how can you heartbreak a stranger?
I've spent most of last night and today reading fic. *happy sigh*
I discovered - well, I guess rediscovered, or, perhaps, clarified, is a better way to put it - one of my favorite relationship dynamics in ship fic. And I'm having a really hard time explaining it without resorting to specifics so I guess I can say that this story (Inception; Arthur/Eames) totally nails it. I really love stories where the relationship two characters think they're having is not the relationship they're actually having. (thank you, John Munch, though I don't think you meant it in quite the same way.)
Mostly, what I mean is, I really like stories that, rather than having the structure of a conventional romance, start with the couple having sex and then slowly realizing that it means more than "just" sex. Also, where one character is really mouthy and flirty and then completely shocked when the other finally gives in, and they both think they're outsmarting the other one and there's no real emotional component until it whacks them upside the head (I really need to write something like this with Max/Alec, because imagining the poleaxed look on Alec's face when Max is finally like, "okay, let's get to the sex then, though it can't possibly live up to the hype" makes me cackle with glee), because of course, "this doesn't change anything" is a complete and total lie, which they're both smart enough to know but which somehow never actually occurs to them until it's way too late to get out unscathed.
A lot of the Remus/Sirius fic I wrote was like this, with Remus being long-suffering and giving in to Sirius, never thinking he was (sorry!) serious, and then, you know, finding himself completely overwhelmed when it turned into something real and true (and then feeling betrayed and heartbroken, but let's fast-forward through the depressing parts to the... other depressing parts *sigh*).
So you know, like that. But without the 12 years in prison or the utterly stupid death by curtain.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/207148.html.
people have commented there.
I discovered - well, I guess rediscovered, or, perhaps, clarified, is a better way to put it - one of my favorite relationship dynamics in ship fic. And I'm having a really hard time explaining it without resorting to specifics so I guess I can say that this story (Inception; Arthur/Eames) totally nails it. I really love stories where the relationship two characters think they're having is not the relationship they're actually having. (thank you, John Munch, though I don't think you meant it in quite the same way.)
Mostly, what I mean is, I really like stories that, rather than having the structure of a conventional romance, start with the couple having sex and then slowly realizing that it means more than "just" sex. Also, where one character is really mouthy and flirty and then completely shocked when the other finally gives in, and they both think they're outsmarting the other one and there's no real emotional component until it whacks them upside the head (I really need to write something like this with Max/Alec, because imagining the poleaxed look on Alec's face when Max is finally like, "okay, let's get to the sex then, though it can't possibly live up to the hype" makes me cackle with glee), because of course, "this doesn't change anything" is a complete and total lie, which they're both smart enough to know but which somehow never actually occurs to them until it's way too late to get out unscathed.
A lot of the Remus/Sirius fic I wrote was like this, with Remus being long-suffering and giving in to Sirius, never thinking he was (sorry!) serious, and then, you know, finding himself completely overwhelmed when it turned into something real and true (and then feeling betrayed and heartbroken, but let's fast-forward through the depressing parts to the... other depressing parts *sigh*).
So you know, like that. But without the 12 years in prison or the utterly stupid death by curtain.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/207148.html.
people have commented there.