Our BetterMost Community > Creative Writer's Corner

Taking Chances, by E. L. Van Hine and L.H. Nicoll

<< < (72/1900) > >>

Lumière:

--- Quote from: louisev on June 28, 2006, 12:46:53 pm ---but I am really trying very hard to make every intimacy between them mean something, beyond the entertainment factor of course... something that shows the level of trust and intimacy between them as well as the unfolding sexual dimensions of a man who spent his life in repressed fantasy.  There are plenty more bedroom scenes to go!

--- End quote ---

Knock yourself out Louise!   ;)  No complaints coming from anybody here!  :)

louisev:
Update to "A Second Chance"

http://louisev.livejournal.com/62433.html  "Chapter 46:  Ruskin for the State"

MaineWriter:
In response to Louise's question, posted a few comments ago...

I actually wrote "my" Ennis (A Love Born From Steel Ennis, that is) to be opposite, that is, he comes to acknowledge and accept he's gay before moving into the realm of more adventurous and experimental sex. Near the end of the story, actually, Ennis starts asking Jack about "different types of queers" and Jack stocks the new nightstand with a few toys, which Ennis seems pleased to find and think about how to use.

I think it is not so much the order in which these events occur, rather, that there needs to be a deep and underlying love to establish the trust needed to "go there" -- wherever "there" may be. To that end, Louise, I think you have written the love very effectively, from Ellery's first "I have a theory--we're falling in love"; to Edna saying to Ennis, "He loves you very much" and Ennis being able to answer, "I know, he tells me all the time"; to most recently (and this is one of my most favorite lines in recent chapters), "You are precious to me." To me, it is that love that is more representative of Ennis's growth and unfolding, more than the sex (although the sex works, too).

This is probably going to sound like heresy to some people, but I think we have gotten to the point where Ennis loves Ellery more than he loved Jack...or maybe, to phrase it better, more completely. The point he is at now is exploring how to share a life with Ellery, something he never did with Jack. As I wrote in my story, Ennis and Jack were fuckbuddies who got together 2 or 3 times a year...fuckbuddies in love, yes, but there was no basis to their relationship other than that. He has matured, with Ellery, to the point that there is a relationship which transcends the sexual component.

L

louisev:
Well, I don't know that it is "heresy."  He could not conceive of living with a man, due to his traumatic upbringing, in 1967.  After losing Jack, after losing his own home, family, profession, and sitting in a room for two years, hanging on to bare existence with his fingernails, he had to change his conceptions.  I think with this new relationship he has a context and more than that, PERMISSION to love, that he had not been granted in his relationship with Jack.  So rather than thinking of it as "loving him more than he loved Jack", he is able to express himself in ways he did not have before, lacking the experience in doing so.  If he knew how, when he and Jack reunited after those four years, he would have expressed it then, but he did not know how.

MaineWriter:
The people who think that it can only be Ennis and Jack would be the ones who would think it is heresy that not only does Ennis love someone else, he loves him more. Your phrase "he is able to express himself in ways he did not have before" is probably better and what I was trying to get at with "loves more completely."

I wonder, if Ennis had been able to get together with Jack in 1967, would it have worked? A large part of me says no, since I don't think either of them had the maturity, at that point, to face what would have been very high barriers. That is part of the reason I set my story in 1976. I know there are fics that have them getting together in 1967 (I even read a few paragraphs of one that had Jack objecting at Ennis's wedding...that would have been 1963). To me, that is implausible for many reasons but mostly because of the emotional maturity issue that is not being addressed.

To keep this on your story, Louise, I think you address all these issues very well.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page