Honeytrap Discussion Post

[osprey_archer]

I have had a couple requests for a Honeytrap discussion post where spoilers are allowed, so here you go! Discuss! Spoil away!

Comments

[kore]

Can I just say OH MY GOD IF IT HAD ENDED AT PART TWO, in spite of it being all dramatic and beautifully written and parallel-esque and all, I would have crumpled and fluttered gently to the floor with my heart in a million little pieces.

(Even so, it still got dented!)

[osprey_archer]

The endings of both part one and two are basically design to punch readers in the heart, so... I am glad to hear that it worked! (Did part three put your heart back together?)

[kore]

I was a tiny bit wary and dipping my toes in the apparently happy ending after THE END OF PART TWO, just like the characters! I actually really liked that the HEA wasn't Gennady defecting; Daniel wasn't everything to him, altho they were so in love, and he didn't want to just cut off his whole life. Now he can share his family with Daniel, and show off where he came from, too. That is a great ending.

LOL Daniel crushing on his boss, and Gennady being surprised at him working as a counselor, and then remembering how good he was at drawing people out as an FBI agent.

[kore]

Also, new favourite moment:

"I suppose swinging hasn't made it to Moscow, either."
"You should read about our Silver Age poets!"

[osprey_archer]

Gennady is just like "OMG, Daniel, the United States is not on the vanguard of EVERYTHING, unless being the most full-of-yourself people in the world is a thing you can be on the vanguard of."

[kore]

The young would-be assassin who was dumber than two sacks of hair somehow not thinking through what would happen if he did shoot Krushchev was kind of really symbolic of American corn-fed stupidity, I have to say. Also did you ever see this? https://sites.tufts.edu/fletcherrussia/files/2019/09/Jacob-Hill-Khrushchev-in-the-Cornfields.pdf

"Khrushchev in the Cornfields
How an Iowa Corn Farmer Befriended the Soviet Premier,
Modernized Russian Agriculture, and Warmed the Cold War"

[kore]

And did you do "Angie" and "Peggy" on purpose??

[osprey_archer]

I had to look up which part you meant, so it must have been an unconscious association!

[kore]

I was like "Stealth Agent Carter easter egg! Yes!"

Also not to be That Reader but A SEQUEL WOULD BE SO GREAT. Two superannuated ex-spies travelling around Russia! Making out at the dacha! Finding Arkady's grave so they could piss on it! Emily could visit Dasha in Berlin! They could trade stories about the epic romance of their dads!

I loved Elizabeth but I'm actually glad you didn't write out that scene where he goes to Daniel's old house (SOB) and asks her where to find Paul's grave because that would have been EVEN MORE heartbreaking in a full scene, thanks, author. And poor Gennady, he goes off at Daniel about capitalism but so much in his life is transactional, even with them. He finds mushrooms and wants them to enjoy cooking them for their marriage! He has a plot to bring people to the house so they'll buy Elizabeth's paintings! MY HEART.


*I am so That Reader, sorry

[kore]

"Oksana's husband Alyhosha stumbled, dead drunk, into the path of a truck"

GOOD

[osprey_archer]

Probably they are all better off without him, but it was still, well, upsetting to have it happen that way.

[kore]

"You smell like her" and "Everyone smells like eau de cologne WHEN YOU DRINK IT" was priceless.

[minutia_r]

PAUL. Paul is The Worst and I like him so much? I mean, obviously Arkady is actually the worst but Paul is so bad, he is so bad for Daniel, except in the ways that he's actually good for Daniel? I am just in awe of how you made him such a complex, flawed, real and ultimately tragic character without him ever actually appearing on the page.

And the way you handled Gennady outing him to Arkady was genius because I sure noticed when it happened! I was like o shit did he just but then there were no immediate consequences and so much other stuff was happening that I cared about more, so I just forgot about it? But you did not forget about it!

And like... the way Gennady never explained to Daniel exactly how it happened! Because Daniel would have been 100% more sympathetic and forgiving if he had, but. From Gennady's point of view a) what does it matter? He still did what he did. But also b) he would probably rather think of himself as reporting about Paul's orientation because of course, it was his job, what was Daniel expecting, than that he blurted it out in a panicked attempt to cover for himself and Daniel, and, relatedly, c) explaining what actually happened to Daniel would require him to talk more about the Arkady Thing and he's pretty much never going to do that voluntarily.

But anyway, my point is, PAUL. If you are planning to do any extras Paul is at the top of my list of what I'd like to see, what a fascinating character, The Worst.

[osprey_archer]

I'm glad you liked Paul! I had to cut so much Paul stuff, I really wanted Daniel to have a long heart-to-heart with Gennady about The Terribleness of Paul (although mixed together with "Actually Paul was great and really helped me accept myself!" Never mind that what really made Daniel accept his bisexuality was the fact that he couldn't stop noticing pretty waitresses even though Paul hit the roof every time), but eventually I just had to accept that Daniel was never going to do it.

Honestly I really waffled about whether Gennady would explain to Daniel about Arkady, at all, even to the extent that we get in the book, or would he just carry the secret to the grave? But ultimately I felt that readers would need the catharsis. (But yeah, definitely, he is never ever going to give Daniel a blow by blow description of what happened, even though it would allow him to explain how he came to tell Arkady about Paul, because to his mind the explanation would sound unbelievable and self-serving and even if Daniel believed him, why would Daniel care, anyway, it doesn't matter WHY you tell when the consequences of telling are so awful?)

One of my beta readers LOVES Paul and was basically like "You know how you broke out your OT3 feels from Honeytrap to write The Threefold Tie? What if... you did that for a book about Paul...?" But I'm not sure. Do you think it would be possible to make Paul sufficiently less The Worst to achieve a happy ending, while still retaining his basic Paulness, which is all tied up in how he is The Worst?

[minutia_r]

I don't know! I would happily read a book about Paul but I feel he belongs in like, The Secret History, not a romance. The ways in which he is fascinating are also the ways in which he is awful. (I mean, he is also interesting because you get that occasional flash of not-awful, as in Daniel's memory of Paul gently talking him through his panic the first time they had sex, but like--that's interesting because it's surrounded by so much awful.)

[ancientreader]

That broke my fucking heart, okay? I knew there was no way Gennady was going to be able to explain to Daniel how that happened, but what a horrible irony that he outed Paul because he was trying to protect Daniel. He reminds Daniel that D. knew he was a Soviet spy, but in that whole scene in Arkady's office he's not behaving much like a spy, is he? He's a panicked drunk victim of sexual abuse.

[kore]

Yeah, I think you are right on the money with Gennady's reaction -- he doesn't want to try to defend himself (he almost never does re KGB stuff, with Daniel), and he's the one who keeps trying to get Daniel to agree that they're agents first before anything and that makes any personal association dangerous, and DEFINITELY yes, he doesn't even like thinking about Arkady alone to himself. He doesn't even tell Sergey (sp) how shitty it was for him after the defection when Arkady was taking it out on him.

(I actually kind of loathed Paul, LOL, altho I think for me a lot of that was him slapping Daniel for an offered blowjob -- what the FUCK! But I thought he had blamed Daniel in his suicide note, and then I reread it after I'd finished the book, and he really hadn't. But you are right, he really is a fully done character even tho he never shows up. We did get a better perspective on John when he showed up and apologized, and Daniel was the one who really didn't handle that so well.)

[minutia_r]

Also Daniel's relationship with Elizabeth is so interesting? Obviously they love each other and tried hard to make it work, and they did make it work for a long time, but based on some stuff in the second section as well as how their relationship ended, the impression that I get is that while Elizabeth is inclined toward polyamory, Daniel, it turns out, isn't. I feel like if Daniel and Gennady's relationship hadn't ended the second time how it did, this might have become an issue. I ended up with the feeling that Daniel kind of did Elizabeth a little bit dirty, although it wasn't his fault really, sometimes you don't know things about yourself until you find them out through experience.

Anyway I hope Elizabeth is doing great out there and living her best life.

ETA: What the heck how did I manage to type Arkady for Gennady

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think that's accurate re: Elizabeth and Daniel and polyamory. I don't think either of them really realized that when they got married, or possibly they just figured that they could make it work through the Power of Love (tm), which in fairness did work for them for over twenty years... until it didn't.

I actually have an extra I wrote in Elizabeth POV, which is about the time Gennady visited to ask about Paul's grave, but we get a glimpse of Elizabeth's life, too. I should post it sometime. (But for now I will say that I think she's doing fine and she and her new husband are overall pretty happy, although obviously a divorce can be a messy and difficult experience even if it's basically amicable.)

[minutia_r]

Also I really liked the scene with John, I might have liked for Daniel to confide in him and for them to be friends but I get why that didn't happen. And it's pretty hilarious to me that when John told Daniel about his pride club or whatever Daniel's reaction was, "That's a bad idea and irresponsible and dangerous for the kids" and then he turned around and told Gennady and Gennady was like "That's a bad idea and irresponsible and dangerous for the kids" and Daniel was like "):"

Because, I get it! I get why Daniel would want someone to tell him it was a good idea and was going to be fine, and I get why he would specifically want Gennady to think that! But if he is looking to Gennady to be less cynical and more optimistic about the possibility of social progress that was never going to happen.

[osprey_archer]

I like to think that later on John & Daniel do become friends again, and eventually - VERY eventually - Daniel lets John know that yes fine he was right about the whole bisexual thing. But in that moment when John is hinting at it I think Daniel was very much having a reaction of "You FORFEITED ALL RIGHT to have any interest in or opinion about my sexuality, BACK OFF."

The pride club is based on an actual club at my alma mater in the 1970s! I found the page while I was looking through an old yearbook (they had a whole stash in the bowels of the periodical section) and it blew my tiny mind that there was this whole gay rights club (I think that was its actual name, or something like that) in the 1970s. I hadn't learned yet that there was a lot of activism at that time that basically got trampled later on by AIDS.

[ancientreader]

Apropos of no sort of discussion, I just want to say I love this book. Amazon why so slow in posting my 5-* review????

[osprey_archer]

Who even knows what is up with Amazon! It took an ungodly amount of time to finally publish the Honeytrap paperback (I ought to post a link to that, by the by). I daresay it will take its sweet dilatory time about the review, too.

[aurumcalendula]

I absolutely adore it (and I love how epic it is)! It was a delight to see Gennady and Daniel's relationship through the years! I'm very fond of Elizabeth, and I loved how we kept hearing about Gennady's family (particularly Dasha).

I was a bit confused by the closed communion in the Methodist church, but I can handwave that as Daniel being mistaken (like the only reason I noticed this was I was raised in the United Methodist Church).

[osprey_archer]

The Methodist thing was 100% my fault, but I am happy to blame Daniel, who as a fictional character cannot protest this rank injustice.