![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
grown-ups.
Did I hear it wrong, or has our local news radio station started referring to the moisture content of the air as 'doomidity' ? ...it would be accurate, anyway. Rained this morning, so the *temperature* isn't over 95 yet, but the humidity may well be.
Have been reading "Virtuous Love Affair" (which is flocked on fakenews_fanfic at lj) on sister's rec. She's right - it's an excellent, perfect slashfic that hits me right there, up to the point where they start having lots of sex, at which point it becomes simultaneously boring and overwrought.
...I have issues.
No, but honestly, VLA hits right on a genre of slashfic that I have been wanting to read more of for *ages* but nobody ever seems to write much of : where our characters, in canon, are very clearly in love with each other, and have been for ages, and it's so obvious that I have a hard time believing they haven't noticed it yet. (This applies in many, many fandoms. From Kirk/Spock/McCoy all the way on up to John/Rodney.) So I have trouble believing in the stories where, after three, or five, or nine years of blatant onscreen flirting, they suddenly realize they're MFEO and fall into bed together.
Oh, I'll give it a miss if there's a good reason they wouldn't've before - they're enemies, they're teenagers, they're from a culture where it's literally unthinkable - and many writers can sell it even without that. But when half the authors in a fandom are spending so much effort trying to justify the fact that these guys have never dealt with the UST before, just so that they can write those explosive first time stories - it gets a little wearing.
And I start wanting the stories where they hooked up way back in S1 and have been secretly having an affair all this time. Or even better - and this is what VLA tried to do, (and what Boston Legal basically explicitly did in canon) and so few others have - where they confronted their undeniable attraction back in S1, talked it out like people who really are good at communicating when they want to be (with each other, even if with nobody else), maybe even tried it out, and then mutually decided that for everybody's good they should keep it chaste for the time being, because the relationship works perfectly that way, and their lives are complicated enough as it is. And, because they are adults and self-aware, they manage to do it - there are problems, tensions, crises like in any intense relationship, but they deal with it and get stronger as a result and move on.
And maybe they develop sexual relationships with other people that work, and are real, and the main pairing never gets beyond intense friendship. And maybe they eventually reach a turning point where they *can* turn the corner as a couple, and they knowingly shift the relationship into another gear (smoothly or not.) But either way, the sex is always secondary to the important part of the relationship, and always will be.
Of course, in that story you don't get to write many hott sex scenes. Or massive angst dumps, or betrayals of everything else because they can't keep it in their pants, or scenes where they're having an identity crisis one minute and screwing the next, or your standard romance novel outline, or any of the other staples of slash epics. So I understand why they aren't the most common. And I know a lot of people are only interested in the first-time stuff, and not a mature relationship.
But please can I have more grown-up responsible love affairs?
Have been reading "Virtuous Love Affair" (which is flocked on fakenews_fanfic at lj) on sister's rec. She's right - it's an excellent, perfect slashfic that hits me right there, up to the point where they start having lots of sex, at which point it becomes simultaneously boring and overwrought.
...I have issues.
No, but honestly, VLA hits right on a genre of slashfic that I have been wanting to read more of for *ages* but nobody ever seems to write much of : where our characters, in canon, are very clearly in love with each other, and have been for ages, and it's so obvious that I have a hard time believing they haven't noticed it yet. (This applies in many, many fandoms. From Kirk/Spock/McCoy all the way on up to John/Rodney.) So I have trouble believing in the stories where, after three, or five, or nine years of blatant onscreen flirting, they suddenly realize they're MFEO and fall into bed together.
Oh, I'll give it a miss if there's a good reason they wouldn't've before - they're enemies, they're teenagers, they're from a culture where it's literally unthinkable - and many writers can sell it even without that. But when half the authors in a fandom are spending so much effort trying to justify the fact that these guys have never dealt with the UST before, just so that they can write those explosive first time stories - it gets a little wearing.
And I start wanting the stories where they hooked up way back in S1 and have been secretly having an affair all this time. Or even better - and this is what VLA tried to do, (and what Boston Legal basically explicitly did in canon) and so few others have - where they confronted their undeniable attraction back in S1, talked it out like people who really are good at communicating when they want to be (with each other, even if with nobody else), maybe even tried it out, and then mutually decided that for everybody's good they should keep it chaste for the time being, because the relationship works perfectly that way, and their lives are complicated enough as it is. And, because they are adults and self-aware, they manage to do it - there are problems, tensions, crises like in any intense relationship, but they deal with it and get stronger as a result and move on.
And maybe they develop sexual relationships with other people that work, and are real, and the main pairing never gets beyond intense friendship. And maybe they eventually reach a turning point where they *can* turn the corner as a couple, and they knowingly shift the relationship into another gear (smoothly or not.) But either way, the sex is always secondary to the important part of the relationship, and always will be.
Of course, in that story you don't get to write many hott sex scenes. Or massive angst dumps, or betrayals of everything else because they can't keep it in their pants, or scenes where they're having an identity crisis one minute and screwing the next, or your standard romance novel outline, or any of the other staples of slash epics. So I understand why they aren't the most common. And I know a lot of people are only interested in the first-time stuff, and not a mature relationship.
But please can I have more grown-up responsible love affairs?
no subject
I've always been kind of miffed that fictional people tend to handle their love-affairs like over-wrought teenagers (in that even teenagers manage maturity eventually). I find relationships that involve both head and heart very, very sexy.
no subject
I've come across the occasional Highlander or SG1 story that's close to what I want, but not nearly enough!
no subject
Also, I belive Shalott wrote an SGA one... ah, here: A Beautiful Lifetime Event (http://www.intimations.org/fanfic/stargate/lifetime_event.html)
I agree though, I like interweaving love-lines and stories. I think that one of the reasons they're difficult to find is that they also require plots of a plot nature, like adventures
no subject
ABLE is one of my favorite fics ever! But even that one isn't them recognizing it early and dealing with it - that story depends on both of them having a huge and unexplained blind spot about sex for a nine years. Which I can only sort of buy because it's a) shalott and b) John and Rodney. But even then it really stretches me.
I don't know that they necessarily require plot of a plot nature. VLA doesn't have it. One can certainly write a long story where the plot *is* the development of the relationship, without having the relationship be based on sex. It's just that you have to be *really* good at writing the relationship if you want that to carry the story by itself, and you don't have romance genre conventions and expectations to use as a crutch.
no subject
It was the only thing I could think of, but yeah, I kept wondering, "And you're not having sex yet, why?" because they seemed so oblivious to the very concept. I find her Rodney a bit odd.
I guess you could do it, I just find it difficult to imagine. The pay off would be awesome though, if it worked.
no subject
curse you, though, I've already read VLA through twice and I don't have time for it again right now.
Let me know if you find more grown-up responsible love affairs in my fandoms, though.
no subject
no subject
no subject
*pushes you out of lurkerhood*
no subject
no subject
THIS IS THE CORRECT COMMENT
That's what I thought! I wanted to make sure.
I've always wanted
someone elseto do a really deep analysis of the homoerotic dynamics of that show. Like, what does it mean when 99% of the interactions suggest, no, STATE a romantic and sexual relationship, but one insists that they are not having sex.Or, you know, a good fanfic would work too ;)
Anyway, Alan and Denny fill me with joy.
(Reply to this)(Parent)
Re: THIS IS THE CORRECT COMMENT
Alan and Denny fill the whole world with joy.