Fic rec/pet peeve, resulting dream
I read a 100K Inception fic on Friday. It'd been months since I'd read any fic other than sporadic updates of snookiescookies' Pretty Woman AU Paper Things and toomuchplor's Steinway!verse, both also Inception, but for whatever reason, the desire struck me and there was this student/teacher high school AU I hadn't read among the fics ranked by most kudos on the AO3.
It was - well, on a sentence level it needed work (to paraphrase the opening of one section: 'He groaned, jaw dropping, the blood rushing both from and into his face as his brain tried to decide whether to blush or go pale in mortification'), all adverbs and redundant descriptions and a weird mix of italics and all-caps for emphasis, and there were some "that would never happen" moments as well as idiosyncrasies born of a British author depicting an American school year, etc., but it was paced well and the cresting and ebbing emotions resonated, and I was glad to have read it by the time I went to bed.
All that by way of mentioning two things:
One
I know fandom loves its tropes, but I'm tired of the conceit where the [ETA: neurotypical] character with the desperate crush refuses to see the signs that the object of said crush returns the attraction. I like the tension when it's uncertain whether the feelings are reciprocated, and the pining when it seems there aren't and won't be any indications of same (even if there ends up being a happy ending), and the shift from pining to joy when the one with the crush begins to hope or to understand that it might be mutual. But this thing where character A likes character B, and character B indicates in numerous ways that they like A as well, but A explains it all away, and then characters C and D tell A that A is being ridiculous and obtuse, but A also rationalizes their comments away, followed by a string of deliberate misunderstandings and a near blowup before the climactic epiphany and celebratory sex... not a favorite.
I mean, I get that someone liking a person can be more obvious to outsiders than to the person themselves, but so many stories take it too far (for me) and I wish writers would respect their characters and their readers enough to spend less time on the misunderstandings phase and more on the "can this really be true," "how do we make this work" parts OR drop fewer obvious hints and let the pining feel as acute to the reader as it does to the character instead of leaving us to facepalm because we see the signs of affection as clearly as their frustrated friends do. Well, no, it's maybe not a lack of respect so much as a love for the structure that you see so often in romantic comedies. A love that I share less with each passing year.
Maybe I'm just reading the wrong stories.
Two
Must have been the influx of ficciness after a drought, but I had this dream Friday night involving three men with (on reflection) Eames' body type as described in the story, hard bodies, heavily muscled, tattooed, naked, exuding sex and power in a way that defied what I'm usually attracted to. Have been trying to pin down what the main one looked like, slick black hair and olive skin; can only come up with something like Sukar from the TV show Defiance, except that's not quite it.
In the dream the three of them were recovering from some kind of energy blast like being hit with a phaser and one had taken it really hard, was groaning and shaking as though he were having a seizure, wrapped around a radiator to try to ease the aftershocks, only when the other two pried him away from it he had these huge gouges in his flesh that had been burned away from the heat, down to muscle and bone.
So.
Domestic day today, methinks, after a busy one yesterday at the Head of the Charles and out on a bike ride. There's a vid to poke at and pumpkin bread to be made.
It was - well, on a sentence level it needed work (to paraphrase the opening of one section: 'He groaned, jaw dropping, the blood rushing both from and into his face as his brain tried to decide whether to blush or go pale in mortification'), all adverbs and redundant descriptions and a weird mix of italics and all-caps for emphasis, and there were some "that would never happen" moments as well as idiosyncrasies born of a British author depicting an American school year, etc., but it was paced well and the cresting and ebbing emotions resonated, and I was glad to have read it by the time I went to bed.
All that by way of mentioning two things:
One
I know fandom loves its tropes, but I'm tired of the conceit where the [ETA: neurotypical] character with the desperate crush refuses to see the signs that the object of said crush returns the attraction. I like the tension when it's uncertain whether the feelings are reciprocated, and the pining when it seems there aren't and won't be any indications of same (even if there ends up being a happy ending), and the shift from pining to joy when the one with the crush begins to hope or to understand that it might be mutual. But this thing where character A likes character B, and character B indicates in numerous ways that they like A as well, but A explains it all away, and then characters C and D tell A that A is being ridiculous and obtuse, but A also rationalizes their comments away, followed by a string of deliberate misunderstandings and a near blowup before the climactic epiphany and celebratory sex... not a favorite.
I mean, I get that someone liking a person can be more obvious to outsiders than to the person themselves, but so many stories take it too far (for me) and I wish writers would respect their characters and their readers enough to spend less time on the misunderstandings phase and more on the "can this really be true," "how do we make this work" parts OR drop fewer obvious hints and let the pining feel as acute to the reader as it does to the character instead of leaving us to facepalm because we see the signs of affection as clearly as their frustrated friends do. Well, no, it's maybe not a lack of respect so much as a love for the structure that you see so often in romantic comedies. A love that I share less with each passing year.
Maybe I'm just reading the wrong stories.
Two
Must have been the influx of ficciness after a drought, but I had this dream Friday night involving three men with (on reflection) Eames' body type as described in the story, hard bodies, heavily muscled, tattooed, naked, exuding sex and power in a way that defied what I'm usually attracted to. Have been trying to pin down what the main one looked like, slick black hair and olive skin; can only come up with something like Sukar from the TV show Defiance, except that's not quite it.
In the dream the three of them were recovering from some kind of energy blast like being hit with a phaser and one had taken it really hard, was groaning and shaking as though he were having a seizure, wrapped around a radiator to try to ease the aftershocks, only when the other two pried him away from it he had these huge gouges in his flesh that had been burned away from the heat, down to muscle and bone.
So.
Domestic day today, methinks, after a busy one yesterday at the Head of the Charles and out on a bike ride. There's a vid to poke at and pumpkin bread to be made.