Archived fic rec - Being There

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Being There

Author: Sunhawk

Fandom: Gundam Wing

Rating: R

Pairing: Heero/Duo

Warnings: alcoholism, detoxing, unintentional violence, character injury, self-destructive behavior, self loathing issues, suicide attempts, unhealthy codependent relationship, angst

Other notes: hurt/comfort, hurt/recovery, friendship

Length: Long

Summary: It was a car accident that finally made me wake up and stop the drinking. Sounds pretty typical, huh? Alcoholic has near-death experience and re-evaluates life? Except the accident wasn’t mine… it was Heero’s.

 

…is this really the first Gundam Wing fic I’ve rec'ced? Oh dear.

So, I guess GW was my first really big fanfiction fandom I got into. I remember lots of porn. Lots and lots of porn. I also remember there being a huge range of topics–everything from insanely long mpreg stories to boy band AUs to parodies of Titanic.

I also remember a lot of really, really bad fic. It seems like certain parts of fandom were far more interested in the prettiness of the boys, rather than their status as child soldiers/terrorists/really really screwed up people. That, or they pulled off really violent, PTSD-ridden hurt/comfort. Really extreme fandom, GW was. Everyone was shipped with everyone.

I don’t know that this is the best example of GW fic. There’s one that comes to mind that I read ages ago–a sort of soft parody where Relena was madly stalking Heero, convinced Duo was controlling him, and it turned out that Duo was, in fact, an actual death god/reaper, and Relena was one of the few people who could see his real form. Wish I could find that fic. it was pretty much the Ur Example of GW fic.

Still, I think it’s decent read, and it goes well with some of the other alcoholism fics I’ve rec'ced.

I’ve found my tolerance for melodrama sorts of wanes and waxes. I appreciate the details in this story–the pain, the way everything seems excessive, because it is–the alcohol magnifies the character’s pain, and keeps them from progressing. They start off bad, and have to get worse and worse before making a breakthrough.

It is really hard to get a good grasp on GW characters–on the one hand, they are teenage boys, and most of them grew up in bad conditions. Quatre is probably the only one who had any opportunity to learn about properly expressing his emotions. Of the other four, you’ve got two soldiers–the adopted son of an assassin and an orphan mercenary (if I remember Heero and Trowa correctly), an orphan sent to the streets after his orphanage and foster family were destroyed (in Duo’s case), and a man raised in a very traditional, conservative, sexist/macho family (for Wufei). So, to some extent, having them tumble into sex or violence without really grasping or showing any emotional significance makes sense.

In most stories, if I got to that last revelation and love confession, I might laugh at how absurd it sounds. But here, I can almost believe that both of them really were that oblivious. That both of them could form such an obviously codependent relationship without realizing it. That one of them would run away and try and kill himself rather than admitting he wanted a change in the relationship.

…it sounds very Supernatural when I think about it like that. Hmmm.

Anyway, Sunhawk was one of the good writers. I might go digging around more later, but nearly all of my anime fandoms, GW included, were before I started bookmarking fic, so I don’t know if I’ll find any.

 

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Originally posted on tumblr on 05/07/13