Does she drink cider? Does she drink beer? That damned elusive--!
Very, very firstly: Admire the shiny icon, courtesy of simplystars, who made story-specific icons for the whole team and who WINS REALLY A LOT. \Dief-with-RayK's-hair/
Hello, and welcome to the post in which I blather on and on about the Match for what seems like 0.7 of an eon.
I'm going to try and be somewhat chronological, for the sake of my own sanity as much as everyone else's. Firstly, ds_team_whimsy. My team ♥ The words do not exist to truly describe how wonderful, sparkly, clever and fearsomely witty Team Whimsy are, other than to say that; 1) our story summary post is quite possibly the crackiest thing in this half of the internets, and, 2) we had the best possible Captain in the shape of zabira.
Personally, last year, I felt that I failboated at team things on Team Romance and this year I made a conscious effort to join in with chats and so on, and, seriously? Best. Team. Ever.
In the first week or so of the Match, it was ficlet bombing time. I embraced this activity with immediate and possibly unhinged fervour. Whilst some of my more logical sane team mates were beginning to rifle around their imaginations for suitably whimsical plot devices, I was mainly skipping around in the hinterlands of something'll occur, la la la! and I jumped all over Z's "whimsy!bombs are go!" post like a very hyperactive jumping thing (occasionally my strange neurochemistry expresses itself in useful ways). In quick succession I hit:
- nos4a2no9 with the tale of Ray's imaginary friend (he's called George)
- j_s_cavalcante with the results of chasing perps into a paint factory (strangely hypnotic. Also glittery)
- Then I kicked up a gear (mainly because there'd been a realistic counter-attack on my darling Captain) and qe2 subsequently got treated to a demonstration of what whimsy-upping is all about (it is so too an actual word. Shut up)
- And, finally, well. I decided that a properly done crossover could also be whimsical, as long as the other canon was suitably weird. And that's about all the justification that's ever going to exist for omphale23's due South/Thursday Next bomb (and, y'know, if someone actually wanted to write this crossover properly? I would have their internet babies times a million and two)
They seek her far--
Then came prompt assignment day.
I was blithe--after all, last year, I read my prompt and not only immediately knew who would say the line, but also had the majority of the plot (what little there was) fall fully formed out of nowhere (Bob matchmakes; trips to the afterlife, stealth dating and turtles ensue!)
Not so this time.
"What do you mean, they did it?"
What do you mean, this is my prompt?!
There may have been a solid half hour of very private freaking out and scrambling around both my mind and my 'maybe ideas' folders on my laptop. Then, in despair, I decided to ignore the problem by wallowing in the depths of my fic bookmarks. This did not help, as I ended up staring at cesperenza's About a Dog in a truly emo fashion. Human!Dief would be such a fun trope to write, I thought. But it's already been done, and awesomely well (and, also, it would allow me to blindside people with my unhealthy Dief obsession in new and unhinged ways).
Then, serendipitously, I was indulging in that other great la la la, I'm not thinking about it! pastime of attempting cleaning up my flocks of subfolders (they breed. Periodically I have to go what was I thinking? and going baleeting) when I happened across a few paragraphs, the premise of which seemed to be Ray K staring in bemusement at Fraser as he devoured a whole box of donuts. Because Fraser had--for reasons of plot--bodyswapped with Dief.
Hwee? I went. Fwee!! \o/
I had my basic idea.
After I'd stopped being giddy with relief that the defaulting monster had been kept at bay for the time being, I actually calmed down enough to reread the paragraphs. It took me about 0.01 seconds to realise that, whilst Ray freaking out about Fraser/Dief bodyswap, Fraser woudl be irritatingly calm and au fait with suddenly belonging to the family Canidae. 0.00001 of a second after that, I mentally pictured Ray K waking up as a (half)wolf.
He obligingly freaked his way out of a window and concussed himseld with a rose bush.
FWEE!!!
With the bare minimum of planning (for reasons of plot, RayK and Dief bodyswap. Hijinx ensue!) I submitted my idea to the team story ideas post (the aim of which was to make sure our whimsy was as varied and awesome as possible). Several people went yay!, which was more than enough to convince me the rest of the way.
I then altered between writing and deluging Z with emotastic emails and comments about how everyone would think that my story was a total rip off of About a Dog, and they would want to shoot me with bullets. Z, bless her heart, was most excellent at both handholding and squee.
They seek her near--
And then--then I was on holiday in Toronto. With fangirls, many of whom were fellow Match writers, and some of whom were my own darling team mates. There may well have been slightly hysterical giggling in corners.
I got a lot of writing done whilst parked on the end of Nos's couch, and even more done in the Writing Party of Two that lamentables and I had in her hotel room (we drank tea and were very English). I then had a panic on draft deadline day and spent the hour or so that the rest of the Niagara Falls daytrip gang hd dinner in frantically typing and cursing the fact that my 500-words-to-end prediction was off. By about another 800 words.
Deadline made, I felt fully justified in enjoying the last night of Fangirls Do Toronto.
Once I'd finished dying of stress and travel induced 'flu, and could actually figure out how my head attached to the rest of me, it was beta time. Firstly, I winnowed through the draft, cried what were you thinking? a lot and edited. Then, the truly sterling lamentables provided some quality beta work and I also threw one of the drafts up on the Whimsy comm for filleting by my team mates-- all of whom were wonderful and several of whom (catwalksalone, I'm looking at you) were vitally helpful.
Beta done, I sent my fic in, sat back and waited. And waited. Last year, my story was up on the first day, so I had no real concept of just how agonising it is not to know if today's the day that your story will be posted. Waiting until day 10 was possibly nearly the almost death of me (I distracted myself my fangirling at Team Whimsy HQ and by posting obnoxiously frequently about the Match and why EVERYONE EVER SHOULD READ THE FICS OMG. You may have noticed this)
That damned elusive--!
Writing from the perspective of a man trapped in the body of a wolf of dubious ancestry, or; synaesthesia, and why I think it's a really cool narrative device
Hi. My name is etcetera_cat, and I have an unhealthy obsession with Diefenbaker.
Once I'd plumped on bodyswap as my theme du jour, I pretty much rattled straight off into writing. That's how I roll: planning is something of an alien concept for me (which bodes for interesting times when it comes to the Big Bang and myself), I just bounce along into the story. I did, however, decide one thing very early on: Dief's experiences of the world (and, perforce, Ray's while he's in Dief's body) were going to be distinct and different from a usual 'human' perspective.
To that end, I went and dredged through some of my anatomy textbooks and had some serious pondering and cogitating. I then also remembered the senseory crossover concept that Terry Pratchett has used for Angua von Uberwald in the Discworld books (see, I don't have original ideas. I just steal them and file the license numbers off) and decided to thieve that, turn it up to 11.5 and put in some of my own experiences of synaesthesia (I'm not, actually, a true synaesthetic. I did, however, have a rather complex series of adverse drug reactions last year that rendered me synaesthetic for about two months. Also allergic to the colour blue, but we really don't need to get into that here and now).
I hope it came out well--comments from people that do have synaesthesia seem to indicate that I at least wasn't too horribly wrong.
As a last aside: human!Dief just is a moocher surfer dude in my head. I didn't even think about how I was going to write him, he just turned up, showcasing a slouch that would have won an Olympic medal, and saying "Heeeeey!" in an annoying drawl.
Oh, yes--there's one other thing.
Back at the beginning of the Match, after the ficlet bombs, but before the prompt assignments, I had an idea. In the space of a very short period of time (after emailing Z and rambling at her in a truly incoherent fashion) said idea went from inception to adolescence and I got to skulk around and smirk in a self congratulatory and very private fashion.
I did cave a bit at CanCon, and catwalksalone got let in on the secret on the last day, and then got my laptop shoved in her direction on the plane. She said ridiculously nice things about it and me ♥ ♥ ♥ In my defence, this was mainly because I'd just spent an entire week around people that I was desperate to tell my secret to, and yet refused to, for reasons that really shouldn't need explaining at all.
The short version of this is: Hi. When it suits me, I skulk around under the pseudonym ficlateer.
Yes, I'm quite clearly insane. Also, maybe psychic. Definitely in the steel-clawed grasp of the fannish hivemind.
I swear that I didn't have the inside skinny on any of the Reality stories and that, anyway, all of the f! ficlets were written even before any of my team mates posted more than bare-bones story ideas. What I did do, however, was skulk around in people's profiles and public fic tags and write lists of genre and pairing preferences. Cross-referenced lists. Lots of cross-referenced lists. Ahahaha lists.
Perhaps surprisingly, for each pair of snippets, I always wrote the Reality one first. I suspect that the act of supressing all of my cracky tendencies for the duration of 100-500 words, conspired to make the Whimsy ones even more batshit. As far as I can tell, I think I covered every possible permutation of crack and/or whimsy over the course of those 17 ficlets. I certainly know that I was faintly twitchy at the end of the second of my f! writing sessions, and had to have a time out before launching back into beating Ray over the head with the city of Chicago.
Anyway: I hope that everyone who read them enjoyed *big breath*, my whimsy!bombs, 7,000 odd words of Dief-centric bodyswap and conclusive proof in the shape of ficlateer that I scared the rest of the crackers out of the barrel years ago.
*beams*
Hello, and welcome to the post in which I blather on and on about the Match for what seems like 0.7 of an eon.
I'm going to try and be somewhat chronological, for the sake of my own sanity as much as everyone else's. Firstly, ds_team_whimsy. My team ♥ The words do not exist to truly describe how wonderful, sparkly, clever and fearsomely witty Team Whimsy are, other than to say that; 1) our story summary post is quite possibly the crackiest thing in this half of the internets, and, 2) we had the best possible Captain in the shape of zabira.
Personally, last year, I felt that I failboated at team things on Team Romance and this year I made a conscious effort to join in with chats and so on, and, seriously? Best. Team. Ever.
In the first week or so of the Match, it was ficlet bombing time. I embraced this activity with immediate and possibly unhinged fervour. Whilst some of my more logical sane team mates were beginning to rifle around their imaginations for suitably whimsical plot devices, I was mainly skipping around in the hinterlands of something'll occur, la la la! and I jumped all over Z's "whimsy!bombs are go!" post like a very hyperactive jumping thing (occasionally my strange neurochemistry expresses itself in useful ways). In quick succession I hit:
- nos4a2no9 with the tale of Ray's imaginary friend (he's called George)
- j_s_cavalcante with the results of chasing perps into a paint factory (strangely hypnotic. Also glittery)
- Then I kicked up a gear (mainly because there'd been a realistic counter-attack on my darling Captain) and qe2 subsequently got treated to a demonstration of what whimsy-upping is all about (it is so too an actual word. Shut up)
- And, finally, well. I decided that a properly done crossover could also be whimsical, as long as the other canon was suitably weird. And that's about all the justification that's ever going to exist for omphale23's due South/Thursday Next bomb (and, y'know, if someone actually wanted to write this crossover properly? I would have their internet babies times a million and two)
They seek her far--
Then came prompt assignment day.
I was blithe--after all, last year, I read my prompt and not only immediately knew who would say the line, but also had the majority of the plot (what little there was) fall fully formed out of nowhere (Bob matchmakes; trips to the afterlife, stealth dating and turtles ensue!)
Not so this time.
"What do you mean, they did it?"
What do you mean, this is my prompt?!
There may have been a solid half hour of very private freaking out and scrambling around both my mind and my 'maybe ideas' folders on my laptop. Then, in despair, I decided to ignore the problem by wallowing in the depths of my fic bookmarks. This did not help, as I ended up staring at cesperenza's About a Dog in a truly emo fashion. Human!Dief would be such a fun trope to write, I thought. But it's already been done, and awesomely well (and, also, it would allow me to blindside people with my unhealthy Dief obsession in new and unhinged ways).
Then, serendipitously, I was indulging in that other great la la la, I'm not thinking about it! pastime of attempting cleaning up my flocks of subfolders (they breed. Periodically I have to go what was I thinking? and going baleeting) when I happened across a few paragraphs, the premise of which seemed to be Ray K staring in bemusement at Fraser as he devoured a whole box of donuts. Because Fraser had--for reasons of plot--bodyswapped with Dief.
Hwee? I went. Fwee!! \o/
I had my basic idea.
After I'd stopped being giddy with relief that the defaulting monster had been kept at bay for the time being, I actually calmed down enough to reread the paragraphs. It took me about 0.01 seconds to realise that, whilst Ray freaking out about Fraser/Dief bodyswap, Fraser woudl be irritatingly calm and au fait with suddenly belonging to the family Canidae. 0.00001 of a second after that, I mentally pictured Ray K waking up as a (half)wolf.
He obligingly freaked his way out of a window and concussed himseld with a rose bush.
FWEE!!!
With the bare minimum of planning (for reasons of plot, RayK and Dief bodyswap. Hijinx ensue!) I submitted my idea to the team story ideas post (the aim of which was to make sure our whimsy was as varied and awesome as possible). Several people went yay!, which was more than enough to convince me the rest of the way.
I then altered between writing and deluging Z with emotastic emails and comments about how everyone would think that my story was a total rip off of About a Dog, and they would want to shoot me with bullets. Z, bless her heart, was most excellent at both handholding and squee.
They seek her near--
And then--then I was on holiday in Toronto. With fangirls, many of whom were fellow Match writers, and some of whom were my own darling team mates. There may well have been slightly hysterical giggling in corners.
I got a lot of writing done whilst parked on the end of Nos's couch, and even more done in the Writing Party of Two that lamentables and I had in her hotel room (we drank tea and were very English). I then had a panic on draft deadline day and spent the hour or so that the rest of the Niagara Falls daytrip gang hd dinner in frantically typing and cursing the fact that my 500-words-to-end prediction was off. By about another 800 words.
Deadline made, I felt fully justified in enjoying the last night of Fangirls Do Toronto.
Once I'd finished dying of stress and travel induced 'flu, and could actually figure out how my head attached to the rest of me, it was beta time. Firstly, I winnowed through the draft, cried what were you thinking? a lot and edited. Then, the truly sterling lamentables provided some quality beta work and I also threw one of the drafts up on the Whimsy comm for filleting by my team mates-- all of whom were wonderful and several of whom (catwalksalone, I'm looking at you) were vitally helpful.
Beta done, I sent my fic in, sat back and waited. And waited. Last year, my story was up on the first day, so I had no real concept of just how agonising it is not to know if today's the day that your story will be posted. Waiting until day 10 was possibly nearly the almost death of me (I distracted myself my fangirling at Team Whimsy HQ and by posting obnoxiously frequently about the Match and why EVERYONE EVER SHOULD READ THE FICS OMG. You may have noticed this)
That damned elusive--!
Writing from the perspective of a man trapped in the body of a wolf of dubious ancestry, or; synaesthesia, and why I think it's a really cool narrative device
Hi. My name is etcetera_cat, and I have an unhealthy obsession with Diefenbaker.
Once I'd plumped on bodyswap as my theme du jour, I pretty much rattled straight off into writing. That's how I roll: planning is something of an alien concept for me (which bodes for interesting times when it comes to the Big Bang and myself), I just bounce along into the story. I did, however, decide one thing very early on: Dief's experiences of the world (and, perforce, Ray's while he's in Dief's body) were going to be distinct and different from a usual 'human' perspective.
To that end, I went and dredged through some of my anatomy textbooks and had some serious pondering and cogitating. I then also remembered the senseory crossover concept that Terry Pratchett has used for Angua von Uberwald in the Discworld books (see, I don't have original ideas. I just steal them and file the license numbers off) and decided to thieve that, turn it up to 11.5 and put in some of my own experiences of synaesthesia (I'm not, actually, a true synaesthetic. I did, however, have a rather complex series of adverse drug reactions last year that rendered me synaesthetic for about two months. Also allergic to the colour blue, but we really don't need to get into that here and now).
I hope it came out well--comments from people that do have synaesthesia seem to indicate that I at least wasn't too horribly wrong.
As a last aside: human!Dief just is a moocher surfer dude in my head. I didn't even think about how I was going to write him, he just turned up, showcasing a slouch that would have won an Olympic medal, and saying "Heeeeey!" in an annoying drawl.
Oh, yes--there's one other thing.
Back at the beginning of the Match, after the ficlet bombs, but before the prompt assignments, I had an idea. In the space of a very short period of time (after emailing Z and rambling at her in a truly incoherent fashion) said idea went from inception to adolescence and I got to skulk around and smirk in a self congratulatory and very private fashion.
I did cave a bit at CanCon, and catwalksalone got let in on the secret on the last day, and then got my laptop shoved in her direction on the plane. She said ridiculously nice things about it and me ♥ ♥ ♥ In my defence, this was mainly because I'd just spent an entire week around people that I was desperate to tell my secret to, and yet refused to, for reasons that really shouldn't need explaining at all.
The short version of this is: Hi. When it suits me, I skulk around under the pseudonym ficlateer.
Yes, I'm quite clearly insane. Also, maybe psychic. Definitely in the steel-clawed grasp of the fannish hivemind.
I swear that I didn't have the inside skinny on any of the Reality stories and that, anyway, all of the f! ficlets were written even before any of my team mates posted more than bare-bones story ideas. What I did do, however, was skulk around in people's profiles and public fic tags and write lists of genre and pairing preferences. Cross-referenced lists. Lots of cross-referenced lists. Ahahaha lists.
Perhaps surprisingly, for each pair of snippets, I always wrote the Reality one first. I suspect that the act of supressing all of my cracky tendencies for the duration of 100-500 words, conspired to make the Whimsy ones even more batshit. As far as I can tell, I think I covered every possible permutation of crack and/or whimsy over the course of those 17 ficlets. I certainly know that I was faintly twitchy at the end of the second of my f! writing sessions, and had to have a time out before launching back into beating Ray over the head with the city of Chicago.
Anyway: I hope that everyone who read them enjoyed *big breath*, my whimsy!bombs, 7,000 odd words of Dief-centric bodyswap and conclusive proof in the shape of ficlateer that I scared the rest of the crackers out of the barrel years ago.
*beams*