Narrative kinks: communication failure?
I've been thinking about narrative kinks lately, and the many different ones I have. A major one I came up with is a kink for silence. Not enforced silence (gags, or the like), but the kind of silence that arises because the characters fail to communicate. That may well be because somewhat distant, emotionally repressed characters are whom I tend to like best.* And while having these characters' emotional floodgates burst can be its own kind of emotional porn (if written well), the version of events I will actually believe in (as opposed to possibly-prefer-in-a-happy-fantasy kind of way) is the one where communication fails to happen. Or happens, but fails to be conclusive, or satisfying. This doesn't have to be, but tends to be more pronounced, in pairing fic. Because you can have the characters have sex and still not be happy, or really "get" each other. And I, for some reason, absolutely love that.
And if communication does eventually happen, after what I can sometimes see as years of failed attempts (take, for example, Kirk and Spock at the end of ST:TMP), I find it is infinitely sweeter and has more of an emotional impact. But, see, I don't even need an eventual happy ending for this kink to work. Quite the opposite: in most cases, I prefer the silence to be terminal.
I also think there are numerous ways to play with this: while there's the possibility of having characters speak but not really understand each other on more than the surface level, there's also that of having them be silent, but still communicate to a certain degree via physical cues. I must say I find the misunderstandings resulting from both equally tempting.
* And boy, is that list long: Mr Spock (pre-V'ger), Raistlin Majere, Sherlock Holmes, Bruce Wayne... to name but my primary fandoms. Also, Tarik from my original stuff.
And if communication does eventually happen, after what I can sometimes see as years of failed attempts (take, for example, Kirk and Spock at the end of ST:TMP), I find it is infinitely sweeter and has more of an emotional impact. But, see, I don't even need an eventual happy ending for this kink to work. Quite the opposite: in most cases, I prefer the silence to be terminal.
I also think there are numerous ways to play with this: while there's the possibility of having characters speak but not really understand each other on more than the surface level, there's also that of having them be silent, but still communicate to a certain degree via physical cues. I must say I find the misunderstandings resulting from both equally tempting.
* And boy, is that list long: Mr Spock (pre-V'ger), Raistlin Majere, Sherlock Holmes, Bruce Wayne... to name but my primary fandoms. Also, Tarik from my original stuff.