Summer Talking Meme #4
Well, it's being a bit of a rubbish day (& I keep layout-hopping, sorry; I don't think I've finished yet, either), so what better than a completely self-indulgent question from the Summer Talking Meme? It reminds me that sometimes I make things that I like...
So, from femme_slash_fan: My favourite fiction I've written so far and why.
Oh, Gosh. I mean, it depends on the day, the weather, my mood and whether I'm feeling smug about stuff or wondering in despair and shame why I ever imagined putting pen to paper was a plan.
Anyway, the meme asks for my favourite, not my most popular (although other people liking the fic or not actually does affect the way I think of it) or what I consider to be the best, so here are some favourites (for today, anyway, although they are ones I tend to come back to):
1. A Tear the Sun Lets Fall (S&S, G, 4540 words, Original Elements; originally written for
hc_bingo 2013).
This one felt like the culmination of a lot of my weird Element-thinking in so many ways; it was satisfactory to write, I like the title (and why the title), and I still actually enjoy it when I reread it occasionally. I think it might be id fic? I don't want to think what that says about me. (This one's gen, but weird elemental shippage is totally my id/kink/whatever, it turns out. And there's not really much of a line between that and any Elemental interaction.) Of course, it's Original Elements, so it's not been widely read - but it has been read and garnered some nice comments. It's about as far as I dared go into what you might call Element mythology (because the mystery is the point, with S&S) & I very much enjoyed doing that.
There was a beauty in working with her colleagues, Bronze saw that. Iron didn’t understand, but then, perhaps he didn’t understand primarily to counteract the fact that she did. There was, after all, balance in the way they interacted. She saw it as a complex dance: they were always changing partners, learning the steps. Iron, if he allowed such a fancy, would probably argue that they were more like miners, hacking away at the endless rock face together and needed no frivolous distractions.
And she and Copper - there were lines, there were connections that crossed and tangled together, things that needed no words. That was always how it was, how she recalled it. If you measured such things, which she didn’t, she might probably be younger than Copper, but it felt as if it were the other way round.
2. Vigil (Measure For Measure, Teen, 1246 words. Isabella/Duke Vincentio; originally written for Yuletide 2012)
This fic is a slight thing; I think now it could be better, but I was so terrified of writing it - it was one of the shippiest things I'd done at the time*, and a strange pairing, and Shakespeare and so many other things. Basically, it turned out I unexpectedly had SO MANY Isabella and Isabella/Duke feelings. (I do, I really do.) Possibly I just like it because I was so scared, but as it turned out I got some of the nicest yule-comments. It still makes my heart go warm when random readers like it even now. And it probably isn't that good (and I have YET MORE FEELINGS about M4M) but for those reasons it's a favourite.
The minutes that come between the public words and the chance for private discussion are as hours, measured by the insistent beating of her heart. She wishes to speak, yet she fears it. She does not know what she must say this time.
When the moment comes, it is not as she expected.
* Don't laugh at me! It's true. :lol:
3. House/Home? (Original Fic, PG, 8410 words; written for runaway_tales)
I think there are some places where I needed to follow through a little more (but it was getting overlong already), but I had an awful lot of fun writing this piece. I wrote it to fit the prompt: Once I spoke the language of the flowers and it's a linked chain of moments, each fitting three flowers & their meanings, and I loved doing it, and I think it turned out well, and it was unusual for me: I don't think I've written anything else that's quite so solely a mundane little love story. (If anyone's interested, it should stand alone, I hope: in short, the two characters made a marriage of convenience that really wasn't and it was all highly improbable and extremely foolish of them, but then they had the misfortune to be in fic by me, so they should just be grateful neither of them turned out to be a displaced Victorian housemaid.)
Happiness, she knew, was a thing that the universe took away from you the moment it noticed you had it. She’d been trying to walk a middle path, between the loneliness and the risk of reaching for something she couldn’t afford to lose. She had been playing a game, staying where it was safe. Maybe it had been a little awkward, even a little painful here and there, but that was fine. The fates didn’t get jealous of such things; they wouldn’t instantly know she had someone to lose and steal him away.
Talking of which...
4. UNIT: Strange Weapons and UNIT: Lonely House (because I can't separate them). (DW, far too many words, far too many OCs, sorry about that.)
I haven't re-read these in a while and there's so much about the structure of my 1980s UNIT sequence that I'd like to fix (because it was only meant to be one story, dammit! I kept trying to FINISH THE DAMN THING, but I should have given in and then at least the over-arching series plot wouldn't keep trying to get everything sorted every third story).
But still, it was such fun, people were so kind about reading them & I do think that the first two stand up both as Doctor Who plotty missing adventure stories and with the original characters. It's the tale of UNIT in the 1980s, because how did they manage without the Brig and the Doctor? What was Colonel Crichton actually like? Who on earth got lumbered with being scientific adviser in the absence of the Doctor and how did they cope? Also, New Who, had given us Torchwood, up to no good throughout the 20th C.
So, what ensued was the tale of Colonel Crichton's best efforts to manage UNIT, recruit a reliable scientific adviser, defeat the evil Torchwood shenanigans, enlist old friends wherever possible - and deal with the unfortunate Victorian housemaid that Torchwood carelessly left behind them.
The funny thing was, looking at this girl, she seemed to belong to the Hall in a way that he and the pieces of more modern furniture about them didn’t. He felt as if he was the one out of place, not her.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t have much choice, so he had better convince her. “I’m sorry, but I do need your help. My name’s Webber - Dr Peter Webber. How about you?”
She gave a lopsided smile. “I’m Tilly. I’m the ghost.”
(Hmm, I think a connecting theme here, Shakespeare aside, is that I clearly just like things with OCs that other people also like. People liking things because you had their favourite characters in is very nice, of course, but people liking your own just because they do; that's a whole other level of writing happiness.)
But another day I might say something completely different: Light on a Hill, which took me so long to finally write; Ar Haner Nos yn Glir y Daeth, because it's not every day you get a really good excuse to write Aberystwyth-set fanfic, or Ten Times the Doctor (Almost) Got Hitched (because that was so much fun) or something else again. Everybody else's favourite, however, remains that random ficlet in which Miss Marple pwns Dracula, but I suppose that's fair. The above are probably some of my odder fics.
Here's an even more self-indulgent question which you're welcome to ignore, but I am curious - do any of you have a favourite of my fics & if so, what is it? (I am fairly sure it's unlikely to be any of these, except possibly the last one!) (I mean, you know how it is: you get recced, YAY, and then... "Oh, no, not that one... I was going to delete it!" The author always has funny ideas about their own writing...)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
So, from femme_slash_fan: My favourite fiction I've written so far and why.
Oh, Gosh. I mean, it depends on the day, the weather, my mood and whether I'm feeling smug about stuff or wondering in despair and shame why I ever imagined putting pen to paper was a plan.
Anyway, the meme asks for my favourite, not my most popular (although other people liking the fic or not actually does affect the way I think of it) or what I consider to be the best, so here are some favourites (for today, anyway, although they are ones I tend to come back to):
1. A Tear the Sun Lets Fall (S&S, G, 4540 words, Original Elements; originally written for
hc_bingo 2013).
This one felt like the culmination of a lot of my weird Element-thinking in so many ways; it was satisfactory to write, I like the title (and why the title), and I still actually enjoy it when I reread it occasionally. I think it might be id fic? I don't want to think what that says about me. (This one's gen, but weird elemental shippage is totally my id/kink/whatever, it turns out. And there's not really much of a line between that and any Elemental interaction.) Of course, it's Original Elements, so it's not been widely read - but it has been read and garnered some nice comments. It's about as far as I dared go into what you might call Element mythology (because the mystery is the point, with S&S) & I very much enjoyed doing that.
There was a beauty in working with her colleagues, Bronze saw that. Iron didn’t understand, but then, perhaps he didn’t understand primarily to counteract the fact that she did. There was, after all, balance in the way they interacted. She saw it as a complex dance: they were always changing partners, learning the steps. Iron, if he allowed such a fancy, would probably argue that they were more like miners, hacking away at the endless rock face together and needed no frivolous distractions.
And she and Copper - there were lines, there were connections that crossed and tangled together, things that needed no words. That was always how it was, how she recalled it. If you measured such things, which she didn’t, she might probably be younger than Copper, but it felt as if it were the other way round.
2. Vigil (Measure For Measure, Teen, 1246 words. Isabella/Duke Vincentio; originally written for Yuletide 2012)
This fic is a slight thing; I think now it could be better, but I was so terrified of writing it - it was one of the shippiest things I'd done at the time*, and a strange pairing, and Shakespeare and so many other things. Basically, it turned out I unexpectedly had SO MANY Isabella and Isabella/Duke feelings. (I do, I really do.) Possibly I just like it because I was so scared, but as it turned out I got some of the nicest yule-comments. It still makes my heart go warm when random readers like it even now. And it probably isn't that good (and I have YET MORE FEELINGS about M4M) but for those reasons it's a favourite.
The minutes that come between the public words and the chance for private discussion are as hours, measured by the insistent beating of her heart. She wishes to speak, yet she fears it. She does not know what she must say this time.
When the moment comes, it is not as she expected.
* Don't laugh at me! It's true. :lol:
3. House/Home? (Original Fic, PG, 8410 words; written for runaway_tales)
I think there are some places where I needed to follow through a little more (but it was getting overlong already), but I had an awful lot of fun writing this piece. I wrote it to fit the prompt: Once I spoke the language of the flowers and it's a linked chain of moments, each fitting three flowers & their meanings, and I loved doing it, and I think it turned out well, and it was unusual for me: I don't think I've written anything else that's quite so solely a mundane little love story. (If anyone's interested, it should stand alone, I hope: in short, the two characters made a marriage of convenience that really wasn't and it was all highly improbable and extremely foolish of them, but then they had the misfortune to be in fic by me, so they should just be grateful neither of them turned out to be a displaced Victorian housemaid.)
Happiness, she knew, was a thing that the universe took away from you the moment it noticed you had it. She’d been trying to walk a middle path, between the loneliness and the risk of reaching for something she couldn’t afford to lose. She had been playing a game, staying where it was safe. Maybe it had been a little awkward, even a little painful here and there, but that was fine. The fates didn’t get jealous of such things; they wouldn’t instantly know she had someone to lose and steal him away.
Talking of which...
4. UNIT: Strange Weapons and UNIT: Lonely House (because I can't separate them). (DW, far too many words, far too many OCs, sorry about that.)
I haven't re-read these in a while and there's so much about the structure of my 1980s UNIT sequence that I'd like to fix (because it was only meant to be one story, dammit! I kept trying to FINISH THE DAMN THING, but I should have given in and then at least the over-arching series plot wouldn't keep trying to get everything sorted every third story).
But still, it was such fun, people were so kind about reading them & I do think that the first two stand up both as Doctor Who plotty missing adventure stories and with the original characters. It's the tale of UNIT in the 1980s, because how did they manage without the Brig and the Doctor? What was Colonel Crichton actually like? Who on earth got lumbered with being scientific adviser in the absence of the Doctor and how did they cope? Also, New Who, had given us Torchwood, up to no good throughout the 20th C.
So, what ensued was the tale of Colonel Crichton's best efforts to manage UNIT, recruit a reliable scientific adviser, defeat the evil Torchwood shenanigans, enlist old friends wherever possible - and deal with the unfortunate Victorian housemaid that Torchwood carelessly left behind them.
The funny thing was, looking at this girl, she seemed to belong to the Hall in a way that he and the pieces of more modern furniture about them didn’t. He felt as if he was the one out of place, not her.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t have much choice, so he had better convince her. “I’m sorry, but I do need your help. My name’s Webber - Dr Peter Webber. How about you?”
She gave a lopsided smile. “I’m Tilly. I’m the ghost.”
(Hmm, I think a connecting theme here, Shakespeare aside, is that I clearly just like things with OCs that other people also like. People liking things because you had their favourite characters in is very nice, of course, but people liking your own just because they do; that's a whole other level of writing happiness.)
But another day I might say something completely different: Light on a Hill, which took me so long to finally write; Ar Haner Nos yn Glir y Daeth, because it's not every day you get a really good excuse to write Aberystwyth-set fanfic, or Ten Times the Doctor (Almost) Got Hitched (because that was so much fun) or something else again. Everybody else's favourite, however, remains that random ficlet in which Miss Marple pwns Dracula, but I suppose that's fair. The above are probably some of my odder fics.
Here's an even more self-indulgent question which you're welcome to ignore, but I am curious - do any of you have a favourite of my fics & if so, what is it? (I am fairly sure it's unlikely to be any of these, except possibly the last one!) (I mean, you know how it is: you get recced, YAY, and then... "Oh, no, not that one... I was going to delete it!" The author always has funny ideas about their own writing...)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: