Some Near Misses and Writing Meta

[flaming_muse]

I've been talking a bit of Near Misses meta over on tumblr.

I'm putting it here beneath the cut for my LJ readers and my own desire for organization:

Comments

[pene]

To me one of the positives of Near Misses is that it is not a story of misunderstandings. You have created a situation/universe where two people need to shift their views on themselves and each other in order to come together. I thought about this while reading the story because so many romances are based on situations where if they'd only spoken all would be well. That becomes essential in keeping them apart before the (inevitable?) declarations and love. In life I have not found those to be a realistic impediments.

But in your story I never felt the separation was falsely forced upon them. It was a matter of character rather than circumstance, in a way. And I felt it was mutual. There were very good reasons for the two boys to believe they couldn't address things between them. Each of them had their own evidence that led them to silence.

But even more importantly had they spoken more openly after the first time they had sex it wouldn't have come clear. At that stage Blaine genuinely believes that he wants and should experience the more casual things he is aiming for (and maybe he should, I mean, if this were reality it's not entirely an unhealthy trajectory, aside from the damage to his self-esteem inflicted by his relationship with Sebastian... and also his young sense of self) And Kurt wouldn't be able to believe in their relationship until they built that working respectful friendship.

To me it's not just that they're not together through high school that makes them different, it's also age. The things you trust at 16 are not the same as the things you trust at 19.

Still my favourite :)

[flaming_muse]

To me one of the positives of Near Misses is that it is not a story of misunderstandings. You have created a situation/universe where two people need to shift their views on themselves and each other in order to come together.

That is absolutely how I see it, though I'm aware not everyone does. But when I started thinking about the arc of the fic, part of what I wanted to show was how step by step both Kurt and Blaine have to change as they grow together/are changed by growing together and finding each other in this timeline, and how that's a process. It's not as simple as meeting; it takes a lot of conversations and a lot of time together. As you say, they could have been entirely honest in chapter three and would still never have been able to make it work then.

So thank you for seeing that and liking that. <3 <3 <3 It makes me very happy. <3 <3 <3