and instead I pour the milk

[lostinapapercup]

I'm going to do the AO3 meme going around because I could use a little creative positive thinking.

I have 21 works archived at AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 21 (the first thing I posted there), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it.Honestly I haven't even taken half my fics from my master list over to AO3, so if

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[lostinapapercup]

Well, if you thought what my pick for your meme ended up with was funny...

16 is Time, Spirit, and Sinew, your post-canon Kara/Sam birthday fic. Here's what I like about it, and I won't cheat and say your reactions to it. (Because let's be honest: you were first delightfully surprised and then delightfully appreciative and generally speaking you're one of the best recipients a fic-giver could ask for.)

1. I like Kara's range of emotion. Sometimes it's open and even tearful, but she's still Kara and the poof didn't change that. I like that after her emotional goodbyes on Earth she reacts strongly to seeing Zak again but doesn't change so she's showing grand displays of emotion all the time. If I had intended to write a longer story and wasn't trying to be more efficient time-wise I'd definitely have dipped more into her reactions to more of the people there. Her parents, especially, and I felt like that wanted a level of detail that I couldn't afford to delve into at the time. But with the ultimate purpose of ending on the K/S reunion for a shippy birthday gift a lot of characters took a backseat because I felt I had to acknowledge them being there even if I couldn't spend too much time with them. When I was trying to think of reasons why this story would suddenly be getting so very many hits I certainly considered a lot of its flaws, including that it doesn't pass the much-loved bechdel test. Kara and Kat have a conversation that both touches on the availability of men and then turns to Hot Dog. But honestly, Kara and Kat having an openly honest and emotional moment at that point wouldn't have felt right at all to me and I was okay with Kat ragging on Kara in a superficial way and I like both of them kind of affectionately making fun of Hot Dog. It's bittersweet that he outlasted both of them (but not necessarily surprising) and I think that's something they'd be aware of in that moment but not necessarily something they'd be having a heart-to-heart about then and there. Anyway, yeah, the post is that despite the flaws I see in the story I like Kara's level of emotion throughout the story: it's closer to the surface than usual, but it's not bleeding out all over the place. And she's still perfectly capable of trash-talking the people who matter even if she has happy to see them in a happier place.

2. I like Zak's conversations with Kara. I like to think there's a lot of affection between them in those scenes. I didn't rewatch his parts of the series in my hurry to watch this so I don't know that I could actually hear it in his voice, but I like the realization he comes to about why Kara passed him and I like his attempt to explain the fields. It's not something that comes with a handbook and he doesn't have any well-defined answers. He knows what he knows.

3. And on the above note: "Maybe we're infinite." Generally speaking, I like the concept of the fields. How do you deal with multiple loves? It seems really sad to think that someone you loved and were loved by so much before your premature death would be left to deal with the fact that by the time you died and rejoined them in the afterlife those feelings were old and stale. So... I hoped I combined the Colonial idea that your dead loved ones were waiting for you -- something that obviously rings true enough for Kara's final words to include "they're waiting for me" and for Laura to actually see it in a possibly prophetic dream in Faith -- with a sense that no matter when you die you can still matter every bit as much to the people who mattered to you, that those relationships absolutely still mean just as much.

And as a bonus I like that it comes full circle. It wasn't planned, but by the end it felt right.