Ode to Optophobia (8B)

[veryspecial0ne]

Title: Ode to Optophobia, or: Ten Men That Loved Annie Edison (16/19)
Author: veryspecial0ne
Rating: R for the whole series, to be safe.
Word count: ~2100 for this installment, ~40,800 for the series thus far.
Disclaimer: I have now been tweeted by Alison Brie, Ludwig Goransson, and TWICE by Dan Harmon. I'm pretty sure that's the closest I'll ever come

Comments

[stephanierb]

Another chapter! It's like extra Christmas! :-)

First off, if I didn't mention this before then I was completely remiss, but you write an exceptional Pierce. It felt like his character throughout from the mannerisms to the dialogue. I'm going to echo the earlier commenter who mentioned the leaves. It was a lovely way to convey Pierce's change in demeanor from the earlier almost absentminded brushing of the leaves to the excessive tearing of them later. Fantastic detail.

"Your name's Andy Cohen?" Pierce says in greeting.

His jaw clenches again. "I go by Andrew now."

"Sure," nods Pierce. "I bet that fixes everything."

I laughed out loud when I read that. Even more than the Hawthorne Wipes reference - which was brilliant, by the way. I could just picture so clearly the looks on Andy and Pierce's faces during that exchange and it cracked me up.

Annie's conniving was great. Someone else mentioned that it was likely Jeff's influence, and that's one of the reasons why they're my OTP - the effect they have on one another, and this definitely seems like a change Annie would undergo after being in a serious relationship with Jeff.

I thought you did a tremendous job of balancing the humor and the emotion in this one, with a very smooth transition from the prank played in the restaurant to the discussion of Pierce giving Annie away. Such a sweet moment between them.

Fabulous job. I'm really looking forward to the Jeff chapters but I also know that it will mean the end of this lovely fic. *sniff* I love your writing and I hope, hope, hope you continue to write for these two. You have a way with these characters and this pairing and it's always a treat to read. And if you think you'll need the encouragement, I'm more than happy to continue pestering you on Twitter. ;-)

[veryspecial0ne]

Aw, thanks Steph! I'm gonna need you to keep up the Twitter nagging for realsies, because I know the Jeff ones will be hard, if only because I've spent so long building to it.

Here's the thing about writing Pierce. It's hard. Jeff is fairly easy for me because he's really the group member I'm the most like, and Annie's simple too because I understand what it is she wants in life -- same with Britta to an extent. The other group members are farther from my personal experience, and as I said in an unnecessarily long comment on an M/M post, usually when I create characters they're all like different facets of me so it's a huge change. I feel like the biggest failure I see in fanfic when it comes to characterization of the group members is making them one-note...all Pierce does is make racist or perverted comments, all Shirley does is judge, all Abed does is comment on everything from the outside, all Troy does is comically misinterpret everything. And very occasionally that happens on the show too so I can kind of understand it, but I definitely want to take pains to avoid it.

You know I always love your comments. <3