Grimm's sex-narration sinergy · 12:34am May 15th, 2019
Grimm just released a new story, Ocellated, sequel to Chrystalized. In order to appreciate it better, I've been reading the earlier one again, and it happened to spark some thoughts.
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Chrysalys' stubbornness and narrow visions have to confront Thorax's compassion. The many confrontations that follow are a testament to the Queen's moral statue: she's a remarkable villain of rock solid principles, able to hold her moral high ground even when alone at the bottom of a dungeon. She's so great she can keep up with Thorax, who has the crucial advantage of outside support, all on her own for way longer than anyone else could. While haggling, she easily sees through the facade of a dark prison and immediately realizes she has the super hand. She takes the lead and makes the rules, knowing that the other party has no other choice but to agree to her. Even In having a change of heart, she stays remarkable for the importance of her actions and remains an intimidating enemy for anyone on her new path. So great are her certainties and so adamant she is in her belief, that hard she falls as she has a change of heart. And like in Mis-Shapes, like in Blindsided, in The Other Side Of the Coin, in Full House, in all of Grimm's production, this has to happen through and thanks to sex, for it couldn't happen any other way. The symbiosis between sex and story, the use of sex not only as fetish fuel but also as an active narrative driver that propels the story forward is my favorite element of any Grimm fic. Ask yourself this: could you take what happens in this pivotal sex scene and have it happen in a sex-free context? Can you have Chrysalis realize Torax harbors lost feelings for her he himself forgot about? Could he fall under her spell for his hive's sake, in any other way? No. It couldn't happen any other way, and had anything else happened instead the story wouldn't have gone where it is now. Now ask yourself this other thing: if you were to take this same sex scene and strip if of its narrative elements, what would you be left with? All you'd have is two nameless bugs pistoning into each other. A disconnected, distant representation of a biological function that ceases to be interesting after the first copile of lines. Grimm himself has a blog post that exacerbates this very topic, figuring out which one is left as an exercise to the reader. Now that you have these answers, you can understand the outstanding synergy Grimm has mastered, to drive sex and narrative through each other, and to interconnect them to the point that it can't even be thought of to separate one from the other. His technical mastery in prose validates this all the more, indicating the work and dedication that has gone into perfecting such an art to this extent, and keeping on improving it with every iteration. Did I already say how remarkable this is? Because it is, and it deserves so much more appreciation than what it has. You should read everything Grimm has ever written, and be grateful for the stories he keeps on publishing to this day.
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You may ask yourself, what's the meaning of this silly post that nobody's ever going to read? If you did, I welcome your doubt, and inform you that it's reasonable indeed. I wish I had an answer. I can take a guess though, as good as yours, as to what this is meant to be. You see, I've been reading Grimm for years now, and ever since I started I had this thing about sex-plot sinergy roaming around my head. It came about in almost all Grimm fics, in often times in other fics, sometimes even in real-life scenarios in which it was not ok for it to do so. Tonight, it just so happened to take the form you see above, and I happen to be pleased with it. It's far from perfect and surely not an ideal representation of what I'm thinking, but it's good enough to be English and to give me an opportunity to shout it out to the world. But, you may ask, who's ever going to read a post by a four-days old account? Who could take you seriously? And this time, you'd be correct. As you can surely already tell, you don't exist. Nobody is reading this except me, and nobody likely ever will. I found that a great way to keep a secret to yourself into put it somewhere others can find it, but it's ever so inconvenient to do so. So I'm taking this precious note that I'm dearly bound to and putting here, where I know nobody will ever hear of it. Nevertheless, I'll know it's there and it's been written, and I'll have taken off my chest the weight of sharing it, and I'll be able to move on to something else. And if you, dear reader, just so happened to exist, and you wanted to have a voice, leave me a comment or a PM. Who knows, I might even answer it.
The last question I'll allow yourself to ask, is why not a comment on the story? Why an obscure post that the author is never going to read? The answer to that is simple: this post is not good enough. It's not constructive feedback, it's not a critic, it's not noteworthy. It's nothing that hasn't been said before, nor nothing that wasn't part of the story since its first design ideas. On a story's page, this would be TMI, selfish and a detrimental contribution to the educate discussions that take place in Grimm's comments. Plus, it may look as if I'm making comments with no idea of what I'm talking about, or making point I'm not qualified to make. By putting this whole thing in a blog, I'm preventing the story from having to deal with a of that and still making my pointless point.
