Snowflake Challenge Day 10

[nrgburst]

Day 10

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs.


I love mutual pining. The whole I-want-you-so-bad-it-hurts-but-I-respect-what-you-want-more always gets me. The tension! The bitter circumstances keeping them from just up and blurting already! The lingering looks and repression! The misunderstandings making the reader go, "nooooooo"! The resolution leaving everyone laughing a bit at their own foolishness!

See Johanssen in that icon? I love how she's grinning and saying "Yes" to going back for Watney even though she's ALSO looking straight at Beck and SHAKING HER HEAD because FFS DUDE ANOTHER 19 MONTHS OF TENSION.

I think my favorite meta on this state of longing is actually this hilarious set of tags about Pride and Prejudice:

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#IN A FILM OF PERFECT MOMENTS THE HAND FLEX™ STANDS ALONE#BEATIFIED; REVERED AMONGST ITS PEERS#NEVER BEFORE OR SINCE HAS A PIECE OF CINEMA BEEN SO PURE; SO HEART WRENCHING; SO OBSCENELY EROTIC#IM GONNA KILL MATTHEW MCFADYEN#pride and prejudice#THE WAY HIS THUMB GRAZES OVER HER KNUCKLES PUT ME IN THE MOTHERFUCKING BIN#and the way she looks at him like ‘did he just’#and he looks back at her like ‘fuck. i did that…. we practically boned on the driveway’#BUT HONESTLY THIS ONE MOMENT IS MORE SEXUALLY CHARGED THAN ANY SEX SCENE OR ANY ACTUAL SEX#and okay like people who hate this movie#(YES. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HATE CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 2005)#say that it is a bad adaption of the book because it focuses on the sexual tension too much#and not the like ~repressed nature of lizzie and darcy’s witty repartee#BITCH#ARE YOU SEEING THIS?#DO YOU SEE THIS GIFSET?#IS HE NOT REPRESSED ENOUGH FOR YOU?????#HE SPENDS THE WHOLE MOVIE DISGUSTED THAT HE’S ACCIDENTALLY CAUGHT FEELINGS#HE THRIVES ON HAVING TOUCHED HER HAND TO HAND FOR LIKE A MONTH!??#THEY GAZE AT EACH OTHER DURING CHURCH SERMONS#I’VE NEVER SEEN TWO PEOPLE SO REPRESSED IN MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE#look JANE AUSTEN HERSELF would SWOON watching this movie#she would skype that dude she got engaged to for one night and ask him to roleplay reenact this hand flex with her#kinkshame the austen
Tag credit: apriki

XDDDD A lot of ships I like have this as an element even in canon, and a lot of what I write incorporates this trope, too. But here, have some recs with lots of palpable tension and competent people being obtuse when it comes to ~feelings!

a thing we can't deny by tremontaine (MCU, Natasha/Bucky, E)
So what happens if you were married but both of you got brainwashed in the interim? Natasha's refrain of, "If he is happy then I am happy." also follows the 'if I repeat this enough I might actually convince myself' trope, too. 

one equal temper by hairgel (HTGAWM, Connor/Oliver, E, torture)
This Spy AU is soooo good. Oliver thinks the pining is only on his part. (Spoilers: it's not.)

A Favourable Arrangement by by grav_ity (The Hobbit, Fili/Sigrid, M)
Arranged marriage leading to ~feelings actually might be a subset of this trope, now that I think about it. This is obviously AU as anything.


As a ship-kink, what I loooove is mirroring to show just how perfectly in tune two people are. (Hi, Pacific Rim, I LOVE YOU.) I've talked about this before on the LJ, but this is usually shown visually so have some GIFs:

Fitzsimmons on AoS actually takes the cake at this and there are loads of sets about it because IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.

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Also Ginny/Mike on Pitch

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And Hiccup/Astrid from How to Train your Dragon

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Comments

[kayim]

I suspect that mutual pining is similar to my "I love you but we can't be together" trope. My two Forever OTPs are both these kind of pairings - they *have* been together in the past, and they both know that they both love each other, but for Reasons™ they can't stay together. See Dick/Babs from the DC comics and Starbuck/Apollo from Battlestar Galactica!

And yes, that perfectly in-sync mirroring is awesome!!

[nrgburst]

Ah, I call that kind of trope "bounded by fate"! I have ships like that too! (Kolvina from The Originals (one half of the ship was dead for a full season, then was resurrected. They got a week together before the other half was killed) and Will/Lyra from His Dark Materials (forced to live on in separate dimensions to save the Universe) I think mutual pining is something different because it's before the romantic revelation/union. I think Jane Austen said it best in Persuasion: "I am half agony, half hope." There's not much hope in the "bounded by fate" ones- just resignation and continued devotion. (I think- I don't know those canons so I could be totally off base!)

[kiki_eng]

:D Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! :DDDDDDDDDDDDD

Okay, so, yes. I, too, am obsessed with that moment of the 2005 adaptation, and, yes, this is also why I love to pieces Sense & Sensibility (1995) and now I need to watch Pitch even more desperately because mirroring. This is a great post. Yes.

[nrgburst]

:DDDD Austen was the master of barely touching hands UST, I STG.

Pitch is soooo good! Do it! Do iiiiittt XDDD