everything to me
Things I really should have learned by now, #3,754: that someone has a rec page does not mean that their taste or standards are compatible with mine.
I've been reading a lot of Fraser/Kowalski lately, but I had to stop today, because I was getting too claustrophobic. On their behalf, I mean. It's not the first time a slash pairing gives me claustrophobia, but those two are certainly, in many stories, a very clear illustration of the how and the why, of all the stuff that gives me a bad vibe, the stuff that makes me kinda nervous for them, truth to tell. Because they work together, right, and they're friends, they hang out, and then wham, they're lovers, with the big romance and the mad declarations and wolves mate for life, or was that another fandom? anyway, all I can hear is how they're nailing themselves into a smaller and smaller box, because they have no people, they can't have any people, they are each other's world and no one can know because of homophobia and regulations and Vecchio's cover and the phases of the moon, and it's just the two of them and their insecurities in mad mad mad love together forever and they both have obsessive tendencies to put it mildly and next up, the folie a deux and the suicide pact, you know?
All in all, it's quite a relief when they move to Canada and start making friends with the locals.
This is why many buddy pairings don't work for me. Working together, partners, best friends - add in zhe romance on top of that and suddenly there's no air left. The sparkly dancing boys are a lovely exception to this, because they worked together and there was/is best-friend-ness, but their lives are full of people, tons and tons of people, so the problem is usually how to get them somewhere semi-private where they can get it on without a twenty-person entourage watching. Even when just two of them are written into a house somewhere together with their cell phones off, the rest of the world is just a tabloid front-page away. But other fandoms I've been into or enjoyed reading have certainly suffered from If You Were the Only Boy in the World syndrome, such as Phantom Menace and Sentinel.
Obviously, for some people this is a kink rather than a squick, and obviously, far from everything in any one of these fandoms is like this, and obviously... okay, I've forgotten what the third thing is. I'm just going to open the balcony door a bit, let some air in. :)
I've been reading a lot of Fraser/Kowalski lately, but I had to stop today, because I was getting too claustrophobic. On their behalf, I mean. It's not the first time a slash pairing gives me claustrophobia, but those two are certainly, in many stories, a very clear illustration of the how and the why, of all the stuff that gives me a bad vibe, the stuff that makes me kinda nervous for them, truth to tell. Because they work together, right, and they're friends, they hang out, and then wham, they're lovers, with the big romance and the mad declarations and wolves mate for life, or was that another fandom? anyway, all I can hear is how they're nailing themselves into a smaller and smaller box, because they have no people, they can't have any people, they are each other's world and no one can know because of homophobia and regulations and Vecchio's cover and the phases of the moon, and it's just the two of them and their insecurities in mad mad mad love together forever and they both have obsessive tendencies to put it mildly and next up, the folie a deux and the suicide pact, you know?
All in all, it's quite a relief when they move to Canada and start making friends with the locals.
This is why many buddy pairings don't work for me. Working together, partners, best friends - add in zhe romance on top of that and suddenly there's no air left. The sparkly dancing boys are a lovely exception to this, because they worked together and there was/is best-friend-ness, but their lives are full of people, tons and tons of people, so the problem is usually how to get them somewhere semi-private where they can get it on without a twenty-person entourage watching. Even when just two of them are written into a house somewhere together with their cell phones off, the rest of the world is just a tabloid front-page away. But other fandoms I've been into or enjoyed reading have certainly suffered from If You Were the Only Boy in the World syndrome, such as Phantom Menace and Sentinel.
Obviously, for some people this is a kink rather than a squick, and obviously, far from everything in any one of these fandoms is like this, and obviously... okay, I've forgotten what the third thing is. I'm just going to open the balcony door a bit, let some air in. :)