a ball of yarn that does not a sock make

[extrapenguin]

So, recentishly I read some meta, almost 15 years old, about (in essence) how much written-out emotion people like in their fic. Now, I don't think I'm a cold prickly who wants everything to be in code one has to decipher, or a warm fuzzy who's all about explicitly describing every emotion – but then again, if this is a scale from 0 to 100, I'm pretty sure everyone between 10 and 90 is convinced they're roughly at the middle. *g*

(More notes: there was a lot of talk about what slash is for, which to be is a bit nonsensical as a question – slash is a category of fanfic, and fic isn't for one single thing. This was an interesting generational divide!)

Then I thought some more about it, and I think I lost the intermediate stepping stones, but what I came at was: expressions of love. IDK how it is in America, but here, no-one says "I love you". Affection and care is turning up, cooking, talking about tractors. We are an emotionally constipated people.

Ah yes, now I remember the bridge for the donkey-cart of thought! It was related to the actions of characters versus the internal monologue. So: I guess that the line in the sand I draw is that the characters' actions remain as in canon, but the act of fic-writing for a visual medium is already decoding some of that everything. As long as the characters' actions are as in canon, the internal monologue can be filled in at will. (It's a bit different for text-based things that are from the canon narrator's POV. But there we have a clearer target to emulate.)

And because this is a post composed of thread-ends I can't quite weave into a blanket, let me bring in Guardian as well! Some of this is probably my personal cultural baggage, as I'm not Chinese, but I honestly never could believe the the whole "they didn't get together during the series" thing, because from my POV, by the end, they live together and have spent half the show saying "I love you" to each other. It might be fraught, but all new and newish and intense things are. They're also not stupid or incapable of listening to the other's words. (As for the timing, well, before the bomb scene, though something that comes before that might push it beyond even that.) The meta I linked above talked about coding; to me, there is no coding: the love is explicitly text.

(I am also part foreign. This means I have a huge, constant desire to verbalize my love and caring, but the words never make it to my mouth. I am reasonably certain this – conflict? is also present in my writing. But some things are never meant to be said.)

Comments

[extrapenguin]

Oh wow, that meta is a total blast from the past! I'm more on the side described as "cold prickly" too, though I'm really not fond of that term. *g*
I suspect it's conflating a few things into the "how much description of emotions do you like" issue, including some different views on favorite genre and what experience people want from fic. (Though I don't know julad or their friend circle, so idk, maybe this is all about the get-together romance slash subgenre?)

But on the other hand, I could absolutely believe they never actually got around to having sex, and I think for a lot of people that's an essential part of getting together ...
Huh, this is odd! My general view is that since they lived together and were together for months (at least 3, even if one places the get-together during the blindness arc), they had ample opportunity for sex. They're also adults, so it's not like they were under contractual obligation to wait a year before banging. (And unless Dixingian biology was truly unexpected, they wouldn't have to do the contraceptives-and-conception thinking that slows het couples down a bit.)

[trobadora]

I know this is a minority opinion, but personally, them "getting together" in the "having sex" sense before the blindness arc is always a hard sell for me, just going by the way I interpret their on-screen dynamics. And after that, yes, they certainly had the opportunity, but that doesn't mean they took it. I mean, people don't always have sex just because they can. *g*

[extrapenguin]

And after that, yes, they certainly had the opportunity, but that doesn't mean they took it. I mean, people don't always have sex just because they can. *g*
I mean, yes, I know, but to me this represents such ample opportunity that if they were interested in sex, they'd bone. The point at which they (first) bone might be something others might be able to have interesting discussions on, but given the literal months of time (even if there's no pre-blindness arc boning), "they want to have sex but didn't" is a no sell for me. (Ace headcanons or other variants of them not wanting to have sex are a different beast entirely.)

[trobadora]

I guess we have incompatible views on that, then. :)