writing voices

I read a Bruce/Dick soulmates fic today and it was...weird, because it had the structure and emotional echo of being something that could've been epic and engrossing, but was held back from meeting its potential with a few typos and bad sentence structure. It was a superficial version of what it could have been. In some ways, it felt too self-aware of what it was trying to achieve? It takes a talented author to write that kind of epic emotional arc (from foster child to more, with all the drama and angst and entanglements required) that you can fall into without noticing. The kind of writing that envelops you in the world and the characters in a way that feels real and resonant while you're reading. You aren't consciously aware of the author's choices in the story because it flows so organically.

For me, thehoyden is particularly good at that; it's why I can read her stuff in almost any fandom and love it. dorkorific/Rave also hits this note for me: her ST RPS, her football RPS, just reads with such warmth/affection/a voice that just feels so natural to the character (even if it's different from RL, but the key is that you buy it in the moment for that character). astolat can too, though it depends on the fandom. It's harder to call other authors to mind because oftentimes I only read them for one particular fandom, so even if I love their work it might just be that they hit my favorite dynamic for that particular fandom or ship. It's when I've read them across different fandoms that I start noticing if it just happens to be their style that falls in place for me every time.

Anyway, I accidentally wrote a mini-essay on my feelings about supergenius Jim Kirk characterizations because a friend asked, so I'll talk about that more later, edited to hopefully have more coherency.