A List of Available Smiles
Title: A List of Available Smiles
Pairing: Phan
Rating: PG-13 (although possibly triggery)
Warnings: Depression (NO self-harm, NO suicide, NO eating disorders)
Wordcount: 13,829
Disclaimer: Most emphatically, I do not believe this to be true.
Summary: This is the truth of depression: it doesn't stop you laughing. It just stops you feeling happy. And it ( Read more... )
Okay, okay reading.
.
God, woman. I am so glad I'm marrying you. You've not let me down yet. So as much as I want to get on to the next part and just kind of squeal in your general direction, I really want to actually review this. So.
I love Dan's perspective that people are selfish creatures who build themselves up so much that when they get knocked down they simply cannot deal with it. I love that Dan can't vocalize what he perceives to be the true nature of the world because it would be 'breaking the rules' of the 'game' that he believes us all to play.
Dan's view of life as an intricate deception contrasts so nicely with Phil's simpler, cleaner version of the world in such a beautiful way. God, I'm feeling.
So far, and this is only the first part, it's made me think about my own view of the world and what that says about me. And then I realized: We all have our Dan moments, and we all have our Phil moments. No one can be Phil all the time, and being Dan all the time is unhealthy. At our worsts, we all become Dan. But Dan is stuck on being Dan, and his Phil moments are too sparse to have much of an effect.
I feel like I need to note that Dan in this is incredibly reminiscent of my father, and it's hitting really close to home in all the best of ways. It's entirely relatable, which is so important when dealing with such a sensitive subject.
The psychological elements in this are making me not even feel the need to comment on the romantic, mostly because most of that probably comes later, but of course I appreciate that as well because I am the phangirl extraordinaire.
Long review is long. Synopsis: You are perfect, your writing is incredible, I am feeling, and the marriage is happening so hard, okay, you don't even know.
P.S. The title and summary are beautiful.
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"Je voulais dire seulement que le héros du livre est condamné parce qu’il ne joue pas le jeu... Et c’est pourquoi des lecteurs ont été tenté de le considérer comme une épave. Meursault ne joue pas le jeu. La réponse est simple: il refuse de mentir."
That's a quote from Albert Camus, a French philosopher, talking about his book L'Etranger. Just in case you don't speak French, I'll translate:
"I only wanted to say that the hero of the book is condemned because he doesn't play the game... And that's why some readers have been tempted to consider him as a write-off. Meursault doesn't play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie."
This is part of Camus's philosophy of the Absurd. The idea is that nothing has any meaning. Nothing we do has any consequence. And so we all construct ways of giving our lives meaning, be that through religion or law or arbitrary rules of politeness. We construct our lives in such a way that we don't have to contemplate the idea that nothing is worth anything.
We read that book in class when I was seventeen. "That's so weird," said everyone else. "That's... exactly what I've been thinking for the past four years," I said.
Basically, this is me disavowing creative ownership over that idea! Okay, next comment...
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