Seven Days of Self-Promotion: Day One
Borrowed from upupa_epops who borrowed it from others.
Because, a) who doesn't like talking about themselves and their fanworks? and b) I still haven't finished my OTP meme, so obviously, I should start another. But this one is only a week long, so I promise to finish the OTP meme after that, because my Arrow obsession was reduced by the fact that I cannot watch S2 as quickly as I watched S1. Because the world is an unfair place. Anyway....on to the meme.
Here are the topics:
1. Something old
2. Something new
3. Something you made for someone else
4. Something you made just for yourself
5. Something for a major fandom/pairing/character
6. Something for a minor fandom/pairing/character
7. Something you're just really proud of
And then other people can read your discussion and follow your links to your fanworks (and maybe HOPEFULLY???!!! comment on them?) and you can read their discussion and follow their links and comment on them, and it will all be lovely. [In a perfect world.]
I have a lot of fic, so "old" is a relative term. I'm fortunate enough that my oldest fanfics have disappeared from the interwebs and the only ones still out there are pretty much things I'm happy with. So I decided to go with something that's old in my TVD fic collection which is ridiculously lengthy (both the individual fic, and the group from which it was chosen).
Saved By Grace: LJ version or @AO3 | Damon/Elena | Post S2 | 50k+ words | The only Big_Bang I've ever written.
It's hard now to remember a time when Damon and Elena hadn't kissed, or made love, or declared repeatedly on any given day how much they love each other even if they have decided they are terrible for each other. But such was life just THREE SHORT YEARS ago, and I devoted my summer to righting that wrong and bringing them together in a story that consumed my life (before we even knew we wanted love that consumed us...), and it was so much fun. It was a lot of work, too, of course, but I can honestly say I never had as much fun writing anything as I did this one. It was a labor of love, purely for myself, purely for Damon and Elena, purely to give them something they could never have on the show: their own family.
I've always been a theme writer, and the plot usually develops on its own based on whatever theme I'm focusing on, but this was a different beast in a lot of ways. For one thing, I never imagined it would be so long. I thought 25k would be a stretch, so when it took just that many words to even get Elena to say the words that altered the course of her and Damon's life (I'm pregnant) forever, I started to realize how much these characters had changed my writing life. I was no longer in control, I was simply a spectator to it all, but it was not a chore to watch it all unfold.
Every once in a while I get a new comment on it, or I get an old fan who comes back and says thanks again for writing it. Both types of comments make my day and remind me that for all the hell Damon and Elena have put me through, they truly brought me joy that summer three years ago. And for that, I will always, always, ALWAYS love them.
My favorite passage from this fic is:
"Damon!" Elena shouts as he jerks open the bedroom door and walks out into the living room. All their clothes lay in a direct path from the outside door to his feet; Elena's lace panties are the first thing he sees as he's about to lean down and grab his own boxers, which are just a few inches further away.
He's naked, and it's late, but not so late that Lydia isn't sitting on the sofa in the living room with her laptop on her lap. Her head jerks around when he comes barreling out of Elena's room.
"Oh. My. God," Lydia says and either she can't or doesn't want to look away. She totally checks out him out, which sort of takes the fire out from under him, and it gets even better when Elena comes running out behind him, dragging the bed sheet with her, wrapping herself up as she goes. She steps in front of him, blocking Lydia's view (he sees disappointment on the girl's face) but then he has to focus his attention on the half-naked girl directly in front of him.
"You're not leaving, we're not done talking about this," Elena says and she body-blocks him, trying to push him back into her room.
"Y'all are already fighting?" Lydia asks. "I thought you'd at least have a honeymoon phase!"
Damon can't help it, he starts laughing because, god; this girl! Where did Elena find her? "How much does she know?" he asks because Elena's face is threatening to crack under the humor, too.
Lydia speaks before Elena can say anything. "I don't know anything, really, because Elena is so mysterious about everything, but I do know she's crazy in love with you because she talks about you all the fucking time. Drives me nuts, actually. Damon this, Damon that, blah, blah, blah. But then I met you earlier and I thought, oh. I mean, dude, look at you? You're like the most beautiful man I've ever seen. No wonder she puts up with your shit-that's the little she's told me. You've been kind of shitty to her, but then you've also been really great. And you are sorta obsessed with your brother, but hey, everyone has their thing they need to see Freud about, you know?"
Elena bursts into giggles and before he knows it, she's resting her head against his chest and shaking it back and forth like she's embarrassed. He doesn't know how this has happened to him, how he ended up in a Woody Allen comedy where a crazy girl succinctly puts all his damage into a monologue that makes it seem...not that bad somehow?
He has no fucking clue how this is his life.
His hands end up on Elena's bare shoulders and she tips her head back as she stops laughing. "Do you believe me now?" she asks.
Maybe it's because his own eyes are so crystalline, but he's always, always, always gone weak in the knees for brown eyes. Elena's eyes-so similar to Katherine's obviously, but really so, so, so different-have this way of making his heart literally feel like nacho cheese in his chest.
(He is so whipped, in other words.)
"I love you," she whispers, pushing herself up on her tiptoes so her mouth can brush over his, which reminds him that he's naked and they have an audience. It's the sweetest of kisses, but it's far from innocent because his bodily reaction to it is sudden and powerful. "I love you," she breathes against his lips.
He does believe her.
He does.
Fuck him eighty ways until the end of time; this is not going to go at all how he planned.
This fic also has the one original character I've ever written that has gotten as much love as canon characters. Her name is Lydia and she is wonderful. ♥
Because, a) who doesn't like talking about themselves and their fanworks? and b) I still haven't finished my OTP meme, so obviously, I should start another. But this one is only a week long, so I promise to finish the OTP meme after that, because my Arrow obsession was reduced by the fact that I cannot watch S2 as quickly as I watched S1. Because the world is an unfair place. Anyway....on to the meme.
Here are the topics:
1. Something old
2. Something new
3. Something you made for someone else
4. Something you made just for yourself
5. Something for a major fandom/pairing/character
6. Something for a minor fandom/pairing/character
7. Something you're just really proud of
And then other people can read your discussion and follow your links to your fanworks (and maybe HOPEFULLY???!!! comment on them?) and you can read their discussion and follow their links and comment on them, and it will all be lovely. [In a perfect world.]
I have a lot of fic, so "old" is a relative term. I'm fortunate enough that my oldest fanfics have disappeared from the interwebs and the only ones still out there are pretty much things I'm happy with. So I decided to go with something that's old in my TVD fic collection which is ridiculously lengthy (both the individual fic, and the group from which it was chosen).
Saved By Grace: LJ version or @AO3 | Damon/Elena | Post S2 | 50k+ words | The only Big_Bang I've ever written.
It's hard now to remember a time when Damon and Elena hadn't kissed, or made love, or declared repeatedly on any given day how much they love each other even if they have decided they are terrible for each other. But such was life just THREE SHORT YEARS ago, and I devoted my summer to righting that wrong and bringing them together in a story that consumed my life (before we even knew we wanted love that consumed us...), and it was so much fun. It was a lot of work, too, of course, but I can honestly say I never had as much fun writing anything as I did this one. It was a labor of love, purely for myself, purely for Damon and Elena, purely to give them something they could never have on the show: their own family.
I've always been a theme writer, and the plot usually develops on its own based on whatever theme I'm focusing on, but this was a different beast in a lot of ways. For one thing, I never imagined it would be so long. I thought 25k would be a stretch, so when it took just that many words to even get Elena to say the words that altered the course of her and Damon's life (I'm pregnant) forever, I started to realize how much these characters had changed my writing life. I was no longer in control, I was simply a spectator to it all, but it was not a chore to watch it all unfold.
Every once in a while I get a new comment on it, or I get an old fan who comes back and says thanks again for writing it. Both types of comments make my day and remind me that for all the hell Damon and Elena have put me through, they truly brought me joy that summer three years ago. And for that, I will always, always, ALWAYS love them.
My favorite passage from this fic is:
"Damon!" Elena shouts as he jerks open the bedroom door and walks out into the living room. All their clothes lay in a direct path from the outside door to his feet; Elena's lace panties are the first thing he sees as he's about to lean down and grab his own boxers, which are just a few inches further away.
He's naked, and it's late, but not so late that Lydia isn't sitting on the sofa in the living room with her laptop on her lap. Her head jerks around when he comes barreling out of Elena's room.
"Oh. My. God," Lydia says and either she can't or doesn't want to look away. She totally checks out him out, which sort of takes the fire out from under him, and it gets even better when Elena comes running out behind him, dragging the bed sheet with her, wrapping herself up as she goes. She steps in front of him, blocking Lydia's view (he sees disappointment on the girl's face) but then he has to focus his attention on the half-naked girl directly in front of him.
"You're not leaving, we're not done talking about this," Elena says and she body-blocks him, trying to push him back into her room.
"Y'all are already fighting?" Lydia asks. "I thought you'd at least have a honeymoon phase!"
Damon can't help it, he starts laughing because, god; this girl! Where did Elena find her? "How much does she know?" he asks because Elena's face is threatening to crack under the humor, too.
Lydia speaks before Elena can say anything. "I don't know anything, really, because Elena is so mysterious about everything, but I do know she's crazy in love with you because she talks about you all the fucking time. Drives me nuts, actually. Damon this, Damon that, blah, blah, blah. But then I met you earlier and I thought, oh. I mean, dude, look at you? You're like the most beautiful man I've ever seen. No wonder she puts up with your shit-that's the little she's told me. You've been kind of shitty to her, but then you've also been really great. And you are sorta obsessed with your brother, but hey, everyone has their thing they need to see Freud about, you know?"
Elena bursts into giggles and before he knows it, she's resting her head against his chest and shaking it back and forth like she's embarrassed. He doesn't know how this has happened to him, how he ended up in a Woody Allen comedy where a crazy girl succinctly puts all his damage into a monologue that makes it seem...not that bad somehow?
He has no fucking clue how this is his life.
His hands end up on Elena's bare shoulders and she tips her head back as she stops laughing. "Do you believe me now?" she asks.
Maybe it's because his own eyes are so crystalline, but he's always, always, always gone weak in the knees for brown eyes. Elena's eyes-so similar to Katherine's obviously, but really so, so, so different-have this way of making his heart literally feel like nacho cheese in his chest.
(He is so whipped, in other words.)
"I love you," she whispers, pushing herself up on her tiptoes so her mouth can brush over his, which reminds him that he's naked and they have an audience. It's the sweetest of kisses, but it's far from innocent because his bodily reaction to it is sudden and powerful. "I love you," she breathes against his lips.
He does believe her.
He does.
Fuck him eighty ways until the end of time; this is not going to go at all how he planned.
This fic also has the one original character I've ever written that has gotten as much love as canon characters. Her name is Lydia and she is wonderful. ♥