[ SECRET POST #2666 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2666 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #381.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Going a little farther afield

[feotakahari]

I haven't read either of these books, but my general impression is that the point when you've doomed your story about terminal illness is when you start making the illness feel like something that would inevitably happen to a person like this. Or in other words, like your protagonist is so pure and so perfect that God just had to take her back, but not without giving her time to brighten the lives of those around her. It's not beautiful, it's macabre and repulsive.

To give an example, the novel Safelight by Shannon Burke has an FMC who dies of AIDS. The last paragraph has the protagonist observing a string of lights. One light suddenly burns out, and the other lights all brighten slightly. This is the third worst metaphor I've seen in my life, behind the cake as lost love in MacArthur Park and the repeatedly stubbed toe as racism in Apex Hides the Hurt, and it caps off a novel I wanted to like, but couldn't, because it took so much pain and suffering and made it feel so neat and tidy.

Re: Going a little farther afield

[(Anonymous)]

"like your protagonist is so pure and so perfect that God just had to take her back, but not without giving her time to brighten the lives of those around her."

This is like the perfect description of The Fault In Our Stars >.< This is not, however, how Deadline is at all. There's a whole part where the protag realizes how terrible his death is gonna be for pretty much everyone around him and it isn't sugarcoated at ALL. The "happy" ending is basically just "well, the people he left behind managed to carry on with their lives although they miss him." AFIOS spends forever warbling on about how special and amazing the dying/dead person is and what a wonderful inspiration to everyone around them they were. It made me sick. Deadline, though, I thought was a really great look at a lot of heavy themes without making them maudlin or irritating. I actually got attached to the characters. But then imo pretty much everything Chris Crutcher writes is gold.