art of the grovel

If I’m allowed to toot my own horn, I’d have to say that one of the key aspects of my stories is trope inversion or subversion. Being irritated with a commone fandom trope is most often what motivates a particular story. Not all of them, sure, but a lot—possibly even most.

On some tumblr post about romance novels and why they’re Totally Valid, someone mentioned a frequent aspect is someting called ’the grovel’: wherein the love interest expresses sincere remorse over a harm done. Something a lot of women find satisfying because in real life men—if they notice at all—rarely apologize for anything. They usually don’t care enough about women’s feelings. Or (worse, imo) they aren’t willing to do the emotional labour to address the harm.

Anyway. Not the point.

The point is that this romance feature explains a lot about what goes on in sterek fic. Most sterek fics are written from Stiles’ perspective, usually framing Stiles as the main character and Derek as the love interest.

As a result, Stiles is usually the one done wrong by his man and Derek is the one grovelling¹.

It made me realize that—more than any other trope—this is something my fics usually invert or subvert.

Learning about this romance trope helped me understand one of my main frustrations with sterek fic: that Stiles can seemingly do no wrong. Or, if he does make mistakes, he rarely faces any substantive consequences for them. Or, if he does face consequences, they’re usually framed as unjust².

It frustrates me enough that I’m writing fanfic like ten years after the last time I wrote any.

I’m pretty sure everyone knows that I have a big bias for Derek (vs. Stiles). As a result, I turn their normal dynamic around. Stiles’ negative qualities cause Derek harm and he’s the one who needs to grovel (in the fics where something like this happens).

(Now I want to make a rec list for fics like this. There wouldn’t be many…)