Big Bang/Exchange Fic Discussion #3
Post your threads for Big Bangs and exchange fics here.
Format like so:
SUBJECT: Title [Pairing, Rating] by AUTHOR
CONTENT: Art by whoever
http://url of the master post on the BB comm.
Show and Fandom | Actor Gossip | Off-Topic | Reference | Flatview
Format like so:
SUBJECT: Title [Pairing, Rating] by AUTHOR
CONTENT: Art by whoever
http://url of the master post on the BB comm.
Show and Fandom | Actor Gossip | Off-Topic | Reference | Flatview
The other thing that didn't work for me in this fic is the underlying theme: the focus on the AU world's homophobia and its (anvil-like) overthrow.
Okay, the guys got together in the first part, happy ending was being actively worked on throughout, and in a flashforward (to a scene that gets more play in this installment) it was shown that happy endings in general for all same-sex couples were becoming reality. So maybe it was hard to come up with a way to infuse renewed narrative tension into a romance that felt resolved. (I'm sorry the writer didn't consider alternatives such as external tension device classics "grave illness! how will they hide or justify their bond!" or "the government/church finds out and takes one of them away! how will the daring rescue be achieved!" or "someone really bad finds out! how will they blackmail that person into silence!" etc.)
Anyhow, what the author went for was to detail the entire "how same-sex couples came to be accepted" process, and to focus on a lot of the homophobia in the world the writer had built. Which the way it was done, was not enough plot to sustain 26,000 words.
So the Js have a headache for most of the fic. They still work and socialize with the CW and RPF characters introduced in the first fic. Jensen's a physical therapist, and Jared's in PR -- or legal? it's very vague but one of those two -- at the secretly same-sex-supporting lifestyle services major national firm of Nimoy & Shatner. Which includes both legal and PR departments/sub-agencies -- but, hey, it's an AU!
(A quibble: I liked the firm being called Nimoy & Shatner in The Word Of Us, thought it was cute and funny. But having the CEOs retire and having the new CEOs be Quinto and Pine? Sorry, no. Wanting to keep male Star Trek RPF characters as the CEOs should have taken a backseat to the lack of credibility given the actors' ages. Especially as they're not that much older than the Js. If the writer was going to go with a set of actors who played a much-slashed couple, why not new CEOs Bean & Mortenson, or Gross & Rennie? Or, using femslashed characters, maybe even harking back to Star Trek by using Mulgrew and Ryan? Since Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor were unavailable for use as they'd already made a diffent cameo in the first installment.)
But, back to Secrets Kept/Secrets Told.
There's an attempt to show more problems and concerns with the bondmating through the very one-dimensional device of (OFC?) Lindsay, Chris/Steve's beard and secondary non-bond-mated but sexual and romantic partner, whose actual bond-mate is schizophrenic. Which even though he's far away, makes her flip out through the bond. There's some random homophobia from a friend's new mate, but most of the Js relatives' are surprisingly accepting when they find out, with one exception....
(Side-note: all of Jensen's immediate family learned about the Js' same-sex bond at the end of the first installment and were "hey, no problem!" about it. Jared's siblings had also learned about it earlier in the first part and were supportive.)
The exception is Jared's mother -- who pretty much functions as the villain, or rather the stand-in for the villain, the homophobic Church and government. She's shown throughout the first fic and until almost the very very end of the second as extremely, overbearingly focused on Jared finding and mating with a nice girl, and very religious and homophobic.
In this installment Jared's dad is apparently his mom's doormat go-along-to-get-along spouse and is actually surprise!not-homophobic. Because he used to be in the army. Jared's mom is screechy and overbearing -- a major source of tension (actual tension in the first fic, tension only in comparison to the lack of sexual tension in this one) in both installments are her constant efforts to get Jared hitched to a suitable girl and dismissal of Jensen even as supposedly just Jared's friend.
tbc
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