I was afraid you'd ask that..... It was an instinctive reaction on my part and now I'm struggling to find words to describe it properly. Hmmm. Reading the fic again, a lot of my reaction is to do with the kissing scene. It's quite drawn-out compared to similar scenes in your other fics that I've read (hereafter referred to as YOFTIR). I mean, it's brilliant what with the concept of Richard controlling time and a knot in Justin's stomach for every touch etc........ *struggles towards coherence* .....YOFTIR have a feeling of pulsing brevity to them - a tightly bound package of emotion/action. This fic - and the kiss in particular - somehow seems to be a melancholy meander, the language verges on langourous, the action unfolds in tiny increments (breath, nose, forehead, cheek, jawline and then mouth). YOFTIR also have an authoritative feel to them - you take canon and make it fanon and that's just the way it is. YOFTIR (and I'm thinking a lot of your Fight Club fics here, with splashes of HP, X-Men, Gossip and From Dusk...) are very yours, spinning the characters out beyond their canon confines, fleshing them out, letting them breathe. But the characters are still themselves, only more so. This fic seems very canon-based by comparison (even though the kiss isn't canon), dwelling as it does on canon-matter/events ie. their motivation for the crime and the nature of their relationship; not arcing away from canon-specific events to re-join them later or setting the fic post-canon. Plus: in some indefinable way, I feel this fic is a rung on the ladder to your best stuff. I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to the terminology of literary criticism; all I can say is there are moments here and there in this fic where I feel - if you were writing it now - your writing would be a teeny tiny bit smoother.
Does any of that make sense? *sigh* I've just spent a ridiculous amount of time paddling around in fandom wankery which I hate but I got sucked in and now my brain is mush. Y'know - when you go all navel-gazey introspective, thinking about fandoms and fannishness as actual entities, societal structures... peopled by some very strange and stupid types at times, it has to be said ...and then you surface and it's like "Gah! I could've spent that time writing my own damn fic and hatching a marvellous new icon like I've been promising myself since forever!" Gah! Gah gah gah!
Hope I've made some sense for you and that this isn't just a big bunch of crazy...................hey, it can't be all bad - I created an acronym...............
Erm..........
It was an instinctive reaction on my part and now I'm struggling to find words to describe it properly.
Hmmm.
Reading the fic again, a lot of my reaction is to do with the kissing scene. It's quite drawn-out compared to similar scenes in your other fics that I've read (hereafter referred to as YOFTIR).
I mean, it's brilliant what with the concept of Richard controlling time and a knot in Justin's stomach for every touch etc........
*struggles towards coherence*
.....YOFTIR have a feeling of pulsing brevity to them - a tightly bound package of emotion/action. This fic - and the kiss in particular - somehow seems to be a melancholy meander, the language verges on langourous, the action unfolds in tiny increments (breath, nose, forehead, cheek, jawline and then mouth).
YOFTIR also have an authoritative feel to them - you take canon and make it fanon and that's just the way it is. YOFTIR (and I'm thinking a lot of your Fight Club fics here, with splashes of HP, X-Men, Gossip and From Dusk...) are very yours, spinning the characters out beyond their canon confines, fleshing them out, letting them breathe. But the characters are still themselves, only more so. This fic seems very canon-based by comparison (even though the kiss isn't canon), dwelling as it does on canon-matter/events ie. their motivation for the crime and the nature of their relationship; not arcing away from canon-specific events to re-join them later or setting the fic post-canon.
Plus: in some indefinable way, I feel this fic is a rung on the ladder to your best stuff. I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to the terminology of literary criticism; all I can say is there are moments here and there in this fic where I feel - if you were writing it now - your writing would be a teeny tiny bit smoother.
Does any of that make sense?
*sigh*
I've just spent a ridiculous amount of time paddling around in fandom wankery which I hate but I got sucked in and now my brain is mush.
Y'know - when you go all navel-gazey introspective, thinking about fandoms and fannishness as actual entities, societal structures...
peopled by some very strange and stupid types at times, it has to be said
...and then you surface and it's like "Gah! I could've spent that time writing my own damn fic and hatching a marvellous new icon like I've been promising myself since forever!"
Gah!
Gah gah gah!
Hope I've made some sense for you and that this isn't just a big bunch of crazy...................hey, it can't be all bad - I created an acronym...............