This was absolutely EVERYTHING I love about this genre. The formality and the pining and the focus on the subtlest touches and closeness. I love that you're able to really capture such big emotional moments in such tiny gestures (I have a thing about hands and touching wrists and so on...). And Oh man. The fact that it wasn't some big, dark secret or giant melodramatic trauma that kept Gerard hidden away. I mean, not that dead parents and grandmother isn't traumatic, but I really, really appreciate that it wasn't actual madness... just the simple fact of it being easier to stay safe and distant from people. Thank you for that. Seriously.
And MIKEY! Trying so hard to do what he thinks is best and that moment where he offers to go walking outside with Gerard. I really do have such a soft spot in my heart for the mistakes that lack of communication cause, and that just seems like such a big one so easily fixed by just the acknowledgment and offer. And oh god.
And you did exactly as you hoped as far as the influences of the story, because I didn't read the notes before I read the story. It definitely evoked all the best things about Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden without feeling like a retread/rip-off, and it just gave me the urge to go dig up some of my other gothic romance favorites because it reminded me just how much I absolutely love this type of story.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-06-12 09:25 pm (UTC)And MIKEY! Trying so hard to do what he thinks is best and that moment where he offers to go walking outside with Gerard. I really do have such a soft spot in my heart for the mistakes that lack of communication cause, and that just seems like such a big one so easily fixed by just the acknowledgment and offer. And oh god.
And you did exactly as you hoped as far as the influences of the story, because I didn't read the notes before I read the story. It definitely evoked all the best things about Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden without feeling like a retread/rip-off, and it just gave me the urge to go dig up some of my other gothic romance favorites because it reminded me just how much I absolutely love this type of story.