UPDATES ON THE LAWS REGARDING ATTRACTION
Hello everyone, this isn’t the update that you are looking for, but it is a fairly important announcement.
I will be re-writing the majority of this fic and possibly have new plots throughout/delete old plots that i wrote.
There are many reasons why, but the main reason is that I have felt as though my craft has been corrupted. I wrote this fic when i was 19, but even then i know what type of fiction i want to write, fan created or original; I want to write a social commentary, one where it confronts the reader on the biases they already have in their life. I think this fic is my magnum opus in that regard, because in just 7 chapters, it confronts many reader’s biases against women.
I understand that most people came to fics as a way to fantasise and escape from reality. It is a world where you can pretend discrimination doesn’t exist, biases don't happen, society is well and good, villains are just bad guys without nuances and of course, the main character being perfectly likable, a perfect victim. I don’t want that for my own works, my own fanfics. I want my fanfics to reflect the world, the good and the bad.
Advocate en chef was a love letter to all of the “unlikable” women and girls out there. The arrogant, brash, harsh, cold perceived women/girls that received ill treatment from people around them. She is a character that I truly pour my soul into. I tried my best to make her feel real and alive. She is rude, yes, but her rudeness was with reason. She has inherently beliefs that perhaps even you as the reader doesn’t understand.
The main criticism I have gotten for this fic is how unlikable the main character is from the first couple of chapters. That she is rude, aggressive, arrogant, hard headed- she is basically your stereotypical bitch. But now I ask you, dear reader, if you have this perception of her, why do you expect her to be nice from the start?
Arranged marriages in fics is almost always a simple plot device, another trope to bring the main characters closer together. Enemies-to-lovers as a trope is treated also as simply tension-inducing device to better introduce drama to the story. But in this fic, arranged marriage reflects reality and enemies-to-lovers isn’t simply a trope, it is the natural conclusion of the mc’s relationship with neuvillette.
Girls as young as 9 years old in various countries are being married off to boys and men in arranged marriages. This “plot device” that you could dismiss in a fic is a reality for so many women- and the fact that there is even a sliver of readers that couldn’t understand the main characters “rudeness” to her arranged husband and her inherent objection to the arranged marriage is honestly EXTREMELY disturbing to me. It reads like these readers couldn't understand why women and girls couldn’t just “fold” to their husbands when the husband just so happen to appear nice to them from a couple of interactions.
“Eun but she was so rude to Neuvillette when Neuvillette just wanted to be nice” YOU ARE FORGETTING SOMETHING. The first look we have of fontaine- neuvillette was and ALWAYS HAS the reputation of being neutral, impartial, stone-faced judge, we only know- as travelers in the game- that he isn’t as cold as his public persona, BECAUSE we have interacted with his outside of the court room. To the majority of fontainian citizens, Neuvillette is as cold as someone can be while being damn good at his job. Would it genuinely be illogical for avocate en chef to be scared shitless that she will be trapped in a marriage with a MAN that she doesn’t know the temperament of? Lawyers handle domestic violence cases too, you know.
And yes, the whole point of this fic, is that the main character WAS SCARED SHITLESS until Neuvillette can earn her trust. EARN.
Moreover, you guys seem to forget that neuvillette plays a BIG role in nurturing a cold, out-of touch legal system that was shown in canon time and time and fucking time again to NOT work, to NOT deliver justice, TO BE AN EXAMPLE that a legal system can’t exist when humanity isn’t thrown in the mix.
This fic is intended as commentary for xenophobia, sexism & misogyny, racism, arranged marriages, patriarchal society, authoritarianism, broken legal systems, and so so so much more. And I- the author of this fic- is stupid enough to bend to those uninformed criticisms and complete a fast track of what could be a genuine relationship being developed between Neuvillette and Avocate.
TLDR: i will be rewriting this fic because it has been bastardised.
Thank you for reading The Laws Regarding Attraction, please look forward to future changes.
