Fic: Shone a Light and Called It a Star (Firefly, Mal/Jayne)

[mosca]

First: femslash06. Because one woman is sexy, but two women are double sexy.

And now, the thing where two men are also double sexy.

Title: Shone a Light and Called It a Star
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: Mal/Jayne
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers/Continuity: Takes place during and after SerenitySummary: Jayne's mind ain't been settled since they left Miranda, and this

Comments

[globalfruitbat]

this was lovely. thank you for sharing it!

[mosca]

Thank you!

[van]

I will never, ever get tired of your fics. I see them and just drop everything I'm doing and read. They're like water to a parched man and this was no exception. I generally don't enjoy fics written really strongly from the POV of just one characters, because generally they fail somewhere along the way and become sluggish or unrealistic, or just stop being POV for no reason but you pulled it off quite beautifully -- better than I've seen done anywhere else

[mosca]

Thank you so much for sending such rich and detailed feedback. I'm so flattered that you took the time to write this much, and it's such a pleasure to see a reader go into depth about her reactions. I found your reflections especially valuable because you've hit upon a lot of the things that I work really hard to accomplish. I hear my characters' voices vividly in my mind as I write, so it's hard for me to conceive of telling their stories outside of their voices. At the same time, it's quite difficult to maintain those voices consistently and to translate them into prose; I'm glad to hear it's working for you. I also do make an effort to tell a different story each time, even if I'm writing a pairing that I've written before. I sometimes wonder if anyone notices that, other than my beta readers, so thank you for confirming it.

I like that you didn't make River the pilot and you hired someone else. (I wish you'd detailed him a little more, he sounded quite interesting.)I understand other writers' desire to leave the crew "intact"

[van]

I can say that, as a writer myself, I get absolutely tickled pink when a reader picks up on the little things I insert into my fics and then tells me that he or she saw them and were pleased. I've been in fandoms where I could write a direct Romeo and Juliet parody and it would completely go over the reader's heads. I've discovered that Firefly fans seem to have a keener sense to see those nuisances I put in, and so it only seems fair that if I see something that particularlly stands out to me, I should note it. Hence why you got a nice review. I really love your Mal/Jayne stories, too, and you should know that. Largely because good feedback is what fuels writers and I don't want you to ever stop writing these two. *laughs*

I couldn't write my stories from the POV of just one character. (I've done it, in the past, and it's been extremely difficult for me.) On top of that, often I read fics that are written in a Firefly dialect, where it simply doesn't work. But although you wrote from Jayne's POV you didn't drop to his speech

[mosca]

I've been in fandoms where I could write a direct Romeo and Juliet parody and it would completely go over the reader's heads.

Dude, tell me about it. I, um, there was one fic where I quoted William Carlos Williams? I think I can leave the rest to your imagination.

Largely because good feedback is what fuels writers and I don't want you to ever stop writing these two.

Okay, I'm the only person in fandom that's not true of. Fueled by my own ambition and impossible standards, I am. But I do appreciate thoughtful feedback.

you still managed to convince the reader that it was Jayne's thoughts and views we were seeing

Thank you. I try to strike a balance, you know? I've had long circular conversations with my betas that go, "Change it to this word." "But Jayne doesn't *know* that word." With Jayne in particular, I think a big part of it is staying within his vocabulary, his frame of reference. And that's true for everybody: I read fic where Simon is dropping "ain't"s and f-bombs, and I get the same feeling.

I think you

[morgannas_gate]

I'm not good at feedbacking but all I can say is it's tied equal as the best gorram FF fic in the 'verse. The other of course being Alphabet.

Thank you, you made my world a better one.

[mosca]

I think you feedback just fine. Thank you!

[bluerosefairy]

Wow, you captured Jayne's voice perfectly - dead-on perfectly. There was so much about this story I loved. Mal and Jayne arguing over which of them Inara would condescend to fuck. Jayne talking about building houses. The new pilot walking in on them. Mal's oblique references to his first lover. Jayne standing by Book's grave instead of Wash's.

Brava. This was amazing.

[mosca]

Thank you so much!

[ana_grrl]

Nice. There are a lot of things I like about this. The way you handle the new pilot is very low-key, and works very well for me (and really works with Jayne's characterisation). The sex is hot. I like Jayne's initial ambivalence about it and about Mal.

I really like this little tidbit of information:
He knew it wasn't smart to eat fruit where beggar children and pickpockets could see, but he'd left all his coin in his bunk anyhow.

And this: ha!
"You're stealthy like a herd of stampeding cattle, Jayne," he said.

Very enjoyable, all of it. Thanks!

[mosca]

Thank you so much! I intended to present a lot of things in a low-key, almost offhand manner -- it seems that Jayne would shrug past a lot of details that stand out to us as readers. In his mind, it's perfectly logical that the boss would replace the dead pilot, and not eating fruit in a bad neighborhood is plain common sense. That's one of the joys of writing science fiction: figuring out what's novel and what's normal in a given universe, and how they're different from our own world.