Headache-inducing categorization

[estirose]

So, I am finishing/getting ready to post a fic on AO3.

It's got a science fiction premise - the pov character is a canon character that was deaged permanently and had to grow up again, has no real idea of their original life, is for all intents not the same as the canon character. They're attracted to the original's girlfriend/boyfriend, but there's no relationship there, the pov character is underage and the original's partner isn't about to date an underage version of the canon character.

I have no clue on whether to mark this gen or not, because while there is one-sided attraction on the part of the pov character, all actual relationships happened in the past.

Sometimes I wish my brain didn't go off on weird writing tangents. Particularly in fandoms I've been writing a lot in lately.

Comments

[reka]

I thought it was very nicely done. That sort of premise can really bother me, because when it's done badly it is really uncomfortable. Since I know you've read some Valdemar, I'll point out Vanyel/Stefen as an example of lost-love-but-not-anymore handled in a terribly squicky way. (Not that Mercedes Lackey is a terribly skillful writer in most ways, but the example holds as an example of a similarly tricky subject handled as "love makes everything suddenly okay."

Anyway, rambling about my addiction to questionable fantasy novels aside, I quite liked it. There's more you could explore, of course, but I think you handled what you did well.