frog princess

I thought it might be amusing to make a list of the fanfics that are in my 'will read over and over again' file. A sort of 'ultimate recs' list. But I haven't the energy right now. I haven't recced anything in any detail for a long time, but I think that's because it's hard.


A short Eroica Discursion
For the past month I've been reading From Eroica with Love stories of varing quality, but I have some definite favourites. If slash fiction is about seeing a subtext and then making it real and believable, then some of my favourite Eroica stories are a sort of dizzying pinnacle of this art. Why? Because any plausible explanation of how Klaus and Dorian could ever end up together means that any writer will have to provide a note-perfect set of motivations. One for explaining why Klaus would ever accept that he was a 'pervert'. and then another that could convince me that Dorian wouldn't get bored after achieving his long-awaited goal.

Klaus and Dorian are complete opposites. Klaus is homophobic and hopelessly repressed about sex with any gender. He gets very angry when Dorian is around. It's easy to see the path a writer may, and often does, take with this: Klaus's anger at Dorian is sublimated desire. People, if experiencing emotions that they don't want to admit to, will reshape them into something else, often not consciously. So Klaus could well be a grown-up playground bully, who, when faced with a desire that he can't acknowledge, uses his fists instead. Of course, Klaus doesn't need to be written this way, but for me it's the most convincing explanation of his behaviour.