ITP: Talking to myself.
Or "listening to myself talk", more like. About fics, mostly, and what kind of things I most like to read and write. Pay me no mind.
I can't write smut. ...Well, no, maybe I shouldn't use the word "can't." If I really tried to, I probably could. No guarantee that it would be good (in fact, there is a 99% likelihood it would totally suck), but I could do it.
But I don't really like to write smut. I much prefer gen, and the reason is this. When I read and/or write fic, there is a certain type of emotion that I'm always looking for/craving/trying to draw out above all else, and that is the hurt/comfort feeling of someone who trusts someone else so much that when things seem at their absolute worst, they can open up to that person and feel safe. That's it.
(ETA: After sleeping on it, I feel like I should clarify that it is possible to write a fic that features (but doesn't focus on) smut and still has this sort of feel to it. But I just feel like that's very difficult to accomplish, because even angsty, needy sex is still incredibly distracting. If it's written well, it's distracting because it's hot, and if it's not written well, it's distracting because it's, well, awkward. Either way, nine times out of ten it will pull the reader away from that previously described feeling. And I don't feel like I'm a good enough writer to pull off the trick of avoiding that. I know some people who are; I'm just not one of them.)
ANYWAY. Basically, if I were to strip my ideal fic concept down its very essence, the resulting plot would be something like "Gokudera (or Yamamoto or Tsuna) breaks down and confesses all of his secrets and pain and bawwww to [INSERT OTHER MEMBER OF THE TRIO HERE], and just cries in their arms but they tell him it's going to be okay."
Naturally, I don't actually want to read that fic. What I want to read is a fic that can somehow wrest that sort of super intense bawwww emotion from those characters while actually having it be in character. Because I want to have my cake and eat it too, which means that even as I'm craving seeing these characters get beaten down to their angsty cores, I also want them to retain their pride and dignity because I want to read about strength, too.
Because here's the other type of emotion/feeling I'm addicted to: Tom Morello's guitar solo fading out into the ungodly sexy purr of Chris Cornell as he sings
Fearlessness in the face of death
Pain with a smile
Braving the fight until the end
while the guitar and bass slowly creep up again behind him. Hell freaking yes. If that song were a person I would totally hit that. Anyway, though, that's not the point; the point is that when I hear those lyrics, what I think of is this. THEY CAN TAKE OUR LIVES BUT THEY'LL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEEEDOOOOOOOOOM.
And that's the other thing I need in my fics! I need my heroes to... well, be heroic. Because they are heroic! Even Lambo's heroic when push comes to shove. And when I say heroic, I don't necessarily mean never freaking out or getting scared or even quitting or running away from something. I just want them to carry themselves in a way that makes me feel for them, makes me proud of them in some small way.
So what I really, really want from a fic is a plot or situation that pushes the characters to their limits and beyond, something that will still hammer them down and bring that sweet, sweet angst, but will do so in a way so that when they are forced past those limits, it's understandable. They don't just burst into tears and turn into a wimpy "SAVE MEEEE T_T" puddle at the slightest provocation, but they put up a fight! IT WAS JUST A FIGHT THEY EVENTUALLY LOST. Because I need my huge emotional breakdowns to be in character, or else it just doesn't work. What's the point if it doesn't even feel like Gokudera anymore, but instead some wibbly fragile special snowflakey version of him? No thank you.
And of course, having said all this, I have now established the catch 22 which has plagued my quest for fic for many a moon; if Gokudera, Yamamoto, and Tsuna are canonically not the type to just fall over and become babbling, sobbing messes (and yes, that's true of even Tsuna--even when he's freaking out he doesn't really like everyone else to see it. Only in his case, it's not because he's ashamed or anything; it's that he doesn't want to burden his friends), then that means I have to resign myself to the fact that I will never ever be able to read or write a fic where they have that sort of complete breakdown and it doesn't nag at me and ping me as OOC. The best I can hope for are little partial breakdowns, and even then, only if the circumstances are so completely, astoundingly terrible that I can actually buy it.
And this is why I write fics like Indeterminism and Rationale and Down the Stairs, all of which, when you get right down to it, are basically long, wordy excuses to heap so many problems onto the characters' shoulders that eventually they can't help but stagger, just a little bit. And when they do, one of the other characters is ready to catch them. And for just a small moment, maybe I can come close to the kind of feeling I talked about before. That "it sucks, I know it sucks, but I'm right here with you, so don't give up, we'll do this together" feeling that I ultimately crave from everything I read, watch, and write. The sort of feeling that, if it's not there in a series, no matter how good the series is, I will never be able to completely fall in love with it.
Moving on to a different subject that has almost almost nothing to do with the previous topic at all (...almost), for a long time now, I've wondered why, despite the fact that I adore Tsuna and genuinely do ship 5927 and 8027 in a sort of gen-y, fluffy sense, I consistently finding myself writing 8059 and Tsuna stand-alone fics instead. Whenever I write a particularly long and angsty 8059 genfic, like my most recent one for example, I always feel really guilty afterwards because where the hell is Tsuna? Why is he apparently just sitting around twiddling his thumbs while his friends are angsting over "ffff we had our first kills :|" or "ffff Yamamoto is dead" or "FFFFF HE'S DEAD AGAIN, STOP DYING YOU STUPID BASEBALL FREAK"? Part of me feels like it's a complete failure on my part because these are Tsuna's two best friends, and they should be much closer to him than this. Canon doesn't set them apart like that (usually); this is entirely my failure as a writer.
But here's the problem with Tsuna (and this is not actually a problem, it's actually a very wonderful fact about him): He brings out the good in people. He brings out the best in people. Both Yamamoto and Gokudera are better people around him, better people for his influence. And they influence him right back. When the three of them are together, or when it's any of the other two Tsuna combinations, the angst, as a result of this, just tends to disappear. They make each other stronger! And that's awesome, but it also means that instead of Audioslave singing about "whew, things are getting pretty grim and intense up in here", the theme music for Tsuna and co is more along the lines of Matthew Bellamy singing, And tonight we can truly say together we're invincible.
Which, again, is fine. More than fine. Sometimes I am looking for that sort of feeling instead of the angst. That kind of great, feel-good, we-can-do-anything feeling. But when I am looking for angst (which is still a lot of the time), in general I can't wring it from Tsuna unless he's cut off from the other two, because otherwise they just will not cooperate.
I guess what I'm trying to say is what I'm looking for is a feeling of, "I would kill for you; I would die for you." And when Tsuna is in the mix, it inevitably becomes, "I would live for you." Which is beautiful in itself, but it just doesn't have that same sort of raw, desperate fighting-for-our-survival-ness of the former sentiment. And when it's just Yamamoto and Gokudera (or Tsuna alone), while it's still no simple task, I feel like it is just a little bit easier to wear them down to those bleeding edges.
In conclusion: I think I am a little sadistic. Sort of an Izaya-type, when it comes to fanfiction, anyway. But there it is. XD