Pilgrims gave me flu!

[blamebrampton]

No, seriously! Months after their orange backpacks left the Emerald City, Sydney is still feeling the impact of the WYD pilgrims' sharing natures. THEY LEFT US THIS FLU! Bastards! And look, even the Catholic News says it's true! Well, likely at any rate.  Apparently the three-week-plus flu that turns to bronchitis is knocking people out across the city, and has been since July, so I am not alone in my feebleness.

Honestly, it was bad enough when it was just nuns trying to plough me to the ground.
 
Bryoney opined that I have been talking too much sport and not enough fandom lately, so three links to make her feel loved. The first is to a very interesting question posed by bewarethesmirk  in her post here. She asks what it is about some styles of writing that immediately succeeds in drawing the reader in. I've blathered on at length in a comment, as have several others, and I think that we're edging towards the total picture, but I am sure that more brains, particularly brains as big as you lot have, will get to the actual answer. Alas, it's flocked, but if you're not on her flist, feel free to chat here.

My dear jadzialove  wrote a story recently in which Weasley brothers engaged in activities of an adult nature only suitable for readers over 18. With each other. We both squealed in a frightened fashion, she even while writing. However, that was nothing compared to this story from The Times. To quote their head and standfirst:

I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty

A woman slept with her sibling for years and has good memories. Not many people understand their relationship, she says

I can't say I'm surprised to hear that.

For maximum bemusement, you have to read the comments.

Thirdly, Maya has posted the last chapter of Quality of Mercy, and 

there have been many posts along the lines of OMG, it's not H/D! To which I have to say, der! There was never any pairing specified, Harry and Ginny's relationship has been written as genuine and developing the whole way through, Harry has been protective and fraternal in his relationship with Draco and Draco has been someone desperately trying to forge actual relationships in his world, rather than just getting what he wants. Why would a writer ditch all of that worldbuilding for a ship in which she has only written some of her fics? 

I sometimes wonder if people actually read fics as actual creative works or just go through them ticking off their internal preference list. "Yay, there's a cool one-liner, there's an insight into canon, there's a good spot of fanon, excellent UST, and ... and ... THAT'S IT? NO SMEX? YOU SUCK!" On bad days, I suspect the latter.

Oh well. A happy fandom aside: 2500 words of Darkfest written, 1700 of them even consecutive!

And, my final Paralympics moment, Australia lost to the US in the rugby, but Kurt Fearnley won the marathon! YAY!
 

Comments

[sarcasticpixie.livejournal.com]

As RE: the internal preference list -- yes, people definitely do that, and in many situations, I'm one of those people. It's generally when you're dipping your toes into a little-explored fandom or pairing, and you're trying to gobble up everything you can get. I find my internal preference list works a bit differently, though; I'll put up with quite a bit just to feel validated that someone's written something I thought only existed in my bizarre little brain.

As RE: the mad OMG HET ONOZ posts... I get it, to an extent, in that I also felt a bit disappointed. The ending was definitely rushed, but the epilogue was delightful. I think my own disappointment stems from how very, very well Maya (although I suppose she's Sarah these days) has always written H/D -- it's compulsively readable and heartbreaking and funny and fantastic, all at once. I was expecting that moment, and it never came in QoM.

I'll also agree with another commenter who pointed out how very, very much the UST figured into the story -- of course it's entirely believable that two seventeen-year-old boys would have mixed-up feelings RE: each other that didn't end in smex0rz, but I didn't think this story was one of them, because of the attention paid to the UST and the longing glances and the compatibility... of course, the events of the last two or three chapters easily could have been spread into seven or eight but for the obvious time constraints.

In short -- and incoherently, since I spent the day sitting in a retirement plan implementation meeting and the evening cleaning carpets -- it's still an enjoyable, remarkably well-written story. But I get the disappointment on a level other than the visceral.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Not incoherent at all, in fact I think that you probably cover the key points of the discussion most succinctly of all of us! And I agree with you that the action and plot parts of the chapter seemed very rushed and under-formed.

I wonder if there would be the same sense of outrage if it was a story that fandom had come to with different expectations? Because I am sure that my reading of it was very informed by the fact I'd been reading Sarah het just before I began this one. I'm loving this discussion, everyone has such interesting viewpoints to add!