round 3 overflow post
Round 3 Overflow Post
This post is for Round 3 fills only. We ask that when a round hits 8500 comments, fillers begin moving their fills to this post.
Format:SUBJECT LINE -- Round #, short description of fic (ex: "Alex/Hank, lab partners ( Read more... )
This post is for Round 3 fills only. We ask that when a round hits 8500 comments, fillers begin moving their fills to this post.
Format:SUBJECT LINE -- Round #, short description of fic (ex: "Alex/Hank, lab partners ( Read more... )
Erik
As we've already discussed, I adore the approach you take with your third person-limited perspective. I really do get entirely engrossed in Erik's perspective when I read an update from you. There's something dark about being in his psyche, with vague edges of brokenness. But I think the best part is the way that you use that. You show, you don't tell, and despite the fact it's from Erik's perspective we learn about Erik through those around him-particularly Charles and Raven, I feel. You never really write Erik just sitting there thinking about his past or his scars or his baggage, and that's believable. No one sits around thinking extensively about the bad in their lives, not typically at least, and Erik doesn't either.
We discover Erik through your perspective of him, the way that he weaves himself into the lives of these other characters. We learn about him through what he gives away and what he doesn't, the intricate way that you write his emotions and what he expresses and what he hides. The development of his character is believable, from personal vendetta to soldier on the forefront of mutant rights and supremacy to uncertain but determined ruler. And that same development seeps into his personal life, carrying the reader along through waves of time where he's suffering unrequited love, painful acceptance of his own loneliness, growing affection for Charles, to possessive lover. And the growing affection for Charles seeps over very well in this chapter to his relationship with Rogue. You can tell that Erik's finally seeing her and appreciating her, using her to get more understanding.
But he isn't without his flaws, his imperfections and insecurities. He tries, but he's hard on himself. I was discussing a few days ago with my RP partner about the likeliness of Erik being a Pisces, and one of the things that websites said was “No one is harder on the Pisces than the Pisces itself.” I think, regardless of zodiac sign, this is true of your incarnation. No matter what he does, Erik will see the bad in it, see his shortcomings, and that makes him almost unbearably relateable. It makes him real, and his characterization solid.
Style
I love reading your style. It's always hard to put into words exactly what I get out of it, because I'm worried I'll say the wrong thing, but I'm envious of how you work. The way that you string things together is absolutely inspiring. I think a lot of authors spend a lot of time trying to make every sentence make an impact, which gets tedious. Your style is so powerful because the right sentences-sometimes the ones you don't expect-punch you right in the face. This is one of those fanfictions that I read and I end up smiling without realizing it, or frowning, or flexing my fingers in nervous habit. You're brilliant, and it shows through the way that you use your words.
I also think the way that you don't keep a consistent method with your sections is excellent. The sections that are just a sentence or two really do their job of punctuating what you want to punctuate. Or at least, I assume that's their purpose. I know sometimes I write things and think-hope-wonder if the audience is getting what I meant for them to get out of it. Half the time they get even more and I'm not entirely sure how they do that. But I digress, the point is that you keep the powerful themes punching through. Things echo in my head sometimes from when you update, and since I'm in Erik's head space I'm always wondering if those same things echo for him.
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I don't know if I can properly say how much I envy this world that you've set up. It's complicated, but I think you handle it in such a way that I don't get lost in the jargon. Sometimes, with other fics, I think the author spends so much time developing the world that they forget their readers probably haven't done as much research on the subject as they have. And while I'm all for teaching readers things through pushing them to look up references, when the entire world is painted in textbook knowledge, it just gets overbearing. You don't do that, and I'm infinitely thankful. Seriously, bby, you don't even know.
We're showed the important parts of the world-the ones that matter to our key characters-and that's all that we really need. You don't hold it over us that there's this not-quite-our-world out there, but instead let us see it in increments. We see it the way Erik-the way any political leader-sees it. It can't be big picture all the time, that's overwhelming, so we see the important details. The strategies for the Battle of New York were easy to understand without being dumbed down in the slightest. Your work really showed through (I remember you did some research for that one), but you didn't drag it out either. The battle was breathtaking without being arduous, I remember being very tense throughout it and I loved the way you used the mutants at Erik's disposal.
Charles & Erik
Of course I wasn't going to write a review without pumping up how well you handle these two. Your transition is...beyond words, honey. I don't even know how to begin. You put a vice grip on my hear with these two and then loosen and tighten it depending on whichever way the wind blows. In this update I was flailing over Erik's keen acknowledgment of the fact that Charles is still a captive. It's something that, as a man with a conscience, must not be easy to handle. I couldn't imagine keeping anyone, let alone someone I've come to love, away from the world even if it was for their own good. His motives and his resolution to protect Charles are strong, but we see the cracks in him-we saw a few of them in this update.
I also enjoy how Charles is still resistant. As he said, he isn't “a delicate little princess” and treating him like one wouldn't be doing him any favors. I think your characterization of him, even though we don't get to see him any other way than through Erik's lens, is alarmingly good. He doesn't want to just lie down and take it, but he knows it's for the best. And yet, he's still captive, so what does that matter? If I were Charles, I would be shifting my weigh the same way we see him doing; I wouldn't know which end was up. It's unrealistic to think that he would either. I feel like, even though we don't see in Charles' mind, we get a sense of him, and that makes him all the more intriguing and unnerving to Erik.
Erik's love is possessive, and Charles is completely accurate in being uncertain of it, of Erik, and of his situation. The fact that he didn't try to gloss over it, even if Erik didn't realize it (I'm not sure Charles realized it either), was sort of a 'fuck off.' He was being honest, because that's who he is. Of course he can be thankful and uncertain at the same time; nothing in that tiny little apartment is ever all that stable. I think it's just heartbreaking that reality that he could be telling himself any number of things to keep away the pressure of his situation. After all, that's how things like Stockholm Syndrome and Learned Helplessness happen. The mind is a tricksey piece of machinery.
So, in general, I think this was a great update, but it's also a great fanfiction in general. I can't wait to see how things turn out in the end, even if I'm fairly certain my heart won't be able to handle all the feelings. Just let me know if you need any Skittles to keep you going. I make no promises on the raw meat.
-xo Cosh
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It's really your favourite XMFC fic? Considering how amazingly talented this fandom is, I'm ridiculously flattered. Thank you so much!
Seriously though, have you been sitting in my brain? Because so much of this is so spot-on to the way I think about writing and how I'm doing it. I'm a big fan of showing instead of telling. Some readers find that more difficult than others, because I like to be subtle and let the prose tell the story without me explicitly telling it- as far as possible I avoid exposition, so I'm really glad that works for you.
I always want the reader to get to know the character by getting to know them the way you would someone you meet in RL, rather than having their backstory spoonfed to you, and for their character development to be shown that way as well- in actions, not prose. I'm really glad you caught on to what I was doing with Rogue, by the way!
When you describe my Erik like that it's so interesting, because in many ways Erik is like a dear friend of mine now, or my child, or me, because I've spent so much time down there in the trenches in his head. So sometimes I find it hard to think about how he looks from the outside of my head. I'm glad it seems to match up!
I touched on style in my review of K&C, and it's interesting to see that you have a similar opinion of my style to the one I have of yours- a real economy of language that allows for the story to show off more than the words chosen. And again, you're very right in that the short sections are intended to put across one very pointed emotion or theme or idea at a time. I think sometimes the things you want to emphasise the most can get lost when you tuck them away in a massive cloud of words. So from time to time I like to take a knife to it and hack away everything that isn't the essence of what I want to put across. It's like- to use a very egotistical-sounding metaphor- taking a beautiful block of stone and cutting away at it until you find a sculpture inside it. It's the essence of what you want to say.
The worldbuilding stuff really ties into what I said above about exposition and showing, so I'll leave that where it is.
One of the things I've found the most interesting about the responses to the fic is how some people really empathise with Erik (I'm so far down his particular rabbit hole that everything he does is the right choice if you ask me, but then he's given me Stockholm Syndrome of my very own, so) and some people really hate what he's doing. For my part, I see a man who has been burned so many times that trusting someone, anyone, entirely is almost beyond him- even Charles cannot be trusted not to leave him, or change his mind, or be doing things for some hidden ulterior motive, not entirely. Erik is a man who has lost everything, time and again, and then the one thing he had left- his revenge- he lost as well, at his own hands, leaving him with nothing. So it's not surprising to me that he would cling to whatever - and whoever - he has with both hands. Charles only knows the surface, really, of Erik's heart, because it's a landscape Erik himself is unfamiliar with.
Honestly, if Charles didn't push back and resist and call bullshit, I don't think Erik would trust him at all. They're working their way towards a deeper understanding of each other, but circumstances keep getting in the way. I think the central question of this fic, the burning central point for me, is this- how does Charles really feel about Erik, if you take away the captivity, the lack of choices, the constant pushing together of the universe shoving them against one another? Would he still feel the same way, and how much of his attraction for Erik is artificial?
My reply turned into kind of an essay too, huh! I spend so long thinking about this fic- obsessing over it, tbh, I'm kind of living inside it at the moment- that it comes out like this if you give me half a chance. You'd better hand over those skittles, I'll need a sugar rush after all this!
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Yes, it really is my absolute favorite. : ) I have a chart for these things. Okay, not really, but I know that it's my favorite one.
I struggle with show-vs-tell, I think, but I'm working on it. You execute it beautifully. I feel like too much expository writing in fiction makes it...jerky, I suppose? It feels very stunted to me, and since I've been writing and reading for years, I get just as immersed in the words as I do the images. So. If. You. Write. Like. This. Then it gets to be very annoying for me. Just the same as saying something like, “Erik walked into the room, and the room was too cold so he knew that something was wrong.” It has that choppy feel.
I think my biggest concern with trying to get things across about back stories with show vs tell is that people might not pick up on it. But you're right, it's a risk that usually works out for the better. At least in my experience. I could sing your praises all day in terms of style, which is why I'm really flattered that we seem to have a somewhat shared opinion about things like lexicon and flow concerning each others work.
(In your defense, it would be very hard not to get some Stockholm Syndrome with Erik. I mean, look at him. And I mean that beyond his attractiveness but that weight that you give him. I feel like he's the type of person you could look at and you could see such a hard life on him, but still be so aware that you don't have a clue who he is. Unf, tormented characters kink, yes please.)
Your back and forth with them is painfully human. A friend of mine the other day was talking about his boyfriend and how his boyfriend keeps himself behind a shell, and he knows that he does, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier to let it go. It's ten times harder to learn about a person who locks themselves away like that, even if you know they must have very valid reasons for doing it.
Charles and Erik both have their work cut out for them in determining this relationship, because it isn't like Erik's a prize at the end of the maze, just waiting for Charles to find him so he can say “Yay, you win, you've found the real me!”. He's just as lost in the labyrinth as Charles is. And I think that makes it genuine. You can learn about yourself through people, and sometimes you don't always discover the things you were hoping to. And for Erik, in particular, who you've clearly made lose so much in his life, that has to be terrifying. He can't help Charles over the roots and underbrush of his problems if he's wandering in the same dark, after all, and he doesn't know which stumble will be the last before Charles just gives up.
But it breaks my heart to have that lingering possibility of artificiality over all of it. It's like the movie Tangled, if you've ever seen it, where Rapunzel loves Gothel because Gothel is all she's ever known. The second she got a taste of the real world it didn't matter that Gothel had been taking care of her for eighteen years. For selfish reasons, but she didn't torture or starve or beat her. She brought her books and paint and food-she did what she could given the circumstances. Gothel's trespasses are different than Erik's, they originally spawned from selfishness rather than turning selfish (and Charles' hair doesn't glow when he sings...I don't think), but the point is the same. There's that hanging, horrible question of if the world will win out, and I really can't blame Erik for being afraid of the answer.
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I've never especially noticed any telling in K&C, if that helps. I always think that if you're aware of what you struggle with (dear God run-on sentences are the bane of my existence) then you can fix it as you go along, and the more aware of it you are the less you do it until eventually you don't do it any more.
I get what you mean about subtlety when it comes to showing, though. It's a debate I've had with myself more than once, but I came to the conclusion that I want to write something I would want to read, and that means learning through observing and intuiting and sudden thunderbolts of understanding (hopefully!) I've debated this with nekosmuse as well, about how commercial fiction requires more exposition than fic to be sold, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm gonna do my own thing and hope for the best. If it means not everyone gets what I'm driving at, then that's okay - they don't have to. It's worth it for the people who do.
You know, I think you've just pinned Erik right there. I love that whole paragraph. (I wish I'd written it!) Erik is just always waiting for Charles to give up on him, or disappoint him somehow, and he's fighting as hard as he can to reach Charles through this tangle of his own issues but they're choking him back as well. He tries and he tries and he tries, but he gets so caught up in I can't let him see this and he would hate me if he knew and don't give anyone the ammunition that he can't stop it any more. He can only hope that Charles is stubborn enough to keep going. And the thing is, there's so much Erik doesn't know about Charles, either. (But no, his hair doesn't glow when he sings :D)
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