Drabble Challege, 1-5 for ubiquitousmixie (DH, GA, GG & GL)

[mrschimpf]

I admit I had a few problems with these prompts, but they did turn out much better than I thought they would and I'm glad that you gave me such a great selection to work with, D! Hopefully you enjoy them and the one I'm really scared of (you know the one) doesn't squick you too badly.

Comments

[ubiquitousmixie]

Oh my God, Nathan.

I'm going to comment on the others in a bit, but I felt the need to focus first on The Pall of Death. When you said you were worried about how this was received, I was extremely curious and nervous that you would shrink back. I know that readership is important to you, and I know you were nervous that readers would be offended or upset by this. But I have to say, I'm really proud of you for having the courage to write this and post this. As nice as it is to think that Rory and Paris can be all sunshine and daisies, there's always a darker side to life. There's always more angst to deal with than coming out to parents or getting bad grades in school. When I gave you this prompt, I wanted you to step out of your comfort zone and try something completely different than what you were used to. You absolutely delivered.

I found it extremely easy to slip into this dark, dreary world. I thought at one point that if I looked away from the computer screen that I would see unpacked boxes and blank walls. It gave me a chill to see how the two of them related to each other and how they sought to find relief in the only way they knew how. And, in the interest of full disclosure, the most difficult part to read was the way in which they skated physicical abuse. Self mutilation is...well...pretty terrifying, and the part when they were using the heated edge of the glue gun brought me back to some really dark places. I also remembered the rush of it when my skin burned and how it made everything else stop completely for just a few seconds. That part may have been a negative trigger for me, but this piece overall was worth it. It's about finding life in death and clinging onto feeling in whichever way is possible at the time.

[mrschimpf]

I just was feeling in such a dark mood last Thursdaay when I wrote this at work in my iPhone in the notes app (was that an adventure in itself!) and I didn't know why it ended up so dark. But I just kept thinking in some way that Rory and Paris wouldn't mourn in the normal way. And it just seemed better to have Jess murdered in an act of heroism than it would have to just have him in a traffic accident or something else. Pretty much how I feel, I will pretty much do anything to Dean and Logan even if it's absurd, but I feel like Jess is among the most untouchable of Rory's men. It hurt to write that out but in a fic like this, it was the way I had to write it.

And I do thank you for offering the prompt and making me confront this issue, as it's easily one of the biggest hangups I have about fanfiction involving death in this fandom; it's either an excuse to describe a long love in an entierly too-long fic, or an excuse to hook one character up with another. I see it as a human emotion and after quite a few fics where Paris faced death in ways I found inappropriate, it was cathartic to write this out so I could show 'no, Paris mourning is not meant for comic relief (death glare to show writers), and it's not an excuse to hook her up happily with someone else (which one writer did to her inexcusably with Finn).

I haven't self-abused, though I admit curiousity about scarring, burning and such, and I knew I was going to trigger things. This is why I was very careful about how to portray it, since I knew you went through it personally and it shouldn't be gratuitous, nor should it be encouraging. By showing it in this harsh light I hoped that the expression of emotion would be shown, but I also hoped that I would not get the 'more please' reaction in any way, because there isn't a way I could write more than one chapter.

I'm proud that I could do the prompt justice and that you thought I could handle it appropriately. It's nice exploring other aspects of the relationship and that you're there to guide me through it when my heart is telling me 'don't put this out'. Thank you for being so honest and hope about it.