Fic: Breeding Lilacs [1/2] (Adult Content Warning)

[etherati]

Title: Breeding Lilacs
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Rorschach/Dan.
Summary: It’s easier to ignore these things, frozen and buried under snow. Warm times are not so forgiving. Zombie!verse.
Rating/Warnings: NC-17. Oh, god. Let’s see. As per the original story: Zombies, science zombies, bad science, slash. Slash is explicit this time though, so

Comments

[daylilymoon]

Pfff I will not hear any apologies for posting awesome fic! It's a compliment to you that I would rather have sat reading this than gone and done the fix hair+fix face+pack lunch routine.

Also, although the betas you listed are quite amazing people, they wouldn't have been able to polish this to anything good if this wasn't fantastic to start with. So there :p

NOW TO FIC. My God. I expressed my love for the first part already so you know I was impressed, but I'm extremely glad you didn't stop there. You've explored the beginnings of a relationship here, in a very thorough and very touching way. I would have been pleased with merely a PWP, but you took it to a better and deeper place like you always do, and I'm happy about that; your fics don't sit there with a dispassionate eye describing what's happening, they prod and peel away until something more important gets exposed. Authorial voices and authorial attitudes for some reason always jump out at me before anything else; a lot of them, especially in the published world, put me off so strongly I want to whack the author in the nose--but yours is nice and inquisitive and reminds me of when I used to be into science; there's so much meticulous examination and inquiry and working into details for the sake of discovery. Oh God, none of that tortured sentence I just wrote makes sense. To summarize: IT'S NICE TO READ YAY.

Thank you for not shying away from the fact that kinky!Dan is kinky, and for showing how closely wired violence/danger and sex must be in his mind. And also for showing that things are not perfect and there's implications to the relationship they desperately bury, but it's still theirs and they still want it and still try.

And as always, your imagery's gorgeous. Usually in fic there's one or two nice images to read if you're lucky, but this is packed all the way through, from the unshattering teacup to the rose-grey sky to the brittle moths.

I absolutely love how big a part trust plays in this, too.

(I'll stop rambling sometime, I swear) And again with the characterization. If someone put canon!Ror, zombie!Ror, and the current Ror we have in Brushstrokes in front of me on a page, I swear I'd be able to tell them apart. They're all such subtly distinct versions of each other, and I don't know how you do that. but I like it!

[etherati]

but yours is nice and inquisitive and reminds me of when I used to be into science; there's so much meticulous examination and inquiry and working into details for the sake of discovery.

Quoted because it's very interesting, since science is my first love and still the focus of my academics. I wonder if those things are connected. It would make a lot of sense.

The trust is honestly what finally drew me in. I'd sworn I would never write zombieporn when liodain drew the necknomming picture and made a silly comment in the thread about zombie!ror and I realized that, oh holy crap, Dan would have to have SO MUCH TRUST to let him do that. And trust is more of a kink for me than most straight-up sexual things are. So my resolve completely, utterly broke at that point.

but it's still theirs and they still want it and still try.

Yes. Yes. Exactly. It's theirs and they don't have a whole lot else and it's worth trying, because there aren't always second chances. Even if it's fucked-up and broken in places and doesn't quite fit right in others; it's nothing foisted on them by society or the rest of the world. It's whatever they choose to make of it.

And yes, kinky!Dan is kinky. Hooboy is he ever.

Thank you so much - you have no idea how good these long, thought-out reviews make me feel. <3

[daylilymoon]

I wonder if those things are connected. It would make a lot of sense.

Hunh! That is interesting. Now I wonder how peoples' careers impact their writing. And it's kinda cool to meet a sciency person in fandom, it seems like most people around are English majors (nothing wrong with that, though)!

Well thank goodness she drew that picture, haha. But seriously yeah, it's hard for me to ever get into 'ships where there's no trust, so I get what you mean. And trust is so big with them. Trusting each other in terms of being two loners who manage to form a friendship, and in terms of trusting each other as partners-in-crimefighting.

It's whatever they choose to make of it.

fff Yes. That's what makes their relationship real to me in this, because--everything you said in that paragraph, that is a real-life relationship.

You're welcome, you're welcome! ♥ I can't help but tl;dr about good stuff, ha.

[etherati]

One of my big, big pet peeves is this idea that a 'relationship' is a set, formulaic thing, where suddenly people are calling each other pet names and picking out china patterns. Relationships are only ever what we make them. They don't have to have rules, or roles, or anything in particular. They just need people, preferably being themselves and doing the things they're likely to do, and giving a shit about each other. Everything else is up in the air.

[daylilymoon]

Totally agree with everything here. There's as many different types of relationships as there are people. That whole giving a shit part is the only part that actually matters. Seeing fiction where that part is missing but the "relationship" is there (and it's not meant to be read as fucked-up)? That's anger-making. So I'm glad you get it :D