ext_9238 ([identity profile] joandarck.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] mrsronweasley 2006-05-12 12:56 am (UTC)

another ridiculously long comment

You know what, I think of myself as not wanting to read kidfic, just as I don't want to watch movies with kids in them - I resent the cutesiness, the limitations it places on the story, the simplistic, predictable dialogue, and the blatancy of the emotional hook. (I love books from children's points of view, but that's different.)

But there are exceptions - Aliens has a kid in it, and it drives the story instead of limiting it, and the emotional hook makes perfect sense in a survival setting, and it's, okay, a little cutesy, but I enjoy it.

Due South is the only fandom where I've liked kidfic. It still makes me uncomfortable, the hook is too overt or something, so I don't tend to reread it, but I do like it at the time, kind of like cuteoverload.com (http://cuteoverload.com/).

I think partly because Due South is for me in a lot of ways a, um, fix-it fandom? So to speak? I don't just want to read dS slash because I want validation of the subtext or because it's hot - I want it because I want someone to love Fraser and make it all better, and give him a chance to open up. And I want Ray to get his emotional security and have his big crush pay off. I can imagine them both wanting a long-term, secure, domestic, spouse-and-family situation, that creates something for the future, and raising kids sort of pings at that. (Oh god! grandkid fic! is there any?!)

(see, and I sort of love that idea - them as handsome old men, holding hands in the park, generations of their loving family around them, standing up at their kids' weddings - one gives the bride away and the other makes the toast, maybe? - framed photos on the mantlepiece - grandkids asking for stories or playing frisbee at the barbeque or - and at the same time I feel a little sick. cuteoverload!)

It's also a realistic setting for both their teamwork and their friction to play out, with lower stakes than crime-fighting - of course mom and dad argue but they still love each other, right? Or something. And also it's just easy to picture both of them dealing with children, in their different, but extremely cute, ways.

I don't know if any of those are the real answer. There's just something instinctive going on. When I look around at my other fandoms (Blakes 7, Professionals, LOTR, LOTRips, Sentinel, Farscape), the idea of kidfic is always somewhere between boring and threatening. It's easy to say it would be OOC for some of the characters to want kids - or that it would soften them to the point where they're no longer interesting - but mainly I just don't want some little burden taking screen time away from what I really want worked out, the relationship between the adults.

So why F/K kidfic? I guess something about F/K feels like it could be worked out through having kids? Going around in circles, giving up... now.

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