sakura_no_miko

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Benton/RayK

Warnings: explicit sex (gay), reckless behaviors, references to suicidal ideation, general angst

Other notes: get together, first time, supernatural intervention

Length: unknown

Summary: Then–whoa, boy–Fraser reaches for the bottle and puts it to his lips and tilts up–and I got this weird, tingly feeling all over. Like Fraser probably gets when somebody’s about to blow his head off.

I wonder why I didn’t do this fic before. I remember not wanting to rec every single fic Speranza wrote. At least not all at once. Oh, well, I left myself something good for later.

I’ve always found perspective and communication to be fascinating–how easily two people can see the same event in utterly different ways. I’ve gotten into many an argument with people because I find When A Man Loves a Woman to be a very depressing song. I can’t get past the “turn his back on his best friend” bit. I realize it’s meant to convey this idea of loving someone so much and so fiercely that they become the center of your world, the priority. But I find myself empathizing more with the friend sitting there, watching his friend reject everything around him in favor of his new-found affection.

…wow, that puts Fraser and Victoria in an interesting context, doesn’t it?

I don’t consider myself to be a particularly empathic person–not naturally, anyway. I can analyze myself just fine, but when it comes to understanding other people, I am lost. (And before anyone brings it up, characters are a whole other thing entirely. Particularly writing them–because you get to build their psyches up and decide how they’re going to react. You make the rules and logic (or lack thereof) that govern them. Trying to build a profile on a person is much harder, no matter what the crime procedural tv shows would have you believe.) If you ever study child development, they talk about the development of empathy. An infant starts off very self-centered, concerned only with its own survival. You have to learn to see things from other perspectives, and how your actions affect others. Some people will always have trouble with this; other people are constantly trying to understand new cultures and ideas and perspectives. For me, most recently, being in a romantic relationship is the newest challenge–wanting to be closer to a particular person, to really understand how they work. It’s weird, I tell you. Fascinating, but weird.

Which is a very long way of saying, I adore reading alternate point-of-view and parallel point of view stories. There’s just something amazing about that moment when someone points out something about you they think is utterly fascinating, and to you, it’s meaningless, plain, boring, but to them, it’s amazing. (Something like this comic, I suppose).

Wow, just overused amazing and fascinating.

I always end up reading this story differently. Sometimes I go straight left to right, one line next to the other. Fraser first, sometimes, or Ray first. Other times I read the entire scene, then, boom, back up to read it again, anew, skewed. The formatting fascinates me. I remember seeing this linked on AO3–“Scrabble,” the title, word count: 14. Was this..an actual scrabble board? I wondered. But, no. The AO3 just has a note about not being able to properly copy the formatting over. HTML is not my strong point. I can groove with all the nitpicking and formatting for a bit, but it soon devolves into frustration. So I have nothing but admiration for people who not only utilize unique formatting, but managed to actually code in said formatting. (The Theory of Narrative Causality is probably the finest example of this.)

And suddenly my brain stalled out. Ach, well, this is already pretty long. let’s see, fascination with alternate points of view, check. Lovely formatting, check. I suppose if there’s anything that bothers me, it’s that the resolution of the whole “Fraser loves death” issue is dealt with pretty easily. I suppose, if you consider his self-destructive behavior to be a result of loneliness and not having an outlet, then it makes sense that once he has an outlet, and someone to look out for him, it would sort of simmer down. I just imagine it would take longer to work through, but I suppose the story can’t go on forever. It’s not that I think the story isn’t handled well, it’s just–a lot of stories end at the point where the relationship is just starting, and there’s all this hope and promise of things getting better. I suppose the cynic in me keeps thinking, recovery takes a long time, and forcing yourself away from bad habits can be so hard. Again, it’s not this story specifically, it’s just a trend I see.

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Originally posted on tumblr on 08/21/13