Life's Hidden Forces (can only be discovered by living) - Team Epilogue

[hdcup_mod]

Title: Life's Hidden Forces (can only be discovered by living)
Team: Team Epilogue
Author: kabal42
Prompt: Strength
Wordcount: ~17,600
Rating: R (going on NC-17)
Warnings: BDSM in main pairing (not particularly explicit, but a key element of the story), polyamory, cheating/infidelity (for a while), positive view of Ginny
Summary: It is never easy to love

Comments

[outofthisplace]

I feel like you havn't fleshed out the H/D relationship enough at the point where you state that Harry loves Draco--so far, all we've seen is one BDSM session, which really doesn't say love at all.
The dialoge's well done, certainly, but I feel like you do a lot of telling instead of showing, through the dialogue.
My, my, Harry is a selfish thing, Draco is right. Who's he to think he can have his perfect family and his perfect lover, and everyone'll be happy?
WOAH! Ginny watching?? This is an interesting twist, I'm very interested to see how this goes down.
The whole negotiating table sitiuation seems very surreal.
I really can't believe Ginny can so calmly watch her husband, the love of her life, flogging and and nearly fucking Malfoy, of all people. More surreality.
This was definitely well written, and well executed for what it was, and the characters were successfully developed, however I do feel that they weren't, well... the characters they were supposed to be. That is to say, if it had been three other people, not Harry, Draco, and Ginny, it would have been just as believeable and successful.

[kabal42]

Hi there :-) Thanks for the comment! It means a lot to me that you took time to leave this, especially since it clearly wasn't your favourite kind of story.

I have to disagree, though, that BDSM doesn't say love. To me, nothing says love as much as that - and this is what I was trying to show. I'm sorry if I failed, though.

But you are so right that Harry is selfish! I'm not sure he really deserves what he gets... The strongest person in this fic is, in many ways, actually Ginny because of her ability to overcome her difficulties and try for happiness for all involved. I was trying to show that all the characters here are strong and carry a lot - not just for themselves, but for each other. Even Harry, selfish as he is, wants what's best for everyone.

Like I said to zanzou_chan I'm very sorry you felt the characterisation wasn't sufficient. To me, this would never have worked with any other characters, so that's something I'm going to work harder on another time.

[outofthisplace]

I have to disagree, though, that BDSM doesn't say love. To me, nothing says love as much as that - and this is what I was trying to show. I'm sorry if I failed, though.
Oh, no, I don't disagree with the fact that BDSM can say love, I just feel it takes longer for it to do so than in just one session, which is how much you give us before love shows up. But I suppose you were just trying to show it in a different way. And it was definitely successful in a number of places :)

[kabal42]

Oh, I'm glad, then :-) Thank you, again!

I know I only showed one session, but more than a year passed and the second scene was meant to imply that this was a very regular thing. I usually believe in the "show, don't just tell" idiom, but frankly, a long series of scenes might've got a bit boring ;-) At least to me.