Admire and Desire

Fanfiction
Title:	Admire and Desire
Author(s):	Charlotte Frost
Date(s):	3 March 2006
Length:	~18000 words, 95k, 49pgs
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Sentinel
Relationship(s):	Jim/Blair
External Links:	online here archived version
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Admire and Desire is a Jim/Blair story by Charlotte Frost.

Summary: "Blair is eager to work with a respected professor. Takes place late in the second season and makes an AU turn."

Author's Comments

I had quite a few stories under another byline when I got going on this, but I decided to post it as a C Frost story, because it felt like a CF story. It felt good to have a new idea. Still, as with so many of my stories, I wrote the opening sequence and then stopped, having no idea where it was going. It was a few weeks, if not months, before I figured out what I wanted to do with it. That’s why Blair meeting the old man on the street seems to have too much importance in relation to the rest of the story; I thought the man was going to be somebody important, but instead he ended up being merely a subconscious reminder about something from Blair’s past.

From the Author: Counters and Kudos

My last year or so in Sentinel fandom, I discovered a counter site called Statcounter.com. It was free, it allowed me to have invisible counters (which I preferred), it allowed me to block my own hits, and it gave all sorts of stats.

The first story I posted, using Statcounter, was "Admire and Desire". I had been writing Sentinel stories under the Southy byline for a while, but I decided that story would be a Charlotte Frost story, because it felt like a Charlotte Frost story. So, I posted it, with its invisible Statcounter, and made an announcement on the CF LJ at the time that it was available.

I felt like a naughty voyeur as I constantly re-checked the counter stats in the ensuing hours. The stats included the URL that each hit came from. So, I could see that, from people clicking on the link from their LJ Friend's page, just who was clicking to look at the story... and presumably read it. It felt like too much information, and it was easy to form unfair opinions along the lines of, "Gee, this person has never said anything about liking my writing, but she's one of the first to click on my new story!" Or, "This person has clicked on the story three different times within two hours -- just read it already!" Or, "This person usually sends feedback, but they didn't for this story, though I know they clicked on it, and probably read it."

The "Referring URL" gave other voyeuristic results. Like, if someone Googled something, and the words they used happened to hit one of my stories, then my stories were turn up in their results, and they might click on it. For example, I remember vividly somebody searching something about enemas. Since that word was used in one of my stories, that person clicked on my story. Sometimes, people will do searches like, "Blair tortured", or something like that. Again, it feels like voyeurism, getting to see what someone was searching for.

All these years later, I've used Statcounter again to track the traffic to my stories. Since my visitors click on most stories directly from the menus, which they probably have bookmarked, then I don't know who they are, in most cases. I usually just see a city and state, or a city and country. There's very few fans that I feel confident that I know where they live. Also, there's a way to block counter information on one's computer, so I can't always see where they came from.

Reactions and Reviews

When a respected professor asks to write a paper with our favorite anthropologist, Blair is torn between excitement at the opportunity and fear that he was only asked because the professor has a known inclination for young men. Excitement wins out, until the moment that Blair finds himself in the professor's bedroom with his pants undone and no memory of what might have happened.

This isn't my usual type of story, but it's so very, very well done that I have to rec it. First of all, this story is a fantastic case file, with all of the inherent investigating, logical analysis, and resolution that that implies. Second, you have a mystery: did anything happen? Blair doesn't remember anything and the professor's story is reasonable. And yet, Blair has had a bad feeling about the guy all along...

Third, and most impressive to me, is the way that Charlotte manages to portray the aftermath of a possible rape, especially the way not knowing anything for sure makes the whole situation so much worse. What makes this fic especially brilliant is the way that she does this without sinking into melodrama -- the end result is that, while the plot of this fic is inherently triggering, I think most people (even folks like me, who avoid rape fics like the plague) can read it without trauma.

I do wish this story had been a bit longer as some aspects of it are a bit rushed. Still, as it stands it is a plausible and fascinating look at an all-too-common crime.