fic rec: Crusie fic!
Nov. 6th, 2011 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraMaking It by Emeraldwoman. Post Faking It, starring Nadine. About 4700 words. This story is delicious and romantic and full of yay. If you haven't read Faking It and Welcome to Temptation, this is also a rec for them - Jennifer Crusie is my favorite romance novelist and while Bet Me is probably still my all-time favorite of her books, Welcome to Temptation and Faking It are close runners-up. And "Making It" is a truly worthy followup to them.
There's only one thing wrong with it... let's talk about shipping.
I was pro-Nadine/Ethan after Faking It, but after "Making It" I was *really* pro. Team Ethan FTW. Sailing the Good Ship Nathan or Ethdine or whatever you want to call it. So I was actually pretty upset when I read on Crusie's website that she's planning to write a couple more novels in which Nadine gets together with the boy kid from Maybe This Time (the recent Gothic one with the ghosts).
First of all - whaaat? I do not love this thing that sometimes strikes authors later in their careers, where they want all of their books to have taken place in the same world and fiddle things around so they're all interconnected and the character from one is secretly also the guy from the other and gah. If Crusie wants to write books with ghosts and magic, that's fine, I read fantasy, but it actually takes away from my love of her contemporaries to have fantasy oozing into them.
I'm also not convinced that taking a supporting character from series A and a supporting character from series B and mooshing them together is actually a recipe for a good romance. It's true that Davy (star of Faking It) was a secondary character in Welcome to Temptation, but Tilda was *made* for him - I mean, literally, by Crusie. Which is not to say that she's not an awesome character in her own right, but the ways she fits (and doesn't fit) with Davy, the things that make their story interesting and fun, were built into the character from the ground up. Nadine and Carter are both who they are for the roles they play in their respective books - will they really just happen to also work perfectly as a pair without character surgery?
And thirdly, finally getting back to "Making It"... but what about Ethan? I obviously can't say that if Crusie didn't want me to ship Nadine/Ethan she shouldn't have written "Making It", because she didn't. Such are the perils of fanfic. But even just on the basis of Faking It... look, I know it's not very realistic for people to end up with their high school love interest, but sometimes it's just really satisfying to read stories where they do anyways. Sometimes I just want it to work out for Keith and Watts and for Andie to realize she *is* attracted to Duckie. Ethan fits with the Goodnights, he fits with *Nadine*, what the hell does tragic-past Gothicboy have to do with anything.
I was really caught off-guard by how much it bothered me. I like to think of myself as ship-flexible, above the petty bickering of ship wars. I might not have been super-enthused about the canon pairings in Harry Potter, but it wasn't like Harry being with Ginny in canon made me enjoy Harry/Hermione or Harry/Draco any less. "Making It" will still exist even once Nadine is off romancing someone else. But, oh, wah! I wanted Nadine/Ethan to be *real*, darnit! Which is a ludicrous thing to say. But it's not ludicrous to say that I don't particularly want to read Nadine with someone else, and yet that will apparently be my only choice if I want to read a new Crusie book when that's the book she has coming out, or if I want to read more Nadine as written by Crusie.
There's only one thing wrong with it... let's talk about shipping.
I was pro-Nadine/Ethan after Faking It, but after "Making It" I was *really* pro. Team Ethan FTW. Sailing the Good Ship Nathan or Ethdine or whatever you want to call it. So I was actually pretty upset when I read on Crusie's website that she's planning to write a couple more novels in which Nadine gets together with the boy kid from Maybe This Time (the recent Gothic one with the ghosts).
First of all - whaaat? I do not love this thing that sometimes strikes authors later in their careers, where they want all of their books to have taken place in the same world and fiddle things around so they're all interconnected and the character from one is secretly also the guy from the other and gah. If Crusie wants to write books with ghosts and magic, that's fine, I read fantasy, but it actually takes away from my love of her contemporaries to have fantasy oozing into them.
I'm also not convinced that taking a supporting character from series A and a supporting character from series B and mooshing them together is actually a recipe for a good romance. It's true that Davy (star of Faking It) was a secondary character in Welcome to Temptation, but Tilda was *made* for him - I mean, literally, by Crusie. Which is not to say that she's not an awesome character in her own right, but the ways she fits (and doesn't fit) with Davy, the things that make their story interesting and fun, were built into the character from the ground up. Nadine and Carter are both who they are for the roles they play in their respective books - will they really just happen to also work perfectly as a pair without character surgery?
And thirdly, finally getting back to "Making It"... but what about Ethan? I obviously can't say that if Crusie didn't want me to ship Nadine/Ethan she shouldn't have written "Making It", because she didn't. Such are the perils of fanfic. But even just on the basis of Faking It... look, I know it's not very realistic for people to end up with their high school love interest, but sometimes it's just really satisfying to read stories where they do anyways. Sometimes I just want it to work out for Keith and Watts and for Andie to realize she *is* attracted to Duckie. Ethan fits with the Goodnights, he fits with *Nadine*, what the hell does tragic-past Gothicboy have to do with anything.
I was really caught off-guard by how much it bothered me. I like to think of myself as ship-flexible, above the petty bickering of ship wars. I might not have been super-enthused about the canon pairings in Harry Potter, but it wasn't like Harry being with Ginny in canon made me enjoy Harry/Hermione or Harry/Draco any less. "Making It" will still exist even once Nadine is off romancing someone else. But, oh, wah! I wanted Nadine/Ethan to be *real*, darnit! Which is a ludicrous thing to say. But it's not ludicrous to say that I don't particularly want to read Nadine with someone else, and yet that will apparently be my only choice if I want to read a new Crusie book when that's the book she has coming out, or if I want to read more Nadine as written by Crusie.
