A mild rant

[leethet]

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.

Comments

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Amen! There can be good stories that use these cheats but so often I find myself rolling my eyes. Napoleon and Illya have been partners for five, seven, sometimes ten years and all of a sudden because of some odd circumstance they end up getting it off with each other?! And it takes that for them to know they're in love or, worse, that they're gay? No, give me a deliberate realization that they want to be together anytime.

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Heh. I used almost every one of those tropes in my latest... but they still don't have sex until 39019 words into a 4400 word story. :D

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

Well, I do agree with you that we all see, and use, these plot devices over and over. However, I refuse to call them "cheats" -- what they are are cliches.

The genius thing to me is to take one of these common devices, or cliches, and turn it on its ear so it seems completely fresh. Those are the fics I love the best.

[franciskerst.livejournal.com]

Curious, I am reading an old story, from an old zine, that uses all these tricks and more and I was thinking about the same questions you asked. My take is that is unavoidable when you deal with guys who are supposed, either completly straight, either possibly bisexual but strongly repressed for cultural and professionally submitted to strict rules of behaviour. They cannot easily hange their way of thinking and feeling by a simple psychological inner evolution, while in some circumstances of sexual deprivation or forced intimacy or both (preferably) they may be driven to unsignificant horseplays, then to buddy fucking, then to something more serious when the "Great Crisis" appears. The little tricks you call cheating are very useful to set the initial predicament and trigger the first flash, but not enough to give a credible basis to a durable and exclusive commitment. I can imagine NS and IK experiencing a sexual activity because of some odd circumstances but I couldn't believe it would be enough to make them aware of their mutual love and suddenly swearing everlasting fidelity to each other. It could end that way but after a long and complex evolution. On the other side, they could feel love at the start of the story, at least one of them and refuse sex as a threat to their partnership and friendship. That is an utterly blocked situation: the writer needs not only a trigger for the sex but also for the love awareness. I don't know what to do if nothing very special happens: they must be confronted to their inner needs and feelings but how?

Cheats or cliches

[tgabrielle.livejournal.com]

1. Locked room
2. Truth serum
3. Hypothermia or other illness involving naked contact
4. Muscle cramps and resultant massages
5. Bed sharing

Your rant is fun and provocative because we are all probably thinking back and wondering if we are guilty as charged. What you describe can be cheats, are most certainly clichés, and also canon. (Three C’s?) If you read a story employing them and roll your eyes, my guess is said story doesn’t get beyond the C’s. It’s not as if any of the above shouldn’t be explored. To add yet another “C” these boys are not clueless. Napoleon and Illya don’t have to be tricked into discovering each other (and I think that is what you really mean.) Me, I rather like the locked room and the truth serum, and if they're cold or crampy (more C's) or staring at a single bed, it all depends upon how the writer handles the situation, that is also a potential cheat. The setups you describe will always be there.

[cousinnat.livejournal.com]

>have a passing thought along the lines of “they had been moving toward this moment for a long time”

Uh-oh. Time for a re-write on that planned Incognito story.

Nat