Glory to the Spoons!

I've been thinking lately about romance, and fic, and why I tend to bounce so hard off of a lot of shippy fic even when I at least theoretically enjoy the pairing. And I think it comes down, at least in part, to the broader way we conceive of romance as a culture. My issue with a lot of romantic fanfic (and profic, for that matter) is that it is very concerned about Romantic Gestures but it doesn't make any effort to suss out what those gestures mean to these particular people--as if romance and romantic gestures are an objective set of behaviors and items that should be applied to any relationship regardless of the people involved.

This isn't exactly the main thrust of Jess Zimmerman's excellent essay, Hunger Makes Me, but it's something that she touches on:
It will probably shock no one to learn that I am a terribly unromantic person in real life; my favorite Valentines Day gift ever is a Ka-Bar knife from my spouse, who knows me entirely too well. But this idea of pageantry and insincerity stuck with me, and I think it's what bugs me about a lot of romance in fanfic, above and beyond the fact that I'm kind of an unromantic curmudgeon: there's this tendency to act out the stagecraft of Romantic Gestures without ever considering what they might mean to those particular people. There is a Grand Proposal, or the Presentation of the Ring, or Flowers and Chocolates... it's not that no one likes these things, or that no one should ever do them, but the way they turn up in fiction often feels like characters reeling off a script with no regard for who they are, what they want, how they might respond to such a gesture.

All this probably sounds really grouchy, but I have read some truly great romantic fic, both long glorious epics and short sweet one-shots; the difference is, really good romance considers its characters as people, and therefore considers who they are and what they might want, how and when they might trip over their toes, how they love people and are loved in return. I'd like to see more of it.

On the upside: I think I've managed to kick the writer's block with my novel rewrite, and all it took was deleting like two and a half pages of a scene that wasn't working and rewriting it.

On the downside, I'm pretty sure I've just discovered that I'm going to have to kill a character I really don't want to kill to make the rest of the story work. :(

...is it permitted to write fanfic of your own original fiction where someone who died For Plot Reasons survives?

Well, I have successfully written 50k, which works out to about three quarters of the story. I only really developed a plot around the last 5k, though, which means I pretty much have to go back and re-write the entire rest of it.

...at least it's something to do.

Also, I'm considering finally sitting down to catch up on SPN. Can anybody advise if this is a good idea? Or will I just want to beat my TV to death when I'm finished?

An excerpt from my MASTERPIECE:

(  It's quiet down on the east side of the waterfront... )