Archvied fic rec - Tender

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Tender

Author: Resonant

Fandom: The Sentinel

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Jim/Blair

Warnings: explicit sex (gay), angst, some stalker-ish behavior, jealousy issues

Other notes: character study, relationship study, vignettes

Length: 9k

Summary: Jim gets an offer he can’t believe. Some time later, Blair gets an offer he can’t refuse.

 

Oh, I hate those moments where you forget something totally obvious. I kept thinking, ‘ah, what is the word for this fic? It’s like a five times fic, but made up of more than five scenes? A scenes fic? No, that can’t be right.’

Then, several minutes later, I thought, vignette–“a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, idea, setting, or object.”

That’s exactly what this fic is–a gorgeous exploration of a single word, of two complicated characters, and of their relationship. English is both amazing and amazingly annoying in its depth and variety. It’s not uncommon to have a word with a dozen definitions, or a dozen words with very similar, but ever-so-slightly different definitions. Which is why you can have a fic like this, wrapped up in a single word’s many meanings. Fascinating, brilliant–and yet just a bit overwhelming. I’m a fluent, native speaker of English, someone who reads and writes and awful lot, and I still get stumped on words pretty frequently.

As I tend to do, I read a bunch of Sentinel fics, bookmarked the ones that stood out to me, then chose a few to rec–and, huh, all of these are Resonant’s fics. Whoops. I’ll usually try and vary things up, but I went with my gut, the fics that grabbed me the most, and, well, not surprising I’d be attracted to the same author over and over. Sorry for the spam. But the fics really are good.

What I like here are the character flaws. Have you ever noticed that problematic behaviors tend to either get glossed over and romanticized–i.e., the stalker-ish behavior of Edward in Twilight–or they get analyzed and criticized and held up as an example of Things That Are Wrong–again, like Edward in Twilight. I tend to be evenly split–I do rec fics where characters are doing things that would be abusive or messed up in real life, but I accept, in the context of the narrative, that they are justified or erotic or just okay. I also reblog a lot of commentary posts, and point things out in my own notes.

Now, here Jim is displaying problematic behaviors–he’s jealous, he’s invading Blair’s privacy, he’s reacting out of fear. Even Jim himself points out that his behavior is Not Okay. But Jim and Blair end up discussing things, and working them out. It’s not glossed over, but it’s also not vilified. I like that. I do think it’s important to point our problematic behavior. It’s not romantic to go through someone’s stuff because you’re terrified they’re going to leave you. At the same time–even after someone has done something problematic, sometimes, with mutual consent, discussion, apologies, and understanding, you can move past that behavior, correct it, forgive it.

I just feel like so much of what I see is either “he was abusive, but my love changed him,” or “I thought my love changed him, but he remained abusive.” This, on the other hand, is more, “I’m flawed, I screwed up, I acknowledge I screwed up, and we’re going to work together to change this.” It’s a middle ground. I like that Blair makes Jim discuss things. I like that Jim forces himself to talk about things he really doesn’t want to talk about.

Ah, the worst things to rec are the things that are really really good, or really really mediocre. I could write more paragraphs, but, man, just go read the fic.

 

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Originally posted on tumblr on 10/10/13