(no subject)
Okay, so I'm going to natter a bit here and then (hopefully) there may be radio silence from me for a bit while I work myself silly over the next week. Which means NO MORE random Sadie stories for awhile. Priorities = getting this Big Project out of the way, then my lynnevitational fic, then poisontaster's Daddy!Sam fic. And of course my MA exams next month.
I kind of appreciate having "challenge" stories to write sometimes, things with boundaries instead of just following whatever my latest random fascination is (girl!Winchesters anyone?, Sam's closeted high school football player boyfriend?). Like how agreeing to lynnevitational means I have to write a straight up Buffyverse story for the first time in awhile. And luckily, on the train this morning I realized that it involves Faith, Buffy, a road trip and Faith teaching Buffy how to drive (not to mention those ENORMOUS ISSUES they have). The story doesn't seem to know yet how slashy it is though. Humph.
And also happily I think I have some direction for PT's story now too. Which leads me to babble about original characters and names. Do other people have trouble coming up with names for their OCs? Because I really don't actually. If the character is solid enough in my imagination they just kind of "tell me" what their name is.
So what Erin wants is a sequel to Straight Line, one in which Sam deals with becoming a father, and one which also centrally concerns Dean. The first story was very much all about Sam and his issues--about finally dealing with his relationship with his own father, about deciding whether he wanted to be "in life" or on the outskirts of it, and a lot of that was accomplished through a comparison between a shiftless Sam and a more settled Dean as well as Sam spending time alone with himself and his past. And in that story, the OFC was very purposefully not named, because it took the course of the fic for Sam to be able to consider opening himself to people. In order to do what PT wants, I now have to name her, and that means a radical shift from the first story. I *felt* this as soon as "she told me" that her name was Meghan. Hum, I won't spoil anymore but I'm pleased because I found a way to write this story about Sam expanding his sense of family that fully incorporates Dean...because it has to, I think.
Another example of this naming business is how in the Sadie 'verse Dean is married and though all the existing stories say about his wife is that she is a "shy girl mechanic" and they live in a farmhouse in upstate New York and have three children. Oh and that she has a mom who makes quilts and wasn't in any way going to name her child "Dean Jr." But as soon as I gave her a name--Lissa--I knew all these other things about her as well. I knew that her full name was Melissa but that had always seemed too long and too formal to her. She's tall and thin in a wiry kind of way with blue eyes and light freckles but still tans in the summer. She has long dirty-blonde hair. She's quiet but not sulky. Strong but doesn't feel a big need to prove it. She's a country girl with simple aspirations in life, and a "tomboy" by city standards but not aggressively so. She's an only child, an only daughter, and she's been fixing cars at her Daddy's garage since she graduated high school. She had a lot of cousins though growing up so that's why she wanted her kids to have siblings. When her Dad dies that garage will be hers--not Dean's even though he works there too, but it didn't even occur to her that she and Dean wouldn't get married or that she wouldn't take his last name. She's a good cook in a functional way; she makes pie and bread, meat and potatos, salad from the garden--she doesn't do garnishes. She expects that Dean will wash the dishes if she cooks, and vice versa. On regular days she wears jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, pulls her hair back in a pony tail and smells like plain lotion and Burt's Beeswax lip balm. On special occasions she wears lipstick in neutral shades but no other make-up, lets her hair hang loose. She loves Dean but is not "overly impressed" with him--she likes that he's capable. She's pretty much the anti-Sadie--who ran away from a small town as soon as she possibly could to chase artsy dreams in the city. Sadie who never dreamed of getting married and had a lot of lovers after and in between Sam before they became a "real thing." Sadie who is *real* but likes the performance of life. Lives and breathes that.
Hmmmm, of course I also feel like I can get pretty detailed/intimate with characters I don't name, but usually that is if the story is written in the second person and in those situations it's kind of so intimate, so magnified that you don't need the name. For the duration of reading you're that person maybe? Like it just captures their way of looking at the world, rather than *showing* them.
I guess I just think that once I name a character I give them a subjectivity that could be *seen* and so these other things flow from there, because it's all these collections of details that make people people, to be totally banal./end babble
ETA: ALSO, have you all heard of this whackjob who's wandering around the internets aggressively trying to convince people that Jensen Ackles is married to someone named "Stephanie Ware?" I guess they're not only posing as this person but also have rabid sockpuppets on IMDB and a bunch of boards. WELL, yesterday I got a random anon comment on a comm post for that Chris Kane/Jensen/Eliza Dushku fic I wrote awhile back. Uh huh, random trolling of months ago RPS fics to "inform" the authors of THE TRUTH. Um, WOW.
ETA2: That link leads to where the actual insane comment is.
I kind of appreciate having "challenge" stories to write sometimes, things with boundaries instead of just following whatever my latest random fascination is (girl!Winchesters anyone?, Sam's closeted high school football player boyfriend?). Like how agreeing to lynnevitational means I have to write a straight up Buffyverse story for the first time in awhile. And luckily, on the train this morning I realized that it involves Faith, Buffy, a road trip and Faith teaching Buffy how to drive (not to mention those ENORMOUS ISSUES they have). The story doesn't seem to know yet how slashy it is though. Humph.
And also happily I think I have some direction for PT's story now too. Which leads me to babble about original characters and names. Do other people have trouble coming up with names for their OCs? Because I really don't actually. If the character is solid enough in my imagination they just kind of "tell me" what their name is.
So what Erin wants is a sequel to Straight Line, one in which Sam deals with becoming a father, and one which also centrally concerns Dean. The first story was very much all about Sam and his issues--about finally dealing with his relationship with his own father, about deciding whether he wanted to be "in life" or on the outskirts of it, and a lot of that was accomplished through a comparison between a shiftless Sam and a more settled Dean as well as Sam spending time alone with himself and his past. And in that story, the OFC was very purposefully not named, because it took the course of the fic for Sam to be able to consider opening himself to people. In order to do what PT wants, I now have to name her, and that means a radical shift from the first story. I *felt* this as soon as "she told me" that her name was Meghan. Hum, I won't spoil anymore but I'm pleased because I found a way to write this story about Sam expanding his sense of family that fully incorporates Dean...because it has to, I think.
Another example of this naming business is how in the Sadie 'verse Dean is married and though all the existing stories say about his wife is that she is a "shy girl mechanic" and they live in a farmhouse in upstate New York and have three children. Oh and that she has a mom who makes quilts and wasn't in any way going to name her child "Dean Jr." But as soon as I gave her a name--Lissa--I knew all these other things about her as well. I knew that her full name was Melissa but that had always seemed too long and too formal to her. She's tall and thin in a wiry kind of way with blue eyes and light freckles but still tans in the summer. She has long dirty-blonde hair. She's quiet but not sulky. Strong but doesn't feel a big need to prove it. She's a country girl with simple aspirations in life, and a "tomboy" by city standards but not aggressively so. She's an only child, an only daughter, and she's been fixing cars at her Daddy's garage since she graduated high school. She had a lot of cousins though growing up so that's why she wanted her kids to have siblings. When her Dad dies that garage will be hers--not Dean's even though he works there too, but it didn't even occur to her that she and Dean wouldn't get married or that she wouldn't take his last name. She's a good cook in a functional way; she makes pie and bread, meat and potatos, salad from the garden--she doesn't do garnishes. She expects that Dean will wash the dishes if she cooks, and vice versa. On regular days she wears jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, pulls her hair back in a pony tail and smells like plain lotion and Burt's Beeswax lip balm. On special occasions she wears lipstick in neutral shades but no other make-up, lets her hair hang loose. She loves Dean but is not "overly impressed" with him--she likes that he's capable. She's pretty much the anti-Sadie--who ran away from a small town as soon as she possibly could to chase artsy dreams in the city. Sadie who never dreamed of getting married and had a lot of lovers after and in between Sam before they became a "real thing." Sadie who is *real* but likes the performance of life. Lives and breathes that.
Hmmmm, of course I also feel like I can get pretty detailed/intimate with characters I don't name, but usually that is if the story is written in the second person and in those situations it's kind of so intimate, so magnified that you don't need the name. For the duration of reading you're that person maybe? Like it just captures their way of looking at the world, rather than *showing* them.
I guess I just think that once I name a character I give them a subjectivity that could be *seen* and so these other things flow from there, because it's all these collections of details that make people people, to be totally banal./end babble
ETA: ALSO, have you all heard of this whackjob who's wandering around the internets aggressively trying to convince people that Jensen Ackles is married to someone named "Stephanie Ware?" I guess they're not only posing as this person but also have rabid sockpuppets on IMDB and a bunch of boards. WELL, yesterday I got a random anon comment on a comm post for that Chris Kane/Jensen/Eliza Dushku fic I wrote awhile back. Uh huh, random trolling of months ago RPS fics to "inform" the authors of THE TRUTH. Um, WOW.
ETA2: That link leads to where the actual insane comment is.