lit analysis on my own work: hold my heart, trauma, healing, and relationships

[madimpossibledreamer]

Hold My Heart is, obviously, a queer series, given that there’s a gay relationship (Leon/Xander), but it’s focusing a lot more on trauma and healing, and how relationships can help heal but it’s not an instant fix. There are some found family themes, particularly in the Ghosts in Ultraviolet phase. I had a ton of fun with the mirroring at the beginning, and there’s a little detail I’m not sure observers would notice on Ao3 because a) it just gives overall fix word count, not that of individual chapters, b) it tends to count word count a little differently than my word processing program, which I’m guessing has to do with dashes and ellipses, but I’m not sure, so it might not have even kept it, and c) it’s really, really unlikely anyone would notice in Feeling of Fading Away (Waiting to Be Found and The Pain of Survival), because that would involve using a different program to count words for the beginning and end, but one that I had a lot of fun with—I wanted to subconsciously indicate the equality there, so Leon’s and Xander’s parts are equal numbers of words in that and the two chapters of Thought and Truth (Floating in Limbo and The Anger Cools). There was some unintentional mirroring in a couple places that I didn’t even notice and absolutely love—both of them attempted food bribery with their respective coworker-friends that appeared in the intentionally mirrored Feeling of Fading Away parts.

Half of it is exploring writing a mature relationship where arguments can happen and it’s not the end of the world (or arguments can happen, it’s the end of the world, but they’re both still committed to the relationship, because, y’know, apocalypse), and half of it is them working through their own trauma. They are both geeks and dorks, and their first instinct is to cope with humor. And there’s definitely a bit of ‘not feeling normal because of how society defines it’. Leon’s better at hiding it, but they both have a decent amount of guilt at burdening others with their pain. I didn’t intend on Xander getting more flustered, but he really, really doesn’t know what to do with love and doesn’t understand what to do with it at first (and then keeps getting frustrated because his own trauma keeps getting in the way and thinking that’s a problem with him; they get to the same page in The Conversation, although I wouldn’t call it ‘fixed’). But also because Leon is doing a better job at hiding it, Xander doesn’t think he’s doing as much for the goofball agent as he is. I’m working on that, though Comfort vs Oblivion was a start. Their trauma (personal, professional, in their love life, losing people, etc), is not the same, but it’s affected them both equally in different ways, and it’s interesting exploring that and letting them heal and learn to trust again, that this isn’t going to be the same, that the world isn’t going to take this away from them too.

And then I kind of break that in some of the Ghosts in Ultraviolet chapters. Sorry about that. I promise to put back everything in better condition than I took it.

(One final side note: I also hadn’t intended on there to be some chronic pain themes with Xander, even with the eye, because, well, it’s the legacy of Sparda, but somehow some mini-metacrisis (Doctor Who) stuff snuck in there during move in circles, so. Yeah, apparently the permanent YAHF costume thing is that Xander has a bit of autoimmune where his devil and human sides don’t always like to play ball, and so sometimes he just hurts. Mostly in the form of a migraine, but it’s probably not always “just” a migraine, although lbr is that a phrase that can even be applied to migraines?)