Fic rec/pet peeve, resulting dream

[bironic]

I read a 100K Inception fic on Friday. It'd been months since I'd read any fic other than sporadic updates of snookiescookies' Pretty Woman AU Paper Things and toomuchplor's Steinway!verse, both also Inception, but for whatever reason, the desire struck me and there was this student/teacher high school AU I hadn't read among the fics ranked by most kudos on the AO3.

It was - well, on a sentence level it needed work (to paraphrase the opening of one section: 'He groaned, jaw dropping, the blood rushing both from and into his face as his brain tried to decide whether to blush or go pale in mortification'), all adverbs and redundant descriptions and a weird mix of italics and all-caps for emphasis, and there were some "that would never happen" moments as well as idiosyncrasies born of a British author depicting an American school year, etc., but it was paced well and the cresting and ebbing emotions resonated, and I was glad to have read it by the time I went to bed.

All that by way of mentioning two things:

One

I know fandom loves its tropes, but I'm tired of the conceit where the [ETA: neurotypical] character with the desperate crush refuses to see the signs that the object of said crush returns the attraction. I like the tension when it's uncertain whether the feelings are reciprocated, and the pining when it seems there aren't and won't be any indications of same (even if there ends up being a happy ending), and the shift from pining to joy when the one with the crush begins to hope or to understand that it might be mutual. But this thing where character A likes character B, and character B indicates in numerous ways that they like A as well, but A explains it all away, and then characters C and D tell A that A is being ridiculous and obtuse, but A also rationalizes their comments away, followed by a string of deliberate misunderstandings and a near blowup before the climactic epiphany and celebratory sex... not a favorite.

I mean, I get that someone liking a person can be more obvious to outsiders than to the person themselves, but so many stories take it too far (for me) and I wish writers would respect their characters and their readers enough to spend less time on the misunderstandings phase and more on the "can this really be true," "how do we make this work" parts OR drop fewer obvious hints and let the pining feel as acute to the reader as it does to the character instead of leaving us to facepalm because we see the signs of affection as clearly as their frustrated friends do. Well, no, it's maybe not a lack of respect so much as a love for the structure that you see so often in romantic comedies. A love that I share less with each passing year.

Maybe I'm just reading the wrong stories.

Two

Must have been the influx of ficciness after a drought, but I had this dream Friday night involving three men with (on reflection) Eames' body type as described in the story, hard bodies, heavily muscled, tattooed, naked, exuding sex and power in a way that defied what I'm usually attracted to. Have been trying to pin down what the main one looked like, slick black hair and olive skin; can only come up with something like Sukar from the TV show Defiance, except that's not quite it.

In the dream the three of them were recovering from some kind of energy blast like being hit with a phaser and one had taken it really hard, was groaning and shaking as though he were having a seizure, wrapped around a radiator to try to ease the aftershocks, only when the other two pried him away from it he had these huge gouges in his flesh that had been burned away from the heat, down to muscle and bone.

So.

Domestic day today, methinks, after a busy one yesterday at the Head of the Charles and out on a bike ride. There's a vid to poke at and pumpkin bread to be made.

Comments

[synn.livejournal.com]

"I love you, a"
oh, he loves me like a brother, that is so great but" *sobs uncontrollably*
"I mean, I love you, marry me!"
he pities me... I must be so obvious! *more sobbing*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Head, desk.

ETA: Well, and to be fair, this particular story was good enough that I wanted it to be better, y'know? But "better" in this case is more fairly called a subjective preference for a different framework.

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

There's being unsure you're not reading too much into the signals your crush sends, and then there's a determination to be pessimistic at all cost. The latter is in character for only a very few characters.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yes! Well put.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Bwee. :) <-- meaning I enjoyed reading this and nodded in agreement even though I don't have much comment.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

*waves*

[amnisias.livejournal.com]

You are so much more tolerant than me when it comes to fic, me thinks (which explains why I'm not reading it that much - I don't just find much that's to my liking). If the writing is bad, it puts me right out of the story within a paragraph or two, even if I know I'd love the story (based on the tags and summary). For me, to enjoy a story, I need to be able to immerse myself in it, and bad writing just jerks me back into reality with every bad turn of phrase, overused adjective or unmotivated change of direction, and instead of being inside the POV's character's head I'm in my own head growning and moaning and face-palming.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Generally I am in the same boat as you, which perhaps also explains why I haven't found much to enjoy in a long time. (That, and so much fic the last couple of years has felt cookie-cutter with the character names changed). There are just, as always, exceptions. Sometimes for a bulletproof kink, sometimes because the mood strikes just right, sometimes who knows. For this one I sort of turned off part of my critical brain and semi-skimmed. For parts! Other parts were good.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the ETA. :) Would you recommend the 100K fic or only the two you have linked above?

Yesterday I read a Sherlock fic that was engaging and pushed the right emotional buttons for me -- except at the critical junctures I kept finding myself saying, "No, that's not why Sherlock acts the way he does." The writer accurately depicted his behavior but gave him sad-panda, brave-little-toaster motivations for everything. So then John had to go through all this emotional pain and public humiliation for not understanding that when Sherlock behaves dickish-ly it's because of how tragic Sherlock is and therefore must be instantly forgiven. And John finally (after driving Sherlock to the brink of suicide through his thoughtlessness) makes the healthy decision to let Sherlock go, to get out of Sherlock's life so that Sherlock can be happy, even though it means John loses his job, his girlfriend, and becomes homeless and alcoholic/drug addicted. But it's ok because Molly is the friend John never was.

Yes, I was getting heavy dark-Wilson flashbacks by the end.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

...There are things about certain fic characterizations I will never understand.

Re: the ETA, for sure, I was making the assumption but hadn't stated it, and obv. it's an important thing to state. If a fic is about how character A wants to go out with character B but one (or both) of them is on the spectrum, for example, and if the story becomes about how hard it is to read signs, then that's all good! It's the deliberate obtuseness of characters who display perfectly capable social abilities the rest of the time that irks me.

Oh and I guess I'd recommend it, just with reservations. http://archiveofourown.org/works/504338?page=1&view_full_work=true

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

You had already implied your assumption of neurotypical social abilities with the phrasing of "refuses to see" but I appreciate your making it explicit. Doesn't hurt to remind readers that different ways of thinking exist.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

♥

[asy99.livejournal.com]

I know it's too late, but I can't keep silent (sorry for my english, not my native and I mostly use it for reading and watching). I love your inception recs in this LJ, and i'm glad to meet a person disappointed in that particular fic, because i was, very disappointed equally with plot angst (it was without real reason, really!) and with the happy ending with extreeeemely boring sex scene (so sorry but sooo true, it was so cruel for me, after lovely UST and reading thought boring angst in plot.