, has reality on some other plane. It's the other plane that bothers me, really, because like Ray I'm impatient. I want him here, now, physical. But I do get you. I feel him. He lives in me. And I think that's why I recognized him when I watched him...and then started to write him.

And, heck, time is fleeting. We're each not even on this plane very long per lifetime. Fraser's so aware of that. And yet...their FT had to wait till Ray was...oh, God, the love. The enormous LOVE...Ray in the ballroom, under the mirror ball...

I'm crying again. Dammit. *smiles through tears*

But I love you very much.

[arrow00]

It didn't kill me. It frustrated me. At the end I kept thinking, okay, where's the rest? Because it didn't ring true for me for the characters.

Well, for me the characters didn't ring true as the characters we see in the series (especially Ray, who seemed homophobic and not demonstrative, and I don't see him that way) but I felt they definitely had integrity within the story she wrote. In other words, if you treat it as an AU departure, like slivers of the characters we know but extrapolated from critical personality points, I thought it incredibly well-written and cohesive. Believable within its own universe, in other words. And so reading it for itself (and reading them both like that) depressed me for days afterward.

The one thing I did find kind of believable and true to Fraser was his love of the freedom of solitude. Which also depresses me, so I try to ignore that part of his personality. ;)

The velveteen detective?

Hee. I so was thinking that. With Welsh as the Skin Horse.

I'm so glad you liked the image of Ray in the ballroom. I actually have a screen shot I took of some guy in a movie that was wearing the exact outfit I was picturing Ray (so hot!) in. But maybe some terrific artist could draw it for us better. ::ducking::