(no subject)
Why do I get the urge to post something long in the middle of the night before bed?
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Been thinking I should write another Puzzle story to add to the sparse collection I already have. Normally, I like to stick to canon (if I can) but Puzzle is different. It was the first pairing that caught my fancy back in 200...2 when I discovered the world of fanfiction.net and the me that didn't care about quality/style/length/characterization/GRAMMAR and whatnot devoured as much as possible (including the smut... oh the smut). So I guess it's normal after 10ish years that I'd veer towards the more unique fics out there. Having said that, I hold a deep appreciation for those who can execute canon so well that it brings me back to when I first watched the show in 2001. It's like homemade cookies. Two authors I can think of who regularly do this are jkateel and Scribbler.
Like a lot of fanfic writers, I'm apprehensive in approaching (one of my) OTPs because I want the story to turn out perfectly. What it means for Puzzle is uniqueness. I won't be satisfied with my Puzzle stories unless they cover new ground in any way, shape or form. So, against the intergalactic-sized collection of Puzzle fics out there, mine get kind of... trippy.
Now I know for a fact that the ones I'm satisfied with don't always jive with readers but I got a sense of accomplishment in getting them done. While I'll probably look back at them and think 'why did I publicly mention these???' I'm going to throw caution into the wind and hope I'll keep this post in its entirely by tomorrow morning (current date and time: April 26, 2012 12:40am).
1) A Darker Chocolate: Originally a response to spirithorse's Cliche Challenge over on fanfiction.net. It was meant be my own little invention of an angels and demons society that traded the gloomy hellfire dramatics for a zany world that jarringly reflects our own. The first chapter was for the lols, the lingust!Yami Bakura, the bratty! angel!Yugi, the sexualization of cake and the made-up language. Oh and for the word "analprodoasser."
But this world didn't leave me alone, so it became a long multi-chapter that has yet to see an end. It also got a lot more serious in that I've decided to use it as an allegory for racism. The thick (sometimes sloppy) layer of humour stuck from the opening chapter but I became less focused on the Puzzle and paid more attention to how I could communicate my theme with this fic. I secretly think any pairing could just slide right in and it wouldn't make a difference.
By all means it's a gross exaggeration of our world. But I was interested in exploring how our culture shapes virtually everything about us and whether the differences between cultures outweigh the similarities. I honed in on the language because our speech in itself is a huge factor in this. That and inventing "demon-tongue" is a lot of fun. I can go further on this but I'm starting to think "Chocolate" should have it's own separate post. /Darn
2) Erosion: Probably the slowest 10k to ever come out. It took just over a month to write and I remember designating hours for it, only to progress about three sentences at a time. It was another submission for the Cliche Challenge (the fairytale one) and is very, very AU.
I drew from Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" so I made Atem an immobile statue and Yugi a swallow. This wasn't so much because I was using my favourite fairytale as it was an attempt to talk about their relationship dynamics with the sexual component totally removed. No bodies, so no sex. And I did this for two reasons: 1) I've seen enough soulroom sex fics to last nine lifetimes and 2) I feel that shipping Puzzle as a romance alone really sells short their deeply intimate relationship. I don't really know what to call what they are because it's totally foreign outside of YGO but I don't think it's impossible to try and reach further than romance.
Even though it's AU, I did my best to line it with canon. As a statue, Atem is severely limited in what he can see and experience so he has to rely on Yugi, who is freely mobile, to relay new information to him. Yugi takes in a lot at a time and sometimes doesn't understand it all, so he has to rely on the ever-contemplative Atem to interpret things for him. In this way, they compliment each others` strengths and weaknesses and can grow together.
Somehow, environmentalism mixed itself in there but it was mainly to drive the plot forward.
3) S t r e t c h: I got comments from people saying this was poetic, but I never meant for it to be that way. I wanted to see if I could use the arrangement of the words in the story to make a kind of visual representation of Atem`s soul room falling apart. I think the Postmodern Poetry class that I'd hated so much broke me and this was backlash. Anyways, aside from the way the words are arranged, it's a pretty normal story. Yugi experiences a deep loss from Atem's imprending departure because there's a growing hole in his soul where Atem's home used to be. What he doesn't realize is that the crumbling maze would give way to the maturation of Yugi's own soul, which needed room to develop as a result of what he'd learned during their journey together.
I had to type it directly on Document Manager because I wasn't sure what fanfiction.net would let through and what it would change. I wish Document Manager would allow more. All well.
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I've wanted to say something about these three for awhile now but I'm always hesitent to talk about my own fics. It feels boastful and I'm not that type of person. But I needed to revive my LJ and I want to get back into the swing of organizing my thoughts this way so I can write better overall.
It is now 2:04am and I hope this still makes sense and doesn't conjure up a slew of typos when I wake up tomorrow.