Previous part is here.
6) Behavioral Therapy
Heroes; Mohinder/Sylar; NC-17
“You can’t simply restrain Sylar physically and hope that your luck holds out indefinitely. To truly neutralize him we will have to go deeper than that. Sylar is a man who believes to his core that he is superior to the rest of us, that the laws don’t apply to him and that violence and manipulation are the keys to achieving positive results. That is what needs to change, and that is what I intend to do.”
Bob hadn’t expected this burst of lecture, and he stood stock still for a moment. “How?” he asked.
“Through intensive behavioral conditioning. I have been reading up on the subject recently. It’s fascinating. Imposition of limits, implementation of stimulus-response reflexes, reward and punishment behaviors. In essence, it’s about finding out what he wants, and teaching him what he has to do to get it.”
The day I ever wrote Mohinder/Sylar was supposed to be the day pigs flew and the cows came home. I haven’t seen any returning animals, by air or land, but somehow I managed to write Mohinder/Sylar– 11-part Mohinder/Sylar– 11-part ADULT Mohinder/Sylar, with all kinds of kinks written in, with sex as a main focus of the plot… and I have emerged relatively unscathed. (More about that “relatively” later.)
There was a set of prompts for adult Heroes stories. It’s what’s called a kink meme: basically the female equivalent of a bunch of guys getting together to watch lesbian porn vids. Harmless and fun, and in this case, completely anonymous. (This, of course, was not written anonymously, or I wouldn’t be talking about it here.) There’s a lot of disturbing stuff in this if you’re vanilla about sex. The funny thing is, in real life I’m quite vanilla. What I like to write or fantasize about is very different than what I would even consider doing. Expressing yourself through erotica is very big in fandom, and it’s also an easy way to make a name for yourself: The Internet Is for Porn, after all.
Writing these characters in this situation was particularly problematic for me because what I was trying to do was psychological manipulation through desire and denial. Both of the main characters were using and being used by each other, and through the push and pull of their interactions something starts that cannot be stopped. It goes from brutal to tortured but romantic, but theirs is not and could never be a happy ending, and I think I pulled off that ambiguity particularly well.
I was very happy to complete this, and it gave me courage to try to write some more for this pairing. Alas, they were not as well received, and the final blow came to me in the very painful format that also (although through a different set of comments) caused me to leave livejournal for a while: “Your Sylar is awful.” and “You can’t write Sylar at all.” I give less credence to those comments with a little space and time, and also because the story did end up winning an award. But ever since, I just have to wonder about all of the people who until then had been friendly to me. Did they secretly think I didn’t have the chops to write this character? Suspicion and paranoia are the death of perspective. (I will likely write more on this as the month progresses, but let’s leave it here for now.)
5) Something Invulnerable
Heroes; Charlie/Claire; R
“What’s high school like?”
The question’s out before Claire can tamp it down, and Charlie’s lips part. Her forehead furrows in worry.
“I mean,” Claire says quickly, “is it as bad as the movies and things say it is? Because it seems really bad.”
Charlie looks at her for a long time. Finally, sympathetically, she says, “Yeah. Yes, it is sometimes. But it’s not forever.” She leans in as if in confidence. “And by the time you’re done with it, you’ve got a badge of honor. You’re strong enough to do anything if you can get through high school. You can walk through fire and not get burned.”
Claire’s eyes go wild and round. She feels like Moses coming upon the burning bush. “Wow.”
“Aren’t you sweet?” Charlie gushes. “I wish you were my little sister. We’d talk about everything, and I’d help you just as much as I can.”
Claire and Charlie never meet in the show, but they’re both young, impressionable and genuinely sweet girls in the Odessa/Midland area. I was immediately struck by the potential chemistry there, and I wanted them to have met at least once. They seemed to me to be like sisters.
This idea was in my head to write for months and months before I got around to it. And when I finally had the scenes straightened out, the language eluded me. I posted, revised, posted again, and finally bid it adieu and sent it out into the world to stand on its own merits. It was mostly ignored, and I kind of understand why– I was still not pleased with it. But the story is one I wanted to tell so badly that it still ranks as one of my favorites.
One difficult thing for me about this piece is that it portrays sexual acts where at least one of the girls is underage. The sex is not graphic, but it is overt rather than implied. But here’s what I realized as I pondered this piece and what it meant: It’s an allegory. It’s about sisterhood, finding someone to connect with, vulnerability and innocence giving way to experience. This is the one fic that I’ve written that I don’t want to be canon. My personal canon says that Charlie and Claire met once and connected, but not sexually. The sex is a metaphor in this. It’s an easy way to represent the connection. In the story itself, it happens; but the story is painting an ephemeral concept with a broad brush, and it doesn’t mean I would have liked to see it happen that way. That may be a little dense or obtuse of me, but that’s the conclusion I came to as to why I did it.
4) Addiction
Gravitation, Yuki/Shuichi, PG-13
I light him on fire, take him into me as though I could breathe him, burn him up and wear him down. It feels good, even the parts that hurt, even the parts where I lose myself in him and cry out for him as though he was air, not poison. Man is not supposed to drink poison willingly. Just as man is not made to be with man. It’s unnatural according to all common sense. But I remain addicted. Despite all logic, despite all I’ve been through and all I know.
Speaking of metaphorical pieces, this is one. It’s too short and probably too fluffy, but I’m attached to it for several reasons. First of all, it’s in Yuki POV and I think it comes off as in character. Which is very difficult, because he’s such a difficult character to get a real grip on. But he gives me a lot of leeway, because he himself is a writer, which leads me to imagine he sees things like metaphor in real life, the way I do. I can imagine very easily Yuki looking at his two biggest vices– smoking and his lover– and drawing a connection between them. Because I did it. (How egotistical can you get? But leaving that aside…)
I suppose it’s necessary, when you’re telling a love story, to tell it from the perspective of one of the lovers. But it often ends up with a sort of dichotomy going on: there’s the half of the pair that the audience clearly identifies with, feels sympathy for, etc., and then there’s the half that is not “self” but “the other,” alluring, mysterious, and impenetrable. Yuki Eiri is very definitely in the latter category, and getting inside his head was a bit of a power trip for me. For once, I was the one wanted, not the one wanting. And I was surprised to find as much vulnerability as I did.
There was someone I considered the Yuki to my Shuichi once. Her handle was “eidolon tree,” and she wrote stories so deep and beautiful that I attached myself to her coattails and called her my akogare, or “idol.” She treated me just as Yuki treats Shuichi; coldly, with a hint of annoyance. And yet she kept responding to my e-mails and admitted, once in a while and grudgingly, that she kind of liked me. Then, one day, she abruptly disappeared, and that was it, she was gone.
If she ever googles her old screen name, maybe she’ll come upon this blog. I hope she gets a good laugh out of it. Having my akogare actually laugh at me was gratifying. It meant she cared enough to respond.
Top three coming up another time.
Filed under: warning: discussion of writing erotica | Tagged: creativity, fan fiction, fanfic, fanfic meme, the creative process
