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A mild rant
So I was dipping a toe back into reading the vast quantity of MFU stories I’ve missed while being absorbed in the other fandom for the last two years, and I read a story.
Disclaimer: What follows is opinion, not attempted edict, despite the tone it may take at some points.
There’re these things we do in fandom (at least, in the two I’m involved in, and I think also in others). For lack of a better term I’ll call them artificially accelerated intimacy scenes. Or cheats. Exemplae gratias:
1. Locked room
2. Truth serum
3. Hypothermia or other illness involving naked contact
4. Muscle cramps and resultant massages
5. Bed sharing
These leap to mind. I’ve no doubt there are more. Now, we writers use them (and I guarantee I do too, so I’m not pointing fingers) because we like them (I admit to a fondness for both locked room scenes and truth serum bits) and because, let’s face it, they’re easy. They’re cheats. They force intimacy.
Now, used sparingly, they’re fine. In fact, in MFU there’s nothing outre about locked rooms or truth serums. But when a fic uses these contrivances one after the other, they start to really stand out. Worse, a reader (well, this reader) realizes that, overused, they result in an intimate relationship based on … well, contrivance, rather than a more natural development of the relationship through solid storytelling. The story becomes rather a house of cards.
Which leads me to the realization I came to, and point No. 5:
I don’t want to read a story where the guys have to share a bed naked, wake up with hard ons (“Oops!”), have a passing thought along the lines of “they had been moving toward this moment for a long time” (and, dude, I’m sure I’ve used that line, so again, I’m not picking on others) and then boom! Détente, denouement, de end.
I want to read a story in which they’re in separate beds, preferably separate rooms, and one or the other, after long hard thought about what he’s feeling and what it means, gets off his ass, gets out of the bed, goes into the other room and says, “Illya, we need to talk.” In other words, a conscious, deliberate act that results (we hope) in that ultimate intimacy.
I realized that I need characters to take responsibility for their actions. I loathe people who don’t, and I really want to love Napoleon and Illya. I don’t want them making love accidentally, as it were, or as the result of cheats. I want them to fucking mean it.
Again (and again): This isn’t me on some high horse saying other writers suck. I have no doubt I’ve used these cheats (though I hope not a bunch of them in one story … I’m a little afraid to go back and look), and I know my fics aren’t perfect. What this really is is me spouting an essay about something I realized I want to read in others’ fics, and that I want to try harder to write in my own.
I’m interested in other views here. Debate, demur, deplore, declaim, delovely, delightful.
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no subject
It's a very subjective call, as I hope I indicated, and I certainly am one of those who loves the tried and true when a good writer uses it and gives it her own twist. One person's "Oh, not this again!" is another person's "I love it when this happens!" Which is cool. I was more sort of exploring what made me go "ack" and why, and it led to the realization that I want to avoid sort of accidental intimacies in my stories in future, assuming I ever finish any in future (sigh). :)
no subject
At the end of what? The trope or the story? The trope(s), no, the story, yes. :)
It's a very subjective call, as I hope I indicated,
Absolutely. And I do know what you mean. Someone once pointed out to me the prevalence of the phrase 'went over the edge' used to describe an orgasm in fanfic, and ever since then every time I see it, I wince, even though I know I have used it quite a few times in my own work.